Quote: Awesome Display (Su): Your phantasmagoric displays accurately model the mysteries of the night sky, dumbfounding all who behold them. Each creature affected by your illusion (pattern) spells is treated as if its total number of Hit Dice were equal to its number of Hit Dice minus your Charisma modifier (if positive). Awesome Display is a revelation of the Heavens mystery. The Heavens mystery gives you Color Spray at 2nd level, Hypnotic Pattern at 4th, and Rainbow Pattern at 8th, which pretty much tells you what to do with this revelation.
Color Spray is an extremely powerful first level save-or-suck spell that is nerfed by two things: its special, short range (15' cone), which requires a squishy caster to get much too close to enemies, and the fact that its most powerful effects only work on low-level creatures. If the oracle has a 14 Cha, suddenly this spell becomes much more powerful: it knocks creatures with 4 or less HD unconscious, blinds and stuns creatures with 5 or 6 HD, and stuns creatures with 7 or more HD for one round. Hypnotic Pattern and Rainbow Pattern, while not as awesome, are also very solid; in combination with Awesome Display, they let an oracle shut down large numbers of foes (especially foes with weak Will saves) with a single spell.
At low and medium levels, it's very easy to imagine a build shaped around this revelation. You'd keep Cha high, invest in Spell Focus (Illusion) and Enlarge Spell (the one that doubles range), and then just blast away with your patterns. True, blind creatures and constructs and undead won't care, but you'll still be able to shut down enemies more than half the time. From second level to ninth or so, it seems like a very plausible build; I'd expect this would be pretty strong for PFS play.
At high levels I think it starts to break down. First off, these three spells are ALL the patterns available to you. There are only eight or nine pattern spells altogether, and the others aren't available to you -- they're arcane only. Second, all of these are subject to spell resistance, so they're going to be less useful after 10th level.
But if you did want to build a PFS character around this, what else might you do to leverage this revelation?
Doug M.
Eldrich Heritage (Arcane) will let you take arcane spells in the list. The ancient lorekeeper archetype wil let you do the same.
You get a maxed out 20 Charisma.
You get a level of Crossblooded Sorcerer with two bloodlines that let you use mind-affecting effects on things normally immune to them (Undead for example). If you want to go all out, get two levels of Dirge Bard for the Undead thing and then use the bloodlines on plants/vermin.
You'd also then have three spell pools complete with bonus spells to cast Color Sprays out of. If you keep maxing Charisma with items and level ups, you'll be able to affect pretty much everything you'll ever face in PFS, but you'll still cry when you face constructs.
Then, after using nothing but Colorspray every round, you get insanely bored, congratulate yourself on coming up with an awesome theoretical build, and then play something that is a lot more fun.
mplindustries wrote: You get a maxed out 20 Charisma. Unless I'm a 25 point build, this means ganking my Wis. Which means the saves against my wonderful patterns are going to be low.
mplindustries wrote:
You get a level of Crossblooded Sorcerer with two bloodlines that let you use mind-affecting effects on things normally immune to them (Undead for example). If you want to go all out, get two levels of Dirge Bard for the Undead thing and then use the bloodlines on plants/vermin.
You'd also then have three spell pools complete with bonus spells to cast Color Sprays out of. If you keep maxing Charisma with items and level ups, you'll be able to affect pretty much everything you'll ever face in PFS, but you'll still cry when you face constructs.
Well, note that I don't get Color Spray as my mystery spell until 2nd level. Dipping three levels after that would mean I wouldn't get 2nd level spells until 7th level, and I wouldn't get Rainbow Pattern until 11th. It also means that up until 7th level, I'd have to cast CS at 15' range, which is awfully close. That seems kinda suboptimal.
I mean, this is a build if all I ever want to do is cast Color Spray. If I'm going that route, I think I'd just dip a single level of oracle right at the start and advance as either a sorceror or a dirge bard. Dirge bard lets me zap undead, which is pretty nice. Unfortunately, it means I miss out on the other two pattern spells that rely on counting HD -- Loathsome Veil (3rd level) and Scintillating Pattern (8th). Both of those are basically more powerful versions of Color Spray, and both benefit tremendously from the Awesome Display revelation; for instance, a sorceror with 20 Cha can cast Loathsome Veil as a save-or-suck to nauseate everything with less than 14 HD.
Mind, once you've got those two you have ALL the pattern spells that count hit dice. There are only eight or nine pattern spells, and several of them (Dazzling Blade, Wandering Motes) don't care how many HD the target has. So this revelation only works with a grand total of five spells: Color Spray (1st level), Hypnotic Pattern (2nd), Loathsome Veil (3rd), Rainbow Pattern (4th), and Scintillating Pattern (8th). That's not a lot... but it makes those five spells really, really attractive.
Doug M.
Your will saves vs. your own patterns don't matter. Maximize your Charisma to affect as many HD as possible.
Douglas Muir 406 wrote: Well, note that I don't get Color Spray as my mystery spell until 2nd level. The most typical build just takes one level of Heaven's Oracle and the rest in Sorcerer.
Douglas Muir 406 wrote: Dipping three levels after that would mean I wouldn't get 2nd level spells until 7th level, and I wouldn't get Rainbow Pattern until 11th. Color Spray is all you need when it's usable on everything and instantly wins fights.
Douglas Muir 406 wrote: Unfortunately, it means I miss out on the other two pattern spells that rely on counting HD -- Loathsome Veil (3rd level) and Scintillating Pattern (8th). Both of those are basically more powerful versions of Color Spray, and both benefit tremendously from the Awesome Display revelation; for instance, a sorceror with 20 Cha can cast Loathsome Veil as a save-or-suck to nauseate everything with less than 14 HD. Color Spray is the best Pattern spell that counts HD by a mile. Loathesome Veil is pretty nice. That's about it. You can go all out Color Spray, or just stick to Oracle and take that illusionist prestige class to add Loathesome Veil to your list.
I don't know, I still think your best bet is to put this character on the shelf instead of actually playing it, because it's awesome in theory and really really boring in practice.
Metamagic such as coaxing spell and therondic spell will turn creatures normally immune to your color spray into not immune. Taking Spell Perfection at 15 will let you apply any one meta magic spell to it without increasing the spell slot.
If you wanted to optimize color spray, there is a trait that you pick one spell and can apply one metamagic to it for 1 less.
With a 20 in Charisma, and grabbing wish +5 and the book at +5, and being old, you can with magic items decrease the HD of creatures affected by your illusion spell by 18. That means, creatures up to 22 HD are going to be stunned, and creatures of 19-20 HD are going to suffer the worst penalties.
I'm building a similar character. My advice to you? Go Veiled Illusionist.
At the price of your oracle revelations, you gain up to 10 illusion spells from the Wizard/Sorc list, the ability to hide your spells, free action True Seeing, and a very nice ability that basically duplicates Persistant Spell.
Grab Shadow Conjuration and Shadow Evocation and become an illusionist, as opposed to merely focusing on Color Spray. When you can, drop a Rainbow Pattern and try to rush your enemies into pits, off cliffs, or through blade barriers.
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