Hey there folks. Did something I never dreamed of doing...building a Dwarven Oracle but somehow I really like it. Have a look and please give me some feedback.
This is for PFS and the intent is to be good in Melee and have decent utility. The build revolves around one big hit per round with Energy Channel and Blessed Hammer. Inspiration should help on ensuring I hit most of the time. Admonishing Ray and Searing Light give me some capacity at range (Energy Channel should apply as these are ray attacks).
I don't really want to utilize any of the necromancy stuff in the Bones Mystery (took it as I can get channel to activate energy Channel) as Torag wouldn't appreciate.
I was thinking of playing him as a very confused and old Dwarven Scholar who wasn't overly welcome at home due to his odd ways and thus joined the Society (Dark Archive?).
Advice on Feats, Revelations and Spells would be greatly appreciated. Also Warsighted might be a better Archetype, I looked at the Archetype that gets a Shaman Hex but those seemed unspectacular.
LN Dwarf Psychic Searcher Oracle of Torag
STR 16 DEX 10 CON 14 INT 10 WIS 10 CHA 14
Traits: Fate’s Favored, Seeker
Mystery: Bones
Curse: Legalistic
Feats:
1 War Blessing: Earth, Good
3 Energy Channel
5 ?WF/Heavy Armor Prof
7 Blessed Hammer
9 ?PA?
11 Divine Interference
Revelations
1 Undead Servitude
3 Tenacious Inspiration
7 Amazing Inspiration
11 ???
Spells:
1st Divine Favor, CLW, Endure Elements, Protection from Evil, Touch of Bloodletting, ILW
2nd Align Weapon, Ancestral Communion, Lesser Restoration, Surmount Affliction, Admonishing Ray (Page of Spell Knowledge), IMW, Augury, Locate Object
3rd Magic Vestment, Searing Light, ISW
4th Greater Magic Weapon, Cleric Haste, Divination
Merry Christmas Bump!
Well, a few comments on spells.
Drop Endure Elements for Bless. With spontaneous casters, you want spells that you'll use every day, and Bless is a core buff. Endure Elements is a cheap scroll or wand since it doesn't scale with level. If your campaign is going to be in extreme climates, you should already be spending money on the appropriate mundane gear to help you survive.
Use the spell swap mechanic to trade out Protection from Evil for something else while you take it's communal version as a second level spell at some point when you get a chance.
If you have a wizard or sorcerer to cast Haste, don't take Blessing of Fervor. If you don't, then definitely take it.
Your rays don't help you in the front line. Then can be decent openers, but you're better off with a buff like Bull's Strength or Weapon of Awe.
Well, a few comments on spells.
Drop Endure Elements for Bless. With spontaneous casters, you want spells that you'll use every day, and Bless is a core buff. Endure Elements is a cheap scroll or wand since it doesn't scale with level. If your campaign is going to be in extreme climates, you should already be spending money on the appropriate mundane gear to help you survive.
Use the spell swap mechanic to trade out Protection from Evil for something else while you take it's communal version as a second level spell at some point when you get a chance.
If you have a wizard or sorcerer to cast Haste, don't take Blessing of Fervor. If you don't, then definitely take it.
Your rays don't help you in the front line. Then can be decent openers, but you're better off with a buff like Bull's Strength or Weapon of Awe.
Hmm yeah I guess I don't need Endure Elements that badly...I don't really want bless though either as my standard procedure on turn one will be to cast Divine Favor and move into combat.
The rays are there for when I can't front line and synergize well with Energy Channel. I might not need two different ones however...
This is for PFS so I don't have a set group and sort of need to be flexible. Blessing of fervor seems to be the most powerful level 4 spell but I might consider alternatives.
psychic searcher seems pretty bad, and so does bones.
Why not nature or lunar? Also, you can dump dex and take noble scion of war for cha to init, reflex saves, and ac using the nature or lunar revalation
The point of Bones is to get channel which is needed to power Energy Channel.
What's bad about Psychic Searcher? You get Inspiration in exchange for your second level Bonus spell then you can take Investigator Talents instead of Revealations but you only have to at level 3.
As someone playing a psychic searcher frontline oracle right now, it is not bad, but there are better. I took it for narative reasons and to fill the divination niche as a secondary roll. The down sides are the bonus spells are not combat oriented (I'm human so I use my FCB to get more spells) and the inspirations are not combat oriented (make sure you know that you can only take a select few inspirations--I don't know how PFS handles the level requirements of the inspirations--and you must exchange your 3rd level revelation for one of (or the one availabe at 3rd level) the inspirations. You can almost always find a better revelation than any of the permitted inspirations.
