Battle Oracle Advice - Spells, Armor, Feats [First Character]


Advice


Hey there, thanks for reading and I'll try and keep this as simple as I can! The questions I need answered will be at the very bottom.

Tried to get into PF awhile back, bought the B-Box, played with a roomie, never took off in my group of friends. Recently got invited to a group at a LGS I just started to frequent and need to make a third-level character. I chose Battle Oracle to cover both a front-line and healer role, and to dodge the moral/deity restrictions of Cleric or Paladin.

I got the invitation last night, and they meet on Saturdays, so I need to have this guy ready for tomorrow!

THE CHARACTER!

Restrictions: My stats were generated by rolling and my character must be an animalistic race.

Goal: Trippy/Maneuver-based, Intimidate spamming battle oracle, for the moment.

Brimaz, Catfolk
Third Level Oracle

Mystery: Battle
Curse: Tongues, Celestial

STR: 15
DEX: 14 (including +2 from Race)
CON: 15
INT: 12
WIS: 9 (Including-2 from Race)
CHA: 17 (including +2 from Race)

Weapon: Guisarme
Armor: ???

Feats:
1- Extra Revelation - Weapon Mastery (Guisarme)
3- Dazzling Display

Revelations:
1- Skill at Arms
3- Maneuver Mastery (Trip)

1. Armor/Skill at Arms, Two-parter:
1a: Which Armor should I start out with, having all three tiers available? What should I be building towards? Skill at Arms slightly wasted if I don't go heavy?

1b: Far as I can tell, I can't using Dazzling Display unless I have Weapon Focus from Weapon Mastery, and I can't have Weapon Mastery without Skill at Arms. If I can maintain Dazzling Display and MM: Trip while opening up something liek Improved Initiative, Warsight, or Combat Healer, that'd be neat.

2. Spells:
Other than taking the Cure spells, I've no idea what to do here. Suggestions of all kind are appreciated.

3. The Future
Based off what I have, what should my next few levels look like? What should I build toward?

Thanks again, guys/gals!


I played a Battle Oracle before. Skill at arms is a trap. It can be useful, but unless you actually want Full Plate, the armors people generally wear (Mithral Breastplate, Celestial Armor) will be fine. You are really burning a revelation on using a guisarme instead of a longspear, and spending a feat on Martial Weapon Proficiency is usually regarded as a poor choice. I would either use a longspear or my claws, medium armor and not take skill at arms.

You want Power Attack and Cornugon Smash if you have an intimidate build. Dazzling Display is alright but not great, same for Shatter Defenses. Cornugon Smash and Enforcer are the two feats you can really build around for intimidate, you really want intimidate checks as free actions, and you need to do subdual damage to make Enforcer work.

You also need a wisdom score, but I assume it got left out in a typo.

Silver Crusade

Skill at arms is great if you actually want to go the armored tank route, though.

My battle oracle walks around in +1 full plate, +1 buckler (leaves the hand free for casting), and +1 ring of protection in Pathfinder Society, so I'm up to 25 AC already at level 4 (with 12 dex and +1 natural armor for being a nagaji). Since AC drops by 2 when you use Enlarge Person on yourself, which all Battle Oracles get for free, it can be nice to really boost your armor.

As for your other questions, you're mostly going to want to focus on buff spells, since you'll probably throw up a buff at the start of every fight, then wade in and start hitting things. If you're focusing on a reach weapon, Combat Reflexes is a good feat to have.

For spells, look at Bless, Divine Favor, Shield of Faith, Protection from Evil, Liberating Command, Aid, and Grace.

I went a completely different direction than you with my Battle Oracle (not maneuver or intimidate focused), and here's my tentative feat/revelation progression:

1 - Feat: Extra Revelation - Skill at Arms
1 - Revelation: War Sight
3 - Feat: Power Attack
3 - Revelation: Surprising Charge
5 - Feat: Extra Revelation - Weapon Mastery: Longsword
7 - Feat: Extra Revelation - Maneuver Master: Grapple
7 - Revelation: Combat Healer
9 - Feat: Quicken Spell
11 - Feat: Extra Revelation - Battlefield Clarity
11 - Revelation: Iron Skin

Bear in mind that my character is also for Pathfinder Society, which pretty much ends at level 12, so I didn't worry about taking all the good revelations too early and running out of good ones for later. I wanted Quicken Spell at 9 so I could start casting 1st level buffs as a swift action at level 10. Divine Favor is actually pretty nice at that level.

