The Bloodbinder is a fantastic archetype, very well done. The Blood Art talents and expanded Blood sphere talents and abilities compliment the sphere extremely well and open the doors for some deviously interesting characters. I am definitely looking forward to more from this author.

First - wow to some of the negative comments given - it's fine to give a low score and review if not satisfied, but does it ever occur to people that if they want 'improved' results, that the result is about learning and not about negativity? If you felt it was bad there are better ways to express it than just calling the person who did it an idiot or any other insults.

Alright, pet peeve moment settled. review of the actual book.

1) Introduction note: The primary thing mentioned here is the fact it's meant to expand on the fact there aren't a lot of premade things items for Spheres and this was aimed to amend some of that. Thus, there will be obvious copy items you are familiar with from regular Pathfinder. I find a remarkable number of people miss the obvious reason for this - because someone out there will go 'well where is my x version of this item?' and they won't take a DM's word of 'just do this' unless it's got an Official stamp on it.

There are also items that are deliberately not made this way because of the nature of Pathfinder's system versus Sphere's system. Certain items just aren't compatible because of how power or mechanics work. This might be something that is better known in the Discord group, but not everything translates well if you switch to spheres - CL tweaking feats, traits, and items can break the balance because they don't scale the same way. So some magic items should not be duplicated for very good reason.

There's more I could say on that, but it wouldn't tie in properly to the review, so...

2) Crafting Traditions: I like the novelty of being able to craft your own items - I think it's something players should learn to do versus just rely on DM's to drop goodies in your lap - so having something that can tweak how they're made is of interest to me. This is not a mega-abusive feature though - it's low power limited so that meta attempts at cheesing it have limited results anyways. It provides a good, semi functional way of designing certain items and getting a mechanical boon out of it without having to just hand wave the idea with the DM, from remaking Dragon Balls (not exactly Low power, but amusing notion all the same) to creating magical items that have curse-worthy features without actually making it cursed, or a purpose to wedging a diamond the size of your skull onto the pommel of a sword.

That said, it is also a new thing to my knowledge, so someone may break it eventually, but it requires investment to do in the first place, so that is a counterpoint for such breaking.

3) Magical Goods in general: There are weird items, good items, and bad items - but to be fair, there are plenty of those sort of items in regular pathfinder as well. For example - A gold sink. Basically it's a magic item that condenses valuables onto it to become an increasingly expensive item. It also gains weight accordingly, so I'm not sure if it's of real use (but it certainly is harder to pickpocket a 50 pound gold bowl than a pouch of 200 gold coins). If you could pry gems off it or do similar things, I'd say it's a novel item of amusement. After having written that, I have concluded it's primary advantage is size adjustment. Storing a Tiny Bowl that weighs two tons is still space efficient because it's a tiny bowl.

It's also an important example of a basic rule of magic item creation that a lot of people seem to ignore or aren't sure what to do with: To adjust the price based on actual practicality and not simply because of complexity. This item uses several talents, including advanced, and has a CL of 10 by default, yet it only costs 50 gp to make. Normally that'd be much more expensive, but its use is very limited and specific, and provides no real combat bonus (or any sort of bonus). With the fact it's storing size away, that's actually an epic discount, but it's major disadvantage is you have to use a miracle or wish to get stuff back out of it. Not sure that's ideal for dealing with things, but it displays a clever use of magic (Pathfinder or Sphere wise) to hopefully inspire other options.

Metamagic rods are not something I normally ever used, so I can't say if the intentions of that are good or bad. I think lower their price make sense due to how Spheres magic operates versus Vancian (DnD classic magic), so There's nothing wrong with suggesting the altered prices and explanations. If you agree with the logic, you're happy you didn't get ripped off if you bought or made one, and if you don't agree with with the logic, well, you're allowed to do that! It's up to the DM what prices to use!

Charms: I'm used to the classic method of '2-3 magic items to boost stats unless you pimp up with a single one that boosts 3' So I don't mind that method at all. I am not sure where the suggested idea of limiting the # of them came from in all honesty, but it's a very easy rule to ignore if you don't agree with it. My guess is it's a case of potential balance flavor since magic in Spheres doesn't operate the same way, or a way to try and encourage other magical knick-knacks versus just buffing all your passive stuff.

