I have not seen them yet, but I am interested to see if the Oracle is the new terrible class, surprisingly good, or somewhere between.
Debilitating Dichotomy alone is a beast, so yes that one at least is worth it.
Something like Tempest Oracle could go like 3 rounds doing competitive damage to max spell slots of their level without even touching their spells slots each combat.
shroudb has summarized it quite quickly
most of the cursebound feats are at least interesting, roughly on par with focus spells, only that they have a different recource
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I have not seen them yet, but I am interested to see if the Oracle is the new terrible class, surprisingly good, or somewhere between.
It isn't a terrible class... it is just a flavourless caster for the most part with a totally optional curse to its playstyle.
As long as it keeps 4 slots it will generally be more powerful than before.
Gifted Power could mean between 2-4 extra top level spells before refocusing.
Are there any long term buff spells that meet the restrictions of the feat?
Im thinking prepping the party at the begining of the day,then refocusing to remove the Cursebound condition.
Is Gifted Power curse bound? I thought it was just one spell, like all the other classes with similar but worse feats.
Is Gifted Power curse bound? I thought it was just one spell, like all the other classes with similar but worse feats.
Darn it.
My bad.It's still quite decent but no , it's not Cursebound, it's just the extra slot, with restrictions.
Whether the cursebound feats are worth using depends on two factors:
1. How powerful the feat is.
2. How bad your curse is.
If you're using the best feats on the least painful curses, they are totally worth it. If you are using the worst feats on the most painful curses, it won't be.
Also, depends on whether you get the standard "refocus as long as I want" breaks between fights so you can remove the condition between fights.
Okay6, so which Curse is the least Painful to use now?
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IMO is the Cosmos' curse Curse of the Sky's Call. It's basically gives the oracle an enfeebled value equal to cursebound condition and DC/save penalty vs forced movement.
Considering that most oracle doesn't uses Str for nothing and fights at range it's unlikely that this curse will do any problems to most oracles.
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IMO is the Cosmos' curse Curse of the Sky's Call. It's basically gives the oracle an enfeebled value equal to cursebound condition and DC/save penalty vs forced movement.
Considering that most oracle doesn't uses Str for nothing and fights at range it's unlikely that this curse will do any problems to most oracles.
Yeah, agreed. Cosmos' curse is irrelevant most of the time now. It isn't doing anything an Oracle cares about most of the time, and if you take it you're probably not building to use STR abilities in combat anyway.
Tempest one is also rather unimpactful. Weakness to Electricity won't be triggered often and penalty to ranged attacks is useless as you just have to never make a ranged attack.
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base on how cosmos curse are read it could mean -4 debuff against any damage effect that also include force movement
flame seem to have the weakest curse
4 persistent fire damage is not even noticeable at level 17 when cursebound can progress to 4
It's also the only one that becomes a bigger problem if you can't stop and refocus immediately after the encounter. It's still probably manageable in most situations, but unique in its way of hurting you.
The only ones with REALLY problematic curses are like Ancestors, otherwise all the other ones are manageable, oh Lore curse 4 is also really bad.
I was confused by the ancestors curse. AC penalties seemed to be acknowledged as a no no in this type of crit system as evidenced by them removing the AC penalty from barb....then ancestors gets a cumulative -4 AC at max curse in tier 4? I can't imagine willingly choosing suicide so I'd never go for max curse on ancestor.....and would subsequently never pick ancestor as my curse. It's a shame bc I wanted to make an ancestor Oracle with the dead walk, but honestly a battle mystery Oracle with the old ancestors curse feat and the dead walk can capture all that flavor, so its not a huge deal. Still though...it's wild that they made a class that can get a cumulative -4 AC.....on a caster. It's the same head scratching I got when I saw the AC penalty on that anger spirit summoner (another subclass I WANTED to play but ultimately couldn't bring myself to).
