|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I fail to understand how every 2e flame oracle having the exact same curse by mandate of the game system is somehow more variety than 1e flame oracles that at least had the option of different curses.
I get that many oracles showing up with the same handful of curses got "samey", but you literally have less choice now than you did in the past.
From my perspective, it's because:
1: You have less diversity in curses within oracles of the same mystery, but more diversity between oracles of different mysteries - you won't play with the same set of curses every time. That's more important to me, because it lets your mystery be a big defining choice that changes your character dramatically, and lets the class have a variety of builds that actually get played. You could take the curse in PF1 that gave you 50% extra (nonlethal) damage from all sources, but it was so much worse than needing to speak in a specific language during combat that it was basically never seen in play. That means that a much greater proportion of the available curses see play in PF2, in my experience. Theoretically, if oracles of a specific mystery ever picked anything but a single curse in PF1, there's more build variety from this option than in PF2 - but seeing all the curses sitting there going to waste, never touched, in PF1 definitely feels like you've got a lot more wasted space.2: The fact that the curses don't need to be in competition with each other means that the curses can access way more interesting game design areas. If you are published a new curse for a PF1 oracle, you need to make sure someone wants to take it roughly as much as they want to take 'you have to speak in Celestial in a fight', which means any meaningful penalty either cannot exist (which doesn't exactly sell the themes of the oracle class), or have to be counteracted by such significant bonuses that it doesn't feel much like a curse. Sure, you could design the game with no curses that have that little impact, but they all still have to be roughly the same impact. The PF2 design allows for you to have one curse like the Curse of Outpouring Life, which reduces/removes your ability to be healed (when that's relevant in the game), and eventually start significantly damaging yourself whenever you cast powerful magic. That's a pretty significant downside, and only works because it's combined with the good healing of the Life mystery, and the increased HP pool of the Life mystery. That can exist in the same class as a mystery that has relatively smaller downsides, but doesn't come with as large a pack of benefits - if you got to pick your curse, the Curse of Outpouring Life would be picked about 0% of the time. That increased variety in the game design space available to the curse dramatically increases my personal experience of the variety of the Oracle class, and really helps each mystery feel very different from the others.
That being said, the balance isn't always there - I hope, like the others here, that they get a bit of a glow-up in PC2 :)
I fail to understand how every 2e flame oracle having the exact same curse by mandate of the game system is somehow more variety than 1e flame oracles that at least had the option of different curses.
I get that many oracles showing up with the same handful of curses got "samey", but you literally have less choice now than you did in the past.
It's the illusion of choice.
If you get many possible choices, but most of them are never chosen, they might as well not exist.
Exactly.
PF2 having every Flames Oracle have Curse of Engulfing Flames isn't any different than every PF1 Flames Oracle having Curse of Tongues .
Now, what would be a useful upgrade to improve the variety would be some alternate curses or alternate mysteries.
For example, Ash mystery shares a lot of theme with Flames mystery - but it defines its own Mystery benefits and Curse.
It would be possible to have a mystery that use the same mechanics for Flames mystery for its benefits, but then has a different curse. Then you could have a 'not quite Flames' Oracle that has the same mystery benefit as a Flames Oracle, but does have a different curse.
Similar could be done for a mystery reusing a Curse. A 'not quite Tempest' Oracle that defines its own Mystery benefits but reuses the existing Curse of the Perpetual Storm that Storm Mystery defines.
But allowing freeform mix and match is just going to lead to powergaming and players picking the same lowest-impact curse for every Oracle.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Having thematic curses for each mystery is IMO much more flavor than what oracles had in PF1e, though that kinda forced Paizo to come up with cursed that had to make sense with each mystery (or not? being effectively blind as a flame oracle still doesn't make sense to me). I feel SuperBidi's solution is really nice to solve oracles in the short term, but I honestly would want for the whole cursebound system to be tweaked, probably by having scaling bonuses and penalties when your curse increases.
I fail to understand how every 2e flame oracle having the exact same curse by mandate of the game system is somehow more variety than 1e flame oracles that at least had the option of different curses.
I get that many oracles showing up with the same handful of curses got "samey", but you literally have less choice now than you did in the past.
Because it wasn't just the 1e flames oracle who were always picking the same curse. It was every mystery picking the same curse. Now, each oracle mystery has an extremely different curse. The variety within the flames mystery alone hasn't increased, but the overall variety for the class has.
