A combination of curse and mystery makes the oracle the most unique and versatile class in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Divine Favor: The Oracle provides players with new options for getting the most out of this foreteller of the doom of heroes and the fates of empires.
Designed by Stefen Styrsky with additional design by Wolfgang Baur, Divine Favor: The Oracle is the third in the Divine Favor series covering cleric, druid, paladin, inquisitor and oracle. This volume includes:
New curses: Coward, Drunkard, Echo, Grotesque, Illiterate, Mute, Souless, Unstable Form and Wanderer
New mysteries: Clockwork, Moon, Old Gods, Plague, Snakes and Wine
New feats: Divine Intervention, Empowered Mystery, Forbidden Knowledge, Mystery’s Alignment and Summon Avatar
Pick up Divine Favor: The Oracle and part the veils of time and space! And check out the other books in the Divine Favor series.
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I've just recently started purchasing PDF products because I'm hoping to publish something in the next couple months so I'm trying to get an idea of what's out there and what kind of quality stuff is being produced. So far I haven't been very impressed but this one was pretty good. Really I'm thinking more like 3.5 stars but why not err on the high side.
Formatting was fine, bookmarks good. Art was okay, most of it looked like uncopyrighted stuff taken from old mythology texts (which definitely fits the theme).
Curses - I had problems with most of these and would probably modify them for my campaign.
Mute and Drunkard - NPC only
Coward - too powerful - perception and Init used constantly, fear checks not so much - ALL my characters would take this if they could.
Echo - didn't make sense to me. I felt like it needed a lot more description. Can they repeat anything that was EVER said to them? That would be a record keeping nightmare.
Grotesque - seemed too weak. -5 to many skill checks for +5 to 1 check.
Unstable form - cool but too much record keeping (recalcing).
Wanderer - as someone else mentioned I would give it a duration. Plus not sure how to define "place you have visited". Is it a store, a house, a village, a country? Can you just not return to the places you actually stood or is it you can't return within 50 miles of a place you actually stood/slept/ate etc...
Illiterate and souless (especailly) were cool.
Mysteries. I liked these a lot more.
Clockwork - Incorporation needed more detail. Is there a recovery time - Is there prep time, material components? How long does it take? I mean you are replacing body parts here?
Wine - Not sure why raise dead was included in the spell list.
Snakes - seemed like a really cool idea but seemed under powered and more combat oriented. The visuals of a human making a bite attack or slithering like a snake really didn't work for me.
Moon - had cool powers
Loved - Old Gods (especially By My Name You Shall Call Me - very original and cool power), On Dark Wings, the fact that The Next Day includes modify memory.
Also thought the Summon Avatar feat was really cool.
So overall, definitely worth the price but missing some key details and some of it didn't work for me but you can't please everyone all the time.
4.5 stars - by far surpasses DF:Clerics and Druids
This pdf is 18 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD, leaving 15 pages of content for the Oracle, so let's check out what we get, shall we?
In this installment of Divine Favor, we don't get a break-down of the class and instead jump right into the new crunch, i.e. the new curses - 9 new curses are presented herein and I'll have to mention that while I love curses, I also consider them pretty hard to design - it's easy to slip and use something that does not necessarily fit the term "curse". That being said, e.g. the Coward-curse fits this particular pet-peeve of mine and is rather bland, providing only a minor penalty for its bonuses. I did like the approach to drunkards, necessitating at least 1 drink per hour and thus making sure that being a drunkard is nothing simple with easily offsetable penalties.
The Echo-curse, though, is probably my favorite: It makes you mute, but lets you repeat what other people have just said, enabling you to duplicate spells you just heard of up to the level you can cast. Speaking of mute - I hated this one. It grants you permanent detect thoughts at 5th level. All the DMs who are already annoyed when reading this hold your hands up! And don't get me started on the ruined adventure scenarios...Not gonna happen in my game. Ever. Soulless, unstable form and wanderer make for AWESOME curses, though the restrictions of the wanderer curse are rather harsh - not being able to return to a place is bad and perhaps a more lenient approach that allows return after e.g. a year would be prudent. Unstable Form lets you be put into a new body as per reincarnate and requires some book-keeping, but will surely make for a remarkable oracle.
