Oracle Bard good or bad idea?

[Snowtiger]

Party is this sorc maybe 2 cavalier Bow focused fighter Skill monkey rogue and switch hitter ranger and i was going to go oracle for heals and talking to god i randomly had the thought what if i go oracle bard and go full on cheerleader. I’m not familiar with bard and this will be my first oracle but I’ve bin playing other casters sorc cleric and druid so oracle doesn’t seem like a hard thing to learn my question is will i cripple myself if i try this? Both use cha as there casting stat and their abilities so i don’t see a clash. I also don’t want to get to level 10 and go s@#!...

Any ideas/advice or big red signs that say no you fool don’t!

also ive never really multi classed. if you do and both share a class skill is it still just a +3 or dose it stack im guessing no?

[Pendagast]

i dont see an immediate problem, except that performances will be delayed and/or weaker.

bard can cast in light armor and shield so i can see some synergy there with the oracle.

What would be extra triply, would be to build a bard/oracle/mysteric theurge. That way you can get all the cha spells bundled up... bonus to oracle revelations is they keep leveling even without more oracle levels.

could make for an interesting character.

[Snowtiger]

ya thats what im looking at im trying to find a draw back so far im guessing if i took the channel energy ability it only counts oracal lvls i think.

looks like id lose out on my revolations tho

[Pendagast]

no revelations can still move forward at half non oracle levels instead of 1:1 for oracle levels....

[Snowtiger]

so instead of getting one at 1,3,7,11,15,19,20 how often would i get them?

[DM Carpe]

Mechanically you would be hurting yourself quite badly. Oracles already have the slower spell progression of Sorcerers and bards are even worse off, by multiclassing you effectively tank the class features that make up for this. It's possible some careful combing through archetypes and mysteries could potentially have some useful synergies, but I cannot think of any off the top of my head.

Can you live with being two, or more, spell levels behind at 10th?

[lemeres]

Well, that might depend on what your level break down would be.

So, what role will you be fulfilling? I ask since some of the oracle mysteries are suited to only specific tasks, and some of the curses can ruin your ability for certain roles. So are you mainly a caster, doing field control/buffs/etc, or do you mix in some combat?

If you take on at least some melee role, I could suggest the arcane duelist archetype? It replaces bardic knowledge for arcane strike (giving +1 to damage at level 1 and another per 5 CL... Might be good if you mystic theurge. You also get a bardic performance that lets your allies use your intimidate check instead of their own save. Useful depending on the situation and if you already have a good intimidate bonus.

[Quandary]

Pendagast wrote:

no revelations can still move forward at half non oracle levels instead of 1:1 for oracle levels....

I'm pretty sure that you're confusing Curses with Revelations...

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If the OP goes for a Bard dip, Extra Performance to up Rounds of Bardic Performance will be useful.
Dipping slightly shouldn't hurt you too bad, and you don't need the high level performances to benefit your party,
I would say look at the Magician (APG) and Dirge Bard (UM) Archetypes,
both would make good 2 level dips on top of Oracle, the Dirge Bard ability lets your Oracle mind-affecting spells work vs. Undead, and the Magician can use spells (including Oracle spells! since it's not specified) to extend performance, although you give up Inspire Courage for a Caster-boosting performance (and Improved Counterspell Feat). Both get an extra spell known of any Arcane list (Necro only for Dirge Bard).
You could also make good use of the Lullaby/FallenPriestKing Bardic Masterpieces.

The biggest 'red flag' I see is that you don't seem overly familiar with either class in the first place.
You will want to be familiar with what abilities at what levels do what, and their power relevance if you stop scaling them.

[Thaliak]

Quote:

The biggest 'red flag' I see is that you don't seem overly familiar with either class in the first place.

You will want to be familiar with what abilities at what levels do what, and their power relevance if you stop scaling them.

This. In general, I would recommend against multiclassing unless you know the classes well enough to understand what you're gaining and giving up. There's nothing wrong with dipping, but most classes' abilities improve significantly with level.

Bards are one of the level-dependent classes. They are powerful in combat because they can buff their allies with Inspire Courage, which becomes stronger and easier to activate with level. They come into their own at seventh level, when they gain the ability to activate Inspire Courage as a move action and cast third level spells, including the powerful buffs Haste and Good Hope.

