| A Man In Black RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32 |
I set out to make some scratch oracles for SGT playtesting, and I noticed a problem. The oracle just doesn't know enough spells to use spellcasting as its primary combat role while still being able to heal and buff the way it will be expected to.
Pardon the incoherence; this is from my notes.
Level 2:
0: Create Water, Detect Magic, Light, Mending, Read Magic
1: Protection from Evil, Cause Fear
Level 1-3, you barely feel like a spellcaster. Unless you choose Bone or Flame as your focus or blow your first Revelation on an attack revelation that works more than once per day, pretty much every Oracle who isn't aspiring to CODzillahood is taking Cause Fear at first level. This doesn't leave any room to cover a buff and a heal, however; there's no way to be able to heal the group and buff the group and still do something other than buff/heal in combat.
On the other hand, if you're not Battle-focused, you won't want to use your spells for buffs and healing and wade in to bash faces. Your AC is less than super and your HP is only middling. Sure, you can take Divine Power, just like the cleric, but then you either don't buff the group or don't heal the group.
Also, there isn't a single orison you'd actually want to cast in combat.
Moving on...
Level 6:
0: Create Water, Detect Magic, Light, Mending, Read Magic, Resistance, Stabilize I guess?
1: Protection from Evil, Obscuring Mist, Comprehend Languages, Cure Light Wounds
2: Summon Monster II, Aid
3: Bestow Curse
I expected things to get better by sixth level. They did not. My options for offensive second-level spells were Sound Burst, Hold Person, or Darkness. (Inflict Moderate is so insultingly bad that it did not bear considering.) The third-level options are Searing Light, Bestow Curse, and Blindness/Deafness. Your first-level attack spells have gone completely obsolete; Magic Stone is terrible at any level and Cause Fear rots.
So, your options for spell-based offense are summoning, exceedingly weak blasting, or one-guy save-or-dies. Also, you still don't have enough spells to have a level-appropriate heal, a level-appropriate buff (let alone multiples!), and a level-appropriate attack spell until level 7, where you're still relying on second-level spells to do the job.
I've been trying to find big spells, spells which cover many bases at once. Unlike with arcane spells, cleric spells don't generally work that way. There are situational status removers/counters, buffs, and single-target save-or-lose effects. The only arcane-style big spells are summons: Summon Monster II gets small earth elementals, which are enough to contribute on CR 4-5 foes, and SM III gets...um...well, nothing the job done at level 7 or higher, great. Aid is kind of like a big spell, in that it's a buff and sort-of healing, so we've got that, too.
Hopefully, your focus is making up for this, so let's see how the focuses are doing.
Battle is doing very well, giving you a great buff, a great battlefield control spell, and another great buff in the first three spells. Battle has a very clear niche; you're going to pick up the self-buffs as soon as they become available, then cast them and stomp into melee. You aren't going to come into your own at the same speed as a cleric due to waiting for the various long-duration buffs on top of the short-duration ones, and you'll be stuck for utility spells for even longer, but you'll always have something to do courtesy of your focus spells. The first bummer spell isn't even until level 13.
Bone is not doing so hot, getting their attack spell two levels behind when they'd actually want it, followed by an unexciting self-buff you cast at breakfast, and an evil spell that GMs like to dick around with. If the GM doesn't screw with Animate Dead in one of the many obvious ways to screw with Animate Dead, it's great, but most GMs are not cool with Team Skeleton following a spellcaster around for flavor, RP, or battle-management reasons. After that, you'll get one decent spell at level 9 and then either the nerfed save-or-dies (which are okay but risky for your fragile self) or retarded NPC-only spells (hey guys, let's make some uncontrolled ghouls! Yay!).
Flame already has a combat schtick (Obscuring Mist, then hide in it while using Gaze of Flame), but they still haven't gotten an actual fire spell that requires a saving throw yet. In fact, if it weren't for Produce Flame, they have to burn a Revelation to get Touch of Flame or Fire Breath to do anything even remotely fiery at this level. In fact, they get fire spells at almost exactly the same level as fire-resistant/immune foes becoming common! Isn't that fun?
Stone has one decent utility spell (at 7th level) and some junk. Acid Arrow is barely better than breaking out the crossbow, and Shield is a bummer for a class proficient with shields and not martial weapons. After Wall of Stone (which is seventeen kinds of awesome), the rest of the spells are bummers, including The Weakest Divination Ever, Polymorph Ally Into Useless Statue, and Swarm Of Weak Guys Who Miss A Lot.
I got bored at this point and didn't do Waves or Wind. Or maybe I got annoyed; I have "Water: WTF Quench????????" written here.
Regardless, most of the focuses aren't contributing enough to magical things to do to either free up spells known for offense/buffs/healing, so most of the time you're using a far-behind slot for a spell to cover at least one if not both of the three.
If I had picked level 5 or level 7, this comparison would have been even uglier; the 7th-level cleric is buffing the group with Freedom of Movement and Air Walk at the same time that the oracle is getting his first third-level buff (probably Magic Vestment or Magic Circle Against Evil).
Actually, this is where my notes left off. Someone could probably do higher levels, but I'm noticing how really very ugly things are for the oracle at low-ish levels. Having a buff-based spell list without enough spells known to have a versatile set of buffs as well as things to do which aren't +1 to some other guy is pretty disappointing.
| tejón RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16 |
How would it look if you had access to both the cleric and druid lists across the board?