| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I concede the point to superbidi, but as GM's, once in a while, just make sure to have two archers or gunslingers focus fire the 12 dex Oracle in the back, just to make them s@@@ their pants !
You don't even need that. The most classical case where I've been targeted with my casters are ambushes. You are surprised, you can be badly positioned due to the current scene (like a social one with my Oracle/Sorcerer speaking on the front), you are not in exploration (so no Defend, Avoid Notice or whatever), and a monster decides to target you. Clearly, I've s@+$ my pants due to ambushes!
For example, yesterday the warpriest managed to avoid several -5 attacks from the boss, as well as turned out critical hit from the main one into normal hits.
Compared to him, the monk got critted way more ( had 3 AC less than the warpriest ), resulting in way more damage. He managed to survive because of his hp ( but he easily lost 50+50+30 hp in a round out of 170 ).
To illustrate what I mean, I've made a small calculation:
2 level 4 Oracles, one with 16 Con (50 hp) and 12 Dex (20 AC) and one with 12 Con (42 hp) and 16 Dex (22 AC) face a High attack bonus (+14) Extreme damage (2d10+7) level 4 monster making 2 Strikes in a row: the 16 Dex Oracle has 15.03% chances to go down, the 16 Con Oracle only 13.55%.
Same Oracles against an Extreme attack bonus (+16) High damage (2d8+5) level 4 monster making 2 Strike in a row: the 16 Dex Oracle has 10.63% chances to go down, the 16 Con Oracle only 9.02%.
Same Oracles (with Canny Acumen for Reflex), but now we are speaking of 2 DC 21 Fireballs in a row: The 16 Dex Oracle goes down 18.14% of the time, the 16 Con Oracle only 17.29% of the time.
So even if the monsters attack AC or Reflex directly, the sheer amount of hit points protects the high Constitution Oracle more than the high Dexterity one.
This seems really optimistic. In the sense that you're being attacked by a single on-level enemy for one round. I'd much rather see survivability numbers for potentially threatening situations like an intelligent +3 boss deciding to put the cloth in the floor or a coordinated attack by a few mooks or a pair of +1s/+2s.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the +3 boss was still better survived by raw hp alone, but I somehow doubt that the extra hp is going to help more than AC against a coordinated attempt to put you down by multiple foes.
Probably spot on with saves though. Spell damage doesn't scale well enough for ref to be more valuable than fort at higher levels when it comes to resisting spells as a whole in my experience.
This seems really optimistic. In the sense that you're being attacked by a single on-level enemy for one round. I'd much rather see survivability numbers for potentially threatening situations like an intelligent +3 boss deciding to put the cloth in the floor or a coordinated attack by a few mooks or a pair of +1s/+2s.
If an angry +3 boss decides to target you, a few hit points or a bit of AC won't save you.
And your other cases are extremely weird. How come that most enemies decide to target you and at the same time your martials are unable to block any of them? Also, a pair of +2 monsters is an Extreme encounter, I'm not sure these are valid metrics for how tough you should be.My cases are more common cases, the ones that happen all the time: The monster that slips through the defenses and target the healer or the area of effect damaging spell who hit the whole party.
What I wanted to show is that even when a monster targets AC or Reflex saves Constitution can be as valuable as Dexterity for survival. Obviously, when a monster targets anything else, Dexterity is useless. So, for the sake of survival, Constitution is at least as good as Dexterity at low level, and far better at high level as the AC issue is one that gets lowered every 5 levels. Hence my statement that AC is often overrated on backline characters. Not that it's useless, but that you shouldn't care much about maxing it at level 1.
@Gortle: Thanks for this post! It's quite helpful for a character whose build I've been planning (an ancestors oracle, and I'd just been looking at the marshal archetype a couple days ago so I'm glad to see others feel it may be a good fit as well). I did notice one error that looks like it hasn't been reported yet: For the Ancestors build, retraining into Ancestral Paragon at level 13 shouldn't actually allow you to take a level 13 ancestry feat as seems to be indicated in this build. Ancestral Paragon specifically allows you to gain a 1st-level ancestry feat.
True two level 13 feats are not possible at that point. Thanks
Life
A Life Oracle is a great healer with extra hitpoints. Your moderate Curse is a big bonus to Heal, but the Major Curse will kill you.