At least, I think that's the argument. Personally, I don't really care because the new mystery/curse combos are more thematic, more interesting, and able to take bigger swings because they have less interactions to be balanced around. I'm fine sacrificing some variety for those boons, much as I'm OK sacrificing your Asmodean demon hunter because demons and devils having beef big enough to ignore good vs evil never really jived for me. Cool flavor wins out for me over mechanical non-choices or glaring thematic head scratchers.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
So, I'll freely admit I have a complexity addiction, and this is likely unfeasible for a number of different reasons, but the first solution an came to mind for me was "have a bunch of different 'clusters' of mysteries and curses, so if you pick a mystery from Cluster A, you can pick any curse from Cluster A, but not a curse from Cluster B". This would allow for mixing and matching, while also keeping high benefit matched with high detriment, low benefit with low detriment.
I can't see WHY that would be a bad idea, I'm just assuming that it WOULD be, based off past experience with ideas that seem obvious and fun to me.
I'd certainly give the choice to the player between paying a Focus Point or increasing their curse level when they cast a Cursebound Focus Spell. It solves the issue for some Mysteries but not all of them.
Anyway, the Oracle needs a deeper rebuild of Mysteries to work fine. I don't know if Paizo will take this time, time will tell (3 months, that's not much).
I personally haven't tried this in a game, but I have seen it suggested more and more as a temporary homebrew and/or an actual change ever since the focus point changes.
Agreed that it doesn't solve everything, but I do love that it solves the big and annoying issue of the curse locking oracles into one cursebound focus spell after the first encounter from level 1 to 10. And I think it does it in a clean and fun way. The resource management in choosing between paying a focus point or advancing your curse is so my jam. I like how it also plays nicely with how each mystery mostly have different preferred curse levels.
It is steadily becoming my favorite new Oracle wishlist change, just behind a built-in Divine Access class feature.
The Deafness curse was awesome in PF1 for oracles. I had a deafness curse oracle of life that was nearly impossible to take down. DM would have really had to go insane trying to take the life oracle out.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah the Oracle needs some love, I cannot disagree with people who want to disconnected the curse and mystery enough though.
I also dislike the idea that some have paizo can't use downsides like curses in class design. It reminds me of the discussions surrounding precision damage/sneak attack, immunities/resistances (and wanting bypasses) and the toxicologist (poisoning undead, elementals, constructs, etc)
However, ancestors as written is just awful... I like me a wellspring mage/wild magic sorcerer... but the dice rolling each round is clunky, it actively limits what spells you can use and in actual play makes you have to build incredibly broadly as a jack of all trades, who can't actually use chunks of their trades at will so is objectively bad at it.
Lore Oracle is worse though, it's curse benefits are actively counteracted by its negatives. That and assurance for automatic knowledge does not scale right in high level play... it is like having flame Oracle but all your enemies get immunity to fire.
Honestly though, if I were to redesign the Oracle going down a Psychic route could have been interesting. The other class that requires focus point help :p
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Immunities sucked at high levels in PF1.
Pathfinder 2e has set a lot of this on fire.
Hard agree. And thank goodness for it!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I also dislike the idea that some have paizo can't use downsides like curses in class design. It reminds me of the discussions surrounding precision damage/sneak attack, immunities/resistances (and wanting bypasses) and the toxicologist (poisoning undead, elementals, constructs, etc)
I think that's kind of a bad comparison. The weaknesses an Oracle has are something you buy into at character creation, and you're somewhat built to play around them. Theoretically, part of the whole gameplay look of the class is actively managing those downsides (how well that plays out is something of another issue).
Encountering a bunch of precision immune enemies as a rogue is entirely based on the whims of whoever created the encounter and you are not really given tools to even attempt to manage them.
However, ancestors as written is just awful... I like me a wellspring mage/wild magic sorcerer... but the dice rolling each round is clunky, it actively limits what spells you can use and in actual play makes you have to build incredibly broadly as a jack of all trades, who can't actually use chunks of their trades at will so is objectively bad at it.
I feel like the core issue with the Ancestors oracle is that you're forced to play this randomization game, but even if you do the rewards are both trivial and replacable.
The idea of 'rolling martial' this turn and adjusting my gameplay loop is kind of cool. The idea that I could be any other class and just in a party with a Bard and get the same results somewhat dampens that though, and turns your oracle mechanic into mostly just a downside.
