Dear Paizo, who deleted mystery benefits?!

[Baarogue]

tsia, but for those who haven't seen yet...

Oracles used to have a curse, as they still do now, and a benefit, which made it worth enduring the curse

What were the benefits?
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Ancestors mystery benefit: The whispers of your ancestors have bestowed additional knowledge upon you. You gain an additional ancestry feat at 1st level and another additional ancestry feat at 11th level. These feats can't be ones that grant physiological effects, such as additional senses or unarmed attacks.

Battle mystery benefit (I'm especially salty about this one): You are no stranger to the trappings of warfare. You are trained in medium and heavy armor. At 13th level, if you gain the light armor expertise class feature, you also gain expert proficiency in these armors. (you know, because it's the BATTLE MYSTERY)

Choose one weapon group that embodies your mystery. You are trained in all martial weapons of that group. At 11th level, if you gain the weapon expertise class feature, you also gain expert proficiency for martial weapons in your chosen group, and you become trained in advanced weapons in that group.

(now we have to waste 1 action on a focus spell AND AN ACTION TO SUSTAIN IT IF WE MISS OUR STRIKES to have proficiency in martial weapons, or, you know, just take a martial archetype instead of use this useless revelation spell)

Bones mystery benefit (this entire benefit is now a part of the mystery's feat, Nudge the Scales, so it's obvious that benefits weren't just accidentally left out. I guess we know which mysteries were the author's favorite): You can cleverly leverage the subtleties of life and death to your benefit. Each day during your preparations, you can choose to align yourself in the confluence of positive and negative energy so as to gain negative healing, which means you are harmed by positive damage and healed by negative effects as if you were undead. If you already have negative healing, instead the DC of your recovery checks is equal to 9 + your current dying value.

Cosmos mystery benefit: Your body is as much an astronomical one as it is physical. You gain resistance equal to 2 + half your level against all physical damage.

Flames mystery benefit: Like fire itself, you flicker and dance, avoiding effects that would quench your vitality. You have expert proficiency in Reflex saves. At 13th level, if you gain the lightning reflexes class feature, your proficiency rank for Reflex saves increases to master, and when you roll a success on a Reflex save, you get a critical success instead.

Life mystery benefit: Your body is a deep reservoir of life energy. At each level, you gain Hit Points equal to 10 + your Constitution modifier from the oracle class, instead of 8 + your Constitution modifier.

(which supported casting the initial revelation spell, life link)

Lore mystery benefit: You hold more mystical knowledge within you than most. You have one additional spell in your repertoire of each level you can cast.

Tempest mystery benefit: You can see perfectly through wind and water, and you send electric charges through both air and water. You never take penalties to Perception from wind, rain, fog, or other precipitation, or from looking through water or being underwater, and such conditions don't cause anything to be concealed from you.
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I've left out the mysteries that weren't reprinted, which were Ash and Time. Do they retain their old benefits and curses? Or do they only suffer the curse without the benefit, since the new "chassis" doesn't include a benefit?

Some of the curses have been reworked or reduced (mostly in complexity), but some have not, at all. I see no reason to play a remastered oracle now. Why submit to the curse when there is no compelling benefit? They're just reject sorcerers

[Baarogue]

and before anyone says it, I play almost exclusively in PFS so all of my objections are in the context of playing a PFS character. I know you can keep or houserule benefits in a home game oracle

[PossibleCabbage]

I suspect this was a give-back in making Oracles 4 spells/rank instead of 3. But I admit, I miss the mystery benefits.

[graystone]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I suspect this was a give-back in making Oracles 4 spells/rank instead of 3. But I admit, I miss the mystery benefits.

4 spell/rank and the ability to 100% interact with focus without involving the curse plus cursebound abilities actually worth taking on your curse for. For me, the new oracle is all win where the old one was only as a chassis for archetypes as I had no intention of interacting with the old curse system: the mystery benefits were nice but I'll gladly trade them off for what we got in return. It was a pleasant surprise as i assumed the class would be largely unchanged.