Str 10 Dex 16 Con 10 Int 12 Wis 12 Cha 18
Basic equipment: Studded Leather,
Ancestry: Elf, Duskwalker, 1st: Elven Weapon Familiarity, 5th: Ageless Patience, 9th: Otherworldly Acumen, 13th:Calaca's Showstopper, 17th:Yamaraj's Grandeur
Deity: Uvuko [CG], .
General Feats: Ancestral Paragon for Otherworldly Magic for Electric Arc
Class Feats: Level 2: Domain Acumen for Healer's Blessing for even more ridiculous healing, Level 4: Divine Access for Fleet Step, Haste, Dragon form, Level 6: Vision of Weakness, Level 8:, Level 10: Quickened Casting, Level 12:, Level 14: Mysterious Repertoire, Level 16:, Level 18: Divine Effusion, Level 20: Oracular Providence
Focus Spell: Life Link is terrible. Yes you have the hitpoints to do it but you are harder to heal than anyone else. Doubling down on healing with Healer's Blessing is nice, is that enough to make LifeLink worth it? I doubt it. Anyway, Vision of Weakness is solid. Alternative: Dammerich [LG] for Death's Call and True Strike, Paralyze, Stoneskin,
Skills: Stealth, Intimidation, Deception
When I read that, I don't think you see much point in playing a Life Oracle over a Cleric of Uvuko.
Life Link is incredible. And your Major Curse also. They are the main reasons (with the Moderate Curse) to play a Life Oracle. Sure, the Life Oracle will survive 2 or 3 rounds if he spams high level Heals with the Greater Curse and Life Link on, but during these 2 or 3 rounds no one can go down. That's the whole point of the Life Oracle: It's the biggest emergency healer in the game by far, but you won't maintain that more than a couple of rounds. It's the perfect healer for a party of extremely offense-oriented characters: Giant Barbarians, Maguses and Rogues for example.As a side note, I really think you should consider Cleric Dedication for Selective Energy at level 12. It's a bit expensive, but for a healer it's quite important. And Improved Communal Healing is also nice.
When I read that, I don't think you see much point in playing a Life Oracle over a Cleric of Uvuko.
Life Link is incredible. And your Major Curse also. They are the main reasons (with the Moderate Curse) to play a Life Oracle. Sure, the Life Oracle will survive 2 or 3 rounds if he spams high level Heals with the Greater Curse and Life Link on, but during these 2 or 3 rounds no one can go down. That's the whole point of the Life Oracle: It's the biggest emergency healer in the game by far, but you won't maintain that more than a couple of rounds. It's the perfect healer for a party of extremely offense-oriented characters: Giant Barbarians, Maguses and Rogues for example.
Thanks for your feedback by the way. It really makes me justify my position or change it.
My concern about life link is that
a) the effect on one creature is to minor and its not going to help the creature much if it is being targeted by several enemies. A decent heal for a huge number it just much better option. Life Link is a single action - I'll rewrite what I said.
b) its uncontrolled and can get out of hand with multiple targets.
c) you need to use it correctly and judiciously. But thats not really a negative
As a side note, I really think you should consider Cleric Dedication for Selective Energy at level 12.
Yes will do.
Fixing up Divine Access - which is really important. BTW thanks for Divine Access Guide its missing the latest but it is a huge help to navigating Deities.
Author here - what's it missing? I try to be diligent on deities, but it's hard to catch every splatbook.
I did find a couple, must have been in modules. Sorry for the comment. Thank you again by the way.
15% (only fails on 1, 2 or 3 since it's DC 4), but yeah, it's still a failure chance, which sucks.Ancestors
The Ancestor Mystery is one of the worst. You do get a couple of free ancestry feats which is nice, but having a failure chance for the main thing that your character does of 20% and higher is intolerable.
Yes thats were it starts. At least you don't lose the spell slots.
I'm becoming more positive on these curses as you just have to embrace them. For some of these Ancestors (choice of action), Battle (you can't always have attacked last round so the penalties will apply often enough), Lore (initiative is important). The disadvantages are real and not minor but you are really getting something as well. In comparison Tempest and Cosmos the disadvantages can mostly be ignored by certain builds. Flames and Life can work with their problems OK. Bones I'm still to tease out to my satisfaction.