All that is not to say it is bad. I play one and love it. But those are potential negatives.
Regarding Bless, it should not be your round one cast. It lasts minutes per level. You can it before the fight (and in PFS, the next few fights).
I believe that Ancestral Gift (4th level) is PFS legal. I strongly recommend that (versitile, auto-proficient +1 bane weapons on demand).
Holy Ice Weapon can be ridiculously powerful. I'm not sure of its legality.
If the inflict spells are for healing undead minions, I would get a wand. They are poor combat spells. Your buffed attacks should be better everytime.
True the Bless Duration makes it good even at higher levels...
The Inflict spells are for channeling through Blessed Hammer. To deal massive damage on a single hit... I'm not actually looking to do any necromancy related stuff. I just want to kill things with my hammer like good Dwarves do. My damage on a hit at say level 9 with a Phylanctery looks like this.
1d8+2(Enhnc) +6(STR) +4(Divine Favor)+14(Acid Energy Channel)+4(PA)+2d8-4d8+9 (Inflict)= 34.5 + 18-27 from Inflict.
I'm aware that Inspiration's use in combat is limited but as my to hit should be pretty high I can easily burn 2 points from time to time to ensure that a big wallop hits.
Ancestral Gift seems nice. I particularly like the duration. However it'll only be good in odd niche situations so it's more of a Cleric spell. Holy Ice Weapon also looks really good for a level 2 spell. But it's prolly the kind of spell I'd swap out later...
I would move PA to 5th. Your armor should be sufficient with Medium armor through 9th level.
I may have bad news. Undead Servitude explicitly states that it does not count for feats that alter the use of its specific channel function: Commanding Undead. Check with the PFS people.
The language in energy Channel is totally different from alignment Channel so I'm assuming it should work here. Then again I tend to avoid rules ambiguties for PFS chars so this might be one of those scenarios. Maybe I'll have to stick to my Cleric Build afterall...
A swift action, you can expend one use of channel energy to grant your weapon attacks a bonus on damage rolls equal to twice the number of dice rolled for your channel energy.
Instead of its normal effect, you can choose to have your ability to channel energy heal or harm outsiders of the chosen alignment subtype.
Undead Servitude (Su): You gain Command Undead as a bonus feat. You can channel negative energy a number of times per day equal to 3 + your Charisma modifier, but only to use Command Undead. You can take other feats to add to this ability, such as Improved Channeling, but not feats that alter this ability, such as Alignment Channel.
The issue is not in the feat descriptions, but in the Undead Servitude description (bolder above). Energy Channel undeniably alters how the channel is used.
If you wanted to take a hypothetical feat that had Negative Energy Channel as a prerequite, but it provide a benefit in no way related to channel, you might qualify for that.
I wouldn't scrap your idea yet. Sure, you don't get an acidic weapon, but other revelations provide pretty good combat buffs. Metal, Ancestor, Nature, Lunar all come to mind. Metal is good if you don't trade away your first bonus spell: leaden blades. Leaden Blades plus vital strike (and enlarge if you can get it from someone) is pretty nasty with the right weapon.
I think you would need to switch your Mystery to Life in order to get Energy Channel to work.
I would consider Magic Weapon as a spell, since Bless is easy to provide with a wand or scroll if it would be useful.
Hmm life Oracle has the disadvantage of only granting 1+CHA channels. And while 5 uses with 3 attacks might be enough for an average PFS adventuring day 3 prolly isn't so this would mean I have to pick up extra Channel or scrap Dwarf(which would be better mechanically).
I think before I go that route I'd try building a Cleric of Torag but his domains are so sucky...I could also consider Cleric 1/Inquisitor X with Channel Scourge but then I end up needing Swift actions for all kinds of things.
The big disadvantage of Oracle versus Cleric is that Oracle with it's spontaneous casting works better for Blessed Hammer and channeling Inflict Spells.
I have played both cleric and oracle. As a battle buffer, I found myself using the same spells over and over. In this case, the oracle wins. More spells per day, revelations better than most, if not all, domain powers, more skill points, curses that can benefit more than hurt if you build around them. However, when my party needed to cross a mountain and our wizard did not know Overland Flight, my cleric was able to memorize Air Walk.
In PFS, you might find the versatility of cleric more important.