Why is every single Pathfinder 1e demon lord, horseman of the apocalypse, archdevil, spawn of Rovagug, great old one, and empyreal lord immune to ability damage (goodbye poisons...), ability drain, death effects, charms and compulsions, energy drain, and petrification?
Don't forget mind affecting.
Reminded of someone bringing in a Psychic as a replacement character in a high level PF1 game and we went 12 encounters in a row before there was a single enemy he could cast his s#@#ty single target damage spell on because someone at Paizo decided to be cruel and label it mind affecting. There's no defending that garbage. It's not even a versimilitude thing because they just randomly handed it out to everything after a point.
PF2 has reduced this problem a lot, but it still crops up occasionally and I still rarely find it validating or interesting from a game design. Our blaster caster did not discover new gameplay paradigms or find himself engaging with Pathfinder in a unique and innovative way when we had back to back to back encounters in Abomination Vaults against wisps and golems, he just spent most of the session on his phone because he had no way to contribute to those fights.
Our Swashbuckler did not feel invigorated when something like a third of the enemies in Malevolence turned out to be precision immune, he just kind of sucked in those combats.
...Pathfinder 2e has set a lot of this on fire. The incapacitation keyword removes a lot of the absurdity of "so why are all creatures above level [X] immune to the same random set of things?" and standardizing it as a power level thing rather than being ad-hoc laundry lists of immunities. I must admit I'm a fan of that.But... Aren't these immunities still here? Well, probably about half of them but still. Poisons? Definitely. Death effects? Quite enough I suppose. To status effects, mental things also happen I think. Besides, there're little so devastating effects now. (And few that remain [and still not insta-kills] some people would like to remove :-/)By and large...no!
Look at fiends. No poison immunity. No cold/electricity/fire/acid resistance and vanishingly few immunities. Sure, devils still have fire immunity, but in PF 1e they also had acid and cold resistance, which is now gone. Gone is the demonic immunity to electricity plus resistance to acid, cold, and fire. Gone is daemonic immunity to acid, plus their resistance to cold, electricity, and fire. They're also no longer immune to disease (I'm sure someone cares).
Even the minor fiends got fixed. Poison immunity was removed across the board. Qlippoth aren't immune to cold anymore, and just have some minor mental resistance rather than flat immunity to mind-affecting. They also don't have electricity and fire resistance anymore. Divs lost literally every resistance and immunity they had. Asuras lost immunity to disease, and their electricity and acid resistance.
The same is true of celestials. Archons, angels, azatas, and agathions were stripped of every single resistance and immunity they had, which included immunity to petrification and lightning plus resistances to fire, cold, and sonic.
Aeons lost all their resistances and immunities, including to poison and critical hits (ewww). Proteans lost their acid immunity and replaced it with variable resistance...
Definitely a nice change.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Personally I dislike classes like Oracle that are built around class abilities that feature benefit/drawback tradeoffs. Unlike 1E, where the benefits outweighed the drawbacks, in 2E the drawbacks nearly always outweigh the benefits. I want class abilities that make my character better, not worse.
In my opinion, Oracle needs to go back to it's 1E roots. Separate curses and mysteries, and class feats need to be more like the Revelations from 1E instead of the generic caster feats.
Just my own personal preferences.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The benefits eventually outweigh the drawbacks in PF1.
Not so much in PF2 for most of the curses. They get pretty terrible, borderline unplayable for a few of them like Bones, Flame, or Lore. Not sure they made that design choice to make the class unplayable as you level and make casting your main ability get you there.
Oracle in PF1 never this bad or unplayable for so little benefit.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I find the mechanical expression of some of the themes of the Mysteries really…odd takes.
Ancestors first curse is laughable. I mean I loved the Deck of Many Things back in the day, but a few narky ancestors make life difficult in battle.
Cosmos first curse makes you…wispy and indistinct. Instead of…..you know…. anything else that you might find in the universe.
Life’s first curse makes you less able to live. Kinky.
Lore’s first curse puts you in a tizzy. You’re too smart to pay attention to the small stuff. And it’s all small stuff: foes, charging foes, ambushes, more foes.
Tempest’s mystery benefit is that you can…see through water perfectly clearly. Perfect! You also see through wind. That you can’t control. Yay!
I feel like the Curse are completely backwards, and should be focused on a comparative lack of the opposite of what the mystery is.