Compounds: Transformation potions were a little weird at first, but their general novelty has its moments. day-long changes that dont' provide all the perks of a creature isn't a bad thing, but many of these options aren't 'practical' below 10th level due to how crafting rules work, so finding them before hand is sort of a rarity unless you Know a Guy. This also breaks some of the normal rules listed for adv talents, but I know the potions were originally made in mind with particular goals and not to follow the norm. That probably should have gotten mentioned.

Implements: I like the idea behind implements because it fits the theme of having a staff or item that helps bolster your magic - but not necessarily by the fact it has a spell built into it you activate (fits more with the vibe of similar logic for a +5 sword). I don't normally play incanters, but I think the specialist staff in itself is nice for its effect - and to note, because I think someone else said otherwise, it does not stack with the same sphere specialization if the incanter has it. So only that single +1 CL bonus to worry about. That means it makes more sense to get one you aren't a specialist in. The price point could use clarification - I think it means the entire staff cost is multiplied, not just the part with the implement bonus. that means a +10 specialist staff is 300k (which is technically pretty pricey by standard price points).

Scrolls: can't say much on scrolls. Technically Sphere scrolls can be more complicated than PF scrolls, but don't have experience for that. No complaints otherwise.

Marvelous goods: Flask Shards: I have no problem with these - they're mostly DM controlled and they're a nice way to supplement things like not having a healer or whatnot. Otherwise marvelous goods = wondrous items, which means all sorts of stuff can happen, balanced or otherwise. They are among the hardest things to price for similar reasons.

Spell Engines: main perk of having premade ones, even if they're basic, is it gives you an idea of the actual leeway expected of them. I didn't consider making a bag of holding into a spell engine - and it fits (pun)! Otherwise nothing crazy here I think.

Fabled Items: These are basically Artifacts in potential with more intent on story building with them - so artifacts you could hand to a party without fear they'll crack the planet in half (depending on your DM). SO long as you you do so responsibly, it gives some nice ideas of how to handle custom-making your own artifacts and the like for games, though one has to make sure to point out to greedy players they're not something you can 'just create.' Actually making one would fall under actual story work and all that.

Talent Crystals: I like the idea of them as it reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics when defeated enemies would turn into them, although I'm not sure how I feel about them DnD style, but given they're DM controlled it's not like a play can go crazy with them either.

Weapons: These a few joke items in here, either because they're remodels of certain Movie Characters (I'm looking at you Lasso of Truth) or helpfully painful (The Knife Wife, aka healing shiv). There's a section going over a bit about making magic weapons with the sphere system as a guide for what to consider making them, which never hurts.

Armor/Shields: Small and simple section. nothing to complain about there.

Alchemy stuff: I can't comment much on this, as it involves Tech sphere, and that is so big and other things going on with I'm not sure I want to confuse myself. ^^; Most/all of these can be implemented in other ways though, so it doesn't rule them out.

Spellbooks: Not to be confused with wizard spellbooks: This I wish was more elaborate, because the spellcraft section had some issues that I think lead to some of its confusion. Several aspects of that are also covered or expanded on with Techniques, however. Spellcrafting is not for the unexperienced.

4) Guide to Magical goodies: This is nothing really new, but it's good to have it around because there will always be someone who doesn't know the stuff we have all learned from various editions. One day some kid is going to go 'You mean This DnD isn't 1st edition? Lawl' and you're going to want to smack them with your +3 Sign of the SmartAss (it gets +13 to hit). It also has some tables for a fair amount of sphere loot to help with randomizing some things if needed.

In Conclusion:

My main grievance with magic item making (in Pathfinder and Spheres) is that examples of adjusting the price on things like this are not given very often. You only notice it happened because a price doesn't make sense. Spheres also does state under magical item creation that if you're duplicating a Pathfinder item it recommends you use the item price from there versus making it based off complexity or such in Sphere, because pricing won't always translate well. There's just that much difference in how things are weighed that there's no cleancut way to adjust, and the nature of a game will influence what is actually useful as well (meaning price values are subjective). While this book doesn't quite help me on my wish for more thoughts on some of that, having more examples does help in deciding those things myself, and sometimes you run into some interesting ideas to expand upon!

