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My quest for my third Society character continues. Now I am looking at the humble Oracle.
Of course I’ve haven’t played an Oracle either and the last time I played a cleric was a 3.0 home campaign where I was literally a walking Band-Aid. (And that’s the way the other players treated me.)
Now in-battle healing isn’t as important in Society, at least in my experience, and once the fight is over the CLW wands start flying reducing the need for healing spells even more. This means I don’t have to specialize in healing, but that leaves me a little lost for a build.
1. What are some interesting Oracle builds? (Single class only please.)
2. What curse is the most fun?
I don’t need a combat monster (though I will accept such builds) I’m looking for something interesting instead. And remember this is a Society character, all the usual limits apply.
I was also looking at races and while being human is fairly standard I noticed something interesting with the gnomes. As a favored class bonus they can gain 1/2 a level as far as their curse is concerned. This doesn’t seem like much, but take it for ten levels and you gain access to the level 15 bonus, which is otherwise unattainable in society as far as I am aware.
3. Is this a worth while trade? Is it worthwhile for only specific curses or all of them?
4. Is there another way to get access to higher tiers of your curse’s benefits?
1) Well builds is depending on who you are playing with.
The battle Oracle is great if your party needs a secondary melee charater. But if that role is already taken - The battle Oracle easy becomes the worst of the melee chars. Then take a more caster focused mystery.
2) I'm playing a duel cursed Battle oracle - the tongues is fun - it adds a bit that my char don't understand what the other players are saying. Making combat more intereseting with misunderstandings and imperfect maneouvering. I also have the wasting curse - the party have a witchcoven theme going and giving people misfortune with my wasted "evil Eye" is just fun flavor!
3) The Extra known spells from human is strickly speaking just BETTER that anything the other races have to offer. Do it for flavor - not for optimization.
4) Not to my knowledge...
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Gnomes make great oracles.
Personally, I don't think nearly as much about the extra spells, because if you've got your concept tight enough, you know what you'll be casting and that's that. Leave it to the cleric and wizard to be the generalist.
Gnomes can tailor their racial bonuses to their mystery quite well. With Gnome Magic, Awesome Display, and Color Spray, a Heavens oracle is very strong. You can also make a blaster similarly with Pyromaniac and Flame Mystery. You could also take Magical Linguist and the Lore Mystery for a lot of fun--don't forget Sidestep Secret in that case!
As for curses, you won't want Haunted, because you won't have the spell slots for your extra spells if you're improving your cuse quickly. In most cases, Tongues is a good curse, although if you go the Linguist route, I don't recommend it because using language-dependent spells gets bonuses. You might find Lame useful, as long as you can be mounted (You're small, ride a dog). Clouded Vision is fine if you play a melee combatant, but you can't use it for long-range spell targeting. Deaf? Ah, deaf. Once again, bad choice for a Linguist, and many people would call it playing on hard mode, but if you're the creative type, you can use the curse to your benefit in many ways.
1. What are some interesting Oracle builds? (Single class only please.)
2. What curse is the most fun?I don’t need a combat monster (though I will accept such builds) I’m looking for something interesting instead. And remember this is a Society character, all the usual limits apply.
3. Is this a worth while trade? Is it worthwhile for only specific curses or all of them?
4. Is there another way to get access to higher tiers of your curse’s benefits?
1. I currently have four favorite Oracle mysteries: metal, heavens, lore, and nature. Lore lets you take a crack at being the Knowledge Monkey of the group; Nature makes you a mini-druid if you choose the right revelations; Heavens lets you fling color spray & other pattern spells with more devastating results than any wizard; and metal is just about the best way to make a really interesting combat-oriented d8 healer. For "cool" factor, Time oracles are neat, but I'm a little underwhelmed by the narrow options for revelations, and by the fact that every single one is supernatural, meaning you're not really much of an oracle anymore in the Mana Wastes or antimagic fields...
2. Tongues would be fun if you like getting to say ridiculous things, but in reality it will probably only disrupt your chance to do any RP in combat situations, and it may adversely affect you in combat if no one else can understand you. I think almost all of the curses can be "fun" to play, but some are extremely detrimental. Under no circumstances should you pick deaf.
3. For pure oracles, only the Haunted or Lame curses jump out as things you might absolutely want; Haunted gives you spells to add to your spell list every few levels, and all of them are sorcerer/wizard spells. Lame gives you some nice immunities to reduction of speed due to encumbrance or wearing armor, and also fatigue/exhaustion, I believe. The fatigue immunity is wonderful for a barbarian/oracle multiclass. None of the other level 15 curse abilities are that impressive to necessitate selection of gnome, and the fatigue immunity comes earlier (and can be gotten 1x/day via humans anyway), so I can't really say gnome is that worthwhile a choice. Humans get to add 1 extra spell known ... that one outpaces bolstering the curse benefits.
4. No.
Because each Oracle build will move you toward being a melee combatant, spell caster, skill monkey, nature master, etc. it's important to know what the other members of your group are playing. I don't think it would be much fun to play a Lore Oracle in a group with a Wizard/Loremaster, for example.