Flame
is fine.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Flameis fine.
No, it isn't. Not sure why you think this.
Your precise vision range becomes 30 feet. Things are concealed from you and can't be mitigated. At moderate they become hidden from you past 30 feet. All this to generate a 10 foot aura of flame that does 4d6 damage to everyone including allies while doing 1d6 to you.
All this on a d8, weak defenses class that is better off operating from range.
It's not a good curse. The hidden condition past 30 feet makes it nearly unplayable unless everything operates within that 30 feet meaning hit by auras, gazes, and the like with a very average fort save.
You don't really know what's going on past 30 feet and can't target with spells past that range.
It's not worth the tradeoff and gets worse as you level.
I wouldn't call that fine. I'd call it an extremely weak, almost unplayable option. All of this from your curse for what? Master Reflexes? And some fairly weak focus spells? Seems not great.
Remember that you can work around the Oracle Curses and make the best out of their benefit. So the only Curses that are really annoying are the ones you can't do anything against, like the -4 to Initiative of Lore Oracle.
The Flame Oracle pushes you toward low range and AoE spells to avoid its effects. That's why it's not "that bad" as you can nearly ignore it by using the proper playstyle.
Flameis fine.No, it isn't. Not sure why you think this.
Your precise vision range becomes 30 feet. Things are concealed from you and can't be mitigated. At moderate they become hidden from you past 30 feet. All this to generate a 10 foot aura of flame that does 4d6 damage to everyone including allies while doing 1d6 to you.
All this on a d8, weak defenses class that is better off operating from range.
It's not a good curse. The hidden condition past 30 feet makes it nearly unplayable unless everything operates within that 30 feet meaning hit by auras, gazes, and the like with a very average fort save.
You don't really know what's going on past 30 feet and can't target with spells past that range.
It's not worth the tradeoff and gets worse as you level.
I wouldn't call that fine. I'd call it an extremely weak, almost unplayable option. All of this from your curse for what? Master Reflexes? And some fairly weak focus spells? Seems not great.
Concealed is an easy problem to get around. You just have to use abilities that don't target eg area effect spells like fire ball, summons etc.
There is an exception for fire magic. The range of 30ft is workable for most modules anyway.You get good focus abilities.
You just aren't thinking about the posibilities.
Yeah fire oracle works fine as long as you have fire spells and AoE options. Your focus spells are short range anyway (with the exception of fire ray being a bit longer.) Im fights where you want to use other spells at longer ranges, you just don't use your cursebound spells. It's a good idea for all oracles to get a multiclass focus spell for these situations. I like amped guidance myself, though amped produce flame is cute with the last revelation spell.
And remember it gets concealment from enemies at the moderate level too.
I’ve seen a goblin Fire Oracle play along side a goblin bomber alchemist and the damage output was impressive. Add in a fire kineticist and it it would probably top out PF2 damage numbers in any fight against creatures without fire resistance/immunity.
The part of the Oracle class I really hope they don't lose is the incredibly awesome Oracle oracle feats the class had, like glean lore, vision of weakness and read disaster. Those kind of feats really made the class feel different from any other caster.
|
The part of the Oracle class I really hope they don't lose is the incredibly awesome Oracle oracle feats the class had, like glean lore, vision of weakness and read disaster. Those kind of feats really made the class feel different from any other caster.
The feats are definitely the best part, aside from divine access. Hopefully that becomes part of the core chassis.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Flameis fine.No, it isn't. Not sure why you think this.
Your precise vision range becomes 30 feet. Things are concealed from you and can't be mitigated. At moderate they become hidden from you past 30 feet. All this to generate a 10 foot aura of flame that does 4d6 damage to everyone including allies while doing 1d6 to you.
All this on a d8, weak defenses class that is better off operating from range.
It's not a good curse. The hidden condition past 30 feet makes it nearly unplayable unless everything operates within that 30 feet meaning hit by auras, gazes, and the like with a very average fort save.
You don't really know what's going on past 30 feet and can't target with spells past that range.
It's not worth the tradeoff and gets worse as you level.
I wouldn't call that fine. I'd call it an extremely weak, almost unplayable option. All of this from your curse for what? Master Reflexes? And some fairly weak focus spells? Seems not great.
Concealed is an easy problem to get around. You just have to use abilities that don't target eg area effect spells like fire ball, summons etc.