Despite the small flaws it has, this book does give you room for ideas, suggestions, and creativeness. It's not a required book to play, but it is a nice book if you're not afraid of testing creativity.

This handbook suffers from reprints (basic stat boosters etc.), several uninspired items (such as basic items that are combined onto a single slot, or specific implements that are only normal +x with extra talent), and blatant power creep (+x items with non-standard bonus types).

For more interesting and unique items, the pricing is usually off. They might follow the basic guidelines, but that doesn't mean the end result reasonable. If all the book does is following existing guidelines to pump out items without even asking if the price is reasonable for the effect, then I think leaving it to GM oversight is better than printing the item.

I am more positive to the list of compounds. While they still are clearly just made using the basic guidelines (at least for the most part), having a long list of printed potions and oils as well as a random table so you can roll up some treasure would help spice up some loot. I still don't think I approve of Blessed/Cursed Stick as consumable immediate action rerolls have issues once the cost becomes irrelevant. The random table suffers from pulling content directly from the whole book instead of splitting it between different categories of items.

The book has some discussion on how to distribute treasure. GMs and Players new to d&d/pathfinder could find this useful but there was nothing revolutionary there.

The author has stated that the intent of this book was to replace the need of using Paizo sources for magic items. You can do that, and you will find more value out of the book if you do. Between Spheres being a 3rd party supplement to Pathfinder RPG and still requiring the core rulebook and other paizo books for basic rules (skill system, combat rules, etc.) as well as races and classes to use sphere-archetypes with. I think it would be more reasonable to expect the book to be used along with Paizo sources such as Ultimate Equipment. Personally, I will place the whole book on my list of banned content and use Ultimate Equipment from Paizo together with Ultimate Spheres of Power for sphere items.

This is less of a proper review, actually, but I would like to clarify a few points I've seen in some of the other reviews. That is, before you buy this product, you should know what it's trying to do and what you should expect from the contents.

Essentially, this book is a collection of premade items created using the crafting rules in Ultimate Spheres of Power, plus a smaller number of original items that aren't made using the basic crafting rules. The main purpose of these items is to provide a single source so players and GM's don't have to spend as much time using the rules to make common items - doing the work for you, basically. Not every group wants to have to spend time calculating things and pricing individual effects, so this book offers literally hundreds of premade options throughout its categories that you can simply grab and start using in your game. Some of the chapters are pretty basic reworks of common items (stat belts and headbands, etc.), while other parts are significantly more diverse applications of the crafting rules that demonstrate how to use the system. Wholly new bits include new options for scaling items, crafting traditions to make items more unique, and a much-needed boost for Spheres of Might characters using stuff like the Alchemy sphere.

I saw another review mention the metamagic, which is a pretty big chunk of the early book, and how they thought it should just be a paragraph describing the different costs. I disagree. Many existing metamagic options do not work with Ultimate Spheres of Power as written, and the ones in this book have been modified and updated for compatibility. You couldn't get that if you just described the different costs, and this saves people from the issue of trying to figure out how to apply many types of metamagic to spherecasting if they want to use anything that wouldn't normally work as-written. It's easy to miss details like those if you look at an item name, assume it's the same as something you've already seen, and move on - but this book has a lot of little details like that if you look closely, all designed to make things work better with spheres content.

In short, if you want easy access to premade content made using Ultimate Spheres of Power's crafting rules, this book is a good choice for your table. It's very comprehensive in that regard, and offers an incredible number and variety of items for the price (seriously, it's like four or five times as long as one of DDS' regular handbooks, and at just a slightly higher price point). If you're happier doing conversions and making new items yourself, you won't get as much value from this tome because it's mainly an application of the existing crafting rules, although it still has a bunch of samples that you can use to base new items on when figuring out how to balance things.

One of the best comprehensive additions of content for Spheres of Might in a while. This book singlehandedly has added at least one new component to every character concept I've had in quite a while. The archetypes? Wonderful. The talents? WONDERFUL.

Now excuse me while I go play a Kung fu bard dude.

Grinning brigand is worth the price on the tin for sure. The wraith archetype is probably good, but I'm not really interested in that class at all.

Pretty darn good. Makes it easy for someone lazy like me to integrate more spheres content into my game!

