This book mostly has talents for Artifice, Herbalism, Navigation, and Survivalism spheres, and full on errata that vastly improves how Artifice and Herbalism work in general. Those spheres had some serious problems when Spheres of Guile released, but this book addresses a ton of them. There are also a lot of new magic items that are very inexpensive for how good they are.

Coursers can trade Harrying Assault for the Iron Chef Blacksmith's food abilities. The Venator archetype is a might/guile champion that focuses on Trap sphere, and forces enemies to move away from them, preferably into a trap they laid. It's a hilarious and fun playstyle if your GM doesn't throw fear-immune enemies at you or metagame where your traps are. Game Hunter Gunslingers are might/guile champions with Journeyman talent progression. It's very similar in chassis and features to a typical Courser, but it focuses more on being good at killing, and less on mobility and skills. A nice option for players who want to dip their toes into SoG content while having a familiar, simple playstyle.

Professionals get a new Professional Method, Sciences, which gives them an Alchemist's extracts with worse progression. It's decently strong as far as Professional Methods go, because a normal Alchemist is probably going to be a stronger character overall than a Professional with Sciences. You have to really lean into the skill and utility based stuff Professional has to get value out of it.

Explorer Rangers are awesome! The chassis has the best of everything: Full BAB, d10 HD, 6+int skill points, tri-blended Birtuoso talent progression, and it keeps Favored Enemy and Favored Terrain. Most people scoff at Favored Terrain, but it's really good in guile games with its bonuses to stealth, perception, and initiative, and can be used anywhere you want with the Terrain Adaptation operative feat. Your best Favored Enemy can be used against anything with the Target Spotting practitioner feat. So you're good at pretty much everything! Explorers also get a specialization with unique abilities and mid-casting in a sphere. One gives you the Agent's Devious Technique, which is amazing for guile games. Just another reason to never play Agents, poor things.

Iron Revenant Sentinel lowers its talent progression from Expert to Adept, but gets a bunch of abilities based on tracking and chasing down enemies with Tinker sphere's tracking devices. Very stackable with other archetypes. Toilbrook Witches are funky in the coolest ways, because they get combat AND skill talents, and don't lose spellcasting. So you can be a Toibrook Sphere Witch and have all three types of talents! They specialize in both Alchemy and Herbalism spheres, getting bonus talents and flexing with them. Great buffer/debuffer.

The new dual sphere feats bridge the gaps and problems a lot of players had with certain similar spheres, like Alchemy and Herbalism, or Survivalism and Trap. There are a few specific to making your Artifice artworks work better, which are strong and thankfully feats instead of exceptional talents, so they don't (usually) require GM permission to take!

Artifice's base sphere lets you pick a function of your choice when you get a package instead of being locked to the original ones. Very nice for people who use the (gear) package and didn't want to be stuck with the Weapon function. SoG's original release was seriously lacking in strong general-purpose flourishes, and now there are a TON of new flourishes which are super good for buffing your party's equipment. There are many rules clarifications in errata that better explain how the sphere works, too. One very big errata change is Chemical Armaments, which now can only make alchemical weapons, but is very good at it, and prevents creating Cytillesh Stun Vials before level 15. If you want to make alchemical tools/remedies/drugs/poisons, there's an exceptional talent for it.

Herbalism got a new package: The (remedy) package! It's all about using the Heal skill to be an amazing healer, and it lives up to the task. It's not quite as insane as an Alchemy Salve user barraging Vial Arrows, or an optimized Life Sphere user, but it creates fun and strong new healer playstyles. There are new (aroma) talents which are concoctions that create a smell-based aura on a creature. There are also 3 new base herb types and new twists for extant concoctions. Brad did it, ladies and gentlemen. He changed Herbalism from a mediocre Alchemy-wannabe to a powerful, unique sphere that can stand on its own merits!

Navigation has never been a particularly good sphere, but Brad wasn't the author who wrote it originally, so he couldn't do much to improve it. There are a few new talents that improve further depending on which packages you have, but most are pretty niche in application, because they depend on the environment. My favorite is Wild Wit, which lets you set up ambushes better than normal surprise rounds with stealth.

Survivalism has several awesome new (harvest) talents, and new ways to harvest components. Humane Survivalist lets you harvest living creatures rather than corpses, and it's drawbackable. Visceral Survivalist lets you harvest as a free action when you kill a creature, like splattering em so hard that they fly apart in a pile of viscera! Or punching a hole through their chest and ripping out their heart!

There are even some Weather sphere (mantle) talents that buff you according to weather conditions, both physically and mentally. Very interesting if you play with those.

A lot of the magic items are must-haves, or almost must-haves. Probably not no-brainer insta-buys if you're on a budget, but very good and worth the prices. They provide effects that can't be replicated by talents or feats. The Bard-King's items buff Performance sphere abilities, Burrower's Spade is a weapon that lets you trade an off-hand attack for dredging two squares, several ioun stones buff Spellhacking and other abilities, Embertongue Amulet deals damage to your target whenever you use auditory abilities, the list goes on.

TL;DR: Artifice, Herbalism, and Survivalism are freakin amazing now. Buy this book.