There is an exception for fire magic. The range of 30ft is workable for most modules anyway.
You get good focus abilities.
You just aren't thinking about the posibilities.
No. I played one. The curse when you can't see past 30 feet is terrible.
Their focus spells are good. But that past 30 foot blindness range is hugely exploitable, makes you off-guard to everything past 30 feet, and turns you into a relatively close combatant for auras, gazes, and the like.
As I told you, the damage aura affects your allies. You have to be within 10 feet of enemies for the aura to hurt anyone. So it creates a bad situation of having to be within 10 feet of an enemy and often within 10 feet of the martials. So you end up in this situation where you might be hurting your friends while getting easily hammered by the enemy.
So you basically have this curse that hamstrings you, hurts your friends, damages you, and what do you get for it? Master Reflex save and some good focus spells that aren't so good as to be worth the bad.
At least the ancestor curse is mostly annoying, not actively making it hard for to you to interact with your allies risking damaging them or setting you up in range to get whacked on top of making you off-guard to ranged attackers who can slam you hard.
It's not worth it as you level up. Playing a curse that gets progressively worse you level is not how they used to design oracle curses.
Oracle curses used to be designed so that the oracle learned how to harness the power of the curse. Now they seem to be designed to screw you up worse as you level with minor benefits if not outright unplayable burdens. Now the design of the original PF1 oracle curse where the oracle eventually turned the curse to their advantage.
The flame oracle is not fun as ranged attacks against you grow more powerful and you can't see the battlefield past 30 feet and you have to stay close to extremely dangerous creatures with caster defenses and risks of harming your friends.
You'll see how this works if you play one up to a higher level. It really starts to suck that off-guard against ranged attackers and being inside a 30 foot range all the time to use your abilities. Not worth it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If a combat is clearly not going to happen within 10 to 30ft, why would you ramp up your curse?
I had a flames oracle that played up until level 17, and not even that optimally. He did just fine. If your curse is causing you this many problems you're using it wrong. It isn't something you just flip on as quickly as possible in every fight. He didn't even go into major curse that often, but when he did his positioning allowed him to hurt multiple enemies without hurting allies, and his fire spells wrecked shop. If close range fire spells weren't the answer, he'd just use his slot spells instead. And this was prior to the condensed casting proficiency. Now his character could snag some psychic amps to leverage his focus pool in those situations too. The nice thing is combats tend to start at range and then get close far more often than they start close and then move to range. So you rarely regret switching into curse mode as long as you picked the right moment to do it.
No. I played one. The curse when you can't see past 30 feet is terrible.
"Can't see" is hyperbole. At worst curse level it is a 50% miss chance but you can still see the enemies enough to know what square they are in. And the fire-trait focus spells (or slot spells that you may have) ignore the miss chance.
Also you aren't acknowledging the counterpoint that many modules - such as Abomination Vaults - have all of the battles in tiny rooms where a 30 foot range is quite a bit farther than the farthest wall.
The major curse level damaging yourself for 1d6 damage per round is more of an annoyance amount of damage than anything significant for the character level that you can get to major curse at. The fact that it harms your allies is a problem to work around, not something that makes the subclass unplayable. Especially with the additional option to spend an action to prevent anyone from taking damage.
Yeah, fire resistance was already a pretty reasonable investment by this level given how common fire damage hits you. No reason your allies can't have it.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Not to mention some curses like flame are also really bad to RP.
"The bandit camp is ahead. Are you guys ready?"
"Bandit camp? I only see fire"
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I actually love divine accessThe part of the Oracle class I really hope they don't lose is the incredibly awesome Oracle oracle feats the class had, like glean lore, vision of weakness and read disaster. Those kind of feats really made the class feel different from any other caster.The feats are definitely the best part, aside from divine access. Hopefully that becomes part of the core chassis.
It's a "good" feat but one that's unfortunately a tax for flames and storm oracles.
It's a "good" feat but one that's unfortunately a tax for flames and storm oracles.
Flames Oracle, I understand the claim of feat tax - Flames characters are likely to want more fire trait spells than the Divine list gives.
Why does Tempest Oracle need off-tradition spells any more than any other Oracle Mystery?
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
It's a "good" feat but one that's unfortunately a tax for flames and storm oracles.Flames Oracle, I understand the claim of feat tax - Flames characters are likely to want more fire trait spells than the Divine list gives.