However, I'm also the guy that can't stomach strength animal companions even though he wants them bc of the AC deficiencies. AC maluses might just be more a mental hangup for me than an actual problem in the game.
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As Curses are opt-in now, you can just raise your Curse when you are in no danger of direct harm. It's more limiting than the other mostly-unimpactful Curses but far from a real problem. AC penalty is an issue on melee characters but ranged characters can in general ignore it.
I was not aware of the specifics of your Oracle, I understand your anger. Still, from now on, I think everyone will avoid Dex-based options on their Ancestors Oracle.
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AC penalty is an issue on melee characters but ranged characters can in general ignore it.
Enemies getting crit by a bow or a gun can really suck though, but it doesn't come up as much when your enemies are closer to "monstrous" than "humanoid."
On a positive note, I do really like the cursebound feats. Now any Oracle can bypass recall knowledge for the lowest save (the party wiz/sorc thanks you), or get some additional damage from spells, or get the mid/late game stuff for some very beefy affects. Provided you want to spend your feats in the Oracle class, it's going to be an interesting caster mechanically. Very cool
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AC penalty is an issue on melee characters but ranged characters can in general ignore it.Enemies getting crit by a bow or a gun can really suck though, but it doesn't come up as much when your enemies are closer to "monstrous" than "humanoid."
It's pretty hard to stay at range if an enemy wants to close on you, and smart enemies that realize that your AC is in the tank and that you're actually quite dangerous will want to close on you. And that's the ones without ranged attacks, or the ones that start hurling Reflex spells at you, as that's also hit by this curse.
The Life curse is also bad when it stacks up, but Clumsy is really quite dangerous to stack up a lot of. Enfeebled is a total joke in comparison.
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Okay6, so which Curse is the least Painful to use now?
In rough order the best curses are
Flames - just make sure you have plenty of healing available and you can just ignore the damage. It is typically 1-2 points per round and worse case of 4.
Life - make sure you have non magical healing available ie Battle Medicine and alchemical healing. That is not hard to get.
Cosmos - just build a ranged character that doesn't care for Strength and doesn't need to be in melee. Trivial.
Then you probably want to limit how much you use your cursebound powers versus certain opponents
Tempest - don't push this curse if you are up against electrical attacks, and don't make ranged attacks (ie stick to save based for your offensive magic)
Bones - don't push this curse if you are up against undead or enemies that target your fortitude defense.
Lore - don't push this curse if you are up against enemies that target your will defense
Battle - don't push this curse if you are up against blasters and casters in general.
The worst is likely
Ancestors - clumsy is harsh in both melee and ranged as you need AC and Reflex defense so this is going to be the hardest to cope with. My suggestion would be to rely on concealment and hidden effects as they will still work with this curse. Get Invisibility from somewhere
The first 4 are pretty easy, the last 2 are hard.
I think the Ancestors cursebound effect is particularly thematic to that mystery. After all, if you push this curse, you will likely be joining them soon.
LOL!
Okay6, so which Curse is the least Painful to use now?In rough order the best curses are
How do you read the Bones curse when it says "You can be hurt by both vitality and void damage even if one or the other normally has no effect on you."?
I've been assuming it does not mess with targeting, i.e., Vitality Lash still can't target you if you're living, no Void Warp if you're undead, so it doesn't sound too bad. Reading it again though, I don't think I'm confident in my assumption anymore and it could be a more debilitating curse than I thought.
Okay6, so which Curse is the least Painful to use now?In rough order the best curses are
How do you read the Bones curse when it says "You can be hurt by both vitality and void damage even if one or the other normally has no effect on you."?
I've been assuming it does not mess with targeting, i.e., Vitality Lash still can't target you if you're living, no Void Warp if you're undead, so it doesn't sound too bad. Reading it again though, I don't think I'm confident in my assumption anymore and it could be a more debilitating curse than I thought.
I think it is intended to be one at a time. It is to go with switching your healing type. Maybe it needs errata.
