Oracle Curse: Harrowed

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

Hi all,

I've made a new curse for one of my players who is very interested in Harrowing and is going to gain an oracular curse.
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Harrowed
Your destiny is irrevocably tied to the art of Harrowing.
Effect
You have a -2 penalty on all ability scores.
However, once each day you may perform a special harrowing on yourself which takes 1 hour, drawing 6 cards from a Harrow deck. You gain a +1 luck bonus to your ability scores related to the suits of each card drawn. Swords (Strength), Keys (Dexterity), Shields (Constitution), Tomes (Intelligence), Stars (Wisdom), Crowns (Charisma).

• At 5th level as a reaction you may provide an ally within 30 feet with the luck bonus to one ability score that you have for 1 minute per Oracle level. You lose the luck bonus for the rest of the day after doing so.
  
• At 10th level you may either choose to remove two suits of your choice from the deck or draw 9 cards in your special harrowing.
  
• At 15th level you add vision to your spell list, and when you perform your special harrowing you may double the luck bonus you gain to ability scores.
  

I'd love some feedback, is the drawback too harsh? Are the bonuses to high? Is there any particular exploits you could see with one of these.

[Cavall]

I wouldn't do a luck bonus because it's just asking for half orcs fates favoured to be only race and trait to go with.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

Cavall wrote:

I wouldn't do a luck bonus because it's just asking for half orcs fates favoured to be only race and trait to go with.

Fate's favored I understand, but why Half-Orc specifically?

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

Also the math works out very harsh for low-level characters, so the revised version of this will have 9 cards in the level 1 spread instead of 6.

[Cavall]

Oh only because they can take a racial option to get a luck bonus to saves. So you're basically having them take that for a starting +2 to all saves, and then this gains +1 too. All for a trait.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

2nd Revision
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Harrowed
Your destiny is irrevocably tied to the art of Harrowing.
Effect
You have a -2 penalty on all ability scores.
However, once each day you may perform a special harrowing on yourself which takes 1 hour, drawing 9 cards from a Harrow deck. You gain a +1 luck bonus to your ability scores related to the suits of each card drawn. Swords (Strength), Keys (Dexterity), Shields (Constitution), Tomes (Intelligence), Stars (Wisdom), Crowns (Charisma).

• At 5th level as a reaction you may provide an ally within 30 feet with the luck bonus to one ability score that you have for 1 minute per Oracle level. You lose the luck bonus the ability score for the rest of the day.
  
• At 10th level you may either choose to remove two suits of your choice, or one alignment of your choice from the deck, in addition you gain the effects of a harrowing spell upon yourself for 24 hours when you perform your special harrowing. You also add harrowing to your spell list as a 3rd level spell.
  
• At 15th level you add greater harrowing to your spell list as a 6th level spell, any cards drawn in a harrowing double their bonus if their alignment matches your own. Instead of removing two suits of your choice you may remove three alignments of your choice from the deck.
  

[Cavall]

I guess the only other issue is the constant wave of math based on a daily shift.

[avr]

Would these luck bonuses stack? i.e. if you drew 4 crowns and 2 tomes would you get +4 Cha and +2 Int, or just +1 to each? Would you treat this as a temporary ability bonus?

A reaction is an immediate action in PF I think. Also 'luck bonus the ability score' should probably be 'luck bonus to the ability score'.

The change from 6 cards to 9 doesn't seem to address Cavall's concern. If there was another change there I missed it.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

Yes if you draw 4 crowns and 2 tomes you would get a +4 and +2 (the bonuses are determined at the end of the reading). These bonuses are always treated as temporary ability bonuses so you don't get a bonus skill point or qualify for feats from these bonuses.

The concern about the luck bonus is something that completely blindsided me to be honest and at this point it. At this point I'm debating whether to change to an insight bonus or just specifically call out Fortunes Favored as only applying to one ability score.