[Baarogue]

You know, I did not even notice the increased spells per rank because that was never part of my calculus to play the class. It feels lazy to me to delete the unique mystery benefits and just throw extra spells at us but I guess they had to save page count somewhere

I played a battle oracle in case that wasn't obvious, which are trash now. Which myster(y/ies) do you like, graystone?

[graystone]

Baarogue wrote:

You know, I did not even notice the increased spells per rank because that was never part of my calculus to play the class. It feels lazy to me to delete the unique mystery benefits and just throw extra spells at us but I guess they had to save page count somewhere

I played a battle oracle in case that wasn't obvious, which are trash now. Which myster(y/ies) do you like, graystone?

In pre-remaster I liked Ancestors, Cosmos, Lore and Time: ones that give a nice boost without a super noticeable curse effect. For instance, I don't want Ash's leaving footprints everywhere I go.

In post-remaster, Bones, Cosmos, Lore and Tempest look fun. I'm currently building a Skeleton Bones Oracle. I figure that I'll make good use of its ability to be healed by vitality healing and I plan to pick up whispers of weakness to make Recall-like actions even though she'll have an 8 Int [themed as hearing the voices of the dead].

[Baarogue]

graystone wrote:

Baarogue wrote:

You know, I did not even notice the increased spells per rank because that was never part of my calculus to play the class. It feels lazy to me to delete the unique mystery benefits and just throw extra spells at us but I guess they had to save page count somewhere

I played a battle oracle in case that wasn't obvious, which are trash now. Which myster(y/ies) do you like, graystone?

In pre-remaster I liked Ancestors, Cosmos, Lore and Time: ones that give a nice boost without a super noticeable curse effect. For instance, I don't want Ash's leaving footprints everywhere I go.

In post-remaster, Bones, Cosmos, Lore and Tempest look fun. I'm currently building a Skeleton Bones Oracle. I figure that I'll make good use of its ability to be healed by vitality healing and I plan to pick up whispers of weakness to make Recall-like actions even though she'll have an 8 Int [themed as hearing the voices of the dead].

That's a solid concept, and Whispers of Weakness (no, autocorrect, not "whiskers") is a decent feat even if it's limited in uses due to being cursebound. But do you not see that's key to the difference in our opinions. As I pointed out in my OP, Bones was the one mystery that did not lose its benefit, and as you pointed out, gained a lot in the form of increased spells per rank, a nerfed curse, and the freedom to cast revelation spells freely. Soul siphon is a pretty good initial one too, unlike weapon trance. I'm open to testimonies like yours from players who like the changes, but I'd also like to hear from players of the mysteries who actually lost something

[SuperBidi]

Baarogue wrote:

and before anyone says it, I play almost exclusively in PFS so all of my objections are in the context of playing a PFS character. I know you can keep or houserule benefits in a home game oracle

I've played with a pre-remaster character at PaizoCon Europe with Alex Spiedel as a GM :D

Ok, circumstances were different as the PC2 just landed and I was not the only one who didn't have much time to convert. But honestly, as long as you avoid pick up groups, I'm pretty sure you can talk with the GM. I know I'd allow a Battle Oracle to play with their old chassis. Now, I agree it's not funny to "cheat", but we're left with that.

As for the remaster Oracle, it just lost its Curse and Mystery. My aunt who accurately predicts the outcome of reality TV at the cost of regularly losing her keys now qualifies as an Oracle. So sad...

[Squiggit]

Tempest Oracle objectively made it out decently well, in that the curse gives you weakness to a rare element and a penalty to attacks you probably aren't making in the first place. But you also feel a lot less like a 'tempest oracle' from experience, you're more of a generic divine caster who has a couple extra spells known.

Because mysteries do so little now, it really does seem to come down to just picking the curses that are the least likely to impact your ability to play the character, rather than letting its core themes define you.

In terms of raw power, the oracle came out okay, but the remaster was clearly aimed at appeasing people who never wanted to touch the class in the first place.

