So, I've always gone with the edge/contour modeling technique as apposed to sculpting. I use blender mostly and would occasionally jump to sculpt mode to quickly tweak verts as part of my edge modeling work flow.
But on a whim I grabbed a copy of Sculptis this weekend and attempted to do a sculpt from a sphere, committing to spending only 3-4 hours on it, and see if i could do anything.
So, looks like I may start to do more sculpting plus retopo in the future, as sculpting didn't turn out to be as scary as I feared.