Okay6, so which Curse is the least Painful to use now?In rough order the best curses are
Flames - just make sure you have plenty of healing available and you can just ignore the damage. It is typically 1-2 points per round and worse case of 4.
Life - make sure you have non magical healing available ie Battle Medicine and alchemical healing. That is not hard to get.
Cosmos - just build a ranged character that doesn't care for Strength and doesn't need to be in melee. Trivial.Then you probably want to limit how much you use your cursebound powers versus certain opponents
Tempest - don't push this curse if you are up against electrical attacks, and don't make ranged attacks (ie stick to save based for your offensive magic)
Bones - don't push this curse if you are up against undead or enemies that target your fortitude defense.
Lore - don't push this curse if you are up against enemies that target your will defense
Battle - don't push this curse if you are up against blasters and casters in general.The worst is likely
Ancestors - clumsy is harsh in both melee and ranged as you need AC and Reflex defense so this is going to be the hardest to cope with. My suggestion would be to rely on concealment and hidden effects as they will still work with this curse. Get Invisibility from somewhereThe first 4 are pretty easy, the last 2 are hard.
This does just seem like the Curses need to be rebalanced again because penalties to saves are much, much worse then taking passive fire damage or Cosmos which...Magic is generally not melee anyways so you can trivial it. However anything adding a AC penalty is bad can quickly leave to your own death.
It is interesting that you can ignore the Cursebound feats and play as a bulkier Divine Sorcerer with 8 hit points, light armor and 4 slots of spells per rank. The only thing I find is some of the Cursebound feats are not nearly as powerful as Paizo made them out to be.
As such what you're actually getting when you compare them at the current moment.
Oracle
- Higher HP Caster with the Most Slots
- 8 Hit Points per level and Light Armor
- Less Damage then Sorcerer
- Divine Tradition Only
- Vastly varying curses in drawback
- Can 100% ignore Cursebound Feats
Sorcerer
- Less HP caster with the most slots
- 6 Hit Point per level and no Armor
- Has bonus damage or healing when using Spell Slots but not Focus Spells
- Is now officially the Blaster Caster of PF-2E.
- Can choose any Spell Tradition via Bloodline
- Bloodmagic got massively buffed in effect
You can still easily grab Dangerous Sorcery through Sorcerer Dedication if you want more damage on your Oracle. It's been a staple to damage oriented casters and is very easy to grab on Charisma ones.
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They have simplified Oracle - maybe it was needed but I liked the more complex disadvatages.
And replaced the superceded focus point mechanics. They really did have to change after the general focus point changes.
But they have swapped a few almost unplayable mysteries for a few unplayable mysteries. Battle offers nothing much useful, and Ancestors is very dangerous so only newbies and dare devils will play them.
Hopeful we will get errata.
Just as a pure caster Divine Oracle looks good.
I think the Ancestors cursebound effect is particularly thematic to that mystery. After all, if you push this curse, you will likely be joining them soon.
You knocked a homerun on this joke.
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You can still easily grab Dangerous Sorcery through Sorcerer Dedication if you want more damage on your Oracle. It's been a staple to damage oriented casters and is very easy to grab on Charisma ones.
for a while with some GMs. It has pretty clearly been replaced by a class feature Sorcerous Potency
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How do you read the Bones curse when it says "You can be hurt by both vitality and void damage even if one or the other normally has no effect on you."?I've been assuming it does not mess with targeting, i.e., Vitality Lash still can't target you if you're living, no Void Warp if you're undead, so it doesn't sound too bad. Reading it again though, I don't think I'm confident in my assumption anymore and it could be a more debilitating curse than I thought.
If it doesn't mess with targeting, it's not a big deal since a lot of those effects still can't target you. ie: 3 action heal only does damage to Undead, and you're not Undead despite being vulnerable to Vitality damage, which the spell is doing. That seems to defeat the point, though, since if nothing doing Vitality damage can target you, then having a weakness to it is utterly pointless and it becomes an incredibly easy curse to ignore since almost nothing triggers it.
