I'm gonna say it this book does retread alot of ground with some items. However if you run a spheres game it's worth it. Not only will it better help you provide new and unique items to your players it brings them out in such a way makes them usuable with spheres crafting. You will get pages upon pages of items from reimaginings of core ones to brand new items that can grow with the party. And all in a package that helps you the GM understand how best to address the different types and use them.

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.

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

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