Bards are powerful outside of combat because they gain great skill bonuses. For example, they can advance two skills with one skill point using Versatile Performance. They also get the ability to add half their level to knowledge checks and take 10 on those checks, which makes them one of the best know-it-all's in the game.

While bards can't heal as well as an oracle, they have the cure spells on their spell list, which means they can use wands of Cure Light Wounds for out-of-combat healing and pick up a few of the more powerful cure spells for emergency in-combat healing. They also have Use Magic Device as a class skill and a decent amount of skill points, so if you're willing to buy scrolls of the more situational healing spells, a pure bard should be able to handle healing.

I'm not as familiar with oracles. However, I suspect that like many spellcasters, much of their power comes from access to high-level spells. Taking a level or two in bard would delay your access to those spells, so I would only do it if the bard has something you want. Low-level inspire courage isn't worth it; it's comparable to Bless until third level but has a much shorter duration.

If you're interested in casting cleric/oracle spells but want to use bardic performances, you could play an Evengelist, a cleric archetype that gives up one domain, medium and heavy armor proficiency, and the ability to cast cure spells spontaneously in exchange for access to the bardic performances Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics, among others. I haven't played one, but I suspect evangelists would make great buffers and battlefield controllers.

Whatever path you take, you should be able to play the character concept you describe as long as your group is comfortable with reflavoring mechanics. A Bard who never dips into Oracle can still talk to God, and he might gain his spells and knowledge through divine inspiration. An Oracle that never dips into Bard could cast his spells through speech or song, turning them into performances.

[Snowtiger]

im familiar with the sorcerer and the cleric and see oracle as the cleric that lvls and gains spells like a sorcerer except it has its curse and its mysteries seem more or less like bloodlines to me not exactly but a similar concept. i havent touched bard yet but ive seen a couple played and was thinking of adding it for some utility and flavor since the character in the rp hasent figured out shes an oracle and was an entertainer type of slave that eather escaped or was purchased by a party member depending on what rp would be more fun lol. i just dont wanna get to a lvl and go aww crap its laughing at me....

i was thinking of a small dip in bard unless mystic would be better. the origional plan was to be a tongues cures oracle with the healing mystery
its prolly gunna be a catfolk since something happened to my sorceress where she thought she was a cat for a while and slowly got better (i touched a shiny thing in a temple of bastet and had to be punished but the dm found it hilarios and said i could play a catfolk if i wanted for my next character because it amused him) and i looked at the race and figured they would make a good bard or oracle and the party didnt have a healer yet

[Snowtiger]

lemeres wrote:

Well, that might depend on what your level break down would be.

So, what role will you be fulfilling? I ask since some of the oracle mysteries are suited to only specific tasks, and some of the curses can ruin your ability for certain roles. So are you mainly a caster, doing field control/buffs/etc, or do you mix in some combat?

If you take on at least some melee role, I could suggest the arcane duelist archetype? It replaces bardic knowledge for arcane strike (giving +1 to damage at level 1 and another per 5 CL... Might be good if you mystic theurge. You also get a bardic performance that lets your allies use your intimidate check instead of their own save. Useful depending on the situation and if you already have a good intimidate bonus.

mostly heals and utility cc when needed but the party has 2 arcane casters not sure if they are gunna be blasty or not

[DM Carpe]

What do you want from a level of Bard then? Just a little bit of flavor it appears. Not all entertainers need to be bards, they just need to have ranks in perform skills. I can't recall a trait that grants perform as a class skill, but the Cosmopolitan feat would grant you two languages and two class skills which you could use for perform.

It really seems to do nothing for you, apart from versatile performer, Inspire Courage will end up a waste of a standard action, you won't get much from it and it will delay your all important spell progression. Plus your bard spells will keep their low caster level and be pretty worthless. If you just want it for flavor, I'd say you would be much better off just taking a few perform skills, oracles get enough skill ranks to make it viable.

That being said one level isn't crippling, though it would annoy me at higher levels. You might be better off going rogue, that would give your perform, more skills, sneak attack which will remain viable, and trapfinding. If you went tow levels you would also get that handy dandy evasion.

[Snowtiger]

rogue could work and being a little sneeky would make sense for a catfolk that sounds good too. decisions...
also feat sugestions would be nice if there are any reccomendations