Here's a new focus I've been working on. I'd love to hear any feedback.
Deities: Calistria, Irori, Nethys, Norgorber.
Class Skills: An Oracle with the Focus of Secrets adds Linguistics, Knowledge [Arcana], Perception, and Use Magic Device to her list of skills.
Bonus Spells:detect secret doors (3rd), see invisibility (5th), nondetection (7th), detect scrying (9th), commune with nature (11th), legend lore (13th), greater arcane sight (15th), discern location (17th), foresight (19th)
Revelations: An Oracle with the Focus of Secrets can choose from any of the following revelations.
Arcane Sight (Su): You can use arcane sight (as per the spell) at will. You must be at least 3rd level to choose this revelation.
Combat Prescience (Sp): As a swift action, you can use true strike (as per the spell) on your next melee attack. You can use this ability once per day, plus one additional time per day at 5th level and for every five levels thereafter. Starting at 15th level, you can replace one use of this ability each day with applying the effect of moment of prescience to your next roll. The roll can be anything that the spell would normally apply to; however, Combat Prescience cannot be applied to your AC as moment of prescience can, because using this ability is a swift action and must be used on your turn.
Mystic Knowledge (Su): You add half your class level (minimum 1) to all Knowledge skill checks, and may make all Knowledge skill checks untrained.
Lore Master (Su): As a standard action, you may take 20 on any Knowledge skill check, even if you are untrained in that skill. You can use this ability once per day, plus one additional time per day at 5th level and for every five levels thereafter.
Orisons of Knowledge (Sp): Add detect magic, guidance, and know direction to your list of orisons. These do not count against your total Spells Known.
Remote Viewing (Sp): You can use clairvoyance/clairaudience at will as a spell-like ability using your Oracle level as the caster level. You can use this ability for a number of rounds per day equal to your Oracle level. These rounds do
not need to be consecutive. You must be at least 7th level to choose this revelation.
Scrying (Sp): You can cast scrying exactly as the spell, except that your focus is contrained to being a portable
object in your possession (for example, an ordinary mirror, a crystal ball, a piece of crystal, or pair of spectacles). You can use this ability once per day, plus one additional time per day at 10th level and for every five levels thereafter. At 13th level, you can cast greater scrying instead. You must be at least 7th level to choose this revelation.
Status (Sp): You can cast status at will.
True Seeing (Su): You can use true seeing (as per the spell) at will. You must be at least 11th level to choose this revelation.
Truthteller (Su): As a standard action, you may cast discern lies with no components. The only outward sign that you
are casting a spell is a barely noticeable glow in your eyes; a Spellcraft check at DC 28 is required for a stranger to detect that you are using this ability, although your traveling companions will quickly learn to recognize it. You can use this ability once per day, plus one additional time per day at 10th level and for every five levels thereafter. You must be at least 7th level to choose this revelation.
The above information is released under the Open Gaming License, and I specifically relinquish all rights to commercial publishing. If the Paizo design team were to want to incorporate my ideas into their products, I would be honored. :-)
The revelations include a fair number of at-will abilities, but let's face it: this focus is fairly wimpy. I felt the at-will aspect was necessary to help balance it out.
Mystic Knowledge and Lore Master are cribbed from the Bard's class features. I wonder if they are too weak to stand on their own and should be combined ... Lore Master kicking in at 5th exactly as it does for Bards.
I like Orisons of Knowledge, but I fear that it loses usefulness at higher levels. Perhaps the addition of orisons should be staggered across class levels? The downside of that is that you might not be able to get the orisons you need until you after you no longer really need them. Maybe allow them to be cast as swift actions at a suitably high level?
Remote Viewing is cribbed from the Cleric's Knowledge domain. It's a bit similar to Scrying, but I felt they were different enough to make it an interesting choice, just as a 7th level Bard might choose between clairaudience/clairvoyance and scrying for his 3rd level spell. Certainly it's doubtful that any Oracle would ever choose both of these, but I didn't feel that invalidated either as a choice.
I like the idea of a Secrets focus for the oracle, but you're right that it's kind of wimpy. :)
They only have one combat-related ability, and it's only usable a couple times a day.
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I don't mean to be entirely negative, but this class doesn't really seem like it would be that good.
First the class lacks really any battle ability aside from the 1-4 times per day. Even this really isn't good as at best you can land an attack with a simple weapon. Secondly the rest of the Revelations seem like things that would just cause problems with the quest, things like true seeing at will, truth teling, remote viewing, and scrying would just make normal quests either easy or allow you to bypass important points.
I honestly don't think that this build could work.
Not to be entirely negative but if you wanted to go with an oracle of Secrets I think that you should play up the Secrets aspect.
The knowledge side of it makes sense but for the revelations could be more stealth, invisibility, or misdirection based.
I have to hold on reading this in detail, because I gotta get to work... but so far I'm interested.