A great resource that really adds what missing from the world of Spheres: stabbing people with lances made of our own blood!

Skip this one. The good is drowning in the medicore and the utter crap.

Most of the items in here are 100% derivative and don't deviate from the standard Sphere crafting formula. The metamagic rod price reductions are nice, but the multipage section should have been an additional paragraph stating cost per effective level increase. There was no need to print each one.

Then you get the stat boosters. Yawn. Pathfinder already printed these. We don't need new names with the same cost. They further restricted it so you can only have one physical item and one mental item. Do yourself a favor and ignore that rule. Hell, go back to the Magic Item Compendium and eliminate teh 50% price increase for adding +x stat boosts to items. This is a bad and stupid rule and even WotC figure that out over a decade ago. You'd think the people who brought us Spheres would have too.

A few items stand out as good, or at least niche. There's a +3 staff equivalent (except it's a glove) that grants a new blast type talent and swicthes your fvored element to the contained type. It's good as a backup for single element blasters, even if most of the time you'll want a +X destruction staff that also grants a known blast type and doesn't swap favored element.

New tattoos at least put stuff out there for SoM tattoo-ed monk like characters.

And then you get the stinkers. And they are both wildly over- and under- priced

There's a held item that grant fast healing 1. It costs 72,000. Whoever came up with that should stop making spheres content due to incompetence. Boots of the Earth aside, has your group ever used 96 wands of infernal healing? Because that's what this costs. And you'll still need those wands until you can afford a +6 weapon item. For fast healing one. I still can't get over the shear idiocy it took to print this.

Another vastly inappropriately priced item, called a Specialist's Staff, grants a +1-5 enhancement bonus to one spehre, and the effects of a specialization from the incanter class to the same to an incanter. So, a +1-5 enhancement bonus to a sphere, a +1 untyped bonus to CL with that sphere, the base sphere or another talent if they possess it (a +2 effective enhancement), and the 3 domain-like abilities of the sphere's specialization. The cost? 50% increase in price over a +X staff. Whoever came up with this should also give up writing sphere content. For 3,000 GP, an incanter gains an additional 5-feat equivalent power, and +2 CL to one sphere, and a bonus sphere known. The only smart thing about this item is the effective 1-at-a-time limit. Oh, and despite the 1 at a time limit, you can still have a regular staff with other non enhancement bonus stuff on it.

Oh, despite being an autoscaling item, it's just there with the rest of the items.

There's some decent stuff in here. Crafting traditions are great for GMs that require mechanics for their world build. The cost changes for Metamagic is nice. Several of the items that have additional effects if you also have certain class features are pretty cool, but it's obvious they let the D-Team contribute and didn't have anyone who has actually played pathfinder review it.

2/5 - Worldbuilding stuff is nice and it saves you the trouble of making some common items yourself if you're bad at math. But it needed far more time in the incubator and has some obviously unfit author's contributing.

To be honest, I found it fairly derivitive of magic items that are already present in pathfinder. I feel like I paid more for a formatted statblock than anything new or fresh.

well one of the best books i bought keep up the good work

The Youxia's Handbook is one of the most interesting updates for the Spheres of Might system. With new high-wire kung-fu style options, this book is geared towards games with fantastic martial action, rather than just guys in armor hacking at each other with swords. Also, Strength to AC (within reasonable limits). Overall, definitely one of my favorite add-ons for Spheres of Might, and a worthy addition to any collection.

Ultimate Spheres of Power is a massive book with more than 600 pages that updates to the alternate magic system presented in Spheres of Power as well as the handbook project that expanded all 20 spheres. The book also includes materials from Spheres Apocrypha and other Spheres supplements that were published before its kickstarter. I have backed the handbook project for spheres on patreon as well as this book on kickstarter. I also participated in the feedback and discussions during the playtest of Ultimate Spheres of Power and its updated rules.

First off, when I picked up the original Spheres of Power back in 2015 I instantly fell in love with it and I now find little interest in playing pathfinder without it. The system could be used both together with or instead of normal vancian casting, and excelled at producing spellcasters based around a theme. With Ultimate Spheres of Power, this still holds true.

