Take the Burning Magic revelation: your fire spells do an additional 1 point of fire damage per spell level. That's just not very strong; a second-level spell negates it entirely. If anything, it should be twice the spell's level; perhaps even three times the spell's level.
Likewise, the Bleeding Wounds revelation causes a maximum of 5 bleed per round at level 20. Five damage just isn't worth it to keep track of. Perhaps the bleed should be equal to half the oracle's level plus his Charisma modifier. (You'd have to tone it down at lower levels, but the bleed needs to be way higher to keep track of. Most encounters don't last more than a few rounds, anyway.)
On top of this, the various touch abilities--analogous to the sorcerer and wizard abilities--do 1d6 + 1/2 level damage. These are, unfortunately, far too weak to be worth considering. 1d6 + 10 damage at level 20 is barely enough to kill a commoner. There's no way that anyone would waste the time to use this against an opponent except at level one or two. I would suggest increasing the damage or allowing the oracle to use these as a swift/free action later on in his career.
Take the Burning Magic revelation: your fire spells do an additional 1 point of fire damage per spell level. That's just not very strong; a second-level spell negates it entirely. If anything, it should be twice the spell's level; perhaps even three times the spell's level.
Likewise, the Bleeding Wounds revelation causes a maximum of 5 bleed per round at level 20. Five damage just isn't worth it to keep track of. Perhaps the bleed should be equal to half the oracle's level plus his Charisma modifier. (You'd have to tone it down at lower levels, but the bleed needs to be way higher to keep track of. Most encounters don't last more than a few rounds, anyway.)
On top of this, the various touch abilities--analogous to the sorcerer and wizard abilities--do 1d6 + 1/2 level damage. These are, unfortunately, far too weak to be worth considering. 1d6 + 10 damage at level 20 is barely enough to kill a commoner. There's no way that anyone would waste the time to use this against an opponent except at level one or two. I would suggest increasing the damage or allowing the oracle to use these as a swift/free action later on in his career.
I think 5 points of damage is totally worth keeping up with as a Player and a DM.
ignatz
I think 5 points of damage is totally worth keeping up with as a Player and a DM.ignatz
At the early levels, maybe. But past about level 5, probably not worth it.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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On top of this, the various touch abilities--analogous to the sorcerer and wizard abilities--do 1d6 + 1/2 level damage. These are, unfortunately, far too weak to be worth considering. 1d6 + 10 damage at level 20 is barely enough to kill a commoner. There's no way that anyone would waste the time to use this against an opponent except at level one or two. I would suggest increasing the damage or allowing the oracle to use these as a swift/free action later on in his career.
How are these any worse than the sorcerer/wizard 1st level abilities? In the game I'm running now, the sorcerer regularly uses her 1d6+3 ranged touch attack up through level 7 so far, and I don't see her stopping anytime soon. She certainly doesn't use it in the first few rounds of combat, but in rounds that she doesn't want to drop a fireball on other party members, doesn't have a good shot with a scorching ray, and has already cast haste, it's a good option.
At the early levels, maybe. But past about level 5, probably not worth it.
I think 5 points of damage is totally worth keeping up with as a Player and a DM.ignatz
how about when you have 5 points of bleed damage from the Rogue and 5 from the oracle...perhaps there should be a spell with causes hemophilia, and double the amount of bleed damage inflicted on opponents...
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As oppossed to say using a crossbow?
They do make a little point, they are not flashy or special, aside from say a mundane attack that does about the same damage, if not more. The real advantage to using such abilities (and weakness) is that that it usually targets a lower AC, might bypass DR, and might do a little something extra. The other side of that is all those thing might be wrong, and the target has better resistance to it than a crossbow bolt, might completely ignor it (SR), and might have a better touch AC than regular.
how about when you have 5 points of bleed damage from the Rogue and 5 from the oracle...perhaps there should be a spell with causes hemophilia, and double the amount of bleed damage inflicted on opponents...At the early levels, maybe. But past about level 5, probably not worth it.