[SuperBidi]

Squiggit wrote:

the remaster was clearly aimed at appeasing people who never wanted to touch the class in the first place.

The issue I have with that choice is that the Sorcerer is still there. More classes for the big crowd or classes that can satisfy a larger number of players? That's a tough choice for a game designer.

[thenobledrake]

Squiggit wrote:

...the remaster was clearly aimed at appeasing people who never wanted to touch the class in the first place.

That's kind of an unfair statement.

You're downplaying the people that absolutely did want to touch the oracle, but found it too complicated in terms of making the character actually function within the scope of a campaign that is not catered specifically to them.

The idea can be appealing while the mechanics do more to get in the way - especially once the change in refocus rules made what used to be an advantage of being an oracle no longer applicable.

Just like how many people had issues with the superstition instinct of barbarian because it put a larger degree of burden on the rest of the game around that player's character to make the character fully functional, the pre-remaster oracle was an "I wish that weren't such a pain to make feel good in play" option for many people.

So even if the design was aimed at people that didn't play oracles previously, that doesn't mean it wasn't aimed at making oracle appealing for people that like the idea of the class.

[Tridus]

graystone wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I suspect this was a give-back in making Oracles 4 spells/rank instead of 3. But I admit, I miss the mystery benefits.

4 spell/rank and the ability to 100% interact with focus without involving the curse plus cursebound abilities actually worth taking on your curse for. For me, the new oracle is all win where the old one was only as a chassis for archetypes as I had no intention of interacting with the old curse system: the mystery benefits were nice but I'll gladly trade them off for what we got in return. It was a pleasant surprise as i assumed the class would be largely unchanged.

Ironically enough, I find that new Oracle is a better archetype than a class. You can get those Cursebound effects on another class trivially easily and you don't even suffer on how often you can use them until level 11 vs an Oracle.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I suspect this was a give-back in making Oracles 4 spells/rank instead of 3. But I admit, I miss the mystery benefits.

Given the mismatch between the spells table and the spells text, I suspect that being 4 spells/rank was itself the give-back. The whole class reads to me like they ran out of time to complete the book, realized it wasn't in a good state, and tossed that in as a quick fix, which is why it didn't get updated correctly. Weapon Trance has to be explained by being a draft that didn't get play tested or revised, right?

I don't get why they'd do it deliberately since they were already giving it more things to do in the form of Cursebound abilities divorced from the Revelation spells. Adding more spell slots on top of that is just an odd choice, especially when Gifted Power is already giving another spell slot at top level.

[Tridus]

Baarogue wrote:

I've left out the mysteries that weren't reprinted, which were Ash and Time. Do they retain their old benefits and curses? Or do they only suffer the curse without the benefit, since the new "chassis" doesn't include a benefit?

Ash and Time still have to use the Old Oracle. That's stated here.

It's pretty frustrating how hard it is to find this information, given how PFS info and rulings are scattered in so many different places. I only know about it because of a forum thread here about how the other Oracles are forced to use the new mysteries/curses, even if they don't get a rebuild and thus still have to use the old class chassis (which is totally absurd, but anyway).

Quote:

Some of the curses have been reworked or reduced (mostly in complexity), but some have not, at all. I see no reason to play a remastered oracle now. Why submit to the curse when there is no compelling benefit? They're just reject sorcerers

Yeah I'm not happy with how Oracle has been treated, both in the remaster itself and in how PFS is effectively forcing people to use the new version on legacy characters even if the changes effectively break the character and not allowing them to rebuild if they were created after PC1 came out. The PFS end of it is a completely ridiculous situation that has no need to exist.

The remaster class itself... I mean, it's divisive. There's definitely people that like this version more. There's people that really hate it. What I'm finding is that in general (though there's exceptions), the people that are really reacting poorly to it are people that were already playing/had played Oracle and have a character they like that is getting severely impacted. If you made a Battle Oracle before and wanted to play that fantasy, the remaster just breaks the character and requires major changes to get back to where you were (and Weapon Trance is so bad that it's a meme). Life Oracle really didn't come out of this very well either, nor did Ancestors, whose entire thing was changed into a feat that is worse than the curse effect was before and ALSO got a really awful new curse on top of it.