- The higher Dex character will be better in its occasional weapon attack.
- Stealth is my initiative roll of choice for most of these builds because your perception ranks are controlled and low. Initiative is important.
That's completely up to the player. If the player wants to use weapon attacks or to be stealthy, they can increase Dexterity. But there's no incentive in the Oracle class to either go for weapons nor Stealth.
- The Con character is 16% more expensive to heal because of the extra hitpoints.Mostly invalid as you are both the healer and not a tank. When you start taking damage, what's important is to survive. If you have the chance to heal, you can certainly escape damage entirely at that stage.
- Damage is not the only effect of a hit.But the extra effects on a hit are very often not stackable. So once you have been hit once, there's only damage left to hits.
- AC and Reflex attacks are much more common. Especially early when total hitpoints are low.Poison is a killer at low level. Fortitude is more important than Reflex if you want to survive. And as you are the healer, if you go down to poison, your chances of survival are extremely low (both because of low Fortitude saves and limited healing to get you back on feet).
- Higher Dex mean less critical hitsI definitely agree. You take a lot more critical hits. But the damage spikes are the same (you can't take more damage than a critical hit).
I find its the critical hits and the repeated hits in one round that take players out.Low Constitution ones, yes. Not high Constitution ones. High Constitution characters can suck damage spikes when low Constitution characters are reliant on luck to survive (and luck won't always be on your side).
Anyway, these are your builds. It's just that you give nearly always the same attribute arrays giving the false impression...
At low level Con is better.
I've found Dexterity becomes a factor at higher level when AoE reflex saves start doing a lot of damage and you can get deluged by them.
AC for casters is fairly irrelevant. Even if you max out AC on a caster, a monster will still hit you fairly easy due to lower armor proficiency. So your best bet is to simply not be there.
But when you start getting pounded by damage reflex attacks, it's a real issue to fail that reflex saves or critically fail. One failed reflex save can be all the extra hit points from a higher Con.
Then again you don't want to fail Con saves at higher level either.
So you need them both really. I've found Will saves tend to have the least deadly effect on the group and as a caster you usually get a good Will save. But a weak Reflex and Fort save can be painful.
Reflex save attacks tend to be longer range than other types of saves.
If you're not playing much past level 8 or so, you should be mostly fine ignoring Dex.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Domain Acumen: I saw that several of your builds take this feat. Maybe it is a personal thing, but for most mysteries I don't see the need in having both initial domain spells. I would rather take cantrip expansion or a dedication feat. Perhaps you missed that all oracles start with one initial domain spell?
Debilitating Dichotomy: SuperBidi and HumberGamer are correct; it is a great spell. Even if you aren't a dhampir with Feed on Pain like my Bones oracle. Which leads us to...
Bones: I don't have any difficulties with the curse, and it isn't unusual for me to purposely advance it quickly. The minor curse is only really annoying at lower levels when magical healing is less readily available. The hit point loss from the drain on the moderate curse, is mostly made up with a single application of Soul Siphon if the target has a successful save. On a failed save, you gain more than you lost. The minor negative to fortitude saves is more than made up with the various bonuses versus disease, poison, and death effects...most of which are fortitude saves. The major curse could get you killed, but, in my experience, is scarier than it seems. Sure, you're one step closer to death, but you can choose to directly control every other step along the way.
Domain Acumen: I saw that several of your builds take this feat. Maybe it is a personal thing, but for most mysteries I don't see the need in having both initial domain spells. I would rather take cantrip expansion or a dedication feat. Perhaps you missed that all oracles start with one initial domain spell?
Oh yes I did have a couple of misunderstandings. Which get corrected as we go. Some I've reposted, some are sitting in the live doc. Fortunately I'm thick skinned enough to appreciate the corrections.
Bones: I don't have any difficulties with the curse, and it isn't unusual for me to purposely advance it quickly. The minor curse is only really annoying at lower levels when magical healing is less readily available. The hit point loss from the drain on the moderate curse, is mostly made up with a single application of Soul Siphon if the target has a successful save. On a failed save, you gain more than you lost. The minor negative to fortitude saves is more than made up with the various bonuses versus disease, poison, and death effects...most of which are fortitude saves. The major curse could get you killed, but, in my experience, is scarier than it seems. Sure, you're one step closer to death, but you can choose to directly control every other step along the way.
