Oracle Mystery: Pain
An oracle with the Pain mystery adds Disguise, Escape Artist, Intimidate, and Stealth to her list of class skills.
Bonus Spells: Persuasive Goad (2nd), Shield Other (4th), Vampiric touch (6th), Shadow Barbs (8th), Symbol of Pain (10th), Unwilling Shield (12th), Mass Inflict Pain (14th), Nine Lives (16th), Transmute Blood to Acid (18th)
An oracle with the Pain mystery can choose from any of the follow revelations:
Endure Wounds (Ex): You gain Diehard as a bonus feat, even if you don’t meet the prerequisites, and count as possessing Endurance for the purposes of qualifying for any feat with Diehard as a prerequisite.
Excruciating Caress (Su): You gain a melee touch attack that deals 1d6 points of nonlethal damage +1 for every two oracle levels you possess. Creatures that take damage from this ability are staggered for one round unless they pass a Fortitude save. You can use excruciating caress a number of times per day equal to 3+ your Charisma modifier.
Feed on Agony (Su): As a standard action you can grant a melee weapon you are holding the vampiric special weapon quality for one minute even if it is a bludgeoning weapon, treating it as though you had attuned to a new weapon. You may use this ability three times per day. You must be at least 5th level to select this revelation.
Legendary Suffering (Su): When a creature takes damage from or fails a saving throw against a spell you cast with the [pain] descriptor, you gain a +4 profane bonus on intimidate checks against that creature for 1 hour, and can use intimidate to demoralize as a swift action against it. If the spell rendered the creature unconscious or reduced it to negative hit points, you gain this bonus against all creatures that observed the event clearly.
Life Link (Su): As per the life oracle mystery revelation of the same name.
Masochistic Vigor (Su): When you take damage from a source you control (such as striking an enemy with a vicious weapon, taking split damage from your shield other spell, or a damaging spell you cast) you may gain temporary hit points equal to the damage dealt as an immediate action. These hits points last for a number of rounds equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum 1) and don’t stack. You may use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3+ your Charisma modifier.
Pain is Power (Su): As a standard action you may regain an expended spell slot of at least one level lower than the highest level spell you can cast by taking 1d6 damage per spell level. This damage cannot be prevented or redirected. You can use this ability once per day. At 9th and 15th level you gain an additional use of this ability.
Share the Burden (Su): You gain the witch hex Gift of Consumption, except you may use it a number of times per day equal to 3+ your Charisma modifier.
Tormenting Spell (Su): Once per day you can cast a spell as if it was modified by both the Merciful Spell and the Empower Spell feats and it gains the [pain] descriptor. It must be a spell both feats could modify. This does not increase the casting time or the level of the spell. At 15th level you can use this ability an additional time per day. You must be at least 7th level to select this revelation.
Velstrac Technique (Ex): You gain Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Spiked Chain and Chain Mastery as bonus feats, even if you don’t meet the prerequisites. You must be at least 3rd level to select this revelation.
Final Revelation: Upon reaching 20th level you have mastered your pain and that of others. You are immune to nonlethal damage and the dazed, nauseated, sickened, staggered, and stunned conditions. Add all cure and all inflict spells to your spells known. Whenever you cast an inflict spell, heal yourself or your allies within 60 feet for the total amount of damage inflicted, divided as you see fit.
Look I know PAIN is about the edgelordiest mystery to ever edge but I was on a simultaneous oracle and kyton binge and got thinking. That said I didn't want it to just be a kyton mystery, so I've tried to avoid copying their tricks with a couple exceptions.
Masochistic vigor seems a bit excessive. With a little luck it could lead to shield other soaking an unreasonable amount of damage, or to a dozen vicious weapon hits doing only the first 1d6. It needs something along the lines of damage soaked by temporary hit points not counting towards new temp HP IMO.
I dig it.
Masochistic vigor seems a bit excessive. With a little luck it could lead to shield other soaking an unreasonable amount of damage, or to a dozen vicious weapon hits doing only the first 1d6. It needs something along the lines of damage soaked by temporary hit points not counting towards new temp HP IMO.
Ah I realize it's also missing the word "lethal", so you can't, say, tormenting spell flame strike and include yourself to get 40 temp HP for taking nonlethal damage. It was running long and I didn't find a non-wordy way to specify it had to be damage taken from real HP.