Why does Tempest Oracle need off-tradition spells any more than any other Oracle Mystery?
Mystery benefit gives a damage bonus to air and water spells
Ive never played an oracle so im coming at this as a question to better understand the class.
Some are saying just know when not to ramp up your curse. That kind of reminds me of the conversations around barbarian rage and when to not use it. The question then is when you are in a situation where ramping up your curse is too detrimental are you left as a worse caster without accessing that mechanic? Or is the oracle when not ramping up their curse still a very effective class?
The question then is when you are in a situation where ramping up your curse is too detrimental are you left as a worse caster without accessing that mechanic? Or is the oracle when not ramping up their curse still a very effective class?
Disclaimer: I have only played Oracles at low level, and only Lore Oracle and Flames Oracle.
Lore Oracle often doesn't want to ramp up their curse level, and their focus spells aren't all that great in combat - though you can pick up some others that are. However, their curse isn't all that high of impact. Not much worse than that of Cosmos Mystery IMO.
Without using focus spells and curse mechanics, the class plays a lot like a Divine Sorcerer - including the Lore Oracle's benefit of having a Sorcerer's amount of spells in Repertoire. And with the added benefit over Sorcerer of having light armor proficiency and more HP.
Flames Oracle does like to spend focus points. The ramping up of curse as a result is mostly just a drawback that just has to be mitigated (through combat tactics, obviously - the curse effects themselves can't be mitigated). The curse doesn't really have many benefits to it even at higher stages.
Without using focus spells, the class feels like many other Divine spellcasters such as Cleric and Witch, but without any of those class's additional benefits such as Divine Font Heal spells or Hexes. It does have the benefit of being a spontaneous caster though, so the spells that it does know are available most of the time. It also has the added benefit of a good offense cantrip, but that has become less of a benefit with the Divine tradition getting some good offense cantrips natively.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Remember when debating curse efficacy game design is going to play a big part of it. Deriven's complaints make sense when you remember he's playing a heavily modified version of Pathfinder and also tends to favor extremely large maps.
For someone who's playing a dungeon crawl or AP where sightlines are naturally small, the same penalty might not even be a penalty at all.
It's a "good" feat but one that's unfortunately a tax for flames and storm oracles.Flames Oracle, I understand the claim of feat tax - Flames characters are likely to want more fire trait spells than the Divine list gives.
Why does Tempest Oracle need off-tradition spells any more than any other Oracle Mystery?
IMO the problem with Access is that it's somewhat of a theme tax. Like it's difficult to really lean into the conceptual space of mysteries like Flame or Tempest without investing in extra spells, which can be somewhat frustrating.
No. I played one. The curse when you can't see past 30 feet is terrible."Can't see" is hyperbole. At worst curse level it is a 50% miss chance but you can still see the enemies enough to know what square they are in. And the fire-trait focus spells (or slot spells that you may have) ignore the miss chance.
Also you aren't acknowledging the counterpoint that many modules - such as Abomination Vaults - have all of the battles in tiny rooms where a 30 foot range is quite a bit farther than the farthest wall.
The major curse level damaging yourself for 1d6 damage per round is more of an annoyance amount of damage than anything significant for the character level that you can get to major curse at. The fact that it harms your allies is a problem to work around, not something that makes the subclass unplayable. Especially with the additional option to spend an action to prevent anyone from taking damage.
It states at the moderate level and up, they are hidden from you past 30 feet. A 50% miss chance to target on top of making a save if trying to use a save spell isn't great at all.
They are hidden from you, so you are off-guard to them from all attacks. And ranged attacks get stronger as you level including precision damage.
Fire spells past the 30 feet do not ignore the miss chance.
Remember when debating curse efficacy game design is going to play a big part of it. Deriven's complaints make sense when you remember he's playing a heavily modified version of Pathfinder and also tends to favor extremely large maps.
For someone who's playing a dungeon crawl or AP where sightlines are naturally small, the same penalty might not even be a penalty at all.
IMO the problem with Access is that it's somewhat of a theme tax. Like it's difficult to really lean into the conceptual space of mysteries like Flame or Tempest without investing in extra spells, which can be somewhat frustrating.It's a "good" feat but one that's unfortunately a tax for flames and storm oracles.Flames Oracle, I understand the claim of feat tax - Flames characters are likely to want more fire trait spells than the Divine list gives.
