Vatras's page

There is a group of spells whose area is defined by a range followed by a number of targets "no two of which can be more than 30' apart".

Is there something that allows me to change the 30' part? Widen spell is out, as it works only on a few geometric shapes.

I was trying to build a couple of literary characters and realized it does not work. I am not able to cover all the things that character does in the books. So I thought I ask the experts :)

The first in question is Conan the barbarian, as he is described by Howard in his stories, not as shown in the movies. The man is a great warrior, he excels in all physical disciplines, he used to be a thief, a scout, a mercenary, an officer, he ruled a kingdom in the end. The only thing he doesn't do is cast spells, but he does have a little historic and arcane knowledge.

The second is Silk from the Belgarion books, namely the first set. He is a thief, a conman, a trickster, a diplomat, he knows how to disguise himself and he is a great knife fighter. He knows the ways of the world and it's customs. He is at home in the poor quarter, a palace, a barbarian ship or a marketplace.

Which class(es), archetypes, PRC or combination thereof would work best? I look at the time before either of them laid eyes on a crown. That would be Silk when he joins the party and Conan at the time when he first meets Belit to "Beyond the Black River" (before he becomes respectable).

After a look at the FAQs and the forum I did not find an answer, but maybe someone here can tell me.

Holy Aura (8th level cleric spell, core rules) has an effect that blinds evil creatures striking those protected by it.
How often does that happen and has to be saved against? Would that apply to every strike out of a fullround attack? Does it only apply once while the spell runs against each opponent? Should it work per protected target on a given monster or is one save enough to negate the effect completely for that mob (and that specific spell)?

We are going to start a new campaign once the current game (not PF) is done, starting at level 1. We will be five players and at the moment it looks as if we will have a wizard (evoker), summoner, monk and paladin (or fighter). Despite many postings that healing is less effective than removing enemies from the battlefield, it is often mandatory and goes far beyond what secondary healers can provide (at least in our campaigns thus far). So I will fill the slot as the main healer and only full divine caster.
Could be that the game will last till 10th level, might be 20th too...most of our campaigns have run over several years and covered a few levels. Since I don't know, I assume we will get to 20.

Between the various classes that can effectively heal, I consider only cleric and oracle as serious choices. I did check the vitalist, witch and alchemist and discarded them vor various reasons.

There will be some limitations. The DM will use only the Core rulebook and the APG since he is unfamiliar with PF (he did 3.5 before) and doesnt want to let things get out of hand with his roll-players too soon :)
Second he doesn't have magic shops where we can get exactly what we want in large numbers, and none of us is going to create magic items ourselves.
For those two reasons many posts on the web are not useful to me, as they assume you can have any magic item and have access to all published feats and spells.

In 3.5 I would have picked a cleric, although after having seen a sorcerer in actual play over 25 levels, the spontaneous variant looks pretty good, too. Being new to PF I noticed that the cleric got a few subtractions from his former glory, like no heavy armor and turn undead (and its feat applications) is gone. The domains changed a bit too, although mostly for the better in my opinion.
Given the lesser power of the cleric (and a lot of curiosity) I am more interested in the Oracle. Since I will have to heal (the wand option is out of the window), picking the Life mystery is pretty much a given. Since I have no intention of trying to do two things at once, I'll go for caster and ignore melee, even if that means to wait some levels before seeing action.

As race I will take human. I had a look at the halfling, though...not sure if the racial options are better than the human in the long run.

If you are still with me, here is what I need advice for:
- What curse should I take and why (so I understand things better)?
Haunted, Tongues, Lame and Deaf all have their up- and downsides and I am not sure at all about them. I certainly don't want Blind (the idea for a ranged caster...) and Wasting, though. What have been others experiences with their curse?

- What feats would be good?
Currently I am entertaining the idea of picking Selective Channeling and Combat Casting at 1st level, since I don't want to heal the enemy in battle and casting defensively is more difficult than in 3.5. According to the old rule "kill the healer first, arcanes second", I have no prayer of standing unmolested outside the melee to heal my group or harass the enemy.
I easily found enough metamagic to fill the rest of the available feats :) But in the article "Channeling the Cosmos" the author wrote that even a full caster needs only 3-4 of them. So what other feats would be of benefit?

- What to do about my stats?
CHA will take first place, followed by CON, so far so good. As no-melee I don't need high STR. So what to do about DEX, WIS and INT? Is there any reason why an Oracle needs WIS except maybe to boost perception? Is it really worth a feat to get into heavy armor and drop DEX?

- What about spells?
I did take a look at the colors in "Channeling the Cosmos", but I would like to know from other Oracles, which spells have been good, especially together with metamagic.
I haven't read the bestiaries, so I have no idea how common or dangerous certain attacks are, which give weight to certain spells. How important are remove spells in that light? Remove disease, blindness and curse are lot of 3rd level spells for example and are covered by later spells, too - assuming I can get one or the other on scrolls, will that do or are they valuable enough to be taken (and maybe switched out later)?

- What about arcane spells?
Are there ways to get one or two arcane spells of my choice (not the Haunted curse) into my repertoire? Are there items that allow this?
I tried it the other way round by picking another mystery with the spells and refitting for healer, but some of the healing revelations are better for my purpose than what I would get.

Please let me know, if you can help me out :)