Nobody likes having their character messed up and Oracle got that especially hard in these changes. There's more "generic spellcaster" power now with extra spell slots and extra things you can do from the Cursebound abilities... but the Archetype gets those just as easily and Sorcerer is already a "more spell slots caster" except with better subclasses. The biggest thing Oracle had going for it was that it was jam packed with flavor and they absolutely gutted that.

I know outside PFS, I was able to update my Cosmos Oracle in a way that works. I lost a lot of cool stuff (and the resistance loss hurts, literally), but I also gained some cool stuff and I was able to adapt. Course, Cosmos' curse at this point is basically irrelevant to me so its effectively like I'm not cursed at all (the old curse was also pretty tame but did interesting things).

I know my GM has folks in other games playing other kinds of Oracles who asked if they could just ignore the remaster class entirely, and that's what they are doing. And considering how well the remaster went for a lot of other classes, I find that just sad.

I don't even think the class is weaker, in terms of raw power. It's not. It's just that quite a few character fantasies that people are playing with the old version flat out don't work in the new one.

[Ravingdork]

It seems more logical to me that the benefits were deleted by accident than it does that Paizo deliberately removed some of the most thematic and fun elements of the class.

I've at least one distraught PFS player who will be rebuilding his cosmos oracle into a different class entirely.

In my home games I may houserule those benefits back in.

[SuperBidi]

Ravingdork wrote:

It seems more logical to me that the benefits were deleted by accident than it does that Paizo deliberately removed some of the most thematic and fun elements of the class.

I've at least one distraught PFS player who will be rebuilding his cosmos oracle into a different class entirely.

In my home games I may houserule those benefits back in.

The funniest part is that, now, the Life Oracle is the only one with penalties to healing (on yourself) without any bonus anymore. So the Life Oracle is... the worst at healing.

[Finoan]

Ravingdork wrote:

It seems more logical to me that the benefits were deleted by accident than it does that Paizo deliberately removed some of the most thematic and fun elements of the class.

Logical or not, that is what happened.

Player Core 2 Preview: Oracle wrote:

The big change: instead of an oracle’s curse giving them a large suite of abilities, some of which are buffs, some of which are debuffs, and some of which might go either way, the oracle’s curse now just strictly debuffs the player. We’ve done it—no, no, no, come back; I promise this made the class stronger!

[Finoan]

Baarogue wrote:

You know, I did not even notice the increased spells per rank because that was never part of my calculus to play the class. It feels lazy to me to delete the unique mystery benefits and just throw extra spells at us but I guess they had to save page count somewhere

And the focus point usage.

I always found it really strange and off-putting to end up for most of the day having focus points that I quite literally was unable to spend.

[Squiggit]

thenobledrake wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

...the remaster was clearly aimed at appeasing people who never wanted to touch the class in the first place.

That's kind of an unfair statement.

You're downplaying the people that absolutely did want to touch the oracle, but found it too complicated in terms of making the character actually function within the scope of a campaign that is not catered specifically to them.

The idea can be appealing while the mechanics do more to get in the way - especially once the change in refocus rules made what used to be an advantage of being an oracle no longer applicable.

Just like how many people had issues with the superstition instinct of barbarian because it put a larger degree of burden on the rest of the game around that player's character to make the character fully functional, the pre-remaster oracle was an "I wish that weren't such a pain to make feel good in play" option for many people.

So even if the design was aimed at people that didn't play oracles previously, that doesn't mean it wasn't aimed at making oracle appealing for people that like the idea of the class.

In other words, someone who doesn't want to play the oracle. Like I said.

That's not a dig or unfair to anyone, but if your assessment of a class is "I'd like to play this class if its mechanics were completely different" then you don't really want to play that class. You want to play a different class entirely that might share some aesthetic similarities to the class you don't want to play.

