GM advice for player cheesing Oracle curse

[Jonathan Richardson]

I have a player who plays an oracle with the ghoul curse. As courses go this one seems to have one of the easiest detriments to work around, just make sure you eat every 12 hours. My group has never played with seriously tracking eating and rations, so this player pretty much only gets the benefits of the curse. The campaign in running doesn't put the players in survival situations where food would be scarce. Hope can I make this curse an actual curse?

[Chell Raighn]

Given that ya’ll don’t track food regularly, you could extend the curse to require consumption of fresh raw flesh at least once every 12 hours... which would bring the social stigma associated to the ghoul curse into play as they chow down on raw flesh from whatever source they can get their hands on. This in effect makes the optional secondary benefit of the curse obligatory but it adds some real drawbacks to their curse.

Additionally you can force some RP flavor to the fact that they MUST eat every 12 hours by having NPCs comment on the amount of food they see them consume (the ghoul curse is supposed to effectively double the amount of food they consume in a day, but without tracking rations this is not made readily apparent)

[avr]

Oracle curses are supposed to be mostly benefits. There's a lot of them where the negatives can be worked around and that's intentional.

If you want to make it come into play then create situations where a craving for food/flesh might matter. A servant offers them possibly poisoned hors de oeuvres, make a will save to resist. An NPC sees them drooling as they look over the aftermath of battle, make a social skill check to avoid blackening their reputation. Stuff like that.

[Mark Hoover 330]

Feast of Ashes. Putrify Food and Drink. These are low level spells that can target this PC or their gear to hinder their ability to serve the curse. As AVR said though, Oracle curses are more like a class ability then a full-on hinderance the PC has to deal with. Minor, RP-based issues from the curse could be a more viable way to display this.

[UncleExpendable]

You could always just lock them away somewhere. Jailbreak plots are usually fun and kind of messy. Having the oracle growing slowly more ravenous in a prison cell, looking out at the party with steadily hungrier eyes could make for some bloody fine roleplay. Or how about a shipwreck?

[Mark Hoover 330]

@ Red-shirted relative: yeah, there's a lot of specific settings that could mess with an Oracle with the Ghoul curse. On the one hand you have settings with no or little food: a stark desert or badlands area, some sort of cursed wilderness, stuck on a ship at sea or imprisoned somewhere. Another way to go is the other extreme. Trapping the PC in a charnel pit, amid the fallen of a battle or in some sacrificial rite could also be quality RP for the player.

But you said the player is "cheesing" the curse in the title. I'm guessing we're not talking about some legendary thespian using this game as an outlet when they can't tread the boards delivering Hamlet.

The actual mechanics of this curse are that you need food... ANY kind of food... every 12 hours. If this PC has a high Wis (a good bet for an Oracle) they can attempt an untrained Survival check by moving half-speed during travel. Hitting a DC 10 and accepting this slower Overland speed this PC can get themselves food and water in ANY environment, unless the GM specifically calls out that those resources simply don't exist in the area being traveled through. If the PC is outside or even in a natural cavern environment, a simple Take 10 handles that.

Then there's rations. Short of being stripped of all their possessions, I'm guessing this PC will make a point (if you start checking) of having at least a week of these written on their character sheet at all times. If they're clever they'll even RP eating something, just so the GM gets complacent and starts handwaving such a mundane activity from taking up precious game time.

Finally, let's look at an Oracle's 0-level spells; specifically Purify Food and Drink. If I'm running a Ghoul cursed oracle and I know my GM is looking to exploit my curse this is one of my must have spells I memorize every day. Now every dire rat, stirge, leaf leshy etc we defeat becomes a potential food source with me purifying 1 CU foot of the creature's edible material per level. Since the curse doesn't actually specify how MUCH food must be consumed, only that you risk starvation in 12 hours as opposed to other, non-cursed creatures.

So any time you're out and about traveling you can Take 10 to gather food and water from the environment. You have a 0-level spell that purifies any consumable flora or fauna material. You can buy cheap rations to tide yourself over. Mechanically your GM would have to force a scenario where your every resource denied you food.