So how would you build it then?
Which BTW is the point of these threads, to find a reasonable way to build each of the main types of character that works. I know I'm not there with Bones yet.
So how would you build it then?
I wouldn't say it is fully optimized, but here is what I am using.
Str 10 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 10 Wis 12 Cha 18
Ancestry: Human, Dhampir 1st: Adhyabhau, 5th: Feed on Pain, 9th: Multitalented (Rogue), 13th: Form of the Bat, 17th: Symphony of Blood
General Feats: 3rd: Ancestral Paragon (Arcane Tattoos - Evocation), 7th: Toughness, 11th: Diehard, 15th: Fleet, 19th: Canny Acumen (Reflexes)
Class Feats: 2nd: Sorcerer Dedication (arcane bloodline), 4th: Basic Sorcerer Spellcasting, 6th: Divine Access (Charon), 8th: Debilitating Dichotomy, 10th: Bloodline Breadth, 12th: Expert Sorcerer Spellcasting, 14th: Mysterious Repertoire, 16th: Forestall Curse, 18th: Divine Effusion, 20th: Master Sorcerer Spellcasting
Skills: Arcana, Intimidation, Stealth
I considered dropping Forestall Curse and either Divine Access or Bloodline Breadth for Advanced Revelation and Divere Mystery (Whirling Flames or Interstellar Void).
So how would you build it then?I wouldn't say it is fully optimized, but here is what I am using.
Str 10 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 10 Wis 12 Cha 18
Ancestry: Human, Dhampir 1st: Adhyabhau, 5th: Feed on Pain, 9th: Multitalented (Rogue), 13th: Form of the Bat, 17th: Symphony of Blood
General Feats: 3rd: Ancestral Paragon (Arcane Tattoos - Evocation), 7th: Toughness, 11th: Diehard, 15th: Fleet, 19th: Canny Acumen (Reflexes)
Class Feats: 2nd: Sorcerer Dedication (arcane bloodline), 4th: Basic Sorcerer Spellcasting, 6th: Divine Access (Charon), 8th: Debilitating Dichotomy, 10th: Bloodline Breadth, 12th: Expert Sorcerer Spellcasting, 14th: Mysterious Repertoire, 16th: Forestall Curse, 18th: Divine Effusion, 20th: Master Sorcerer Spellcasting
Skills: Arcana, Intimidation, StealthI considered dropping Forestall Curse and either Divine Access or Bloodline Breadth for Advanced Revelation and Divere Mystery (Whirling Flames or Interstellar Void).
Not a lot different to what I did, you have a more positive attitude about the curse. I took a familiar and a spellbook, over Divine Access, and Debilitating Dichotomy. Not sure what the Rogue Dedication is giving you skills plus light armour for one level?
What I want is to see an idea like Divine Access Nhimbaloth (1 Grim Tendrils, 2 Entangle, 5 Cloudkill) To use CloudKill as close range. But I'm unconvinced that either the effect or the curse is strong enough to be worth it.
Anyway, these are your builds. It's just that you give nearly always the same attribute arrays
Sorry I'm still not on board. If your AC is below par then Dex is more important than Con. Because it has a significant affect on the number of criticals you suffer and AC is 3x to 5x more likely to be attacked than anything else. Especially at low level. I get that Con is important and I don't have a build that will not max out Con.
Part of it is I don't want to see every character take Sentinel.
I do accept that that is wrong to give the same array as its not unreasonable to favour Con. I'm going to go back and screw some of the builds a bit more towards Con than Dex. There are some already. But if a caster is not using Dex for a secondary weapon, there is reliable healing, they aren't a front line combatant, or if they wildshape. They can afford to leave some AC adrift for a bit longer.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So how would you build it then?I wouldn't say it is fully optimized, but here is what I am using.
