Life Oracle revelations

[Dingleberry]

Should the Enhanced Cures and/or Safe Curing revelations apply to cure spells used offensively against undead?

[Wandslinger]

Nope. Both of the revelations specifically note that they apply to effects that heal damage, not inflict it.

[Quandary]

i think it works.
"Whenever you cast a cure spell, the maximum number of hit points healed is based on your oracle level, not the limit based on the spell."

enhanced cures increases the HP cured by Cure Light Wounds.
the spell has a clause that says Undead are damaged (the same amount of HPs) instead of cured.
the ability is just changing the numeric effect of the spell, it isn't adding a special '+X curing effect only' deal.
the ability to damage undead is directly based on the amount of curing that the spell does,
so increasing that amount the spell would cure would also carry over to the undead function.

i hit FAQ though.

[mplindustries]

Casting defensively or casting before you get into melee are both extremely easy. I wouldn't worry about it.

[Quandary]

well, i don't think safe curing is that amazing, but it's still valid.
many people taking defensive casting to make sure that casting defensive works,
but safe casting is 100% reliability vs. combat casting's +4... of course, combat casting also applies to concentration in grapple, and other types of spells, so both have their strengths.
but both are basically using up a feat, if you go without both then i wouldn't say casting defensively is always a certain thing, certainly not with your top-level spells (several classes/feats also have abilities that increase defensive casting DC).

i would say that being a life oracle in particular (or positive energy aligned cleric), the fact that you can always channel energy (not provoking) reduces the need for actual cure spells. of course, if you plan on using your channels in some other way (variant channeling, channel smite, etc), then being able to reliably use your cure spells may be a concern of yours. having enhanced cures will make your cure spells more worthwhile usages of the spellslot.

note that safe cures (and enhanced cures) doesn't apply to other 'healing' spells like heal or breath of life, just those with cure in their name.

[Grick]

Dingleberry wrote:

Should the Enhanced Cures and/or Safe Curing revelations apply to cure spells used offensively against undead?

Enhanced Cures (Su): "Whenever you cast a cure spell, the maximum number of hit points healed is based on your oracle level, not the limit based on the spell."

Safe Curing (Su): "Whenever you cast a spell that cures the target of hit point damage, you do not provoke attacks of opportunity for spellcasting."

Enhanced Cures only affects the number of hit points healed, so it won't work at all against undead (unless for some reason it's healing them).

Safe Curing is sort of broken, since most Cure spells are touch spells, and it could either heal or harm someone long after the spell has been cast. For instance, if an ally drops in combat, and you cast Cure Light Wounds, then touch him to discover he's dead and thus not a legal target, you didn't cure any hit point damage, so you should have provoked. But then what if next round you touch another ally, and cure some hit point damage, then you shouldn't have provoked.

They should have phrased it something like "Whenever you cast a cure spell, you do not provoke..." in which case it would apply to Cure spells, regardless of who you intend to touch.

[Dingleberry]

I'm mostly thinking of situations such as when my oracle is facing one big undead opponent and is already out of big spells. Channeling still works, but it's an inefficient use of that area/multi-target resource. At 10th level, a better option might be slapping the undead baddie with a 1st-level slot CLW that does 1d8+10.

Grick, I don't read Safe Curing as "whenever the spell you cast actually cures the target of hit point damage," but rather that the spell is one that can cure hit point damage, e.g., the spell description says it heals hit point damage, like cure light wounds does. That said, I agree with you that RAW is sloppy and RAI surely matches your revised wording.

Quandary, I agree with you that Enhanced Cures probably doesn't work with, e.g., breath of life (in the absence of a lenient GM), but Safe Curing says "when you cast a spell that cures the target of hit point damage," which breath of life does, so I think that does work.

[Pendagast]

the key phrase is "cures the target", using a spell on an undead is not curing it, it's harming it.

[Dingleberry]

Mechanically, it doesn't make sense to me that it doesn't work. If the oracle is standing in a square between a wounded ally and a threatening undead critter and casts cure light wounds on his ally, it doesn't provoke and it "channel[s] positive energy that cures 1d8 points of damage + 1 point per caster level" (from CLW) that isn't capped by level; but if the oracle instead casts CLW on the undead, it provokes and the amount of positive energy is capped at level.

That also makes we wonder what happens if the same oracle casts *mass* cure light wounds in that situation.

[Joy X Baker]

I know 'necro' threads is usually frowned upon, but I wanted to get a clear bead on this and this was the only thread that had the topic in question.

Enhanced Cures says it only works on Cure spells, meaning that, RAW, it doesn't work if you're using an Inflict spell to cure an Undead.

However, Safe Curing does say "if it cures the target of hit point damage", and thus would work on an Inflict spell curing Undead.

This seems to conflict a bit, since it seems like for any effect the Oracle is using for healing, it should apply whether it's Cure on living or Inflict on undead.

How safe would it be to ask the DM to let Enhanced Cures be on any spell that heals the target of HP? But not Combat Healer, since that allows you to cast Cure as an Undead-Damager as a swift.