Scarab Sages

Gregory Connolly wrote:
I played a Battle Oracle before. Skill at arms is a trap. It can be useful, but unless you actually want Full Plate, the armors people generally wear (Mithral Breastplate, Celestial Armor) will be fine. You are really burning a revelation on using a guisarme instead of a longspear, and spending a feat on Martial Weapon Proficiency is usually regarded as a poor choice. I would either use a longspear or my claws, medium armor and not take skill at arms.

A battle oracle with skill at arms is not just picking up one weapon. He also has the option to grab a composite longbow.

As an aside: my battle oracle took one level of barbarian for the full martial proficiency, extra movement and the extra boost from rage when she really needs it.

Liberty's Edge

With Dex 14, you're gonna want Heavy Armor (Mithral Full Plate eventually), which makes Skill At Arms very much worth it. I'd start with Full Plate honestly, it's +2 AC over a breastplate, and +1 over even a magic breastplate (which is around the same price). Make it masterwork for later enchantment.

For spells, buff spells are highly recommended. Divine Favor is solid if you've got Fate's Favored (or are at least 6th level), and Protection From Evil is just generally excellent. Sun Metal is also definitely solid, and Enlarge Person is both awesome and comes free.

I'd skip Dazzling Display for Power Attack. Dazzling Display is nice, and should maybe be grabbed later, but you're clearly building for melee, and Power Attack is a melee character's mainstay.

At 4th level, you're gonna want to raise Str with your level-up point, and grab either Lesser Restoration (if you're the group's primary healer) or a buff spell (Bull's Strength is very solid, though you'll want to trade it out once everyone has Belts of Strength).

Oh, and make sure to grab backup weapons (a Cold Iron Longspear and a Silvered Heavy Mace, plus a Dagger and Longow, for example). It's surprisingly useful.


It isn't that Skill at arms is bad, it is that there are so many other feats and revelations available that it isn't a good idea on all builds. If you want an intimidate master, you want Dazzling Display, Power Attack, Cornugon Smash and Shatter Defenses. You can lose some of those, but it changes what you are building. None of the Skill at arms builds are bad, but they aren't close to what I played. Oracle is very versatile, you can have 10 people make battle oracles and probably not get duplicates.


Fromper wrote:

Skill at arms is great if you actually want to go the armored tank route, though.

My battle oracle walks around in +1 full plate, +1 buckler (leaves the hand free for casting), and +1 ring of protection in Pathfinder Society, so I'm up to 25 AC already at level 4 (with 12 dex and +1 natural armor for being a nagaji). Since AC drops by 2 when you use Enlarge Person on yourself, which all Battle Oracles get for free, it can be nice to really boost your armor.

As for your other questions, you're mostly going to want to focus on buff spells, since you'll probably throw up a buff at the start of every fight, then wade in and start hitting things. If you're focusing on a reach weapon, Combat Reflexes is a good feat to have.

For spells, look at Bless, Divine Favor, Shield of Faith, Protection from Evil, Liberating Command, Aid, and Grace.

I went a completely different direction than you with my Battle Oracle (not maneuver or intimidate focused), and here's my tentative feat/revelation progression:

1 - Feat: Extra Revelation - Skill at Arms
1 - Revelation: War Sight
3 - Feat: Power Attack
3 - Revelation: Surprising Charge
5 - Feat: Extra Revelation - Weapon Mastery: Longsword
7 - Feat: Extra Revelation - Maneuver Master: Grapple
7 - Revelation: Combat Healer
9 - Feat: Quicken Spell
11 - Feat: Extra Revelation - Battlefield Clarity
11 - Revelation: Iron Skin

Bear in mind that my character is also for Pathfinder Society, which pretty much ends at level 12, so I didn't worry about taking all the good revelations too early and running out of good ones for later. I wanted Quicken Spell at 9 so I could start casting 1st level buffs as a swift action at level 10. Divine Favor is actually pretty nice at that level.

Thanks for the outline! Seems nice if I go the full-tank route, which would be appreciated by the group. I'll use this as a template if I can't brew a build that I'm comfortable with.