Str 10 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 10 Wis 12 Cha 18
Ancestry: Human, Dhampir 1st: Adhyabhau, 5th: Feed on Pain, 9th: Multitalented (Rogue), 13th: Form of the Bat, 17th: Symphony of Blood
General Feats: 3rd: Ancestral Paragon (Arcane Tattoos - Evocation), 7th: Toughness, 11th: Diehard, 15th: Fleet, 19th: Canny Acumen (Reflexes)
Class Feats: 2nd: Sorcerer Dedication (arcane bloodline), 4th: Basic Sorcerer Spellcasting, 6th: Divine Access (Charon), 8th: Debilitating Dichotomy, 10th: Bloodline Breadth, 12th: Expert Sorcerer Spellcasting, 14th: Mysterious Repertoire, 16th: Forestall Curse, 18th: Divine Effusion, 20th: Master Sorcerer Spellcasting
Skills: Arcana, Intimidation, StealthI considered dropping Forestall Curse and either Divine Access or Bloodline Breadth for Advanced Revelation and Divere Mystery (Whirling Flames or Interstellar Void).
Not a lot different to what I did, you have a more positive attitude about the curse. I took a familiar and a spellbook, over Divine Access, and Debilitating Dichotomy. Not sure what the Rogue Dedication is giving you skills plus light armour for one level?
What I want is to see an idea like Divine Access Nhimbaloth (1 Grim Tendrils, 2 Entangle, 5 Cloudkill) To use CloudKill as close range. But I'm unconvinced that either the effect or the curse is strong enough to be worth it.
That is a fair assessment. The rogue dedication was purely a roleplay choice. If I was going to optimize, I'd replace all the sorcerer feats too. I thought about it when first creating the build, but the sorcerer part fit his backstory too well to give up. I had some rough ideas what I might do instead but never fully fleshed out the feat selections.
My attitude towards the curse started out like yours. I had already played a flame oracle and wanted to play another oracle with a different mystery. Flavor wise, I really liked bones but hated the curse. I ended up deciding to give it a try and found it not to be nearly as bad as I had anticipated. In my playing experience, the flames curse was more often a detriment then bones.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Bones: I don't have any difficulties with the curse, and it isn't unusual for me to purposely advance it quickly. The minor curse is only really annoying at lower levels when magical healing is less readily available. The hit point loss from the drain on the moderate curse, is mostly made up with a single application of Soul Siphon if the target has a successful save. On a failed save, you gain more than you lost. The minor negative to fortitude saves is more than made up with the various bonuses versus disease, poison, and death effects...most of which are fortitude saves. The major curse could get you killed, but, in my experience, is scarier than it seems. Sure, you're one step closer to death, but you can choose to directly control every other step along the way.
It took me a bit to get to this point on Bones. I thought the curse was too scary to keep high at first but actually, it peaks at the Drained condition on moderate. In practice, at least for me, the rest of the penalties are easily manageable. I even thought I needed Diehard to play. It does make it a lot safer but it ended up not being an auto pick depending on party composition.
Soul Siphon really is the MVP at mitigating the Drained hp loss. I thought it was Armor of Bones at first but Soul Siphon was more universally useful in my experience. Keeping the temp hp up is easy, even out of combat, since it has no duration. It’s fairly easy to spam willy-nilly to constantly refresh the temp hp but there’s always a best target for the most temp hp.
I do like Cloudkill shenanigans with Bones but mostly for fun. It’s often enough that somebody else on the party that likes to cast disease, poison, or death aoe spell to make full use of your curse bonuses.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I personally think that the acrobat archetype is a good fit for the Cosmos Oracle. Auto-scaling acrobatics is pretty good since you want a high dexterity for the AC anyway, and it gives you a decent chance of escaping a grapple (a condition your curse makes you more vulnerable to) since the enfeebled condition is going to make any strength-based attempts to escape dubious at best. Finally, the Graceful Leaper skill feat lets you make good use of the jumping skill feats you get for free that you're normally not that good at using because you are enfeebled and thus not really incentivized to boost your strength.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Thanks for your feedback by the way. It really makes me justify my position or change it.
My concern about life link is that
a) the effect on one creature is to minor and its not going to help the creature much if it is being targeted by several enemies. A decent heal for a huge number it just much better option. Life Link is a single action - I'll rewrite what I said.
I think you missed a few things about Life Link.
The first thing is that it's a healing Focus Spell before anyone can get Continual Recovery. It's always nice.Also, Life Link heals 1d4+3 at launch (preventing the next 3 damage you take is equivalent to heal 3 damage). As a consequence:
- It heals more on a single target than Life Boost, whatever the level. And unlike Life Boost it's frontloaded.
