I'm relatively new to Pathfinder, and I'm really into the Oracle of Life build. The homegrown campaign I'm currently involved in we are level 6. I have an Elf Oracle with the Clouded Vision curse, mainly because I wanted to take a curse that would actually affect gameplay.
The Feats/Revelations I have taken are as follows:
Channel Energy
Extra Revelation-Selective Channeling
Safe Curing
Extra Revelation-Enhanced Cures
I'm looking for ideas on where to go next to get the most out of healing while staying in the Oracle class. I'm really liking the limitations due to the curse (we have an excellent DM that remembers the space of everything as it regards to me). Combat Healer seems good, but spending 2 slots to cast a spell seems like a big slot sink. Energy Body + casting Grace seems like it could do some good healing, but I'm not sure. Any thoughts/ suggestions would be great. hopefully I'm building well so far.
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You need to have something to do, when not healing.
Choosing the Channel Revelation, and Selective Channel feat is about all you need.
Buffing is a good option.
Also, all curses actually effect gameplay. I am not sure what you otherwise mean.
I would pick something, other than blind, as it might be beneficial to actually see those you wish to heal.
The party might not want to all squeeze within 30ft of you, just so you can see them.
The Blackened Curse is a better option.
I made a thread recently about where to go next on a life Oracle here.
You might find some of the comments interesting.
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Most people will say the Haunted curse is absolutely horrible because it messes with your action economy, but I have not found that to be the case. I try to anticipate one thing I will probably need, and have it in my hand before combat starts. The extra spells are handy, too.
I have found Forbid Action and Hold Person to be great spells. I have Air Bubble, but I will probably retrain at first opportunity.
Metamagic feats are really good for a spontaneous caster. Heighten Spell is good for increasing the save DC of your spells.
I like the Wasting curse for life oracles. Getting immunity to disease comes on late, but it has no real draw back for a dedicated healer.
For spells, I picked up a few Summon Monster, various group buffs, and even Harm so I'd have something to do. Quick Channel really helped too.
Maybe grab a Rod of Reach if you can. Turning Cure spells into ranged is nice.
I'm usually buffing when not curing, that's how I have my spells set up. At this level my clouded vision is 60 feet, so it only affects Perception further away than that. I can't change my curse, but I really don't mind since it's great for role-playing.
I don't end up in close combat much, so I was just wondering what feats would be best, whether that be taking Extra Revelation or Extra Channeling, or another idea. What are your thoughts on Energy Body or Combat Healer?
And thanks for the link, Hawk. I'll definitely take a look.
Toughness could help. Hard to heal when you're knocked out.
Also, all curses actually effect gameplay. I am not sure what you otherwise mean.
The Legalistic curse can be almost ignored, but that's about the only one.
Life Link, Energy Body and Combat Healer can help with your action economy. When healing your allies no longer requires most of your standard actions, all kinds of possibilities open up besides healing: buff, debuff (pick Blindness and Heighten Spell and have fun, like, forever), or just lay some holy power against your enemies.
Get friends: spiritual weapon and ally, summons. They will hammer the enemy while you take good care of your companions.
Also, if your character is the only spontaneous caster in the party, don't forget Dispel Magic.
Edit: well, Blessing of fervor is a must, it goes without saying. Your friends will love you for it.
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The Legalistic curse can be almost ignored, but that's about the only one.
Also, all curses actually effect gameplay. I am not sure what you otherwise mean.
I suppose the "I am a better person, and roleplayer, because I pick this Curse" air I got from it, sort of irritated me.
I might have read too much into it.
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The Legalistic curse can be almost ignored, but that's about the only one.
Also, all curses actually effect gameplay. I am not sure what you otherwise mean.
Eh. Only if your game either doesn't involve role-playing, sticking entirely to tactical wargaming and/or roll-playing, or your entire game and party is composed of "Dudley Do-Rights" and "Can't Lie Paladins" who must always keep their word and never ever lie anyway-- otherwise, being unable to effectively lie, potentially impaired at bluffing, and having to be very careful about choosing your words in situations involving necessary deceit and/or extreme tact-- means it's an interesting curse that does impose challenges. For concrete impacts above and beyond fun role-playing challenges-- having 'Legalistic' has already cost me 1 prestige point in PFS play so far (although it was entertaining completely blowing our secondary objective through inability to deceive a bunch of rather evil and ill-mannered customs inspectors)...