The way the curse is worded it seems to want to have you be affected by it, since it says that you can be hurt by it and that any immunity is suppressed. But yeah, it doesn't say anything about changing targeting.
I feel like the intention is that those things should now be able to target you, but this is going to be GM variable without a clarification.
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I'll say to you all what I said to my cosmos oracle player.
Just finished going over the new oracle class, particularly in regards to how it might impact your 2nd-level oracle character in PFS.
It appears you will lose your Powerful Leap and Quick Jump abilities for Moderate Curse, as well as your physical damage resistance. In return, it looks like you get get more spells: 4 slots per level instead of 3 (this won't mean much at lower levels, but is a BIG deal at higher levels), as well as some bonus spells for your repertoire. You also get the Oracular Warning focus spell which (if you keep all else the same from your previous character iteration) looks like the only current way to increase your oracular curse level at this time. Later on you will be able to choose other curse-boosting powers with your other class feats.
Overall, it looks like you gain some and you lose some, and many of the more thematic elements have been toned down (for example, I don't think you weigh half as much anymore).
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I'll say to you all what I said to my cosmos oracle player.
Just finished going over the new oracle class, particularly in regards to how it might impact your 2nd-level oracle character in PFS.
It appears you will lose your Powerful Leap and Quick Jump abilities for Moderate Curse, as well as your physical damage resistance. In return, it looks like you get get more spells: 4 slots per level instead of 3 (this won't mean much at lower levels, but is a BIG deal at higher levels), as well as some bonus spells for your repertoire. You also get the Oracular Warning focus spell which (if you keep all else the same from your previous character iteration) looks like the only current way to increase your oracular curse level at this time. Later on you will be able to choose other curse-boosting powers with your other class feats.
Overall, it looks like you gain some and you lose some, and many of the more thematic elements have been toned down (for example, I don't think you weigh half as much anymore).
I'm playing a Cosmos Oracle in Kingmaker and trying to figure out how I'm going to adjust to all this, and that's roughly where I am.
Power wise: I'm fine. Losing the physical resistance & curse benefits hurts, but the extra spell slot is great, some of the Cursebound stuff is great, and focus points being easier to use is helpful. Being able to sustain Intersteller Void and then blast something with Debilitating Dichotomy is a LOT of offense that doesn't use any spell slots at all.
Flavor wise: Well the curse doesn't really do anything flavorful now at all. Enfeebled is easy to ignore and doesn't seem to have much to do with "the sky's call" anyway. The mystery also lost its flavor. None of the Cosmos specific Cursebound abilities seem to have much of anything to do with the theme (such as it is). I'm effectively playing a Divine Sorcerer that can get Enfeebled in exchange for extra stuff. Before I was a small creature that weighed almost nothing and the GM could have some real fun with that when a strong wind whipped up if my curse was active as it fit the "you're not super attached to the ground" theme pretty well, which basically doesn't exist now.
And I think I have it easy on Cosmos. If I was a Battle Oracle I'd be like "well I guess I'm a Warpriest now?" Some of the themes you could do before like that one just don't work at all with the new curse mechanics and some of the flavor characters got from the class before is going to be extremely hard or impossible to recreate now. It's really rough for those folks.
(Amusingly - I'm archetyped into Imperial Sorcerer and I use that as my character contacting their ancestors who used to be Wizard-Kings in the Stolen Lands (or so my grandmother told me!), to get help with skills I don't have. This ALSO changed in PC2 and instead is now a debuff to enemy saves... which is great with those extra spells or Debilitating Dichotomy but also wipes out the theme and flavor I had going. It's proving a rough transition thematically and narratively and I may do a bigger rebuild to try and get some of it back. None of it is a power issue for me.)
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As someone who played the heck out of a flames oracle in 1e PFS, the original 2e oracle never sat quite right with me.
