The Secrets of the Oracle (PFRPG) PDF

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I Foretold You So!

The power of the oracle, be it gift or curse? Regardless these chosen vessels of divine power delve ever deeper into their sacred mysteries. Some of these mysteries lead to the discoveries of new mysteries, new curses, and new archetypes for the initiates to explore. Read on and learn The Secrets of the Oracle!

Within this product you will find:

  • Six new mysteries (Arcana, Darkness, Luck, Primeval, Rot, and Sound) to help add additional atmosphere of mysticism to your oracle.
  • Six new oracle curses (Bad luck, Emotionless, Hated, Simpleminded, Technical Ineptitude, and Voices) to add exotic benefits and hindrances to your oracles status of being touched by overwhelming divine power.
  • Six new archetypes (Ascetic, Entheogenecist, Crone, Mad Prophet, Tribal, Shaman, Wanderer) to help you find a unique and original vision to your character.

Author: David Mallon
Cover Illustration: Arthur Rackham
Pages: 9

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Sometimes even Rite Publishing gets it wrong...

2/5

This pdf is 14 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of advertisements and 1 page SRD, leaving 9 pages of content, so let's check out the new material for one of the beloved classes from the APG!

The pdf wastes no time and kicks off right away with 6 new mysteries for the oracle class. Unfortunately, the first mystery hits a pet-peeve of mine - I like classes to feel distinct from one another and the arcana mystery is focused on scavenging from the arcane domains of magic and thus constitutes a mystery to which I have a distinct disinclination towards. Worse, the final revelation is overpowered even for the 20th level: It lets you cast spell always still and silent without adding to the level AND lets you omit ANY material components, even the extremely expensive ones. I also consider the revelations to be not perfectly balanced among themselves, ranging from gaining a wizard's bond to minor skill bonuses. Next up is the darkness mystery, which suffers from similar problems: The ability to create Dark Duplicates feels rather strong, granting you a 51% miss chance, lasts oracle level + Cha-mod and can be used for cha-mod times per day. Worse, though is the ability to take Hide in Plain Sight and get rather major spell resistance when not in sunlight. Compare that with "Gain slightly superior low-light vision" and the ability to cast shadow conjurations and we're again in for a mystery that just doesn't feel too compelling.

Next is Luck. God, I HATE this mystery. The "Cut the Thread"-revelation, usable once per day, can be chosen without any level restrictions - make a ranged touch attack against a helpless opponent and (s)he gets a Fort save against 10 + damage (1d4+ oracle level) or dies - oh you assassin's, hang your heads in shame and cry, the oracle will take your jobs! Insta-death is one thing that is RARE in PFRPG and good riddance for the design choice. This revelation is a step back. Have I mentioned the ability to gain half your level to re-roll ANY DIE ROLL?? This is broken, even at 11th level. Have I mentioned fatespinner yet? Grant 3+ Cha-mod allies an insight bonus equal to half your oracle levels to atk, initiative, and all saves. Usable for oracle level rounds per day, this buff is strong - too strong. And there is an ability that makes you immune first to poisons, then diseases and finally even curses. This, at least in my opinion, has nothing to do with luck and is rather powerful.

The Primeval mystery suffers from other problems, namely being too weak: Gaining lame natural attacks, improved vision and uncanny dodge does not for an interesting mystery make. The Rot--oracle per se would be a good choice for evil characters were it not for the Plague mystery from Open Design's Divine Favor: Oracle book, which does approximately similar things, only in much more iconic ways. Just about when I was ready to call it quits on the mysteries, though, the ONE very well-designed exemplar pops up, the sound mystery: From auras of silence to the ability to propel yourself forward with a boom, the revelations are iconic and don't feel over- or underpowered and can be considered balanced among themselves.

Then, there are 6 new curses and unfortunately, they suffer from much the same problems as did the mysteries. Bad Luck forces you to reroll natural 20s and progressively grants you bonuses to reroll and negate natural 1s, making it rather a curse of moderate luck. The simpleminded curse, which caps your Int at 10, lets you add your Wis modifier in addition to your Cha-modifier to all your save DCs at 10th level. This is BROKEN. The technical ineptitude curse is a minor inconvenience, providing a -6 penalty to craft, disable device and use magic device vs. scaling, improving bonuses. Not worthy of the moniker "curse" in my book. The same unfortunately holds true for the distracting voices-curse, which penalizes perception and concentration checks for a bonus against mind-affecting spells and a bonus to knowledge skills.

The pdf also provides 6 new archetypes, the ascetic, the entheogenecist, the crone, the mad prophet, the tribal shaman and the wanderer. The archetypes all come with their own bonus-spells and force you to take certain revelations. The crone feels with her hag-apotheosis not like something anyone would aspire to and more suitable for witches. While the revelations were nice, I am not convinced that they need their own archetypes. To be precise, apart from the iconic lotus-eater revelation, none of them felt truly exciting, novel or ingenious to me.

