A place to look at everything that is non-Paizo. Reviews, suggestions, impressions etc.

So with Path of War Expanded, we have two initiators for every mental ability, prestige classes for just about every specialized need, and at least a couple archetypes allowing some initiators to change their key attribute.

With Spheres of Power, we can "and nothing of value was lost" the entire Vancian arcane/divine construct.

With Occult Adventures, we finally have a book full of flavor for psionics that isn't crystals everywhere, which is the only thing I am not 100% all about re: psionics - it goes great in a fantasy setting so long as it's the ONLY magic, but I hate how the aesthetic clashes with a mostly arcanodivinatory world.

Is anyone else getting really excited that it's finally possible to play full-featured games in Tier 3 without referencing Paizo's mechanical morass at all?! I AM. "Core is banned" games were my favorite kind in 3.5, when you could shovel aside all the dross and play without worrying if your fighter was falling behind the druid's animal companion or if being a rogue was meaningful in a world with greater invisibility and silence, and I'm really glad that we're finally reaching that point in Pathfinder as well.

I've never played in a "core is banned" game. Sounds interesting though. Do you use a homebrew setting as well?

I was just thinking how interesting to be to play a "dimension hopping" game where the different realms didn't just have different flavors but ACTUALLY different mechanical rules. So you'd be trying to play a Pathfinder character in a D&D 3.5 system.

"Roll Spot check"
"I don't have the 'Spot' skill"
"Then roll a d20 and add wisdom and hope for the best..."

So one idea would be that you have a realm full of 3PP stuff while the players are all restricted to Core (or vice versa).

I'm curious about Spheres of Power. I'very heard a bit about it from a friend, and it sounds pretty flexible. But I'm wondering how it measures up for flexible casters (those who pick up lots of different types of spells fron lots of schools). Any thoughts?

It's better in every way except in terms of raw power, outside of certain abuses of Conjuration. You're flexible in how you build your character but won't command anything like the absolute cosmic power of a wizard. It's upper Tier 3 and works great as a drag-and-drop to replace the entire scope of arcane and divine magic and psionics. I strongly recommend it for that purpose and not as a supplement to Paizo's existing systems for the same reason I might strongly recommend antidepressants for someone who was depressed but not if they were self-medicating with near-fatal doses of heroin.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:43, Tue 01 Dec 2015.

Interesting. Do you feel "crippled" compared to a default caster?

I would LOVE a system that would make casters a bit beefier at lower levels but caps them at mid-to-high levels.

Not in the least. You get a pretty good progression of options and you have always-available out-of-the-box stuff that feels very solid. You can do pretty much anything an ordinary caster can and then some, but you're drawn to specialization by enticement and a little necessity, and nothing you can do is going to match up to the high end (except Conjuration, for the usual reason messing with the action economy is hard to regulate).
This message was last edited by the player at 17:42, Tue 01 Dec 2015.

Hmm. You mention specialization by enticement and a little necessity. So does the power grow more organically, keeping with a theme?

For instance, a regular caster could have most of their lower level spells as evocation and enchantment, but once they get 4th level slots, they might branch out into conjuration and necromancy, instantly having powerful spells from those schools without having cast a single spell from those schools before.

Would a sphere caster (apologies if the term is incorrect) be able to do similar, or would they need to start with lower powered spells from new spheres, building their way up slowly?

They don't have spells. There are 20 spheres with names like Alteration, Death, and Mind, each of which gives you one or two base abilities. Warp lets you teleport yourself or someone you're touching to somewhere in Close range as a standard action. Time lets you touch people to grant bonus attacks (haste) or stagger them (slow) as a standard action. You can do these things all day and forever.