Gregory Connolly wrote:
I played a Battle Oracle before. Skill at arms is a trap. It can be useful, but unless you actually want Full Plate, the armors people generally wear (Mithral Breastplate, Celestial Armor) will be fine. You are really burning a revelation on using a guisarme instead of a longspear, and spending a feat on Martial Weapon Proficiency is usually regarded as a poor choice. I would either use a longspear or my claws, medium armor and not take skill at arms.

Added my Wisdom, sorry.

I've no problem giving up the guisarme; honestly, I was brewing off two other builds I googled online. Somethign you mentioned interested me, and as a cat who could choose Cat's Claws/Claw Blades, how would a dual-claw build work? It seems that I could get interative attacks and masterwork formt he blades, but would be subject to TWF penalties. Is it too much to invest in to be viable?

Also, slightly on/off-topic: is one still considered "open-handed" while wearing claw blades? Would ther ebe an additional penalty for wearing a buckler with dual blades?

Concept shift?
I think what I want form this oracle, is to abuse whatever mechanics I can with my special abilities/revelations, CHR score, or Oracle level. I'll be willing to take any feat/revelation road-maps you guys are willing to suggest!

Silver Crusade

Ruzhyo wrote:

Concept shift?

I think what I want form this oracle, is to abuse whatever mechanics I can with my special abilities/revelations, CHR score, or Oracle level. I'll be willing to take any feat/revelation road-maps you guys are willing to suggest!

I think Gregory gave you a good feat path for an intimidate build, and he's right that Skill at Arms probably isn't as important in that build. If you're constantly giving enemies -2 on their hit rolls, then having heavier armor isn't quite as important.

My build is more of a sword and shield battle tank. Bear in mind that mine also started with 19 strength, but lower charisma than your character. If you follow my path with your stats, then taking Weapon Mastery earlier will help with your hit rolls. That's probably worth delaying Surprising Charge.

I don't remember enough to answer all your questions about the claw attacks. I think natural weapons are immune to the two weapon penalty, but you don't get extra iterative attacks at higher levels.


Alright! I think I'll head for the tankier build, assuming the grapple maneuvers and such don't "make" a tank. So... going off of what was presented thus far.....

Armor:
Full Plate
Buckler

Primary Weapon:
[Cold iron, other] Glaive-guisarme

Secondary weapons:
Silvered Mace, Heavy
Longbow
Dagger

1 - Feat: Extra Revelation - Skill at Arms
1 - Revelation: War Sight
3 - Feat: Power Attack
3 - ??? [Combat Reflexes? Mastery? Another Revelation?]

Spells:
Checked out examples, need to decide later.

This is what I will most likely start with, unless someone should suggest another weapon; I chose spwear because we have a sword-and board Fighter already.

I could mimic and tweek Fromper's example further, but if you've additional input on where to go from where, I'd appreciate it.

Claws are a bit weird; Using the Claw Blades turns them into Light Slashing weapons and they ARE subject to TWF restrictions, so I don't think I'd like ot build around those.


Artanthos wrote:
Gregory Connolly wrote:
I played a Battle Oracle before. Skill at arms is a trap. It can be useful, but unless you actually want Full Plate, the armors people generally wear (Mithral Breastplate, Celestial Armor) will be fine. You are really burning a revelation on using a guisarme instead of a longspear, and spending a feat on Martial Weapon Proficiency is usually regarded as a poor choice. I would either use a longspear or my claws, medium armor and not take skill at arms.

A battle oracle with skill at arms is not just picking up one weapon. He also has the option to grab a composite longbow.

As an aside: my battle oracle took one level of barbarian for the full martial proficiency, extra movement and the extra boost from rage when she really needs it.

I wouldn't recommend dipping barbarian and taking skill at arms though. The Heavy armor proficiency directly conflicts with the barbarians fast movement ability


You probably want Combat Reflexes on a polearm character. 15, 15, 15, 12, 12, 11 isn't the worst stat array, but you would probably like a higher strength. I would consider the alternate racial trait Cat's Claws and the feats Nimble Striker and Claw Pounce. You have a lot of directions you could go with this character. I suggest going for the reach weapon, spellcasting and face skills, but really whatever you want to do can be made to work. These boards are good for help with characters, lots of good people here.

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