Why does Tempest Oracle need off-tradition spells any more than any other Oracle Mystery?
It's not that modified a game.
The part about larger maps is true. We play from longer range, both the players and the enemies. You have to make a lot more very dangerous saves playing within 30 feet of enemies and it can get nasty at higher level, so we tend to like to be farther away.
...Flameis fine.No, it isn't. Not sure why you think this.
Your precise vision range becomes 30 feet. Things are concealed from you and can't be mitigated. At moderate they become hidden from you past 30 feet. All this to generate a 10 foot aura of flame that does 4d6 damage to everyone including allies while doing 1d6 to you.
All this on a d8, weak defenses class that is better off operating from range.
It's not a good curse. The hidden condition past 30 feet makes it nearly unplayable unless everything operates within that 30 feet meaning hit by auras, gazes, and the like with a very average fort save.
You don't really know what's going on past 30 feet and can't target with spells past that range.
It's not worth the tradeoff and gets worse as you level.
I wouldn't call that fine. I'd call it an extremely weak, almost unplayable option. All of this from your curse for what? Master Reflexes? And some fairly weak focus spells? Seems not great.
Concealed is an easy problem to get around. You just have to use abilities that don't target eg area effect spells like fire ball, summons etc.
There is an exception for fire magic. The range of 30ft is workable for most modules anyway.
You get good focus abilities.
You just aren't thinking about the posibilities.No. I played one. The curse when you can't see past 30 feet is terrible.
Their focus spells are good. But that past 30 foot blindness range is hugely exploitable, makes you off-guard to everything past 30 feet, and turns you into a relatively close combatant for auras, gazes, and the like.
As I told you, the damage aura affects your allies. You have to be within 10 feet of enemies for the aura to hurt anyone. So it creates a bad situation of having to be within 10 feet of an enemy and often within 10 feet of the martials. So you end up in this situation where you might
No. If anything, I stated the opposite.
I have always been an advocate of range as a PC advantage that our groups build to take advantage of. Martials obviously have to be close, but casters and ranged do not and should not.
Reach Spell I consider one of the most useful and powerful metamagics in the game. I pick it up on nearly every caster character.
So that was not me.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
If a combat is clearly not going to happen within 10 to 30ft, why would you ramp up your curse?
Why would I make a flame oracle if I did not intend to use the focus spells as that is the main draw of the mystery? It's not he master in reflex saves. That is a pretty weak upgrade. The flame oracle focus spells are pretty good.
If you play the game within 30 feet all the time and no enemies are outside 30 feet, then I guess you are ok.
I don't like being offguard to enemies past 30 feet or having to target everything as hidden past 30 feet. No point in picking up reach spell for a flame oracle as after a single daily casting of a focus spell and then cast another and suddenly you're Mr. I can't see past 30 feet and have to play like everything is hidden to me past 30 feet or I'm using player knowledge.
I don't enjoy the disadvantages of that at all.
Alchemist has most changes? In player core 2?
Oracle needs a very big rework of the curse with the new Refocus rules or they are screwed.
Buddy of mine and I were comparing healing and class options and basically determined through our back-of-napkin math that right now there's no mechanical reason to want to play an oracle, and thematically a lot of the beats an Oracle would 'hit' could be covered with GM fiat.
So Oracle definitely needs a rework, because being unable to play most of an adventure is not helpful to the large majority of groups out there.
It merits noting that this was brought up during the Playtest as a possible issue and it was somewhat mitigated.
Hopefully folks were paying attention to that.
I do like Cosmos Oracles DR. Their focus spells are weak. Their curse is minor for a caster if not somewhat beneficial.
I saw a battle oracle in action up to 14. It wasn't too bad. Nothing special, but focus spells were ok. The bonus damage wasn't bad since they had built themselves into an archer.
Flame started off ok, then got terrible as I got higher level and that blindness past 30 feet kicked in early every day. Not fun.
Ancestor worked ok for an Oracle with Monk Archetype. Player let the roll dictate what they did and built up Athletics for combat maneuvers, monk archetype for striking, and cast when casting came up.
A player did a Time oracle as well. That wasn't bad. They liked the 30 foot speed. Though they did not use focus spells enough to max the curse out and get slowed. They were a martial archetype anyway. Another archer.
One of my players likes building oracles with martial archetypes, which if you don't max the curse somewhat mitigates their downside if the mystery or curse benefit is helpful to a martial.