Hi there!
I've been playing Pathfinder via PFS for a year now, but the opportunities have been few and far between until just recently. After the latest mini-con in my town, I was invited to join an already-in-progress home game, of Rise of the Runelords.
The tricky things are as follows - I've not played beyond the early levels, or outside the core rulebook. However, what the party seems to lack is someone with healing skill (armor heavy fighter, a combat druid, a rogue/magus a bard and a summoner), and the cleric is just too vanilla for me to sustain over a few months.
The flavour of the oracle really caught me, and while I was able to create a backstory that worked with the setting and group, I've neither the time, experience, nor search-fu to do a proper build by Friday night. I'm overwhelmed with choices, particularly starting at fifth.
My preference, flavour-wise, is a Oracle of the Heavens, with either the Haunted or perhaps the Tongues curse, with some healing ability, some spells to assist in combat (battlefield control I'll leave to someone more experienced), and possibly some divination. She's a Varisian called away from her family caravan by visions she can't understand, leading her to aid the needy, and now a particularly dark vision has called her to Sandpoint to assist this party.
I don't need a super-optimized character, but I do not want to be a liability either, nor regretting any big decisions made now, over the rest of the campaign. Help! Please! :)
character (5th level)
campaign Rise of the Runelords (in progress)
party: armor heavy fighter, a combat druid, a rogue/magus a bard and a summoner
character Creation is standard society rules with the exceptions of crafting feats and a 25 point stat buy.
I'm not too familiar with heaven Oracles, but I'll give it a try.
Ability scores (before racial mods)
Str 14 Dex 14 Con 12 Int 10 Wis 10 Cha 17
All level increases to Charisma
Race: Probably Human (Put racial bonus into Cha) or gnome.
1st level revelation: Not really sure. The whole point of the Heavens Mystery is Awesome Display, but that can easily be delayed to 3rd level. I'd probably take Spray of Shooting stars for a little blasting. It's not great but most Revelations of the Heavens Mystery aren't exactly stellar.
3rd level should be Awesome Display
Feats: 1st level: Improved Initiative. For Human, I'd add something for defense like Great Fortitude.
3rd level: spell penetration*
5th level: Persistent Spell
Spells (not including Mystery spells and Cure spells)
1st - Protection from Evil, Remove Fear, Bless, Obscuring Mist
2nd - Hold Person, Lesser Restoration
All my parties are limited to Core + APG. There's probably something better for that level in UM or something but I'm not familiar with the other books so I can't really think of anything. However, having your spell bouncing off of Spell Resistence means you wastet a turn and a spell so I prefer all my casters to have Spell penetration. Could easily be takan at later levels, though.
Disclaimer: That's just a VERY quickly done build. Should do the trick if you can't think of anything better.
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Blave threw up a pretty solid starting chassis there.
Heavens has great Mystery spells but really only one decent revelation, which he's already suggested. The suggested feats are good too, you'll want to play a Heavens Oracle more like an arcane caster than a traditional martial/caster cleric mash-up.
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To diverge completely from your stated thoughts of going Heavens Oracle, another suggestion would be to go Life Oracle with the Blackened Curse. Snag Quick Channel and you can do some in-combat touch up healing while keeping a standard action open for offensive casting, Life gives you a lot of the spells you'd want to grab anyways as the party's main healer, Blackened opens up your offensive spell options, and Life Link / Energy Body is a crazy efficient way of helping keep your primary tank up and running. You can use either of the stat spreads above to make it work.
Just for the record: Going by wackyanne's role description for the character, I'd have suggest Life Oracle, too. You can do some interesting stuff with that mystery.
- Go melee, heading for Holy Vindicator.
- Go full support. Healing and Buffing with some Monster Summoning thrown in for good measure.
- Balance Life and Death (my favorite idea). Use your mystery for healing but pick up Necromancy spells like Blindness and Bestow Curse. Make full use of your spontaneous casting by getting lots of meta magic (bouncing, persitent, reach). The blackened curse for some blasting abilities is a good addition as well.
The dream visions can easily be role played by either just being an oracle - which by itself should allow for some weird dream - or taking the haunted curse so it's basically ghosts and spirits talking to you.
But a heaven oracle was the idea, so I tried to deliver.
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Life Oracle is just great because the Mystery itself gives you pretty much everything you need to be a good healer, with the exception of a couple status removal spells. It opens up the rest of your class resources (feats, spells, curses, etc.) to be used to support whatever the thing you want to do that isn't healing is. You can have a Life Oracle tank, controller, debuffer, damage-dealer, etc. It's one of the better Mysteries since it's very well suited to a very specific role and almost all of its revelations are really good for supporting that role. Since it isn't trying to do more than one thing you don't end up with Revelations that don't mesh well, or that leave you with very limited choices since 1/2 of them lean towards one type of role while the other 1/2 support a different playstyle altogether.