The next section details 6 new mysteries and I have to get this of my chest: They are the coolest mysteries out there - Period. The mysteries are all killer, no filler: Beginning with the Clockwork mystery that lets you exchange body-parts for steam-punkish elements, clockwork familiars etc. we get to the Moon mystery that GOES BEYOND "Kill Lycanthropes" and offers baleful moonpowers, the ability to create moonlight bridges and generally mysterious abilities - neat! Being a terrible fan of all things aberrant, The Old Gods mystery strikes a soft spot with me, but complements this predisposition with neat, creepy, madness-inducing powers like offering a glimpse of the elder god's domains. The Plague mystery also OOZES style and provides the ability to turn into miasma, grow carrion winds and finally turn into an avatar of pestilence.
The snake mystery also ROCKS, offering e.g. full crawl speeds, contortionist abilities and serpentine scales. And finally, there's the Wine mystery - in vino veritas, indeed - from morale bonuses to DR due to insensitivity to the ability to alter memory, hangover-style and powerful revelry, this mystery represents the probably coolest take on the trope I could conceive. Credit where credit is due, author Stefen Styrsky has done an awesome job on these mysteries!
Finally, we get6 new feats, one of which is very complex and adds cosmetic and rules-changes to summoned creatures depending on your mystery.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the parchment-look and 2-column standard and comes with no separate printer-friendly edition. The pdf is extensively bookmarked. The artwork is stock that fits the theme. Wow, just wow. After reading the installments on Druids and Clerics, I didn't expect too much and while the curses are hit and miss for me, the mysteries alone are worth the asking price. They are so damn AWESOME.
Each one made me want to play an oracle of said mystery and damn, their abilities are just so fitting, so cool and concise in their benefits that I can't bring myself to say anything negative about them. Not that there was anything, mind you. The new feats are ok, though they pale in comparison to the STELLAR mysteries. Seriously, that's the kind of content I'm looking for - imaginative, inspiring, well-written. MY final verdict has to take the other component parts of the pdf into account as well, though. Thus, my final verdict will be 4.5 stars, rounded down to 4. If you're in it for the mysteries, this is 5 stars and the as of yet best source on oracle mysteries out there. Be sure to check it out!
Endzeitgeist out.
4.5 star review. If you like Oracles it is worth grabbing
This product is 18 pages long. It starts with a cover, ToC, and credits. (2 pages)
New Curses (2 pages)
In this section there is 9 new curses. The new curses are all pretty cool, though some of them are pretty harsh. They make for great RPing but I can see one of them Wanderer not working for a lot of groups. Unable to return to places they have been before after a week
New Mysteries (11 pages)
Clockwork – Very cool mystery though a couple of the powers don't seem much to do with Clockwork.
Moon – This one was very well done, it deals with darkness, madness and summon a moon bridge.
Old Gods – Has a bit of Cthulhu feel to it.
Plague – very neat, you become a plague carrier more or less.
Snakes – Lots of snake like powers, why'd it have to be snakes? Come on someone had to say it.
Wine – Has a bit of a Dionysus feel to it also fits in really well with Cayden.
New Feats (2 pages)
There is 6 new feats in this section. Summon Avatar is by far the best feat and it is very cool. You gain a bonuses depending on what your mystery is.
It ends with a OGL. (1 page)
Closing thoughts. The art work is a mix of color and black and white, it ranges from meh to pretty good. Editing and layout is good I didn't notice any errors. The new curses are very cool from a RP point of view and neat. Mechanically some of them might be a little rough. The new Mysteries I really have nothing bad to say other than there was a couple of powers here and there that I didn't think fit as well as the could or should have. The feats where the worst part, they was mostly ok, nothing great but not bad. With the exception of Summon Avatar which was pretty cool. So what's my rating? I am going to give this one a 4.5 star review. What is good is very good and most of it is good.
The defining features of an oracle are his curse and his mystery, and each one will have a different combination. To aid in making oracles even more interesting and individual, this work starts out by offering some additional curses and mysteries to consider.