The idea is that you choose a couple of spheres which grant at will abilities you can augment by spending spell points. And then learn talents that expand those spheres, either by granting new abilities or granting effects that modify existing abilities like increased range or the ability to target an area. Abilities that significantly power up an ability such as [mass] talents that change a power from single target to multitarget or improve action economy with a single ability typically come with a spell point cost in addition to the cost of spending one of your limited talent choices.

The book is so massive that I won't be able to go in depth on all the options, but I will try to give some highlights of the options presented.

The Good Casting Traditions: Instead of the arcane/divine/psychic divide of the base pathfinder, each spellcaster requires a casting tradition which specifies details about how their magic works. This includes choosing a casting ability modifier (usually Int, Wis, or Cha), general drawbacks (does your magic require Somatic and Verbal components? Does it require a focus like a holy symbol, ring, wand, or metal weapon? Does your magic cause a horrible addiction, drain your life energy, cause pain, require you to play music, or drain energy from the land around you? And many more options), and boons (such as having an easier time maintaining spells with concentration, ability to overchannel to temporarily increase your power, or getting more spell points to fuel your magic). Casting Traditions should ideally be determined in a cooperation between the GM and the Player, but also serves as a tool for the GM to customize his world. Casting Traditions can also be assigned as arcane/divine/psychic or something else entirely if desired to increase the transparency with vancian casting.

The Spheres: The 22 spheres Alteration, Blood, Conjuration, Creation, Dark, Death, Destruction, Divination, Enhancement, Fallen Fey, Fate, Illusion, Life, Light, Mind, Nature, Protection, Telekinesis, Time, War, Warp, Weather, are all distinct and flavourful with mechanics that support the theme and allow for both specialization and diversity. The chapter with all the spheres and their basic talents is around 160 pages giving lots of options.

Advanced Talents: Magic abilities with significant impact on the setting are presented in a separate list of advanced talents. This is where you can find long range teleportation, scrying, creating 2 mile radius darkness, creating instantaneous and permanent effects, and so on. Depending on the style of game, a GM can choose to allow or ban advanced talents. Even if they are allowed, a player should still inform the GM of any advanced talent they take as even in high magic settings where most options would be fine, some can still have major unwanted impact and with well over 30 pages of advanced talents they might not be familiar with all of them.

The Somewhat More Neutral Sphere-Specific Drawbacks: Whenever a character gains a new sphere, they may choose one or more sphere-specific drawbacks for that sphere. In Ultimate Spheres of Power spheres gained through temporary talents cannot benefit from sphere-specific drawbacks and temporary talents cannot be used to buy off a sphere-specific drawback. The way these drawbacks work you lose access to an ability in the base sphere or limit that ability in some way in order to get a bonus talent in that sphere. This is a central and important mechanic when it comes to getting your concept to line up with your mechanics, but also a somewhat fiddly mechanic that can yield a lot of extra versatility if optimized.

Classes: While the classes are generally good, I find that most are either a bit bland or a build your own class type of class. The Incanter is perhaps my favorite class, but it is essentially a generic sphere caster who is specialized in having many magic talents. They did mostly fix the issue of dipping into the Incanter as they can no longer gain all their specialization options at 1st level, and the sphere specialization options now mirror the Conscript from Spheres of Might granting a special ability at 3rd level, 8th level, and 20th level making the option feel more unique compared to the original version. Similarly the Hedgewitch is a generic mid-caster and the Mageknight is a generic low-casting gish, but they are well made and interesting. The Elementalist stands out as everything Paizo's Kineticist wishes it could be, namely an easy to use blaster with mechanics that are easy to grasp and ability to pick up some thematic utility options. Correct application of the Casting Tradition and use of the Nature Sphere and you will have a great elemental bender.

Archetypes: With about 120 pages of archetypes, there is a lot to choose from and the quality will vary. A few archetypes such as the dual-blooded sorcerer were removed in Ultimate Spheres of Power as they essentially traded out nothing for a lot of power, while many of the generic sphere-archetypes for pathfinder classes remain pretty bland. There are however also a lot of inspired archetypes that change up classes in fun and interesting ways.

Transparency: Ultimate Spheres uses something they call magic skill bonus and magic skill defense in place of caster level checks in base Pathfinder. While caster level determines the scaling of abilities and DCs of sphere abilities. This can get a little confusing for players who are used to Pathfinder and d&d. For the most part the systems interact with each other in the way you would expect, and basic rules are specified in chapter 1 while specific instances of how the sphere talents interact with Paizo spells are called out in the talents where it is relevant. It still happens that you run into unclear interactions.