I think 5 points of damage is totally worth keeping up with as a Player and a DM.ignatz
That's....so....awesome....
I think the difference is choice. Sure these abilities stack up against a sorcerer or wizard's lowbie ray ability, but, unlike those classes, the Oracle has a choice. This is one of the things that makes the Oracle awesome (man would I be dissapointed if they got rid of it), but it also makes the ray abilities way less pickable. Who's going to take those with such better abilities available?
I don't really think the damage abilities are supposed to be major on the higher levels, and on the first few levels everything counts, even with the orisons being at will.
Another point could be that the damage abilities will, even at the hig levels still be there for use on minor things - come on, you might want to do some show-off with your low level power, once awesome, now matter-of-factual, but still there.
And well, I had a player running oracle who played a lot upon the fearful part of Burning Magic (Meaning you dn't just take damage you keep burning and have get to run around in panic and roll on the floor and so on to extinguish the fire - If nothing else, it's great flavour and fun).
how about when you have 5 points of bleed damage from the Rogue and 5 from the oracle...perhaps there should be a spell with causes hemophilia, and double the amount of bleed damage inflicted on opponents...
That would be an interesting spell, but AFAIK *BLEED DOESN'T STACK* unless it's different types of damage (ability/ HP).
I don't really think the damage abilities are supposed to be major on the higher levels, and on the first few levels everything counts, even with the orisons being at will.
And well, I had a player running oracle who played a lot upon the fearful part of Burning Magic (Meaning you dn't just take damage you keep burning and have get to run around in panic and roll on the floor and so on to extinguish the fire - If nothing else, it's great flavour and fun).
I think a Divine Spontaneous Caster isn't necessarily going to be a big damage dealer IN GENERAL, though certain Foci may have better offensive effect than others.
re: Burning Magic catching targets on Fire, the continual damage does trigger a Concentration Check, but since it's such low damage, it's trivially easy to pass. A way to make this more relevant could be STACKING the DC increase from the Burning damage on TOP of any Concentration DC's they would normally make (Cast Defensive, Disruption, etc.) which WOULD be a signifigant effect even with only +1 to +4 +DC. (Though logically, this should really apply to ANY Continual Damage, i.e. the 1/2 damage should be a MODIFIER to any Concentration checks you make, or simply trigger it's own with DC of 1/2 continual damage + spell level if nothing else triggers a Concentration check.)
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I think you are somewhat missing the role of the Oracle too. Sure they get these neat Revelations that can help round them out and change their play style a bit, but, ultimately, they have a full divine casting progression. Which means, they aren't there to dish out tons of damage and infringe on the dps classes. If they were able to get full divine casting progression and deal damage comparable to a Rogue( with sneak attack ) or a blaster caster( personal preferences aside ) with their Revelations, I think it would end up being unbalanced.
I think you are somewhat missing the role of the Oracle too. Sure they get these neat Revelations that can help round them out and change their play style a bit, but, ultimately, they have a full divine casting progression. Which means, they aren't there to dish out tons of damage and infringe on the dps classes. If they were able to get full divine casting progression and deal damage comparable to a Rogue( with sneak attack ) or a blaster caster( personal preferences aside ) with their Revelations, I think it would end up being unbalanced.
The problem there is what exactly are they there to do? They dont make good healers they cant really afford to devote their highest level spell to healing and they dont have and secondary healing abilities, they arent good buffers with not enough buffs, they are not batman having the right spell for the occassion like having a remove paralysis at just the right moment, and they have few (especially at low levels) high impact spells that a sorceror would take like slow, or ray of enfeeblement, and they dont do alot of damage. So what exactly are they supposed to do?