What you get as level up is access to talents, which either unlock a new sphere for you or improve on or add to your base abilities. Fate can learn to apply penalties to enemies alongside the bonuses to allies it begins with. Darkness can learn to apply a Constitution-damaging drain to their pitch-black playgrounds. These aren't usually level-locked or prerequisite-bound, so the more you invest the better you'll be overall at a sphere, but if you switch from focusing on Weather to focusing on Illusion halfway through your career you're not missing out on high-level effects or being forced to select low-level ones. Normal Pathfinder casters are multiplicative: one 9th level spell is worth like a hundred 1st level spells. Sphere casters are almost completely additive. Your 20th talent is as good as your 1st was, and the difference is just which order you picked them in.

The almost is Advanced Talents, which are an optional rule: these are noticeably more powerful than base talents. But they're usually just level-locked, so you can spend your first 13 levels learning Nature and Life and then buy an Advanced Talent in Protection without needing to do anything special except know Protection.

They have like ten classes built around various themes, from the mageknight to the psionic-themed symbiat to the shifter (yes, there is a whole class for shapeshifting that isn't messing around with per-day anything, it's great) to the fey adept. Their signature class, the incanter, gets 32 talents overall in a 1-2-1-2 progression (everybody gets two "free" talents for being a sphere casting class) and the opportunity to trade out some or all of their many bonus feats for various sphere specializations. Most everybody else has either 10 or 15 talents. Caster level scaling is a big deal also, and most everybody else has either max 10 or 15 of that as well.

They do have spell points, which are a resource they can expend for advanced effects or to supercharge things If you know Time, Warp, and Telekinesis, you are never unable to stagger, teleport short distances, or pick up rocks with your mind, but you might not be able to steal other people's time or teleport long distances or throw ogres over cliffs against their will.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:37, Tue 01 Dec 2015.

Ahhh, so it reminds me a bit like a super powered witch's hex or a cleric domain/wizard school ability but with unlimited usage and modifiers without being an actual "caster" in a traditional sense.

Then again I really like that. Just being Buff Boy (i.e. Cleric of Luck) is a lot of fun...

Interesting. I'll definitely have to look into the details. Thanks so much for the extensive explanation, SD.

I was wondering if we had any gm's who would replace the vancian magic system with the Spheres of Power from Drop Dead Studios?  What are y'alls thoughts on this product?

Personally, I have some mixed feelings on the product. It's good, but it needs some polish. If you're up for providing that polish, I think an experiment in replacing vancian casting would see some good use out of Spheres of Power. (I think there were a few rather key rules missing, but most GMs would be able to figure it out based on context.)

I have loathed Vancian magic since before I knew what "Vancian" even meant; my expectation into D&D was that there would be mana, and I was bitterly disappointed to find you could actually just "run out" of spells.

I think it's a better system than the default, and so much less broken, but there is some elbow grease that needs applying in places, and Conjuration in particular needs watching (in the specific case that someone starts talking about multiple summons at once; Summoner one-awesome-thing route is fine) because "so much less broken" doesn't mean "can't be broken at all," alas.

Psionics is the other really good replacement choice. It's basically just arcane magic without some of the broken stuff and non-Vancian.

Akashic magic is great, but it's not really an arcane magic replacement candidate per se. If you remember Incarnum, it's the update for that, and like Incarnum it's more about self-buffs and self-expansion than reality-warping.

Hero Labs. Is it good? Filling out character sheets on both roll20 and on rpol is quite complicated, I've gotten the impression that it's easier to use and browse sheets on hero labs. Is that right?

The AP parts of hero labs, is it useful, does it add much compared to scrolling a pdf of the AP?

From what I've seen Hero Labs uses a lot of drop down menus and is good for telling you what you're missing.  Like any program, familiarity will help.  One of the guys I play with swears by it and has invested heavily into it.

That said, I'm not sure how set up Hero Labs is for APs, though I imagine it should work just fine.  If I played more often I'd give serious thought to getting the program.

Honestly, setting up a Google document with your character information (or just using the blank space of an RPOL sheet) gets you the same result for the final cost of "free," and IMHO takes about the same amount of time. The hard part is the choices you're going to make, not filling them in.