Balance Considerations While the original Spheres of Power was clearly a downgrade in power compared to vancian casting, especially at higher levels. This was mostly due to the loss in versatility. Even in the original, a sphere caster could pull off abilities that a vancian caster would need to wait until a higher level for (such as short range teleportation, or a mass charm monster) due to the nature of specializing in a single trick by investing all your talents into that trick. The possibility of creating this type of one-trick pony who has one trick that wins any encounter where it applies but is useless if it doesn't apply still exists in Ultimate Spheres of Power.

Ultimate Spheres of Power also comes with a massive increase in options, which has led to more powerful options. By dipping around, it is possible to gain a multitude of unusual bonus types that in some cases still scale faster than they should as well as unanticipated synergies. One example would be using the Community-Minded trait from Paizo with the War Sphere using the sphere-specific Battle Manipulation and Alternate Rally (for Empower). This allows the sphere caster for 1 talent and a trait at 1st level to as an immediate action spend a spell point to grant themself (as you are your own ally in pathfinder) or an ally within 30 feet of you a +4 morale bonus to either attack rolls and cmb, ac and cmd, saving throws, or concentration checks and checks against spell resistance for 3 rounds. While morale bonus is one of the common bonus types that matter, this together with other dedicated dips for either action efficient or long term buffs of different types can shake up math to the point where a buffed character makes the d20 rng irrelevant.

The increase in options has also led to an increase of save or lose abilities in Ultimate Spheres. While these have existed in base pathfinder and in the original Spheres of Power as well, they are much easier to get or stumble into in Ultimate Spheres. Due to how implements (magic items that increase your caster level and thus also save DC) work as well as how sphere casters can usually always operates at or near full power for as long as they have spell points, combined with the ease of making the save or lose ability multitarget, means spheres casters can shut down combat encounters just as hard as a vancian caster using their best spells.

In the end, my opinion is that while a caster using Ultimate Spheres is less versatile than a vancian caster, a vanilla paizo caster will usually find that they have less raw power compared to a sphere caster's best tricks. This becomes even more noticeable with unlimited access to advanced talents (which I would not recommend), as you have easy demon summoning in Conjuration that can match planar binding, the ability to retrain your whole character using Complete Reversion from the Time sphere, or creating a 2-mile radius area of death using Dark, Light, or Weather spheres. Access to advanced talents with GM approval is still needed if you want staple abilities like long range teleportation, or the ability to raise dead.

Conclusion While the balance of Ultimate Spheres requires more GM oversight than the base Spheres of Power, I find that the rules updates and additional content is an improvement of an already amazing system. I personally will not GM Pathfinder without allowing spheres, though depending upon the style of game I might insist upon only using casting traditions with significant drawbacks and disallowing advanced talents. As a player, unless my concept is specifically based on a d&d or pathfinder style character I find it much easier to realize it using spheres and to adjust the character to be more in line with the rest of the party and setting.

As such I will give Ultimate Spheres five stars and a strong recommendation to anyone who plays pathfinder, and especially anyone who is tired of vancian casting and would like to try out some new options.

This book opens up a great amount of new options for the Spheres of Might system fitting wuxia-style play, as advertised. I don't think there's a single talent written in here that I don't love. I think all the new archetypes presented are great (Kung Fu Exemplar in particular looks awesome); I also very much like the idea of the Light Body Technique optional ruleset, and the idea of grandmasters presented within seems really interesting - hopefully I'll be able to make use of it in games I run. Take my 5 stars and my money.

The Death Sphere is perhaps one of my favorite spheres in the game. Mostly because I've always been fond of the ghost strikes and being able to readily debuff people whenever possible as a way of fighting. This handbook doesn't add much in way of ghost strikes, but the ones it does add are very welcome indeed. It does, however, add in a lot of ways new ways to reanimate using different sphers as well as new things to do with your undead. All in all a great addition to any necromancer. Also adds a great new slew of archetypes that bring something cool, creepy and a bit gross in the case of the Symbiat's archetype, to the table that really get the death juices flowing.