- It heals as much as a first level 2-action Heal after 2 rounds (1d4+9 is just one less hit point than 1d8+8). At level 5, it's a level 2 2-action Heal. At level 11 a level 4 one. At level 17 a level 6 one.
And that's for one action.
At level 1, the Cleric has its Font and the Life Oracle has Life Link, which is the equivalent of a first level Heal as a Focus Spell. So the Life Oracle is competitive in healing against a Cleric right away, because most of your healing will go through Life Link. Your spell list is just a bonus, like the Cleric's one. It's very important to visualize that, because if you miss it, you entirely miss the way the Life Oracle heals.
At higher level, the extra targets are quite dangerous. But it can be useful to protect squishies. For example, if you have a Wizard, you can put them under Life Link. You don't expect them to take damage but if it ever happens it's better for you to take a bit of it as they don't have much hit points to survive.
b) its uncontrolled and can get out of hand with multiple targets.
c) you need to use it correctly and judiciously. But thats not really a negative
That's the Oracle. If you want to play cautiously, don't play an Oracle.
Also, you can dismiss Life Link and you choose to use it. So it's not exactly uncontrolled, your second sentence is a better description of it: It has to be used correctly.And as a Life Oracle, you know you'll go down often as you tend to take the damage of the whole party on you. But that also mean that you can invest in Diehard and such feats to increase your survivability in this case. It's always better to know who will go down as you can protect them more efficiently.
Anyway, overall, I don't like your Life Oracle. Elf is certainly the worst Ancestry for one of them as you need Charisma and Constitution. Fleshwarp is strong, especially Shapewrought because of the resistance to Mental damage that protects you against Debilitating Dichotomy. And Gnome is certainly the best.
If I had to make a Life Oracle, I'd do that:
Life
Str 8 Dex 14 Con 16 Int 10 Wis 12 Cha 18
Ancestry: Gnome
Ancestry Feats: Getting Electric Arc through First World Magic can be super useful at low level, Empathetic Plea is excellent, as is Fortuitous Shift at level 9.
General/Ancestry Feats: Toughness is mandatory, Diehard is nice.
Class Feats: Level 2: Divine Aegis, Level 4: Divine Access for Achaekek, Norgorber or Shax (Invisibility can save you) or Osiris for False Life (so you can start fights with even more hit points), Level 6: Cleric Dedication, Level 8: Reach Spell through Cleric Dedication, Level 10: Oracular Warning (as a healer with a massive hit point pool and proper AC at level 10, you are fine to play last), Level 12: Selective Energy
Focus Spell: Life Link is your main healing ability, before level 11 you will nearly exclusively use it. Healer's Blessing and Vision of Weakness can be useful at level 11+. Debilitating Dichotomy is super strong considering your massive hit point pool, but you can't use it if you expect to heal a lot during a fight.
Skills: Religion, Diplomacy, Intimidation
Dismissing Life Link was surprisingly relevant at later levels, especially with the multiple targets. I don’t do it often but the option to do so has saved my life each time.
Another thing about Life Link is that it’s really good at keeping everyone else standing during and by the end of the encounter. Sure, everyone is potentially left at critical hp, but no one ever went down and wasted actions trying to recover. Healing is so much easier outside of combat anyway.
The only catch here is that keeping the Oracle alive becomes a priority and hectic goal for the party. In my experience though, playing protect the Oracle is a worthy investment for the rest of the party to have extra hp to work with. Having mindful Life Linked party members helps ease this task. In general, this means players that know when to back off when they know a Life Link damage transfer can put the Oracle in a dangerous situation while understanding the extra freedom they have being Life Linked and taking full advantage of it.
This seems really optimistic. In the sense that you're being attacked by a single on-level enemy for one round. I'd much rather see survivability numbers for potentially threatening situations like an intelligent +3 boss deciding to put the cloth in the floor or a coordinated attack by a few mooks or a pair of +1s/+2s.If an angry +3 boss decides to target you, a few hit points or a bit of AC won't save you.