I adored the 1e oracle for its capacity for customization, and 2e locked that down tight. I never felt that I could do much with the original 2e oracle except lean into the playstyle prescribed by its chosen mystery, which was particularly irritating since the 2e flames oracle was all about being visually impaired and spontaneously combusting while my 1e oracle spent her first couple of revelations on fire resistance and the ability to see through flame and smoke. I genuinely felt that I'd be better able to represent my old oracle in 2e as a diabolic sorcerer (to try and keep some measure of divine casting) or fire kineticist (sacrificing casting entirely to go full fire bender) than trying to do so as an actual oracle.
For all the supposed loss of "flavor" in the remastered 2e oracle, I feel like I can actually use it to build something approaching my old oracle now, at least so far as base class is concerned. Obviously mandatory spontaneous combustion is still a thing, but I can live with that.
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I'll say to you all what I said to my cosmos oracle player.
Just finished going over the new oracle class, particularly in regards to how it might impact your 2nd-level oracle character in PFS.
It appears you will lose your Powerful Leap and Quick Jump abilities for Moderate Curse, as well as your physical damage resistance. In return, it looks like you get get more spells: 4 slots per level instead of 3 (this won't mean much at lower levels, but is a BIG deal at higher levels), as well as some bonus spells for your repertoire. You also get the Oracular Warning focus spell which (if you keep all else the same from your previous character iteration) looks like the only current way to increase your oracular curse level at this time. Later on you will be able to choose other curse-boosting powers with your other class feats.
Overall, it looks like you gain some and you lose some, and many of the more thematic elements have been toned down (for example, I don't think you weigh half as much anymore).
I don't have access to the new book in full yet, but I don't think a focus spell should be the source of curse advancement. Cursebound actions supposed to do so, which are mostly unique feats that oracles can pick up (and all curses start with one dependent on mystery). I'm pretty sure your focus spells aren't supposed to advance the curse anymore.
Correct, oracle focus spells are no longer cursebound.
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For all the supposed loss of "flavor" in the remastered 2e oracle, I feel like I can actually use it to build something approaching my old oracle now, at least so far as base class is concerned. Obviously mandatory spontaneous combustion is still a thing, but I can live with that.
These changes probably sit better if you don't have an Oracle right now and can use them to build what you want. Someone else said "this is great if you didn't like Oracle before", and that's pretty true.
If you already have a character going then you built something using the legacy flavor and having that upended so much with not much to replace it feels pretty bad.
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As someone who played the heck out of a flames oracle in 1e PFS, the original 2e oracle never sat quite right with me.
I adored the 1e oracle for its capacity for customization, and 2e locked that down tight. I never felt that I could do much with the original 2e oracle except lean into the playstyle prescribed by its chosen mystery, which was particularly irritating since the 2e flames oracle was all about being visually impaired and spontaneously combusting while my 1e oracle spent her first couple of revelations on fire resistance and the ability to see through flame and smoke. I genuinely felt that I'd be better able to represent my old oracle in 2e as a diabolic sorcerer (to try and keep some measure of divine casting) or fire kineticist (sacrificing casting entirely to go full fire bender) than trying to do so as an actual oracle.
For all the supposed loss of "flavor" in the remastered 2e oracle, I feel like I can actually use it to build something approaching my old oracle now, at least so far as base class is concerned. Obviously mandatory spontaneous combustion is still a thing, but I can live with that.
I felt similar to this before the details of the remaster came out. The thing is, while we technically have more flexibility, in 1E we had a lot more flexibility within the theme of the mystery. I didn’t want Oracles to be locked down to very specific powers and curses, but I didn’t want all of the flavor removed, either. I think the closest thing in 2E to what I was hoping for is the way Kineticist elements are designed. Each element has like 15 unique feats that are thematic to that element, plus the compound element feats. None of the new Oracle feats are unique to a mystery. The only unique things for choosing to be Flames or Bones or whatever are the three revelation spells and the curse. That went too far in the other direction for me.