Unless you're targeted by and fail the save against a Feast of Ashes spell. This spell specifically calls out that no amount of eating can assuage the effect of the spell. Mechanically though this spell induces enough non-lethal damage to knock a PC out unless they heal said damage all the time during the lengthy, 2 days/level duration of the spell. If the Ghoul-cursed PC decides to eat in order to gain the benefits of the curse, this spell will make them Nauseated.

That's about it.

[RJGrady]

Jonathan Richardson wrote:

I have a player who plays an oracle with the ghoul curse. As courses go this one seems to have one of the easiest detriments to work around, just make sure you eat every 12 hours. My group has never played with seriously tracking eating and rations, so this player pretty much only gets the benefits of the curse. The campaign in running doesn't put the players in survival situations where food would be scarce. Hope can I make this curse an actual curse?

What? Why? Is there some reason you want to make this player sorry they picked an interesting character type? The limitation is already spelled out as it is intended. If you make the curse worse than it is supposed to be, you are are just punishing the character.

[SheepishEidolon]

I got the impression many players try to pick a curse with a minimum of negative impact. Tongues seems to be popular due to this, even though its benefits are rather lousy (well, for my taste).

So if you pronounce the drawback of ghoul curse more, you might end up with an upset player who asks to switch curse (probably to tongues) or to change class.

I think it depends on the general tone of the campaign: If it's rather gritty, there should be some mechanical disadvantage, even if the player doesn't like it. If it's rather light-hearted, you can as well let it slip.

[RJGrady]

I'm not sure tone matters at all. The point of the curse is to affect player choices. It's not really supposed to debilitate a character on a regular basis.

[Bob Bob Bob]

...how is this cheese? They're using the curse exactly as it's supposed to be used. They're required to eat more often. That's it. If getting food isn't an issue then the curse won't be either. If you want to make it an issue then the campaign has to make getting food an issue.

If your player wanted a curse with zero consequences they would have taken Legalistic. The only consequence happens if you break your word. Just don't make any promises and it will be completely irrelevant.

[Reksew_Trebla]

You want cheese? The Lycanthropy curse gives you a minor form of Lycanthropy, and the Lunar Mystery has the following as a Revelation you can take:

Lunar Mystery wrote:

Mantle of Moonlight (Su): Your innate understanding of the moon renders you immune to the curse of lycanthropy. Additionally...

It also has no level requirement, meaning you can take it at level 1.

That is what cheese is. Your player is simply working with the fact that YOU THE GM chose to make food not an issue. Don’t want to take their drawback away? Quit ignoring the food aspect of the game.

[SheepishEidolon]

@RJGrady: Hrm, some curses do affect charactes quite often - clouded vision comes to my mind.

@Reksew_Trebla: Personally I wouldn't call it cheese - the player pays with a mystery choice and a revelation to get the drawback of the curse removed. That's a good deal*, but not gamebreaking. They even risk that the GM rules the revelation also removes the curse's benefits.

* and very roughly in line with the Wild Speech feat for druids and other wild shapers

[RJGrady]

Eventually clouded vision becomes a thing where the character can't see beyond 60 feet, or read ordinary letters, but is otherwise not hindered in any way.

[Ryze Kuja]

I don't agree that this is cheese. But, if you feel that it is, Oracles with the Ghoul curse crave flesh from sentient beings, so you could have his curse change to "you must eat flesh from a sentient being every 12 hours". This basically forces him to become evil though and removes player agency.

Tbh, I'd let it play as is.

[ErichAD]

Ryze Kuja wrote:

I don't agree that this is cheese. But, if you feel that it is, Oracles with the Ghoul curse crave flesh from sentient beings, so you could have his curse change to "you must eat flesh from a sentient being every 12 hours". This basically forces him to become evil though and removes player agency.

Tbh, I'd let it play as is.

A change like that would put it in the same tier as reclusive or site bound. Very game specific and probably for NPCs. I agree that leaving it alone is best, most curses just shape how the character is played, mandatory daily cannibalism is so much more than that.