And your other cases are extremely weird. How come that most enemies decide to target you and at the same time your martials are unable to block any of them? Also, a pair of +2 monsters is an Extreme encounter, I'm not sure these are valid metrics for how tough you should be.My cases are more common cases, the ones that happen all the time: The monster that slips through the defenses and target the healer or the area of effect damaging spell who hit the whole party.
What I wanted to show is that even when a monster targets AC or Reflex saves Constitution can be as valuable as Dexterity for survival. Obviously, when a monster targets anything else, Dexterity is useless. So, for the sake of survival, Constitution is at least as good as Dexterity at low level, and far better at high level as the AC issue is one that gets lowered every 5 levels. Hence my statement that AC is often overrated on backline characters. Not that it's useless, but that you shouldn't care much about maxing it at level 1.
My perspective on it is that the more common situations are so non-threatening that they aren't something really worth considering. Survivability matters when things are most threatening and you need to survive the opening round so that you can continue to contribute for as long as possible.
If AC maximizes my odds of having a turn that round or a second turn in the following round over con then that's what I'd prioritize first. If it turns out that raw hp matters more, then I'd prioritize con and early toughness in more builds.
My perspective on it is that the more common situations are so non-threatening that they aren't something really worth considering. Survivability matters when things are most threatening and you need to survive the opening round so that you can continue to contribute for as long as possible.
It's a bit more complex than that. You must build for possible situations. A pair of level+2 monsters is an Extreme encounter and as such is extremely rare. A pair of enemies coming for you is also rare. So a pair of level+2 monsters targetting you is a circumstance that shouldn't even happen once in your carreer, I don't build for such cases.
Also, you shouldn't disregard common situations. Common situations are many, and a few dice rolls can spiral a common situation out of control. So you must also be efficient during common situations to avoid them becoming problematic ones.
That's why I speak of the classical case where a single monster gets to you or when you take a few AoE spells. We can look at less common situations, but they will be hard to design as less common situations are not common and as such hard to define.
Interesting call that you take Diehard. I'm not normally a fan but yes I think this is a build that needs it.
What was the Reach Spell for?
Fleshwarp - thanks for the tip. But I think I'm going to use that on my Bones Oracle
Regarding Oracular Warning and playing last. I disagree. There are plenty of buffs and positioning you can do. But at least someone on your side is going first.
Dismissing Life Link
Actually this is what I really missed. Thanks.
What was the Reach Spell for?
Mostly because you need to take a 1st-2nd level Cleric feat before taking Selective Energy. Also, Reach Spell is quite useful, especially on a character with low Reflex saves (there are tons of immobilizing stuff that rely on Reflex saves).
Regarding Oracular Warning and playing last. I disagree. There are plenty of buffs and positioning you can do.
Obviously. But between a buff and a Wizard throwing a Fireball or a Barbarian getting Large and positioning himself properly, I think I take the latter. There are very few cases where you'd want to be the first absolutely with a Life Oracle, and even in that case, nothing forces you to use Oracular Warning.
@Gortle: I forgot one thing, if you are really affraid of Debilitating Dichotomy's potential to hurt you, you can Spell Immunity it on yourself. It costs you a spell slot of your second highest level, but you end up avoiding its effects on yourself 55% of the time. With the 60-70% chance to avoid it with a critical success to the save, you go down to 15-20% chance to actually take damage from it (and only half damage, with just 2.5% chance to take full damage). I think the risk is now completely in control.
@Gortle: I forgot one thing, if you are really affraid of Debilitating Dichotomy's potential to hurt you, you can Spell Immunity it on yourself. It costs you a spell slot of your second highest level, but you end up avoiding its effects on yourself 55% of the time. With the 60-70% chance to avoid it with a critical success to the save, you go down to 15-20% chance to actually take damage from it (and only half damage, with just 2.5% chance to take full damage). I think the risk is now completely in control.
Spell Imunity is quite nice. It counteracts the spell only for the one target. It lasts for 24 hours - so from yesterday... sounds great.
Problem is Debilitating Dichotomy only targets your enemy not you. So I don't think it would work as you are thinking. A few rules problems here...
Damn, you're right, you're not the target and as such can't block it with Spell Immunity.
So, you just have mental resistance that works... Shapewrought Fleshwarp is the only solution to reduce Debilitating Dichotomy effect.