My first Battle Oracle


Advice


Hi everyone!

This is my first post in this forum, and I'd like some feedback on my Battle Oracle. He is going to be my second character (I'm currently playing a Half-Orc Inquisitor in our Carrion's Crown AP game), and I'm planning to run him in our upcoming Kingmaker game with an evil party. I originally planned to take Inquisitor again (learning from the previous mistakes I made with my first character), but our party currently lacks a "face" and a Charisma based character (and we need one to lead our Kingdom), so I decided to take a Battle Oracle. Looks like our 5-man party will consist of a Human Ranger (switch hitter, with Favoured Enemy: Human), a drunken Dwarven Monk, a Human Cleric of Asmodeus (who will likely fall victim to party-fighting the first time he uses Channel in a battle and somebody misses his Will save against it :)) and there is another player, who haven't decided what to take yet. He is thinking about taking another Ranger, with Dual-Wield, but hopefully we can convince him to take something castier or tankier instead.

My character's backstory will include mercenary background (the reason for his mastery with arms and his Trait) and a grevious injury as an explanation for his curse, his "state" of lvl 1 after being an ambitious lieutenant of a mercenary company and his manifesting Oracle powers. This is how my character looks like so far:

15 point buy, 1 Trait and our DM said we couldn't lower any stat below 8:

Human Oracle, Lawful Evil alignment
Str 16 (with racial bonus)
Dex 8
Con 14
Int 12
Wis 8
Cha 15

13 hit points

Trait: World Traveller (somebody has to take Knowledge: Local after all...)
Curse: Lame (I was also thinking about Clouded Vision, but it might hinder him more in a lot of situations)
Mystery: Battle
Feats: Toughness, Extra Revelation
Revelations: Skill at Arms, Surprising Charge (its only 1/day, but it has many uses and offsets his curse a bit)

Skills:
Perception
Diplomacy
Intimidate
Knowledge (Local)
Sense Motive
Profession (Soldier) or Ride (Ride might be better on the long run, but Soldier also fits his background)

Spells:
Level 0: Detect Magic, Create Water, Light, Purify Food and Drink
Level 1: Cure Light Wounds, Divine Favor, and either Bless or Remove Fear

Equipment: Greataxe, Scale Mail, Dagger and a lot of stuff which could be useful at exploring the wilderness (Tent, Rope, Lamp, etc).

Unfortunately with a starting gold of 105 I can't afford a Greatsword at the start of the game.

Any suggestions what I should change? I know Dex 10, Int 10 would be more optimal, but I like my characters having above average Intelligence for RP reasons (and I love having a lot of skills), and his lameness is a reason for his low Dex.

I'm planning to take Power Attack and Weapon Mastery at lvl 3, and War Sight and Improved Initiative around lvl 5-7.

Regarding Weapon Mastery, which weapon do you think I should use? I'm torn between the good old Greatsword and polearms (most likely Bardiche, it seems to fit the Russian feel of Brevoy). Greatsword has obviously more damage, but Reach could be and advantage against medium-sized opponents and for Trip attempts. Unfortunately there is no reason for me to take Combat Reflexes, which seems to be great with Polearms, and the lack of attacks (mostly AoO's) against adjacent enemies, other than the option of Spiked Gauntlets can hurt in certain situations.

Also, are there any good multiclass options to dip a few levels or maybe any PrC-s for a Battle Oracle? I know that a level Barbarian is awesome
with the Lame curse, but my alignment doesn't allow it, and I'd rather play a cruel overlord who rules his kingdom with iron fist (LE), than an egoist @sshole (my take on Neutral Evil). 2 levels of Fighter might be handy for some extra BAB and feats, or a 1-level dip into Inquisitor (Abadar) for the Travel Domain and the Judgement ability might be a good option. From the PrC's from Core and APG Holy Vindicator looks like a good choice for battle-oriented divine casters, but it seems more useful for Clerics who use sword-and-board for me.

Grand Lodge

You dont need to note the cure spell - its just assumed you have access to those as needed.

Not bad. Why Dex 8? As its themematic along with lame? I salute you - thats cool RP. If its just a dump stat? Not so hot to take that hit to Ref save (not a good one for Oracles) and AC (esp for a Battle Oracle).

Overall its a solid character and one I'd like to see in any game I was in.


Helaman wrote:

You dont need to note the cure spell - its just assumed you have access to those as needed.

Not bad. Why Dex 8? As its themematic along with lame? I salute you - thats cool RP. If its just a dump stat? Not so hot to take that hit to Ref save (not a good one for Oracles) and AC (esp for a Battle Oracle).

Overall its a solid character and one I'd like to see in any game I was in.

Well, my DM doesn't allow to dump any stat below 8, and as I wanted to have an Int of 12, I had to find another stat to dump, and Dex seemed to fit his Curse.