This one originally gave one of a choice of bonuses on taking self-inflicted damage, but there are enough easy ways to take small amounts built right into the mystery the bonuses had to be really weak or use-limited or it was too good, plus it was also too long.Maybe this revelation concept is not to be. I had an idea about using inflict wounds to deal nonlethal damage and sickened, but I wanted something to improve durability that didn't just poach from Life.
Overall I really like this mystery. Most of the abilities are flavorful and useful, which isn't actually as common as it should be when it comes to mysteries, but not game-warping.
Some specific thoughts:
- Class Spells:
Most are on-theme, and are spells worth casting, but Nine Lives stands out a bit. I can see where you were going - there aren't any 8th level [pain] spells, and Nine Lives has a bit of the "dealing and removing pain" flavor, but it still seems kind of off.
- Excruciating Caress (Su):
I'm glad you tacked on the staggered condition here; it turns an otherwise throw-away ability into something that might actually see use. You should probably clarify if this is a pain effect though.
- Feed on Agony (Su):
For a class without access to healing the Vampiric enchantment is a reasonable choice, but for an oracle it seems distinctly underpowered. In exchange for a revelation you get a conditional healing ability that won't ever heal more than relatively low level cure spell in one go, or a mediocre cure spell in one day, and it still costs a standard action to activate. I would either reduce the action to a swift action, relax some of the HD limits on the healing given by the enchantment, or both.
- Masochistic Vigor (Su):
I'm not sure how I feel about the current power-level here; avr has a point, but it may not turn out to be problematic in actual gameplay. Take a 10th level oracle using this ability: the maximum pool of temporary hit points they can reasonably expect out of this ability is going to be in the 30-40 range (assuming half of a bit critical hit with Shield Other). Then, in order to turn this into damage prevented instead of just delayed damage, they have to actually lose that temporary HP before the end of combat. Most of the time you'll be choosing whether to use this ability on less significant hits though, in the 5-15 damage range. With very efficient usage of their probable ~10 uses per day our oracle might reasonably be preventing 100-150 damage per day. That's 3-5 top level healing spells worth of damage prevented, or at higher levels 1-2 Heals. If you're very lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it), you could prevent a much higher total of damage by partially soaking up multiple big critical hits.
This all assumes that you've actually got someone taking hits fairly often to target with Shield Other, or another way you're accruing damage taken, and that either combats last long enough to get more than a couple of uses or a long adventuring day. If you don't have a reliable way of getting large temporary hit point totals and then spending them almost immediately the total damage prevented drops precipitously. Vicious might be one way to spend some temporary HP, but using it to generate temporary HP seems distinctly suboptimal. Our 10th level oracle might be able to prevent 40-50 worth of vicious damage, if this ability is used that way over the course of a long day.
To sum up: with the right group and build this ability probably does equate to a bit much damage prevented, but in other cases it seems fine. Avr's suggestion would help lower the total prevented in cases of quick successive use. Alternately you might consider something like a maximum cap on the temporary HP pool (tied to level or Cha?), or a cooldown (1d4 rounds?) to prevent rapid chaining.
Thanks very much for the feedback!
Most are on-theme, and are spells worth casting, but Nine Lives stands out a bit. I can see where you were going - there aren't any 8th level [pain] spells, and Nine Lives has a bit of the "dealing and removing pain" flavor, but it still seems kind of off.
Spell levels 8 and 9 were a challenge (I was spoiled for choice for 2 & 3). I considered Maze of Madness and Suffering for 9 and maybe it would be better, though I was avoiding spells with the [evil] tag for player flexibility. For 8 maybe Prediction of Failure instead?
- Excruciating Caress (Su):
Good catch will add that - oh and change the final revelation to make them immune to pain too because oops. I was trying to make this mystery in line with others and that meant one like this had to include a deeply mediocre touch attack with appalling scaling, but I figured I could get away with a useful condition with the nonlethal drawback. Realistically it should probably make people sickened for 1 round or something, but I didn't have the heart.
- Feed on Agony (Su):
Maybe change it to a swift action and grant Greater Vampiric instead? That would bring it a maximum healing of 15 HP/HD a day which is a lot to drain, though you're unlikely to get more than half of that on a good day.
How about:
Masochistic Vigor (Su):
When you have no temporary hit points and take lethal damage from a source you control (such as striking an enemy with a vicious weapon, taking split damage from your shield other spell, or a damaging spell you cast), you may gain temporary hit points equal to the damage dealt as an immediate action. These hits points last for a number of rounds equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum 1) and don’t stack. You may use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3+ your Charisma modifier.
Now to get that big boost of HP you do have to take the hit first. I think I'm comfortable with it being situationally powerful.