There's nothing wrong with that.

[Finoan]

Baarogue wrote:

I played a battle oracle in case that wasn't obvious, which are trash now. Which myster(y/ies) do you like, graystone?

Disclaimer: Not graystone.

I have played a Lore Oracle and a Flames Oracle in PFS. I haven't rebuilt them yet or played the rebuilt versions of those characters.

Both of my Oracle characters were heavily into the spellcaster side of the character options, so the changes to make Oracle more of a spellcaster class feel pretty good.

Yeah, I know that Battle Oracle got the short end of the stick because the subclass was leaning into a more Gish role, and that character concept for an Oracle doesn't migrate nearly as well.

[thenobledrake]

Squiggit wrote:

In other words, someone who doesn't want to play the oracle. Like I said.

Now you're arguing semantics, if giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not actually trying to just be deliberately obtuse.

The old version of the class caused hurdles that had to be dealt with in order for anyone to play it and it not be objectively worse than any other available option - so it's basically just gate-keeping to say that only people that went through with playing it anyway "want to play the oracle".

It's not "I'd like to play this class if its mechanics were completely different". It's "I'd like to play this class but it kind of just doesn't really work without being given special treatment" and the fix for that which Paizo came up with was incidentally significantly different mechanics.

[SuperBidi]

thenobledrake wrote:

Now you're arguing semantics, if giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not actually trying to just be deliberately obtuse.

The old version of the class caused hurdles that had to be dealt with in order for anyone to play it and it not be objectively worse than any other available option - so it's basically just gate-keeping to say that only people that went through with playing it anyway "want to play the oracle".

It's not "I'd like to play this class if its mechanics were completely different". It's "I'd like to play this class but it kind of just doesn't really work without being given special treatment" and the fix for that which Paizo came up with was incidentally significantly different mechanics.

I partly line up with Squiggit as the main issue of the Oracle is its curse. The pre remaster Oracle was cursed, as in you had to deal with the negative consequences of its curse and these were impactful. The post remaster Oracle is not cursed, you don't have to deal with the negative consequences of its curse and even if you choose to do so they are so unimpactful that you can handwave them (as long as you don't choose the couple of Mysteries with impactful curses).

As such, it raises the question: Is the post remaster Oracle an Oracle? For me, it's not. It's a Sorcerer with the Oracle trait. An Oracle has to be cursed to be an Oracle.

Also, most players can't deal with drawbacks. Oracle and Mutagenist have been constantly referred as unplayable because of the drawbacks of their curse/mutagens. The concept of playing a character to its strengths and avoiding its weaknesses doesn't click for a lot of people.

[Baarogue]

Finoan wrote:

Baarogue wrote:

I played a battle oracle in case that wasn't obvious, which are trash now. Which myster(y/ies) do you like, graystone?

Disclaimer: Not graystone.

I have played a Lore Oracle and a Flames Oracle in PFS. I haven't rebuilt them yet or played the rebuilt versions of those characters.

Both of my Oracle characters were heavily into the spellcaster side of the character options, so the changes to make Oracle more of a spellcaster class feel pretty good.

Yeah, I know that Battle Oracle got the short end of the stick because the subclass was leaning into a more Gish role, and that character concept for an Oracle doesn't migrate nearly as well.

I welcome all testimonies. It'll be interesting to hear how many players who like the changes play Bones or Lore, who lost nothing, or less affected mysteries like Flames or Tempest

Yeah, the "battle" mystery might as well be renamed the "crossbow" mystery, because that's the only weapon suited for how you need to invest the character now with only light armor and no martial proficiency. I won't be using weapon trance, though something about it seems familiar. I have a morbid urge to try my best to make it work after all but it's been very discouraging having to completely abandon the original concept

Or I might take Tridus' advice and rebuild as a fighter with oracle mc dedication

[SuperBidi]

Baarogue wrote:

I welcome all testimonies. It'll be interesting to hear how many players who like the changes play Bones or Lore, who lost nothing, or less affected mysteries like Flames or Tempest

I play both a Tempest and a Life Oracle in PFS. I won't play my Tempest Oracle again as it lost its identity (no more personal tempest) and mechanics (no more blasting). I will continue to play my Life Oracle because I really like it and some of its flavor and mechanics were not coming from the Oracle class anyway.