Also, there are "work-arounds" that minimize the impacts of many of the curses. For some examples: "Tongues"-- at low level, if the whole party has learned the same extra-planar language as a "battle language", and at high levels, if your character doesn't talk much in a fight, just listens and uses hand signals; "Blackened"-- the penalty doesn't apply to natural weapons; Wasting-- if you're an intimidator, not a sweet-talker, it doesn't affect skills you're going to use much.
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@lorenlord,
Looking at your build, I would suggest these 2 feats, as they are perfect for a cha support build, Battle Cry and Divine Protection.
*Divine Protection is not PFS legal, just a clarification.
Battle Cry lets you throw up a quick buff as a swift action and more importantly, allows you and you allies to end the battle cry’s effect to reroll a failed save.
While Divine Protection, allows you to add your Cha to your saves.
Both will make you and your allies a lot hard to bring down and are powered by your high Cha mod.
People would allow the Divine Protection Feat? Seriously? One of the class defining abilities for a Paladin? As a feat?
Sometimes I hate 3rd party stuff.
Life Link, Energy Body and Combat Healer can help with your action economy. When healing your allies no longer requires most of your standard actions, all kinds of possibilities open up besides healing: buff, debuff (pick Blindness and Heighten Spell and have fun, like, forever), or just lay some holy power against your enemies.
Get friends: spiritual weapon and ally, summons. They will hammer the enemy while you take good care of your companions.
Also, if your character is the only spontaneous caster in the party, don't forget Dispel Magic.
Edit: well, Blessing of fervor is a must, it goes without saying. Your friends will love you for it.
Life Link completely changes the role of the healing oracle to one of 'i need to keep track of all my parties health at all times, so i know when it heals them and when it doesn't. then i also have to heal myself a bunch as i'm taking a ton of damage now'.
It is for the players who want to book keep a lot (or use multiple d100s to keep track of damage).
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People would allow the Divine Protection Feat? Seriously? One of the class defining abilities for a Paladin? As a feat?
Sometimes I hate 3rd party stuff.
Divine Protection
Source Advanced Class Guide pg. 144Your deity protects you against deadly attacks.
Prerequisites: Cha 13, Knowledge (religion) 5 ranks, ability to cast 2nd-level divine spells; blessings, domains, or mystery class feature.
Benefit: You gain a bonus equal to your Charisma modifier on all saving throws. If your Charisma modifier is already applied as a bonus on all saving throw (such as from the divine grace class feature), you instead gain a +1 bonus on all saving throws.
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If its not PFS go divine protection @5 and divine interferance @ 11
Those feats are optimal picks for non PFS.
Grab life link revelation and combine it with boot of earth. Gives fast being 1 and provides all day unlimited healing.
If your going straight oracle I would build like this
Fey fondling and toughness 1st level
3- extra rev. (Free feat)
5-divine protection
7- persistant spell or heighten (I prefer persistant)
9- spell pentration
11-divine interferance
Or you could build as an Oradin. Which are awesome lol.
My fault... just assumed something that ridiculous was third party.
thanks for all of the great Ideas.
As for my previous post about the other curses, my bad, Blackblood, didnt mean to come off as that, it's just that we have had Oracles in the past in the group that didnt RP well, and minimized their curses by 'non- involved DM' fiat. So I wanted to pick one that seemed to fit the Oracle and my character's backstory, in my opinion. So that's why I had said what i said about the curses affecting gameplay, so from my limited experience, I apologize, good sir.
Because of some great ideas from you guys, I'm thinking of these options at lvl 7:
Feat: Quicken Channel
Revelation: Either Combat Healer or Fateful Channel
I play my Oracle as he really follows the ways of Pharasma as far as Fate and Life and Death as a natural force, so I think Fateful Channel would really fit the Role-Play fluff of the character.