Silver Crusade

Just a few things I can recommend to you. Your a primary melee character and not a caster. So you can have a lower Cha to start with. So going with the stat spread like. All level points in to Str. And use magic items to bump your Cha to cast your higher level spells.
Human
Str 17(15+2)
Dex 10
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 8
Cha 14

Now your trait. Why take something that can be coved by some one with normal access to that skill?
Recommended Trait: Reactionary : +2 Trait bonus to Initiative.

Skills:
Bluff: For when you need them to believe what you say.
Diplomacy: For when you want them to do what you want.
Linguistics: To talk to a wider verity of beings.
Perception: Well every one needs Perception.
Sence Motive: So you can tell if they lie to you or not.

I have one suggestion here.
Toughness: This is nice but not that nice there are other feet's that can help you much more. Replacing it with Improved Initiative will help you.
(Improved Initiative +4, Reactionary +2 = +6)
Extra Revelation: War Sight : Roll two dice for initiative keep one.

Revelation:
Skill at Arms

Spells: (You did not take stabilize. This can be very important at lower levels when you don't have allot of spells.)
Level 0: Detect Magic, Light, Purify Food and Drink, Stabilize
Level 1: Cure Light Wounds, Divine Favor, Bless

Huntroll wrote:
I'm planning to take Power Attack and Weapon Mastery at lvl 3, and War Sight and Improved Initiative around lvl 5-7.

Never ever take power attack unless your using it to get combat maneuvers. It is a wasted feet for a 3/4 BAB melee character. The amount of times this is useful for this type of build is very low.

Huntroll wrote:
Regarding Weapon Mastery, which weapon do you think I should use? I'm torn between the good old Great sword and pole arms (most likely Bardic he, it seems to fit the Russian feel of Brevoy). Greatsword has obviously more damage, but Reach could be and advantage against medium-sized opponents and for Trip attempts. Unfortunately there is no reason for me to take Combat Reflexes, which seems to be great with Polearms, and the lack of attacks (mostly AoO's) against adjacent enemies, other than the option of Spiked Gauntlets can hurt in certain situations.

Any two handed weapon will work well. If you removed toughness from your build picking up a exotic weapon at level 3 might not be a bad idea. Ether a elven curved blade for normal two handed, or the fauchard for reach weapon. Both of them are 1D10 Crit 18-20/X2. So at level 8 with your weapon mastery you crit 15-20/X2. Pick your flavor of destruction. IMO reach weapons are better option for divine melee characters.

Huntroll wrote:
Also, are there any good multiclass options to dip a few levels or maybe any PrC-s for a Battle Oracle? I know that a level Barbarian is awesome.

The over all advantage is not worth the delay in spell level access. This is true for all full casters. There are some times when it works for RP reasons. Only a few times dose it ever work for optimization.


calagnar wrote:


Huntroll wrote:
I'm planning to take Power Attack and Weapon Mastery at lvl 3, and War Sight and Improved Initiative around lvl 5-7.

Never ever take power attack unless your using it to get combat maneuvers. It is a wasted feet for a 3/4 BAB melee character. The amount of times this is useful for this type of build is very low.

Power attack is a positive dpr for this character.


Some of the other oracle mysteries make excellent battle oracles. Ancestor and Metal in particular. Wood can make a very good one as well, but it may not fit your background particularly.

I remember looking at this and I was thinking Ancestor and Metal would make better fighters than the Oracle of Battle. I'm not sure what was going through my head at the time, or if I was mistaken, but you might want to take a 2nd look at those. Metal in particular, I think they get some really good spells for fighting.

If you are going to dip a level in barbarian you will get martial weapon proficiency and medium armor. That makes your skill at arms a lot less valuable. I assume you are taking it to get the movement?

The early revelations you can take as an Oracle of Battle are:

Battlecry (take this and you may not want to take bless)
Battlefield Clarity
Maneuver Mastery (doesn't pay off till your levels give you the feats)
Resiliency
Skill at Arms (already mentioned)
Surprising Charge
War Sight
Weapon Mastery (good later on)

Toughness is a good feat. I might actually drop that and take improved initiative though. And take War Sight as one of my revelations. You are guaranteed to get a lot of use out of this combo.


calagnar wrote:
...Never ever take power attack unless your using it to get combat maneuvers...

This is only true for non-battle sword and board oracles as the damage increase from a one-handed weapon does not justify the cost. For two-handed weapons this feat is still quite good.

Starting with level 2 you can use Enlarge Person on yourself and with it Power Attack becomes overkill!


Thanks for all the advice!

I'm thinking about reducing my Cha to 14 and bumping my Dex to 10. (Altough a +3 Cha modifier can be beneficial to the Kingdom in Kingmaker, I guess a +2 early on will be fine, too)

And I will switch Toughness for Improved Initiative, and get War Sight instead of Surprising charge, being able to cast buffs first can be a big advantage.

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