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Oradin is a very strong build, but the reason is you can use the Lay On Hands to self-heal and Life Link to take on the damage from others. Assuming you go Paladin 2 / Oracle 4 / Paladin the rest of the way you still get second level spells before a straight paladin would.

The thing is, based on your description you aren't looking to be the strongest battle field healer. You seem to want to be strong in melee.

Have you considered Paladin/Bloodrager instead? The ability to use the Bloodrager wands is often worth the dip, and you don't reduce your BAB.

Edit to add: Oradin is used for any Paladin/Oracle, but the build with the most synergy is found by using the Life Oracle.

The Paladin 2/Oracle 4/Paladin to 20 is exactly what I had planned, as the character is going to awaken with no memory but play as a swordfighter for that bit before he manifests the curse as a punishment from Sarenrae (she likes to pass down bad sunburns or blindness for transgressors, so I figured Blackened fit the flavor well and doesn't hurt as bad as clouded vision) and gains a bit of power from her trying to steer him back to the straight and narrow.

I'm not going bloodrager because it doesn't suit the character well, nor does it allow me to cast spontaneously whilst wearing armor without a failure chance, because it's arcane casting. Oracle is spontaneous divine casting that I can do in heavier armor while still maintaining a charisma (nee dex) bonus to AC and gives me access to the curse that will give me some fire spells to fling around in the name of the sun goddess. I'll take a *bit* of a hit to melee with the Oracle dip, but by level 20 I'll literally be only one BAB point behind max if I limit it to 4 levels. The intent is simply to let me close the distance with my 20 foot armored move speed and be able to cast a damaging spell at the enemy to draw their attention to me instead of moving 20 feet then standing around while my team mates fling spells and zip around the field killing everything.

As far as I can see this has only positive results on my character's effectiveness by giving him a tiny bit of extra utility and covering a few weak points. Literally all I want to know is "Is this going to gimp me?"

I think that the confusion then is that you're using "Oradin" to mean "multiclassed Oracle/Paladin" and not the conventionally understood use of the term for the incredibly efficient healer that is the life oracle who can lay on hands.

Frankly, I've only ever heard "Oradin" for the latter.

Ahh, my bad. Didn't mean to spark such confusion, but I've heard the term tossed around so much I thought it was just an efficient contraction for a multi-classed character.

Hopefully we can set that confusion aside now, because I'm really wondering if this is a good idea to do or not and I haven't been able to get any good input anywhere else.

I'm going angel-blooded and using the alternate racial trait to trade the spell-like ability for a +2 Con to get that stat spread.

That said, I am *really* not going for a healing build, because there is already somebody else in the party who's going to be a focused healer character. My heals are going to be incidental and when/if I use them it's going to be strictly in case of emergency or as a back up healer out of combat to save his spell slots. My intent is to make a melee fighter that can sling a few offensive ranged spells to make up for low speed. The extra knowledge skills aren't with the intent to skill-monkey, but rather to help the party cover our bases, as I know what they're generally planning, and none of them are going to bother taking dungeoneering or planes or anything like that that might come in handy in a campaign like Strange Aeons. I'm also playing an aberration hunter, so I'd like him to have his *own* knowledge of aberrations and extraplanar abominations and the like, rather than relying on someone else to tell him what he should rightfully know on his own due to his line of work. Extra AC and covering my int deficiency is simply a perk that comes along with a few extra spontaneous spells that include cure spells so I don't have to waste my pally spells known slots on them as well as some nice ranged damage like burst of radiance.

I'm *really* not at all interested in this preconceived notion of Oradins being strictly healer, nor am I going to suddenly change my direction for the character just because of that. It's not in the slightest what I intend.

All that said, does this sound like a solid plan for a Paladin with a small dip to supplement my abilities and give me a boost to some areas that will be lacking, or no?

Okay, so I'm about to run Strange Aeons with my group, and I'm very enamored with the idea of a Paladin of Sarenrae who hunts down aberrations, however my DM is limiting us to 15 point buy for our characters to encourage the group to stick together and work as a team rather than lone wolfing all the time, as a few of our party members have become fond of. Unfortunately, this means that my build is rather tight due to the boneheaded actions of others, and my Paladin that relies on three stats is going to be kind of lackluster compared to others unless I amp things up a bit. I'm stuck with a starting stat block of Str 17/Con 15/Cha 16/Dex-Int-Wis 10.

Enter the Oradin. I'm taking the Sacred Servant (Glory domain from Sarenrae) archetype as well as Oath against Corruption for extra aberration murdering power. Looking at the class features, it appears that I don't really have anything (outside of a capstone feature that I'll probably never even get to anyway) beyond 16th level, barring some spell slots for lvl 4 pally spells. That leaves me room to take a four level dip in Oracle for the Lore mystery that will give me all knowledge skills as class abilities, let me use my Charisma for those rolls, and also let me add my Charisma to my AC in place of Dex. This will help make up for my non-existent Dex for AC, my low int for knowledge rolls (and four levels of Oracle give me a heaping handful of skill ranks to drop on relevant ones at the start) plus the Blackened mystery which, while it will give me a small penalty to my weapon rolls, will also give me a few spontaneous fire spells to cast, which is just suiting for a pally of Sarenrae.