If you like playing non-magical support and utility characters, buy this now. And if you like Performance sphere, the coolest sphere in all of Spheres, buy it even harder! Most of this book is centered around the Advisor class and Communication sphere, but Performance is too awesome to stay out of the limelight!

The Advisor specializes in support. It buffs a ton in ways that are new and interesting, it enables teammates to do things they couldn't otherwise, and it can hold its own in a fight as long as it has allies. Its main form of buffing is giving two allies a synergy, which is kind of like a (mandate) from War Sphere. The allies can do special actions that expend the synergy but give a benefit that's greater than the sum of their parts, IE the actions that they spent. Advisors are also incredible at using aid another and buffing allies' skills via the teach skill use (new in SoG). Undermine Strategy lets them buff allies against a particular enemy in a significant but particular way, and Base of Operations gives the party awesome benefits during downtime. There are a ton of more minor features that help with managing skill leverage, synergies, and other buffs.

It has magnificent archetypes! Captain Advisor loses some skill-based stuff, but gains a strategy pool which is very similar to a Striker's tension pool. You build points when certain things happen and spend them to grant buffs or take special low-cost actions. Dramaturge Advisor focuses on Performance sphere's (act) package, loses some skill-based stuff, can grant allies a bard's Versatile Performance, and gets benefits when allies help with (acts). Philosopher Advisor focuses on Study sphere, loses some teaching-based stuff, and is ludicrously good at skills because the gain +1/2 to all Knowledge (and more) skills, and has a feature similar to Versatile Performance that uses Knowledge instead of Perform.

Musician Bards are a much-deserved redemption story after the woefully weak Thespian archetype from Legends of the Spheres. It's a proper triple-blended champion, for one thing. Like Thespian, it loses Bardic Performance, but it gains amazing unique abilities linked to Performance sphere which are well worth the cost.

There are a few options for Dissidents. Dichotomous Strife gives you a strife penalty from the other side of your struggle, but lets you trigger your unique conflicts as a non-action. It's good if you like to rapidly swap your attunement and don't mind having a penalty to some things at all times. The Symbiont archetype gets a symbiote buddy what they can summon like a Conjuration companion, give them Will rerolls when unsummoned, or buff them in a symbiotic form like a non-stupid synthesist summoner.

ENVOYS. HOLY HECK. They're the coolest SoG class, and they get two awesome new options here: The Officer archeytpe, and the Inspiriting Words alternate class feature. Inspiriting Words changes Dispiriting Words, which are all debuffs, into buffs! Simple and cool! Perfect for Luminaries, or really any envoy who prefers buffing! Officer Envoys are combat/skill champions who lose Dispiriting Words and gain 3/4 BAB, the Advisor's synergies, and extra temporary HP when they have synergies with allies! Compared to an advisor, it's tankier and has more talents, but lacks the Advisor's unique utility. I'm playing one right now and having an absolute blast!

Tactician Investigators specialize in Study sphere and support. They can let allies use their Studied Combat bonuses and Studied Strike. Simple, but very cool.

Sync Prodigies specialize in Performance sphere. They replace their Imbue Sequence with unique imbues and finishers related to the Performance packages. They also swap Steady Skill with bard's Versatile Performance! Its other openers, links, finishers, and such are unchanged, so you still get all of the silly link building optimization we know and love Prodigies for.

There are a lot of new Bluster, Communication, and Performance talents. Even a couple Survivalism ones! Some new sphere-specific drawbacks and talents let you trade Bluster's Flaunt Secrets with the ability to outwit people via anger conditions, trade Communication's Betray to outwit people via baring your soul, and make yourself only able to use beneficial or harmful dredges. There's a new category of Communication talents called (assist) talents which improve the aid another action. You might be worrying about those infamous halfling cavalier builds from 1pp that give their whole party ludicrous buffs with aid another, but don't worry, these talents don't exacerbate existing problems, and make for some awesome new support builds.

I could go into more detail about all of this, but that should give you a good idea of what's in the book. Worth every penny!

P.S. I wrote the Guide to Spheres of Guile (currently 292 pages and set to gain more), which explains everything about the system and analyzes all of the talents. DRS's creative director gave me permission to include content from DRS books in it, which I'll do in a few weeks. Take a peek at it for spicy hot takes and the occasional bit of insight! tinyurl.com/spheresofguileguide

Many people were underwhelmed by the original Spheres of Guile book, but Diamond Recreational Studios is doing an amazing job of picking up the system and expanding and improving on it. The class and archetypes are creative, unique, and powerful without being overpowered. Almost everything in this book has worthwhile use cases, and several options facilitate playstyles that have been weak and underdeveloped in Spheres until now.

Remember the "Iron Mage" style builds in first-party Pathfinder that used Item Mastery feats to cast spells from items? The Conduit class is kinda like that, but way cooler, better, and more flexible. It can cast a small number of sphere spells a certain number of times per day, and as it levels, they become augmented with choices of other magic talents for free. Conduits are also the best class at using Spellhacking to hack enemy magic items and effects during combat, something that's otherwise unreliable and not very cost-effective for other classes. Their main schtick in combat is to quickly, efficiently hack magic and then shatter the hacks for massive damage or other effects, both offensive and defensive. Their "casting" is nothing to sneeze at like I mentioned, and they have full BAB and can spend skill talents on combat talents, so they're as good at fighting as any SoM character in that regard. Yes, they're secretly a combat/guile champion! Sneaky and cheeky, I approve! Seriously one of the best SoG classes.