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Obviously they have the ability to cast any spell they know. This isn't quite as useful as clerics can trade out known spells for cure spells. If they received the cure spells as free known spells that might help fill in that gap. Other than that, being able to cast any spell you know is very handy. It gets us into most of the argument of sorcerer vs wizard and that's been beaten to death, so I'm going to skip and leave the research on the part of the reader. It should be fairly easy to find a sorcerer vs wizard thread and read up on the benefits and detriments of spontaneous vs prepared spell casting.
The class seems very much designed as a parallel to the Sorcerer. Substitute "Bloodline" for "Focus" and it seems like an almost direct correlation. Except for the divine/arcane thing. Obviously the Oracle has a little more say in what abilities they get as they progress, but between spontaneous casting progression, extra known spells based on Focus, Extra class skills based on focus and extra abilities they seem pretty similar. The Sorcerer gets a set of predefined abilities, but gets to choose bonus feats from his bloodline list. The Oracle doesn't get to choose feats, but does get to choose the abilities she gains.
So what roles does the Oracle play in the party?
Healing: If the Oracle chooses cure spells as spells known she can cast more healing spells than a cleric of comparable level.
The other stuff depends on your Focus and what you choose:
Battle: In general makes you more useful in melee combat. Adds the ability to attack and heal in the same round, gives you proficiencies to increase weapon selection and armor prof, grants you dr at higher levels, gives you increased control abilities( Maneuver Mastery ). Warsight is pretty powerful as well.
Flame: Mostly revolves around burning things, though you do get some concealment mitigation and mobility increases. In my opinion it needs to be errata'd so that their su abilities will work with Burning Magic. It seems very silly that, as written, they don't. The "spell level" based on the DC formulas would seem to be 1/2 oracle level. This would drastically increase damage potential while not overshadowing other classes as it is a dot. Has a few ranged/melee touch abilities that tend to be good when dealing with high ac foes.
Stone: I think this is, arguably, the most powerful focus. Rock Throwing is awesome( it's like attacking with a falchion except at range with a lower crit range ) and is always available. Stone Stability is a decent defensive buff, that eventually gives you some control options. Mighty Pebble + Rock Throwing is pretty awesome. Since you don't have the armor to go toe-to-toe with mobs this focus allows you to deal quite a bit of damage from range while giving you the ability to mitigate or avoid close combat opponents( Earth Glide, Shard Explosion, Steelbreaker skin ). Melee touch for acid damage helps with high ac foes.
Water: Revolves around crowd control and does it decently well. Between slow, concealment, and polymorph effects you can help debuff enemies and keep them from your friends. You have a few other abilities that are useful like walk on liquids, some concealment mitigation, and bonuses to some of your cmd checks.
Wind: Damage mitigation/utility in Invisibility, Gaseous form and Spark skin. You can take quite a few actions that are useful in combat that do not break invisibility. Breath attack is decent damage, Wind Sight is nice for distance perception checks and it later abilities. Touch of electricity for highly armored foes.
Bone: Honestly one of the weaker ones. If they received negative energy channeling somehow, I'd change my tune with the bleed revelation. It doesn't seem as thought out as the others. . Most could be cool if you could use them more than once per day until you are high level.
The main problem I see with the oracle is that you can usually use any given ability only once per day... Maybe twice at higher levels. This is pretty restrictive. For the duration powers maybe adding a + chr to the duration per day would help. I.e. 1 minute per level + a number of minutes equal to your chr modifer. Otherwise, since they are in 1 minute increments, you get to use it once and then it's gone.
I didn't really talk about the various armor abilities because i think they are pretty useless. Divine casters are not effected by arcane spell failure and the armors do not become better than a chain shirt( light armor ) until lvl 11 and by that point your magic chain shirt is probably better anyway.
The other thing I noticed that didn't make much sense was that Burning Magic and Freezing spells have no synergy with the other abilities in the focus. Even when another ability grants fire damage or cold damage it doesn't get to benefit from Burning Magic or Freezing Spells. This seems very odd and I can't imagined that was the intended result.
That kind of went off topic. Oh well.