I'm planning to roll with a 2-handed greatsword and take power attack, improved critical and critical focus for sure so I can amp up my damage from combat and then use my Oracle spells as ranged damage to make up for low speed in my armor, plus having some nice light-themed spells just suits as well.

Is this a sound build idea? I really want to roll with it, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm missing something huge here that will be a big detriment. I'm even batting around the idea of taking Additional Traits as a feat to get Magical Knack and give myself a +2 to caster level on Oracle even though there's only a handful of spells that would really benefit from it and then only by about one damage die. Would this be better suited to Paladin so my pally spells are stronger?

If any of you see something I'm missing, please let me know so I don't get waist deep in this campaign only to find out I've built a gimped character. Otherwise, suggestions to add to this without taking away anything I've mentioned would be appreciated, or just general encouragement that I'm not a complete moron for taking a four level dip on a pally. Thanks!

Go to the rules section, and create a new thread. Then state in very specific terms what you would like to be changed. If people get behind it, then it will help. If people think it is ok as is then nothing is likely to happen.

Thanks! I'll pop over there and see what I can drum up.

When working with a GM in a home game, keep in mind that there's room for flexibility and negotiation so long as everyone's amenable to tweaking the rules. That might mean the GM restricts access to certain material, whether to match what exists in the setting or because a particular mechanic has been disruptive in the past. That might mean allowing in some 3rd party material because everyone agrees it would be fun. That might even mean looking at a published rule and saying, "That doesn't work for us, but with a few modifications, it would be great for our game."

Ultimately, respect the following:

How players and GMs use the rules is up to them so long as everyone's cool with the final form.

The GM has the final word on the matter yet hopefully considers a counterargument first.

Developing house rules is largely out of the scope of things if you're participating in an organized play program, which I gather you're not (though I encourage you to give it a try at some point).

In the spirit of making modifications to the rules in the name of fun, applying an ifrit's fire affinity to the flames mystery or a shaman's flames spirit seems pretty reasonable so long as you're respecting the bullet points I wrote above. Please use my take as guidance, not as a mandate for forcing your GM to behave a certain way.

Yeah, this is a home game with friends, so there's room for flexibility, but the GM doesn't like to dip into third party/modified rules as it tends to open the floodgates for all sorts of mess and potential hurt feelings if someone has a modification approved while another doesn't. I basically pitched him exactly what I said here, that Fire domain and Flame mystery could be treated pretty analogous for the purposes of divine casting and the Fire Affinity trait, but his stance was "Not in the book, not in the game" essentially. I appreciate the vote of confidence though! I think I'm going to try petitioning in the rules forum as suggested and see if we can get an official ruling on the matter so there's a point of reference on it for the future, in case anyone else finds themselves in the same situation.

Oh, I wasn't trying to equate Sorcerer to Oracle. I was trying to equate Oracle to Fire domain casters, as both draw power from a divine source, I get where you're coming from though. I don't want to break the rules either, but it seems like Oracle gets the shaft in terms of racial boons since it was a later class addition, when a few small wordings here and there could be altered just ever so slightly to give them the same bonus as other divine casters. It's especially egregious for a class that has a built-in drawback which, to my knowledge, no other class has. It's awesome regardless, but that tiny little adjustment could open up some fun racial options.

Where would I go about creating such a petition exactly? I'll gladly do that if it may garner some good results for a class that could use a bit of love.

Hey all, relatively new player, but I very much love this game system and all the options it offers for incredibly diverse and really flavorful character concepts.

I've just got one little gripe at the moment, because it seems like a grievous oversight that this hasn't been errata'd or updated since conception: Elemental affinity for the elemental races. I'm talking Ifrit/Undine/Sylph/Oread and their respective fire/water/air/earth affinity racial traits. It very specifically calls out the elemental bloodline for sorcerers and casters with the Fire domain, but we also have more closely related sorcerer bloodlines (the elemental genie bloodlines specifically, which add a touch more flavor if you're going for an exotic character) and we also have the Wind/Stone/Flame/Waves mysteries for Oracles.

I tossed the idea at my GM last night about rolling up an Ifrit Oracle of Flame with the suggestion that he allow me to apply the domain-related bonus to the character as it was related to divine casting, where the other bonus was related to arcane. He turned the idea down because, in his own words "It doesn't state that in the wording, so allowing it would alter the lore of the race, which could be unbalancing."

And so I come here to ask for a little input. I've used these forums for reference for some time up to this point, so I know that official developers browse these forums and sometimes respond to these kind of threads. Can anyone point me to an official ruling on this by a developer? Even better, if one of the developers sees this, would you mind weighing in so we have some official word? It seems really unfair that an elementally inclined race should have a bonus to certain elementally-inclined classes but not others. It doesn't even needs to be something new or different. I think we'd all be glad to just have a clarification of "Sorcerers treat charisma as 2 points higher for sorcerer spells and bloodline abilities" while "Divine casters with the Fire domain or Flame mystery use domain powers, revelations and domain/mystery spells at +1 caster level"

Would that be too broken, or are these races just due for a small update to bring them in line with the classes that came after?