I will be playing a Samsarans Oracle in an upcoming game, and want to ask my DM about taking the Mystic Past Life alternate trait. It seems extremely broken though and ridiculous to ask for in its normal state. There is nothing to keep me from taking Tsunami, Polar Midnight, Storm of Vengeance, and Shapechange from the druid list and an extra 4 (17 starting charisma / house-rule) level 9 spells is crazy.
Has anyone used / had someone use this ability in their game? How was it balanced? The extra total spells are handy and the flavor of the ability is really cool, but how would you suggest tempering it so I don't feel like "that guy".
Have you considered that you'll be waiting until your oracle is level 18, when most campaigns end before that you be able to use all those shiny 9th level spells? Remember that only celrics/oracles could cast 9th level druid (divine) spells, and you do realize you have to be have the same type (arcane/divine) spell for Mystic Past Life to function. Sure, if you wait until level 18 you can suddenly get access to a lot of nice spells that aren't on your spell list? But it's not really all that powerful, considering you could have just been the other class. It's nice to be able to cast those other spells, but by the time you're casting 9th level spells from your own spell list the fact that you can do it from the druid's spell list wont make much of a difference.
Mystic Past Life (Su): You can add spells from another spellcasting class to the spell list of your current spellcasting class. You add a number of spells equal to 1 + your spellcasting class's key ability score bonus (Wisdom for clerics, and so on). The spells must be the same type (arcane or divine) as the spellcasting class you're adding them to. For example, you could add divine power to your druid class spell list, but not to your wizard class spell list because divine power is a divine spell. These spells do not have to be spells you can cast as a 1st-level character. The number of spells granted by this ability is set at 1st level. Changes to your ability score do not change the number of spells gained. This racial trait replaces shards of the past.
Also, mystic past life doesn't automatically add the spell to your spells known list, it adds it to the class spell list. So while as an oracle you can add a bunch of spells to the Oracle/Cleric spell list with this, you can't know them all if you choose all 9th level spells, as you only get to know a maximum of 3 9th level spells. Consequently, this trait is much better for prepared casters than spontaneous casters.
Had missed the part about it only adding to the spell list rather than the known spells. Seems a lot less overpowered now haha.