Obviously they have the ability to cast any spell they know. This isn't quite as useful as clerics can trade out known spells for cure spells. If they received the cure spells as free known spells that might help fill in that gap. Other than that, being able to cast any spell you know is very handy. It gets us into most of the argument of sorcerer vs wizard and that's been beaten to death, so I'm going to skip and leave the research on the part of the reader. It should be fairly easy to find a sorcerer vs wizard thread and read up on the benefits and detriments of spontaneous vs prepared spell casting.
The class seems very much designed as a parallel to the Sorcerer. Substitute "Bloodline" for "Focus" and it seems like an almost direct correlation. Except for the divine/arcane thing. Obviously the Oracle has a little more say in what abilities they get as they progress, but between spontaneous casting progression, extra known spells based on Focus, Extra class skills based on focus and extra abilities they seem pretty similar. The Sorcerer gets a set of predefined abilities, but gets to choose bonus feats from his bloodline list. The Oracle doesn't get to choose feats, but does get to choose the abilities she gains.
I am fully aware of the sorceror vs wizard argument, and the potential parallels here. But to me there is one really big problem. The arcane vs divine spell lists. I have always prefered the sorceror to the wizard, but there is a problem. You cant get the same bang for your buck out of the divine spells. Where as a sorceror i can grab at first level grease and maybe magic missile/burning hands, or ray of enfeeblment and be pretty sure i can make use of them in each encounter and have an impact. That is much harder to do wit hthe cleric list, especially at 1st level. This is my opinion ofcourse but there are very few univerally useful high impact spells in the cleric list where a spontaneous caster can make up for his lack of flexibility.
Flame: Mostly revolves around burning things, though you do get some concealment mitigation and mobility increases. In my opinion it needs to be errata'd so that their su abilities will work with Burning Magic. It seems very silly...
The other thing I noticed that didn't make much sense was that Burning Magic and Freezing spells have no synergy with the other abilities in the focus. Even when another ability grants fire damage or cold damage it doesn't get to benefit from Burning Magic or Freezing Spells. This seems very odd and I can't imagined that was the intended result.
The problem with the "special bonus to [descriptor] spells" not applying to Class Abilities is also present in Sorceror Bloodlines (and possibly other Classes I can't remember ATM). This really does seem like a reasonable thing to allow across the board.
The main problem I see with the oracle is that you can usually use any given ability only once per day... Maybe twice at higher levels. This is pretty restrictive. For the duration powers maybe adding a + chr to the duration per day would help. I.e. 1 minute per level + a number of minutes equal to your chr modifer. Otherwise, since they are in 1 minute increments, you get to use it once and then it's gone.
I agree scaling the usages of Abilities is good, even if allowing multiple usages of it's "lesser" form - I particularly think this would be a better approach for the Bone Foci, instead of forcing them to always Know all 3 version of Undead-Creation spells. If they want to create ALOT of Undead each day, they CAN learn those spells if they want (but could also un-learn them, i.e. for higher power version), but if it was a Class Ability/Revelation, each Bone Oracle would have a certain base-line ability to create Undead without impacting their spell-slots (w/ multiple usages of the 'lesser' versions).
This also gets into whether all Bone Foci Oracles are interested/inclined to be creating Undead (i.e. Black/White Necro debate) - As of now, if you don't want to create Undead as a Bone Oracle, you're getting screwed b/c 3 of your Spells known are dedicated to Creating Undead and you can't unlearn them. As an optional Class Ability/Revelation, it becomes a POSSIBLE path for them to take.
My level 2 oracle NPC has cure light wounds and inflict light wounds. She can cast 5 level one spells, so she could cast either one 5 times if she wanted too. That's 1d8+2 damage that ignores armor, with a class that is only proficient with simple weapons, that's pretty good for level two, if you ask me...sure beats clubbing them over the head, in both flavor and number.