As for the "not going to work, combat sucks" I say hogwash... but I'm weird... I don't think every class or character should be about combat. Infact, I'm playing a now 3rd Level Deviner in the Council of Thieves AP... and we got through the entire sewer run without killing a single intelligent creature (I refuse to call PF goblins intelligent)...
We've even rescued whats-his-name with the most offensive spell used being sleep... (admittedly, on a bunch of Hell Knight Initiates who had just fallen into the water due to the bridge collapsing.)
It just goes to show how much you can do with a non-combat build. I'll look at this later, and probably enjoy it.
I'll be honest: I would probably grab this focus in a heart beat. Lots of powerful stuff here that is very useful, with proper application. If I want to blast I'll have plenty of spells per day to do it with, what I want out of my revelations is stuff that most others can't do, and to be able to do it on a whim. With the bonus spells and revelations of this class the oracle will regularly be able to provide his party with essential information that will regularly save HP, time, and lives.
After all the most powerful weapon you can have is knowledge... and this focus can give you that knowledge.
Now on a "balance" perspective, I would probably put in the time limits that are common on the other focuses simply for class symmetry. I still think that even with 1 min/ level and 10 min /level on most of those revelations you'll have more uses than you'll probably go through in a day.
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Are you guys taking crazy pills? For three seconds look at the class as written and tell me that it works.
Remote Viewing (Sp): You can use clairvoyance/clairaudience at will as a spell-like ability using your Oracle level as the caster level. You can use this ability for a number of rounds per day equal to your Oracle level. These rounds do not need to be consecutive. You must be at least 7th level to choose this revelation.
True Seeing (Su): You can use true seeing (as per the spell) at will. You must be at least 11th level to choose this revelation.
Truthteller (Su): As a standard action, you may cast discern lies with no components. The only outward sign that you
are casting a spell is a barely noticeable glow in your eyes; a Spellcraft check at DC 28 is required for a stranger to detect that you are using this ability, although your traveling companions will quickly learn to recognize it. You can use this ability once per day, plus one additional time per day at 10th level and for every five levels thereafter. You must be at least 7th level to choose this revelation.
Alright look at these abilities, between them illusions are worthless, characters and enemies that bluff are worthless, and some traps/puzzles.
This character build does nothing but break the game. I am not saying that all classes or builds need to be combat based. However there should be an in-combat element to every class. If you take a look at all the other Oracle Foci they all have many elements that would be handy in a fight.
Are you guys taking crazy pills? For three seconds look at the class as written and tell me that it works.
Remote Viewing (Sp): You can use clairvoyance/clairaudience at will as a spell-like ability using your Oracle level as the caster level. You can use this ability for a number of rounds per day equal to your Oracle level. These rounds do not need to be consecutive. You must be at least 7th level to choose this revelation.
True Seeing (Su): You can use true seeing (as per the spell) at will. You must be at least 11th level to choose this revelation.
Truthteller (Su): As a standard action, you may cast discern lies with no components. The only outward sign that you
are casting a spell is a barely noticeable glow in your eyes; a Spellcraft check at DC 28 is required for a stranger to detect that you are using this ability, although your traveling companions will quickly learn to recognize it. You can use this ability once per day, plus one additional time per day at 10th level and for every five levels thereafter. You must be at least 7th level to choose this revelation.Alright look at these abilities, between them illusions are worthless, characters and enemies that bluff are worthless, and some traps/puzzles.
This character build does nothing but break the game. I am not saying that all classes or builds need to be combat based. However there should be an in-combat element to every class. If you take a look at all the other Oracle Foci they all have many elements that would be handy in a fight.
So you are saying it gives you too much power and therefore is useless in combat? That these abilities that you could do at those levels anyways are too powerful to have at the same level? That somehow spending your abilities to have knowledge (which is power) isn't worthwhile but at the same time is too powerful for characters to have. That because it doesn't go "boom" it isn't worth having as a character class, but it gives too much bonus at the same time...
Sir your argument does not make sense.
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Okay I think you are missing the point. There is a difference between a class that COULD take an ability and a class that HAS the ability.
For example most wizards wouldn't prepare all divination spells, nor would most clerics spend all their dailies on divination. In specific situations yes, but the build as written above basically has a gimme solution to many puzzles and challenges.
Is an NPC lying? Use your insta-undetectable lie finder. Is something suspicious? Or not suspicious at all; who cares True Seeing, all the time, ever!
Whats on the other side of that door? Remote Viewing 7/day minimum Awesome!
All of these are broken, not to mention the class is built so thats all it can do. There is no combat abilities aside from a couple insta-hit melee attacks.
I am just saying the class is poorly designed and not even salvageable as written.
1) That's not a class. It's a Focus.
2) Most wizards I know and play with prepare at least three divination spells to discern challenges. That's called "playing smart."
3) Detect Thoughts, or even simpler, Detect Alignment, already circumvents many liar NPCs.
4) True Seeing at will might be a bit powerful, I'll give you that, but it isn't gamebreaking. It's mildly irritating at best. Good thing the oracle can see the truth behind things!