Divine Protection is definitely on the Radar, though.
Thanks for helping a newer player with advice on my build. We'll be going to Level 7 soon, so this really helps.
And again Blackblood, my apologies if I came off as you thought. Not intentional.
Since you can't get Combat Healer till level 7 you will have a lot of spell casting of your level 1 spells by then, and your primary battle heals will probably be cure serious and moderate. Having the ability to cast a swift action cure light wounds only using two first level spell slots is a nice "in-case of emergency" thing.
Energy Body is the same kind of thing, it does not do very much healing, but that 1d6+Lvl can be a nice little thing, start it up in combat if you can on a round that no one really needs much more than a few points, or to offset some of the incoming damage from life link. And don't forget, aside from healing (1 target per round as a move action, that either you can take or them), it also gives you the Elemental Subtype while your using it, making you immune to crits, sneak, poison, paralysis, stun, sleep, flanking.
You may think in the late game about taking Sacred Summons at maybe level 13, and sometime before that picking up summon good monster, the summon good monster list 7, 8 and 9 includes a deva that can cast healing/curing spells also, it costs you a high level spell slot, but later in the battle you have yourself and someone else who you control, and both of you can cast healing spells.
Sacred Summons (Feat): Summon some creatures as a standard instead of 1 round.
Summon Good Monster (Feat): Adds good aligned creatures to your list, a lot of which can be summoned via Sacred Summons, so as a standard action.
Is an Oradin just a multiclass Oracle/Paladin? I thought giving up spellcasting levels was a huge no-no.
There are exceptions to every rule.
The swift heal from lay on hands that the Paladin gets can be worthwhile for the mostly Oracle version of Oradin. It doesn't work for all builds, but it can be made to work.
The Paladin isn't much of a spell caster, so the dip into Oracle for Life Link doesn't hurt that much. Choice of using a feat to also pick up Channelling or taking more levels of Oracle is a tougher one. It also adds a lot of spells to the Paladin's spell list if you don't mind using Wands.
The Oradin (Paladin/Oracle) can be a very effective character. My preference would be to run it as mostly a Paladin, but either way can work.
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Oradin just a multiclass Oracle/Paladin? I thought giving up spellcasting levels was a huge no-no.
Typically it is a bad idea but when your a heal bot you dont need lots of spells. As an oradin you have life link with channel energy and lay on hands.
It allows you to swift action LOH and standard channel energy/buff since with life link you take damage in place of others. You also get awesome saves and smite to play a reach AoO character. It is actually one of the stronger healers. Tho being a dedicated healer is a bad way to play the game.
With divine interferance you can sack 1st level spells to negate crits which outweighs every heal other then heal spell.
And you can abuse life link + boots of earth. Oradin are strong at what they do. But requries a good player to pull it off.
Since you can't get Combat Healer till level 7 you will have a lot of spell casting of your level 1 spells by then, and your primary battle heals will probably be cure serious and moderate. Having the ability to cast a swift action cure light wounds only using two first level spell slots is a nice "in-case of emergency" thing.
Energy Body is the same kind of thing, it does not do very much healing, but that 1d6+Lvl can be a nice little thing, start it up in combat if you can on a round that no one really needs much more than a few points, or to offset some of the incoming damage from life link. And don't forget, aside from healing (1 target per round as a move action, that either you can take or them), it also gives you the Elemental Subtype while your using it, making you immune to crits, sneak, poison, paralysis, stun, sleep, flanking.
You may think in the late game about taking Sacred Summons at maybe level 13, and sometime before that picking up summon good monster, the summon good monster list 7, 8 and 9 includes a deva that can cast healing/curing spells also, it costs you a high level spell slot, but later in the battle you have yourself and someone else who you control, and both of you can cast healing spells.
Sacred Summons (Feat): Summon some creatures as a standard instead of 1 round.
Summon Good Monster (Feat): Adds good aligned creatures to your list, a lot of which can be summoned via Sacred Summons, so as a standard action.