Important: There's an awesome new rule that lets archetypes without a skill talent progression be able to spend magic/combat talents on skill talents, as long as they get a skill talent via a class feature. Makes it a lot easier for archetypes that came out before SoG to enjoy exploring skill talents.

The Runescriber Conduit archetype is similar to a Runesinger Fighter and has a lot of strong passive and active benefits. It's worse at spellhacking enemies, but its big strikes and special movement abilities can be used in any situation. The Interdictor archetype loses the ability to cast spells from items, but it gets a beefier chassis, more talents, and improved features that interact with Spellhacking. I've been playing an Antimage Paladin in one campaign for almost a year, and I rebuilt her as an Interdictor Conduit.

The Envoy's Allure forte makes you the best build in the game at using the Suggestion spell, making for an incredibly fun social yet sneaky playstyle, especially with the Beguiler archetype (Legends of the Spheres). Some GMs might think it's "uninteractable" because it's good at making people think it's not a threat, but it's perfectly fine. It's not untargetable like a hyper stealth build or permanently incorporeal build. I encourage those GMs to try running SoG games with more of a psychological focus than a combat simulation focus, thinking more about how NPCs would react to situations based on their personalities than how builds would function in a tactical board game.

Spellwarper Inquisitors are a lot like Interdictor Conduits in that they're great anti-mages, but they don't lose their spellcasting. That means they can be combined with archetypes that replace spellcasting, like Champion Inquisitor for 20 blended magic/combat talents, or a lovely virtuoso progression if you use the variant rules that let you spend magic/combat talents for skill talents. Also, they're one of the only builds in the game that can track people who've teleported.

Shade Rogues. At long last, Rogues don't suck anymore! It's a 15 talent triple-blended magic/combat/skill archetype, and it can count as having full BAB or highcasting in a few spheres. Agent and Professional from SoG were underwhelming, but Shade Rogues get extremely efficient class feature replacements, including a Professional Method and the option to get the Agent's Devious Techniques via a rogue talent. When combined with Debilitating Injury, you can have a LOT of debuffing attack riders. It even can do certain standard actions like quipping, hacking, or sabotaging as an immediate action. Its only downside is that it has has a somewhat low talent count compared to other builds.

Magitect Wizards trade Arcane Bond, Scribe Scroll, and (optionally) Arcane School for a few bonus talents, flexing, and special Study sphere (theory) notion generators and breakthroughs. They keep their spellcasting.

There are tons of new talents for Spellhacking and Study, and a few exceptional Subterfuge and Survivalism ones to boot. The Spellhacking ones make it much easier and more viable to hack enemy magic effects and items, even if you're not a Conduit. There are several new (hacks) that suppress, change, and add effects, and they're WAY better than the "Repurpose X" (hacks) from SoG. Arcane Proliferation is perfect for throwing builds. Glitched Hack lets you bypass the once-per-24-hours-per-hack limit, something that was desperately needed. I can't tell you how much I hated failing a check with Subvert Information outside of combat and being unable to try again. There are several new (research) talents, including one that's good for ranged characters in combat. Build A Case is like the clue-finding sequences in L.A. Noire, letting you distinguish red herrings from real clues without a check. If you like divination spells, definitely check out the Entrails (harvest) talent.

Incredible product! Drop Dead Studios isn't making Spheres content anymore, but the future of it is in good hands with DRS!

P.S. I wrote the Guide to Spheres of Guile (currently 279 pages and set to gain more), which explains everything about the system and analyzes all of the talents. DRS's creative director gave me permission to include content from this book in it, which I'll do in a few weeks. Take a peek at it for spicy hot takes and the occasional bit of insight! tinyurl.com/spheresofguileguide

Hi. I'm Castilonium, and I like this product so much that I wrote a guide for it that's almost 300 pages long. Here it is! https://docs.google.com/document/d/12orVebNArSC8Hq78ewOegVeYVMBp0gFMccl_kHn43Tc/edit?usp=sharing In a nutshell, Spheres of Guile lets you have meaningful non-magical utility outside of combat. Any kind of character can access it via traditions, feats, and alternative progressions, just like Spheres of Might. There are a ton of new skill uses, several new conditions that are useful both in and out of combat, and other mechanics that let you up your suave international superspy game. Some mechanics might seem confusing at first, and I've seen experienced players with high system-mastery get completely turned off because of it, but I think that's just a mindset issue on their part. Even if there are things you dislike in here, I'm 100% certain that if you like intrigue games, there are many elements of SoG that you'll love. Don't skip the non-mechanical sections that give you advice on how to run guile games -- they're surprisingly insightful! I could go on and on about SoG, but my guide should suffice. There's a handy Q&A section at the start for common questions. Have fun!