[Tridus]

thenobledrake wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

In other words, someone who doesn't want to play the oracle. Like I said.

Now you're arguing semantics, if giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not actually trying to just be deliberately obtuse.

The old version of the class caused hurdles that had to be dealt with in order for anyone to play it and it not be objectively worse than any other available option - so it's basically just gate-keeping to say that only people that went through with playing it anyway "want to play the oracle".

It's not "I'd like to play this class if its mechanics were completely different". It's "I'd like to play this class but it kind of just doesn't really work without being given special treatment" and the fix for that which Paizo came up with was incidentally significantly different mechanics.

Significantly different mechanics makes it effectively a different class, especially when they dramatically change the feel of playing it and the flavour at the same time.

Investigator also had a bunch of issues that needed special treatment, especially around Pursue a Lead and Devise a Stratagem. If Paizo had replaced those with a totally different thing that doesn't involve pursuing leads or rolling ahead of time, it would have solved those problems, but it also wouldn't feel like the same class anymore.

Likewise, the issues Oracle had could have been fixed in ways that don't result in breaking a bunch of existing characters, making some Mysteries basically not work the way they're advertised to, and gutting the class of the feel of how it plays to make it more "generic spellcaster".

That's where people are coming from. An Oracle that doesn't have to deal with being cursed isn't an Oracle, no matter what Paizo calls it. The class had a certain feel in PF1 and in PF2, and they've now given us a new class with the same name that lacks that feeling. It's not a coincidence that the people most unhappy about that were playing the class and the people happiest about it weren't playing the class, and that's exactly why people think these changes were for people who didn't like Oracle before, rather than the other class changes which were largely aimed at tuning up an existing class without changing how it feels (Alchemist also changed pretty drastically but seems better received, and Wizard was basically forced by the OGL stuff).

Oracle needed a tuneup and effectively got a replacement instead.

[Teridax]

So, to answer the OP directly: the Oracle's remaster was a net benefit in terms of raw power. The extra spell slot per rank alone I think makes the class stronger than they ever were before, along with the ability to use focus spells without triggering their curse. I would go as far as to say that the class is in fact a little too strong right now, so they definitely received a net benefit from their changes.

In my opinion, however, a "net benefit" isn't really saying much when the Oracle was a really weak class prior to the remaster, and I would personally gladly give up that fourth slot per rank if it meant having mystery benefits once more. Although the Oracle was made more powerful, I very much agree with the critics here that this power increase came at a significant cost to the class's identity. Specifically, losing the subclass-specific mystery benefits that helped make the Oracle almost into a specialist, and being allowed to opt out of their curse entirely if they so wish, both made the class more generic. The fact that it is possible to play the Oracle as an almost entirely feature-free divine caster save for their strong stats and spell slots, and still do well, does not reflect positively on the class for me.

[SuperBidi]

Tridus wrote:

Alchemist also changed pretty drastically but seems better received

As a very long time Alchemist player, the changes to the Alchemist were rather big but, and this is a big but, the identity of the class has been mostly kept as is.

Actually, I think it even has been reinforced:
- Quick Alchemy is much more usable, making the Alchemist the king of "having the right item at the right moment".
- It's much easier to keep your allies' weapon poisoned or to stay under a Mutagen. These aspects are not costing you the majority of your reagents.
- You have much more sustainability, allowing you to stay an Alchemist during long adventuring days.

[steelhead]

My battle oracle might take a significant change to make it worthwhile in PFS. He was already ranged, so that might work in my favor. However, following all the bad press, he’s not high on my list for remastering because it might take a notable amount of work to either make him functional as an oracle with the same flavor and style, or get to the point where I realize that it’ll take a completely different rebuild, including class shenanigans.