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, I did notice a tab-glitch and some minor punctuation problems, though. Layout adheres to a two-column standard and the stock-artworks are neat. The pdf comes with bookmarks. Oh boy am I underwhelmed by this pdf. Either the revelations feel very strong, unbalanced in their choices among themselves, badly conceived or just boring. The overwhelming sense of "meh" this pdf evoked in me never left and was only scarcely alleviated by some gems among what I consider badly balanced and/or boring choices. The curses don't feel too awesome. The restrictiveness of the archetypes doesn't make them that enticing either and in the end, I just don't consider this pdf good. While I do like one of the mysteries and one revelation of the archetypes, this is not enough for me to recommend this pdf. Due to the low price, I'll settle for a final verdict of 1.5 stars, rounded up to 2 for the purpose of this platform.

Endzeitgeist out.


A natural addition to the Oracle class

5/5

I'm often critical with additions to existing classes, because they often feel tacked on, instead of a natural extension of the core rules. But it's not the case with The Secrets of the Oracle !

I really like the classic feel of the Arcane and luck mysteries, as well the Voices curse. Yes, you hear voices and they are real!

There are some slight balance issues (like the Simpleminded curse), but I think most of the concent is right on the mark in game balance, as well as in flavor.

You may read my full review here :
http://rpg.org/review-secrets-oracle-pfrpg/


Highly recommended for oracle fans.

5/5

I usually prefer not to add any additional material to the basic rules of a game and very rarely use 3rd party material, but I really like The Secrets of the Oracles.
It's 6 mysteries, 6 curses, and 6 archetypes. That's what you pay for and that's what you get. There are no additional pages dealing with making oracle characters or how to implement them into a campaign.

Regarding the power level, nothing appears to be exceptionally good, but at the same time pretty much everything seems to be an actually viable option that can work out well for the character. Something that I usually don't see often in d20 splatbooks, except for the Pathfinder Advanced Players Guide, which brought us the oracle in the first place. Usually it's two or three gems in a book of forgettable stuff, but here everything is actually useful.
The mysteries and curses have me completely convinced, but the archetypes are actually getting a bit too far, almost completely replacing mystery spell lists and relevations at lower levels and even at higher level your archetype will be your primary mystery, withyour actual mystery affecting only the list of relevations you can chose from after you got those from your archetype. However, the Ascetic and Mad Prophet are still very interesting choices, and the Tribal Shaman and Wanderer could also find some fans.
Among the curses, only Technical Ineptitude seems a bit too situational in its benefits, but the others are all interesting blends of drawbacks and thematically fitting benefits.

I think there's a focus on more "savage" campaigns instead of urban ones, with the Rot and Primeval mysteries and the ascetic, crone, tribal shaman, and wanderer archetypes. The Arcana, Darkness, Luck, and Sound (which could also have been called Voice) mysteries should be useful in an urban setting as well, however, and the curses can work everywhere.

If you play a campaign in which oracles represent a major spellcasting class, and is maybe even set in a wilderness setting, I actually recommend getting it, even if you are not looking for additional character options. The Secrets of the Oracles not only provides those, but also adds new elements to the game world as well.



Full-Sized Preview

Special thanks to liz for getting this up.


Certainly looks interesting. Since you can get in on RPGNow where I can buy stuff, and it's only 2,30€, I really like to give this a try.


Yora wrote:
Certainly looks interesting. Since you can get in on RPGNow where I can buy stuff, and it's only 2,30€, I really like to give this a try.

glad you enjoy it

Thanks for giving it a review Neithan


This looks very nice! Just one question. Arcane Oracle's final revelation says "Spells you cast do not require material components..." Is this referring to even expensive material components?


DancingStar wrote:
This looks very nice! Just one question. Arcane Oracle's final revelation says "Spells you cast do not require material components..." Is this referring to even expensive material components?

That would be a very powerful ability just by itself, and the rest of the revelation already seems very good. I can't imagine them to itend to cast miracle and true resurrection all day without any limitation but spell slots.


Yora said wrote:
That would be a very powerful ability just by itself, and the rest of the revelation already seems very good. I can't imagine them to itend to cast miracle and true resurrection all day without any limitation but spell slots.

I love the Arcane Oracle. I've been looking for something like it for a while. The rest of the final revelation is very good, so I wouldn't think so either, but I'm just making sure. Don't want my DM saying "no, that's way too powerful," you know? ;)


That seems to be the intent...but why not just give eschew materials?

If it was meant to ignore expensive requirements, maybe an upper limit should be in order. I recommend anything below 10k. Or even 1k. I think components are either below 1k or way above 1k. There's no real middle ground from all the spells I recall.


Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine.


Currently building an Oracle character and wondered what the jist of the Hated and Emotionless curses are (as a pitch to the GM to allow).

Character is shaping up as a Dwarf Oracle of Waves - Vikingr style...


Emotionless: Massive penalties to social skills, better vs. mind-affecting.

Hated: NPCs react bad towards you, later get bonuses to social skills and favored enemy.

Hope that helps, since I didn't know whether ccp'ing the text would be ok. :)


Perfect Endzeitgeist - many thanks, was just looking for a potted description to pitch to my GM

Appreciate it :)

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