5) Remote Viewing to see on the other side of a door? You must be a truly paranoid person. Seek help, or use a summoned monster or more conventional methods of circumventing an ambush that most playing-smart already accounts for.
6) Oracle already gets cleric spells. These are abilities on top of the already astounding Cleric spell list, cast spontaneously. Read the Oracle class first before commenting that "that's all they can do."
7) Discern Lies is instantly beaten by a 2nd-level Bard spell that makes their Bluffs undetectable by magic.
8) Antimagic fields or anti-divination spells and magic items exist. Learn to strategize before whining about Divination.
The build for secrets is a cool idea, but I think it's implementation is pretty poor. With the exception of one of the abilities nothing will help with combat and even though I'm not a combat heavy person, I think that needs to be corrected.
Also in the games I DM, I generally don't like it when players find quick and uncreative ways of making it through a dungeon by scrying and divination to bypass entire puzzles or areas, and this is precisely what this class seems to be for. It takes the fun out of quests, makes it boring for other players, and discourages players from actually doing something, when they can just skip over it.
The problem is the number of at-will divinations meant to completely remove obstacles from the general viewing.
At the same time, I actually applaud that. This Focus (stop calling it a class!) ironically encourages city adventures in ways few others do; the rich noble with the antimagic necklace, the city with no-scrying laws or scrying being impermissable evidence in court when that's all you can get on the mob boss...yes, this focus is tempermental at best in Dungeons. But in a city environment, those same class abilities can actually be the fulcrum of a whole campaign.
I'd tone down the sheer number of At Wills, but the fact that it encourages city adventures and less combat gets a round of clapping from me. Dungeons need to be excised as a central adventure mechanic; they're boring, unrealistic, and cookie-cutter. Who spends hours building a maze full of traps and monsters to guard simple gold? Who traps a temple with cutting-edge magical traps? I'm not saying do away with dungeons (what sort of player would I be if I said that!) but GMs in general need to get away from them and look into alternative adventure types. Nothing is more frustrating than One-Solution-Per-Encounter Dungeons when you could be playing in the vagaries of the city or hunting monsters through the jungle.
Then again I'm crazy like that. It has no relevance on the focus beyond encouraging alternative adventure types.
The focus needs work, but it's a fine start. Divination needs more love.
I removed some 'Yes it is.'/'No it isn't.' back and forth that degenerated into name calling.
Thanks to everyone for the feedback!
The first thing to note is that this is one of those options that I feel would be best utilized by an NPC, but I do want it to be feasible for PCs as well. As such, the lack of combat focus is really irrelevant for my purposes: a PC looking to be effective in combat would naturally stay away from this focus, while a player looking for something different--something with a non-combat bent just to be interesting--might be attracted to it (as I see some folks here indicated). That said, I would be glad to see any suggestions people have for making it (slightly) more combat viable.
Secondly, I'm really surprised to see anyone complain about the Remote Viewing revelation. It's exactly the same as a Cleric with the Knowledge domain ... well, except that the Cleric would get to do it a level earlier than the Oracle. I would respectfully suggest that if you have a problem with that one, you should complain to the Paizo folks, not me. :-)
For the Truthteller revelation, I don't really see being able to do it at will being a problem. If it's too powerful as is, I think the proper solution is to make it take a full-round action (or even longer) rather than trying to limit the number of times per day.
Now, True Seeing at will may have been overreaching on my part, I'll grant you. Perhaps that one needs to be toned down to 2 or 3 times per day (plus 1 at 15th & 20th).
Also, I don't think I clarified that even things that are at-will are not supposed to be something you "turn on" in the morning and walk around with all day (a la the Warlock). I should note that the duration on all those abilities is "concentration."
Mystic Knowledge and Lore Master definitely need to be combined. Which would leave me an open slot for one more ability (possibly something combat-oriented ... I had hoped to find something in Mongoose's Divination book, but I came up blank; if anyone has any other ideas of places to look, please let me know).
Finally, to the point that these abilities can bypass many adventuring problems: well, sure ... that was sort of the point. :-) An Oracle with this focus can't do much else; they need to be useful for something. Personally, when I GM, I don't plan out how my players are supposed to get past the trap or the puzzle or the maze or whatever it is: that inevitably leads to frustration on my part, because the players always figure out a way around it no matter what I do, and, besides it doesn't seem realistic. Theoretically, the person who designed the trap/puzzle/map didn't specifically put in a loophole just so my players could get through it. As long as the party gets past the obstacle, I could care less how. Having a character use their abilities (which they chose and "paid for" via their character development) to short-circuit a puzzle or spot an illusion doesn't seem any different to me than when the Rogue uses her trapfinding to disarm the trap, or when the Bard uses his bardic knowledge to find an instantaneous answer, or when the Ranger or Druid uses wild empathy to make friends with the giant beast you had planned a whole combat around, or whatever.
But I thank everyone again for the feedback, both positive and negative.