The group is currently Lvl 6 now, and will be going to Lvl 7 shortly, but thank you for another great idea.
I was thinking about energy body, but thought I could get more out of going with Combat Healer as a way to get off a round of big heals, as our DM is big into combats.
In a perfect round where I didnt have to move we have 2 fighters, one of which seems to always get himself spearated from the party in combats:
Stand behind Tank, Combat Heal CSW
Quicken Channel to heal group
I already have Sacred Bond on fighter #2, so cast CMW on him.
That's the plan, anyways lol.
I have a life oracle that I rolled up for my group after my summoner got one hit killed by 95 greataxe damage to the face. (It was not a crit.) After that I took "in combat healing is ineffective at high level" as a challenge and made up an Asimar life oracle. At level 13 I should be able to out-heal getting full attacked by the Tarrasque for 3-5 rounds in a row before finally dying. ...I'm not bitter... I'm just really good at min-maxing. He's insanely tough and the only kind of character I would imagine using Shield Other and life link on every other member of the party. Shield other can get really dangerous.
If you aren't already, make use of the Elf favored class bonus to improve your positive channel. Channel energy isn't that great but it's supernatural so that means no concentration check. I've used it to keep the party at full health after I've been swallowed whole on more than on occasion. (I'm not sure you need line of sight to hit someone with a channel energy. You do need line of sight to be able to not hit someone with it, so by extension if you don't have line of sight you should hit them with it.)
For your next feat I would say grab quicken channel or if you can get both together grab Life Link and Energy body. They were made for each other. But both options are so you can cast as a standard and heal as a move. Being able to make your party unable to die from HP damage is good but at this point you will have things that don't go after HP to kill you. Hopefully you should eventually get to the point where you never need to use a standard action to heal anyone unless your enemy is capable of truly terrifying amounts of damage.
Life Link, Energy Body and Combat Healer can help with your action economy. When healing your allies no longer requires most of your standard actions, all kinds of possibilities open up besides healing: buff, debuff (pick Blindness and Heighten Spell and have fun, like, forever), or just lay some holy power against your enemies.
Get friends: spiritual weapon and ally, summons. They will hammer the enemy while you take good care of your companions.
Also, if your character is the only spontaneous caster in the party, don't forget Dispel Magic.
Edit: well, Blessing of fervor is a must, it goes without saying. Your friends will love you for it.Life Link completely changes the role of the healing oracle to one of 'i need to keep track of all my parties health at all times, so i know when it heals them and when it doesn't. then i also have to heal myself a bunch as i'm taking a ton of damage now'.
It is for the players who want to book keep a lot (or use multiple d100s to keep track of damage).
Well, not really, at least in my experience. "Ok guys, it's my turn, let's have a show of hands for life link. Two? Ok, 10 points damage, I heal myself as a move action with Energy Body. Now, for my standard action..." Takes ten seconds, really, and spares standard actions (for stabilize or cure to get rid of bleed). It's also an immediate action to drop as many links as you like, so no action consumption and very little risk of dying by massive damage. Later the Oracle can decide whether to Cure or Channel depending on the damage spread. Last but not least, a kind of fast healing 5 for everybody in the party, what's not to love?
Thanks everyone. I'm wondering how you get around taking opportunity attacks for going through treatened squares to heal with energy body (besides casting grace. I didnt see anythign in the description stating that you didnt take AoO's. Which is why I'm leaning towards Fateful Channel and Combat Healer. Our front-line fighter takes the majority of the damage dealt in a combat (as he should if things are going well), so I would like to set him up for a big round of heals if needed, plus channel in case the group gets hit with an AOE, plus it'll give them a good buff to have at their disposal.
My Oracle of life makes use of Energy Body to heal herself as a move action while life-linking the party.
Also note that Energy Body works both ways: "if you pass through a living allied creature's square or the ally passes through your square".
