I'm surprised to see Bestow Curse removed from the game. It was one of the very few spells that you could add your own creative idea to a spell and had many different options in terms of effects. I'd like to hear other people's views on this decision to remove it from the game, if they agree with it or if they would like to see the spell in Second Edition.
Bestow Curse is not the only spell removed : Animate Undead is too.
I think (read "hope") they were just removed for the Playtest and will be added for PF2, since those spells were pretty iconic in PF1. If the playtest surveys are any indication, the devs seem to think Evil characters will not be numerous, so they removed the most "Evil" options, a.k.a Bestow Curse and Animate Undead.
Well, curses are pretty "evil" in PF1, in that they are primarily casted by Evil characters. Curses were kinda permanent, so you had to be pretty nasty to use them, unlike Fear and Bane which were only temporary (I think this is why Blindness/Deafness is still present too, since it is no longer permanent unless on a critical failure). It's not just a debuff. It's a permanent "Evil-flavored" debuff.
Bestow Curse was about 5x more powerful than any of the debuffs in the playtest. It won't be coming back. You'll instead get narrow curse effects like Spiritual Epidemic, Outcast's Curse, and Mariner's Curse.
Bestow Curse was about 5x more powerful than any of the debuffs in the playtest. It won't be coming back. You'll instead get narrow curse effects like Spiritual Epidemic, Outcast's Curse, and Mariner's Curse.
Ya it certainly was powerful just like many other spells at its level, but I thought it would be brought back with different (nerfed) effects, that's all. Easy enough to do. Just like they did with Stinking Cloud, they kept the spell but just nerfed it so it's not as debilitating.