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So I was considering playing a support focused oracle, and was looking through and picking out potential spells, and found that I really can not get a handle on the divine spell list. At low level you get some fun ones, heal, bless, magic weapon, but by mid levels I swear the spell list was divided by restoration spells niche enough that I would feel weird taking them on an oracle and fiendish flavored blasting spells. It kinda looks like primal or occult are kind of just better at the whole supporting thing at higher levels? If so that feels weird thematically.
Is this true or am I completely misreading it? What do you think of the divine spell list?
That's about right. The divine list is already the weakest, but its absolutely awful for a spontaneous caster. Just grab all the buffs you can and signature anything that scales reasonably well. Support oracle has a few mysteries to choose from so do yourself a favor, read divine access, and then start going through deities to find stuff to steal.
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depends on how you interpret the whole thing
also consider that debuffing the enemy can also be excellent support
there are indeed a lot of blasting spells, but several can be used to weaken the enemy (crisis of faith) or yourself an advantage (vampiric maiden)
others are more longterm useful but certainly give your party an edge (seal fate), can save lives (drop dead, breath of life) or mess up an enemies plan to destroy you (spere of onvulnerability, antimagic field, blade barrier) or their general plan to mess with you or get away (dimensional lock, Foresight, blinding fury)
And if you don't mind something icky, you can cast a wall of flesh, give it mouths and then make it gobble down potions to make it more resillient
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So I was considering playing a support focused oracle, and was looking through and picking out potential spells, and found that I really can not get a handle on the divine spell list. At low level you get some fun ones, heal, bless, magic weapon, but by mid levels I swear the spell list was divided by restoration spells niche enough that I would feel weird taking them on an oracle and fiendish flavored blasting spells. It kinda looks like primal or occult are kind of just better at the whole supporting thing at higher levels? If so that feels weird thematically.
Is this true or am I completely misreading it? What do you think of the divine spell list?
The lower level buffs and healing spells scale really well for higher level stuff if you heighten them. So yeah, as you get on in levels, you'll start running into either more niche healing, revival magic, or spells to help with the divine caster's lack of offensive spells at lower levels.
Kind of a hard sell for an Oracle or a divine Sorcerer, but easier to manage as a Cleric.
Divine does get some good blasts at high level. They aren't typically elemental but most commonly negative ie necromantic. Perhaps half of them are. But there are positive and force and aligned damage spells.
But there are heaps of other great spells Battle Forms, Summons, Protections, utilities. Not to mention that upcast versions of the basic Heal/ Slow/ Haste/ Fear/ Heroism/ Spiritual Weapon are all strong.
Blasting is a choice and you can ignore it totally. Especially with the Divine Spell list. Even the list most focused on it (Primal) can do perfectly well without it.
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Divine list is one of the best for buffs. That's kinda its thing.
Let's see. Mid-level spells for a support-focused character....
You saw Heal, Bless, and Bane already. Magic Weapon is only useful before people get permanent magic weapons.
2nd level:
* Darkness
* Darkvision
* Resist Energy
* See Invisibility
3rd level:
* Heroism
* Neutralize Poison
* Remove Disease
* Circle of Protection
4th
* Air Walk / Fly
* Freedom of Movement
* Globe of Invulnerability
* Vital Beacon
5th
* Banishment
* Death Ward
* Breath of Life
* Drop Dead
* Spiritual Guardian
6th
* Blade Barrier
* Field of Life
* Raise Dead
* Scintillating Safeguard
* Zealous Conviction (though it looks kinda weak for 6th level)
7th
* Energy Aegis
* Regenerate
8th
* Antimagic Field
* Divine Aura
* Moment of Renewal
I think this is well outside of mid-level by now.
And yeah, the bread and butter party buffing spells are fairly low level. Because buffs are always good even at high level.
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If the Arcane list is a toolbox, the divine list is a series of silver bullets.
More so than any other list, divine spells are designed to solve specific problems.
Anti-undead, anti-fiend, anti-alignment, anti-disease/poison, anti-curse, anti-caster, anti-death...