Yeah, Rory, thanks for answering my question about the Energy body. I posted way above, I was torn between two setups at this point upon reaching Level 7:
Feat: Quicken Channel
Revelation: Combat Healer
Ideally, the idea would be to have Sacred Bond on our secondary fighter who likes to wander off to the edges of the battlefield, geting behind the main fighter, and next turn smash down a huge round of healing if necessary
Feat: Fateful Channel
Revelation: Combat Healer
Less of a healing bomb, but the Channel buff is pretty good and seems really useful.Plus my Oracle worships Pharasma so it would really fit RP-wise, which my DM encourages us to take feats/skills that play into our backstories.
The life link from Shaman gives the impression/rules that they have to be at -6. While the oracle is whenever they are at MaxHP-5 or less they get healed
edit- forgot the or less.
You are mistaken. They have to be down by at least 5 hit points.
Feats I would recommend at this point are Divine Protection or Quick Channel.
Depending upon the campaign you might want Alignment Channel instead.
I don't think Energy Body is that tremendous unless you are also already doing the Life Link thing. Although being immune to crits as an elemental did save my life once.
Reach Spell or a Reach metamagic rod is also very useful.
I'm not sure what other advice to give. Most of the options I pick are negated by your blindness curse.
Check me if I'm mistaken, but isn't life link inoperative until your linked companion goes down to negative five in hit points? It's not like take 5 points of damage, you get 5 back from me... it's oh... you're down to negative 6 hit points, you get 5 from me right now!
Ehm, not really: "Each round at the start of your turn, if the bonded creature is wounded for 5 or more hit points below its MAXIMUM hit points, it heals 5 hit points and you take 5 hit points of damage", emphasis mine.
My curse honestly hasnt been very detrimental in combat, since it seems that alot of the combats are taking place in semi-confined spaces where i can see the whole battlefield (60 foot radius).
That's why i'm thinking of going with Fateful Channel and Combat Healer. But going Quicken Channel and Combat Healer could mean a big round of heals, btu that requires most of my party to be low on HP to get the full effects, so i might go with the former.
But thanks for giving me more ideas, and I'm definitely giving Divine Protection a good look as well.
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Life Link (Su): The shaman creates a bond between herself and another creature within 30 feet. Each round at the start of the shaman's turn, if the bonded creature's hit points are reduced to –5 or fewer, it heals 5 hit points and the shaman takes 5 points of damage. The shaman can have one bond active per shaman level. The bond continues until the bonded creature dies, the shaman dies, the distance between her and the bonded creature exceeds 100 feet, or the shaman ends it as an immediate action. If the shaman has multiple bonds active, she can end as many as she wants with the same immediate action.
Life Link (Su): As a standard action, you may create a bond between yourself and another creature. Each round at the start of your turn, if the bonded creature is wounded for 5 or more hit points below its maximum hit points, it heals 5 hit points and you take 5 hit points of damage. You may have one bond active per oracle level. This bond continues until the bonded creature dies, you die, the distance between you and the other creature exceeds medium range, or you end it as an immediate action (if you have multiple bonds active, you may end as many as you want as part of the same immediate action).
These are clearly 2 different things.
There's a cohort in a game I run sometimes who has Quicken Channel. It can be pretty effective for helping the party heal up after Fireballs, dragon breath, etc. Obviously you'd rather give everybody resistance or protection in advance, but sometimes damage happens by surprise.
Get a Reach Rod. It gives a lot more leeway when using Shield Other. It's also awesome when used for Breath of Life.
Problems with AoO? Grace might be a solution.
You need to spend an extra 8k to get a reach rod that works with Breath of Life. But it's definitely worth the lesser one for Shield Other.
lorenlord, I would take Fateful Channel before Quick Channel. Having your channel double as an awesome buff seems a lot better than the occasional double heal. Which isn't to say don't pick up Quick Channel after that. Quick Channeling heals *and* an awesome buff is even better.
Thanks, Markov. I was leaning towards doing that primarily for RP reasons, but you make a valid point about the channel healing and giving out a very good buff (IMHO). And I usually end up channelling pretty much twice per combat, so it would give out the buff technically twice if someone uses theirs early. I probably will get Quicken Channel after that, once it comes to dropping alot of healing in a short amount of time.