First, new curses. The curse must be chosen at first level and remains with the oracle lifelong... so will he be a coward or a drunkard? Either could make adventuring interesting, especially for everyone else in the adventuring party. A stranger curse is that of the echo: this poor oracle cannot speak save to repeat what someone else has said... spells are cast silently, but at higher levels he can speak the verbal components of a spell someone else has cast and cast that spell, provided he is of sufficient level to cast it normally. That might prove too severe a handicap, so the aspiring oracle may prefer to be cursed with being grotesque, becoming even uglier as he rises in level. Other curses suggested are that of being illiterate (which does have the bonus of enabling the oracle to develop a prodigious memory), mute, souless or even of having an unstable form - you roll every day to see what you wake up as! The last one is wanderer, the oracle has itchy feet and cannot stay anywhere long. Each has some minor advantage, like the illiterate oracle's good memory, but in all cases the curse has profound effects on mechanical capabilities, never mind the potential for role-playing a distinctive character.
Next come some new mysteries. Like the curse, each oracle must select his mystery at first level and will continue to deepen his understanding in that mystery for the rest of his life. First is the mystery of clockwork: oracles who delve into this mystery can discern and change how mechanisms work and even create new ones out of thin air! Useful in a world where artificial constructs and mechanisms abound, but abilities are in the main limited to affecting them, so check that they are prevalent wherever you will be adventuring before choosing this mystery. Other oracles may prefer to delve into the mystery of the moon, gaining control of light and shadow and dreams... and insanity and sleep. Another mystery is that of the old gods, oracles who decide on this one gain strange powers and abilities from long-forgotten deities. Those who delve into the mysteries of disease are themselves plague-carriers and in general quite unpleasant to have around, whilst those who devote themselves to the mystery of snakes gain both the good and more repulsive attributes of serpents. Finally, the mystery of wine is there to be plumbed… perhaps best not by those whose curse is drunkenness!
The collection ends with a selection of new feats, all of which are specific to oracles. Many are based on mysteries, or on the oracle’s relationship with their deity, and should enable you to fine-tune your oracle’s capabilities in whatever direction you wish.
This book is all about developing coherent yet individual oracles who ply their trade skilfully and distinctively, and is recommended for all who want to stamp a mark on their campaign setting with their oracle. Some of the curses and mysteries are probably, however, best suited to NPC ‘enemy’ oracles, rather than player-character ones – but even these will prove memorable to those who meet them.
Ooh, Mystery of Wine? Potential Elysian Mysteries shout-out? Considering that I use the Greek Pantheon in my game, if that is true then this may just be a must-buy for me ....
Well, the idea of Divine Favor is that the cleric and related classes just get a lot less love and attention than the sexy wizards and arcane types. So I wanted to see some focused attention on domains, spells, and archetypes for them in this series.
If people ask for Arcane Knowledge, well, that might happen. Wizards are fun and more toys are always better.
Well, the idea of Divine Favor is that the cleric and related classes just get a lot less love and attention than the sexy wizards and arcane types. So I wanted to see some focused attention on domains, spells, and archetypes for them in this series.
If people ask for Arcane Knowledge, well, that might happen. Wizards are fun and more toys are always better.
Here is me asking for Arcane Knowledge, followed by War Collage, and finally Beer and Wenches series. :)
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Why does the Moon domain give two spells each for 16th and 18th level? I don't recall any other domains doing this. They tended to give extra spells known as additional revelations.
Why does the Moon domain give two spells each for 16th and 18th level? I don't recall any other domains doing this. They tended to give extra spells known as additional revelations.
The two spells with (UM) next to them are the spells assigned to that mystery. The additional spells should be in parentheses. I put those additional spells there for anyone who didn't have a copy of Ultimate Magic. The Moon Oracle does not get two mystery spells at 16th and 18th level.
how can you go wrong when the book has a mystery for wine? A small list of feats closes the book, they work with the rules in the book and all seem very useful. I really liked the cover and layout in this book, my favorite of the four.
Kobold Press