Couple that with a generous supply of spells for making allies stronger and you have two very clear goals.
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The only thing I find super anoying about the divine list is that in addition to many of the cure/remove/neutralize spells being very situational already you probably also need them memorized in your higher or highest slots in order to be effective, which makes them even more situational (and very depending on your general style of game including enemy forshadowing). Blasting does not have those issues.
Thank you counteract mechanics.
The only thing I find super anoying about the divine list is that in addition to many of the cure/remove/neutralize spells being very situational already you probably also need them memorized in your higher or highest slots in order to be effective, which makes them even more situational (and very depending on your general style of game including enemy forshadowing). Blasting does not have those issues.
Thank you counteract mechanics.
Yeah you basically need either a staff or to be a prepared caster to use those.
And the staff's mileage may vary
I agree that it can be annoying, but I also think this is why the counteract mechanics favor the counter-actor rather than the actor like they do.
For example, if you are up against a caster that is roughly your equal and you both have up to 5th level spells, your 2nd-level dispel magic handles their 1st-level spells unless you crit fail, their 2nd- and 3rd-level spells if you succeed, and everything else they have on offer if you critically succeed, or you can prepare it in your highest level and be able to near-guaranteed remove anything but their most potent of spells.
And there is a feat I recently had brought to my attention that makes clerics at least very good at counteracting the various "maybe it will come up" types of things because it lets them trade a healing font heal spell for remove curse, remove disease, remove paralysis, or restoration of the same spell level.
Well, how satisfying counteracting is to use may heavily depend on what you are trying to achieve and probably also your levels of play versus how often you encounter different levels of effects. Getting rid of a fixed and/or lower level effect? Super convenient as per your description. Getting rid of a high level, high threat and thus extremely dangerous effect? Super unlikely or maybe even near impossible apart from a nat 20 even if maxed slots are used.
That having said I would rather load a Fireball (example offensive spell) instead of Neutralize Poison even or especially when I know that the party is facing a high level, poison using critter, who probably has a maxed effect level and high DC as well. Fireball does not care if its 8d6, 10d6 or 12d6 versus a level+3 opponent, if the save is not critical that is at least some damage. It's kinda like defensive play is dead in PF2 versus high level oponents, just hit for damage instead, because what is dead can no longer threaten you.
And by the way, that Cleric feat is another example of a "convenience" feat and not actually helpful in combat as 3 of 4 said spells have casting times of 1min+, so even if you can cast them on the fly and at full strength this is something for way after you have been hit by the effect, not to remove it quickly. Without some narrative pressure most groups would probably simply call it a day and wait for their Cleric to stock up on removal spells before moving on.
Disclaimer: All this is written from the perspective of low level play (below level 10). Everything nasty so far have exclusively been high level effects where even maxed out counteracting would have required well above average rolls (even if we had those spells memorized).
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I think this is well outside of mid-level by now.
Mid levels are what 7-14 so only one level out of mid levels :p
Another thing to add to above is the silver bullet nature of the list means grabbing the right scrolls can be incredibly rewarding. I am a big fan of independent familiars being used as a two round free action consumable retriever or item holder.
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You can also deal with most of these, other than poisons, the following day. I don't think there are any curses or diseases that just kill you immediately.
And that's where the advantage is. Clerics know every spell and can prepare whatever they need in their top slot the next day. Sponts can't feasibly do this. Alternatively, a cleric takes the new flexible casting archetype and can just prep extra utility without worrying about wasted slots. Going to be real hard justifying a spontaneous divine caster with flex cleric knowing everything and with bonus heal slots running around.
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Really does kind of feel like the Divine list is the Cleric list first and everyone else's second.
Having a ton of specific counteract spells limits the cleric's ability to have a solution on hand for every problem but because they have access to the full list they can always deal with it the next day if it's a long term issue. Spontaneous divines (and even Witches to some extent since they have to buy the spells) kind of floundery by comparison because it's way too expensive to learn all those spells.