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My level 2 oracle NPC has cure light wounds and inflict light wounds. She can cast 5 level one spells, so she could cast either one 5 times if she wanted too. That's 1d8+2 damage that ignores armor, with a class that is only proficient with simple weapons, that's pretty good for level two, if you ask me...sure beats clubbing them over the head, in both flavor and number.
At that level the extra damage from the "Bleeding Wounds" revelation would be pretty useful too. I still say they should get channel negative energy somehow.
I am fully aware of the sorceror vs wizard argument, and the potential parallels here. But to me there is one really big problem. The arcane vs divine spell lists. I have always prefered the sorceror to the wizard, but there is a problem. You cant get the same bang for your buck out of the divine spells. Where as a sorceror i can grab at first level grease and maybe magic missile/burning hands, or ray of enfeeblment and be pretty sure i can make use of them in each encounter and have an impact. That is much harder to do wit hthe cleric list, especially at 1st level. This is my opinion ofcourse but there are very few univerally useful high impact spells in the cleric list where a spontaneous caster can make up for his lack of flexibility.
You have a valid point. Although the Bloodlines , ahem, Foci do offer great variety, they are currently lacking a little in the power at the moment. Also the Divine spell list is somewhat limited if you take out the healing spells when compared to the Arcane list.
So how do we address that?
In 3.5 I always allowed Favoured Soul's to have all the Cure's for free.
Maybe the problem is the Spell List. I know it's easier to keep Arcane and Divine separate but there is no reason that the Oracle couldn't have its own spell list containing spells from both. Bards get a mixture, why not Oracles?
I expect that a Healing/Sun Foci (I guess those will be separate if 1:1 Domain corellation holds) will Heal the socks off anything. Oracles will probably be better Healers than any Class except Clerics (Healing Foci certainly out-healing non-Heal Domain Clerics at the least), with Extra-Channeling high-CHA Paladins possibly on par with non-Healing Foci Oracles.In 3.5 I always allowed Favoured Soul's to have all the Cure's for free.
Maybe the problem is the Spell List. I know it's easier to keep Arcane and Divine separate but there is no reason that the Oracle couldn't have its own spell list containing spells from both. Bards get a mixture, why not Oracles?
At first glance, I think Battle Focus Oracle could be the new CoDzilla. I'd love to see one of the CO guys post a build.
I thought the exact same thing when I read it. Full weapon/armor proficiencies, the ability to use combat maneuvers, AND the feats Greater Weapon Focus & Improved Critical at the same rate a fighter would acquire them? Yes, please.
Random idea:
What if the revelation choices worked on a "at level this, you get to choose from this little list, etc." mechanic, as found in other core classes?
Then you could scale the power better according to level. The Oracle gets a total of six revelations, so a certain list for the first three, and another, more powered list for the second three (per foci, of course).
Although it may limit flexibility slightly, it would be better than having a giant list to pick from willy-nilly.
[sorry if already mentioned somewhere, by someone]
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Random idea:
What if the revelation choices worked on a "at level this, you get to choose from this little list, etc." mechanic, as found in other core classes?
Then you could scale the power better according to level. The Oracle gets a total of six revelations, so a certain list for the first three, and another, more powered list for the second three (per foci, of course).
Although it may limit flexibility slightly, it would be better than having a giant list to pick from willy-nilly.
[sorry if already mentioned somewhere, by someone]
they already do this by stating that some Revelations can only be taken when you have reached a certain level. 7th and 11th are common.
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some of them might feel weak but there a few that are pretty powerful.
For example, Thunderburst is currently being tested as a medium range, 20 ft burst, 1D6 per level, bludgeon-type spell-like ability for the Wind oracle.
This is pretty good power. If this were to be a sonic damage type then it would be awesome since so few monsters and villians have any sort of resistance. I am hoping that when the book goes to print that the damage type will change to sonic. I feel that there just aren't enough sonic type spell & effects out there. There are several of us on the boards that are trying to make the case that it should be.
You're correct--not all the damage powers are too weak. However, the majority of them are very weak.