Correct, oracle focus spells are no longer cursebound.
I mistook Oracular Warning for one of those feats that grants a focus spell it seems. Turns out the feat is self-contained.
Correct, oracle focus spells are no longer cursebound.I mistook Oracular Warning for one of those feats that grants a focus spell it seems. Turns out the feat is self-contained.
Understandable, since the feat is just the old Battle Oracle "Call to arms" Focus spell in feat form.
The way the curse is worded it seems to want to have you be affected by it, since it says that you can be hurt by it and that any immunity is suppressed. But yeah, it doesn't say anything about changing targeting.
I feel like the intention is that those things should now be able to target you, but this is going to be GM variable without a clarification.
It has big implications when it comes to spells, which are particular with their targeting. Everything else should work as expected. Items and non-spell abilities and attacks that deal void or vitality mostly don’t have strict targeting requirements, so they will threaten your weakness appropriately.
Gaining a weakness from a damage type that mostly can’t target you in the first place reads a bit too good to be true, so I can see the intention to not have it work that way. However, it also seems out of place from the other curses where it not only grants weaknesses but also completely removes an immunity you have by simply going to Cursebound 1. That reads a bit too bad to be true.
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It has big implications when it comes to spells, which are particular with their targeting. Everything else should work as expected. Items and non-spell abilities and attacks that deal void or vitality mostly don’t have strict targeting requirements, so they will threaten your weakness appropriately.The way the curse is worded it seems to want to have you be affected by it, since it says that you can be hurt by it and that any immunity is suppressed. But yeah, it doesn't say anything about changing targeting.
I feel like the intention is that those things should now be able to target you, but this is going to be GM variable without a clarification.
I'm not sure how true that is. Vitalizing Rune only applies to undead RAW, so you're immune to that. Bottled Sunlight only harms "undead and creatures with negative healing" (it's legacy), but this curse doesn't give you negative healing so you're immune to that too.
Vitality/Positive damage is not a common type to begin with, and the number of things that do it that don't also include targeting verbage appears to be very small. (Jyoti's Breath weapon is an example of one.)
Gaining a weakness from a damage type that mostly can’t target you in the first place reads a bit too good to be true, so I can see the intention to not have it work that way. However, it also seems out of place from the other curses where it not only grants weaknesses but also completely removes an immunity you have by simply going to Cursebound 1. That reads a bit too bad to be true.
It's a weird one, yeah. It's either got a lot of text that isn't doing anything and could just say "you gain weakness to whichever of Vitality/Void normally harms you and you cannot gain immunity to it by any means", or it's really unclear and should say "you take both vitality and void damage even if one would normally harm you, and you count as both undead and living for the purpose of being targeted by effects that do vitality/void damage."
Both of those at least clearly spell out what's intended here. I honestly can't fathom a guess as to what RAI is here, because it's either a rather nasty curse or a relatively mangeable one.
Tempest one is also rather unimpactful. Weakness to Electricity won't be triggered often and penalty to ranged attacks is useless as you just have to never make a ranged attack.
All your new domain spells are ranged attacks. So are your basic (divine) cantrips Needle Darts & Divine Lance.
Flames - just make sure you have plenty of healing available and you can just ignore the damage. It is typically 1-2 points per round and worse case of 4.
The Torch Goblin's dream come true!
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Pretty sure most of what the tempest Oracle gets you are range save based spells, which have no penalty.
The life mystery got gutted pretty bad. The penalty to magical healing went from half your level to your level times your curse value. It starts off twice as bad and can upgrade to eight times as bad. And you lost all the buffs to your heal spells, instead relying on a couple of feats which don't actually restore that much. But what is really frustrating is your ultimate healing magic now needs to be supplemented by someone with battle medicine or elixirs of life to stay alive. Part of the class's schtick before was being self reliant since other magical effects couldn't heal you anyway, but you could still heal yourself for respectable amounts.