Font does a lot to make in-combat magical healing more viable and gives the Clerics a powerful fallback option when they don't need a full spell slot... whereas I've seen a lot of divine sorcerers just kind of fumble with their actions when there's nothing to buff or cure or is vulnerable to their one specific damage type they have access to.
SoM helps a little bit with this but still.
IMO the divine tradition still the worse of all 4 but it's necessary if the party don't already has a primal/occult spellcaster because these other traditions don't have all remove conditions spells alone but if the party has a occult and a primal spellcaster both can easily compensate the lack of a divine spellcaster. But besides that is just a spell list full of many situational spells or limited by your deity.
For example analyzing the good spells list provided by
breithauptclan showing their alternative traditions:
* Heal (primal, but the occult spell casters could use Soothe as alternative)
* Bless (occult)
* Bane (occult)
* Magic Weapon (arcane, occult)2nd level:
* Darkness (all)
* Darkvision (all)
* Resist Energy (all)
* See Invisibility (arcane, occult)
* Remove Fear (occult, primal)
* Remove Paralysis (occult, primal)3rd level:
* Heroism (occult)
* Neutralize Poison (primal)
* Remove Disease (primal)4th
* Air Walk / Fly (all)
* Freedom of Movement (arcane, primal)
* Vital Beacon (primal)
* Remove Curse (occult)5th
* Banishment (all)
* Death Ward (occult, primal)
* Breath of Life
* Spiritual Guardian6th
* Blade Barrier*
* Field of Life (primal)
* Scintillating Safeguard (occult, primal)7th
* Energy Aegis (all)
* Regenerate (primal)
* Divine Vessel[b]*8th
* [b]Divine Aura*
* Moment of Renewal (primal)
Obs.: I removed Circle of Protection, Globe of Invulnerability, Drop Dead, Raise Dead and Antimagic Field because they are uncommon or even rare spells and added the other remove condition spells because they are important, some times they even prevented many TPKs.
Notice that many of theses spells are shared specially between Primal and Occult traditions if your party already have one of these spellcasters could be way better complete it with other tradition instead of take a divine spellcaster.
*Blade Barrier is one of many barriers in the game is not useless but other spellcasters have their own good barriers too.
Also many of these spells are overrated IMO:
* Darkness is an interesting spell but unless the mostly party have darkvision cast this spell will be problematic the casters probably will have to waste more spells and rounds casting darkvision or this spell will affect them too.
* Heroism at level 3 is overrated it has same bonus of bless but is a lvl 3 spell, the main advantage of this spell is that the caster don't need to still close to targets but it's still too expensive for just +1. This spell usually is also useless if the party have a bard. IMO this spell only become interesting when heightened.
* Banishment is very situational spell far more than anti-undead/anti-fiend spells
* Divine aura is a very expensive lvl 8 spell. Is a deity and alignment dependent spell making their use not only situational but not possible for TN clerics and depending from how GM reads "if you don't have a deity" it also cannot be used by other divine spellcasters.
Many divine spells has also the deity dependent limitations. Many spells are restricted or even banned to deity alignment limiting even more your options.
But there's some spells that are divine only and very good
* Spiritual Guardian is a very interesting specially the transfer of first 10 dmg once this stacks with DR and shield hardness.
* Breath of Life is an excellent death prevention healing specially in many games that uncommon and resurrection spells aren't allowed.
* Divine Vessel besides be a deity alignment dependent spell is an excellent spell that add 40 tmp HP, fly, +1 for all saves, darkvision and 2d8 or 2d10 unarmed attack dice stackable with runes if you use handwraps is an excellent option for battle oracles if the GM allows the char uses deity dependent spells without being a cleric or if you MC with a cleric.
But in general as spoken in other topic. The Paizo has no love for divine tradition.
IMO the main good thing in divine spellcasters are their class abilities and feats. The clerics if far the better healer in the game but because the divine font and the feat but not because of the tradition and the oracles because their mysteries and curses.
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It's also important to note that most Divine classes have an easy access to spells outside the divine tradition through their deities spells (or, in the case of the Oracle, multiple deities spells).
It has to be taken into account when judging the divine spell list as it's something the other spell lists don't have.
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Sadly most deities don't exactly have a stellar offering, not too bad for an oracle who can choose from quite a broad selection, but it sure does suck that as a cleric you might be massively screwing yourself over by picking a thematic deity rather than one who has good spells.
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Sadly most deities don't exactly have a stellar offering, not too bad for an oracle who can choose from quite a broad selection, but it sure does suck that as a cleric you might be massively screwing yourself over by picking a thematic deity rather than one who has good spells.
The problem is that the deity choice is both a roleplay and a mechanical one. Choosing a deity is the core of the roleplay of most divine casters, but it's also a very important feature for many thanks to the extra spells, the skill, the font, the alignment and the weapon. So, unfortunately, Clerics and Sorcerers of some deities are just bad mechanically, and that's super sad. All deities should be balanced to each other, which is a mess considering their number.
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Splintered Faith, Syncretism and the Pantheons do help with that somewhat.
Another important part of deity's choice IMO is activities for refocusing. They usually have to be negotiated with the GM, but being able to refocus while healing or repairing a broken shield has good value IMO.
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Haven't played it yet but I'm switching my level 9 cleric to use the new flexible magic rules from Secrets of Magic.
It looks like an exceedingly attractive alternative. Obviously with a high cost (losing spells hurts :-() but it gives me huge flexibility both on a day to day basis (letting me still memorize the remove curses etc when a party member gets cursed) and during any adventuring day (letting me choose which level of dispel magic to use, as opposed to having to decide in advance).
I've found I can make pretty good spontaneous divine casters... but they almost always have the same spell list.
Sadly most deities don't exactly have a stellar offering, not too bad for an oracle who can choose from quite a broad selection, but it sure does suck that as a cleric you might be massively screwing yourself over by picking a thematic deity rather than one who has good spells.Totally agree.
Not to say that choosing a deity would also mean choosing a specific weapon for the Cleric.
Leaving apart having to think about a specific weapon + specific bonus spells rather than the deity itself. It's one thing to think about mechanics, but saying that a cleric may choose is wrong given its limits.
There's really no advantage, just a mess ( I feel pity for warpriests ).
The weapon is pretty irrelevant - none of the cleric features or abilities require you to use your deities weapon (except the feat that makes a simple weapon do martial damage), and clerics don't attack in melee enough for it to be worth changing what deity you choose over. Changing deity because their weapon isn't good is like changing which racecar you drive in a race because it doesn't have a towbar.
The spell and skill are a lot more relevant, but even then they are minor enough that I wouldn't change the theme of my character based on them.
Sadly most deities don't exactly have a stellar offering, not too bad for an oracle who can choose from quite a broad selection, but it sure does suck that as a cleric you might be massively screwing yourself over by picking a thematic deity rather than one who has good spells.Totally agree.
Not to say that choosing a deity would also mean choosing a specific weapon for the Cleric.
Leaving apart having to think about a specific weapon + specific bonus spells rather than the deity itself. It's one thing to think about mechanics, but saying that a cleric may choose is wrong given its limits.
There's really no advantage, just a mess ( I feel pity for warpriests ).
The weapon is pretty irrelevant - none of the cleric features or abilities require you to use your deities weapon (except the feat that makes a simple weapon do martial damage), and clerics don't attack in melee enough for it to be worth changing what deity you choose over. Changing deity because their weapon isn't good is like changing which racecar you drive in a race because it doesn't have a towbar.
The spell and skill are a lot more relevant, but even then they are minor enough that I wouldn't change the theme of my character based on them.
That's not really true. If you build a war priest, you are doing so to swing a weapon around. The favored weapon being the only one that reaches expert is huge. But most of the warrior gods have pretty good weapons.
Cloistered clerics may still want to make strikes with their third action, especially if they can get a decent ranged weapon. I saw a cloistered cleric switch from Gozreh to Erastil for exactly this reason.
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So, now that I can see the SoM spells, it does seem that Paizo is enforcing Alignment damage & battle forms as the focus for Divine only spells.
I hope it's because book of the Dead is being worked on, but it really feels like the Divine list is not getting much attention.