[Captain Morgan]

thenobledrake wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

In other words, someone who doesn't want to play the oracle. Like I said.

Now you're arguing semantics, if giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not actually trying to just be deliberately obtuse.

Actually you two are mostly just arguing past each other here. You're saying that some people liked the general flavor of the class while not liking the mechanical execution. Squiggit is saying some people already liked both the flavor AND the mechanics. And Squiggit is correct that these changes ruined the class for many people who liked it as is. And those mechanics also removed some of the class's unique flavor, to boot.

As others point out above, you're left with a more generic four slot caster when we already had the sorcerer. You have your cursebound feats, but like a third of the curses are so bad you'll rarely want to risk them. Many of the old oracle concepts are now better realized by a different class with the Oracle archetype.

[PossibleCabbage]

I'm curious if the Paizo devs anticipated that the Oracle would be the most controversial class in terms of "what changed about it" in the remaster. Since the reaction to most other classes was positive or neutral, but the oracle seems to have the most mixed reaction.

[Omega Metroid]

Just to throw my two cents in here... I haven't done a full comparison yet, but the thing that stands out the most to me isn't just the loss of Mystery benefits (and by extension, the effective loss of your Mystery as a whole, since there aren't really any class feats that key off of it), but the whole "choose your Mystery, and by 'Mystery' we mean Curse" thing means that Oracle's subclasses are anathema to the game's standard subclass design.

Normally, if a class has a subclass, then you use that subclass to specialise. It lets you choose what you're best at, and how you want to narrow your focus & define your character. Oracle, however, chooses how they want to get screwed over.

They're the only class in the game that uses their subclass to choose what they want to be worst at.

----

Quick summary:

• Ancestors doesn't get worse at having ancestors, but they're now significantly worse at not becoming an ancestral spirit (by which I mean dying because their ancestors are actively malicious and explicitly trying to kill you now).
• Battle is effectively a trap action to trick you into thinking you're good at battle, then cripple you the instant you miss an attack.
• Cosmos was one of the only two that was playtested, and "only" lost the fun part of the curse and all of its flavour.
• Flames got its wish granted by an evil genie; it gets fire spells now, but lost the features that interact with them.
• Life is now the worst Oracle at healing, since it no longer has the HP or self-healing capacity to be an empathic pseudo-healer with life link, and the self-healing nerf might or might not apply to temporary HP too (strictly as written, it affects any spell that "restores" temp HP).
• Lore loses the free RK check, and gaining stupefied 1 at CB4 just comes across as a petty insult.
• Tempest got its wish granted by the same evil genie as Flames, gaining air & water spells but losing the feature it wanted them for, and also slows the entire party down if you hit CB4.
• Not sure about Bones yet, though being more vulnerable to the very spells it grants you comes across as a petty insult.

I want to do a more in-depth comparison, but my first impression is that each "Mystery" is now named after the thing it makes you worst at, which is the literal exact opposite of how every other class in the game is designed. (Not counting how certain parts of the class got ripped out of their Mystery, turned into a feat, and then nerfed for no real reason, since that seems to have been done by a different team than the one that rebastard remastered the Mysteries.)

[Ryangwy]

thenobledrake wrote:

Now you're arguing semantics, if giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not actually trying to just be deliberately obtuse.

The old version of the class caused hurdles that had to be dealt with in order for anyone to play it and it not be objectively worse than any other available option - so it's basically just gate-keeping to say that only people that went through with playing it anyway "want to play the oracle".

It's not "I'd like to play this class if its mechanics were completely different". It's "I'd like to play this class but it kind of just doesn't really work without being given special treatment" and the fix for that which Paizo came up with was incidentally significantly different mechanics.

But the old curses also had completely unique playstyles that just don't exist anymore. Old Tempest Oracle got interesting use out of very thematic spells. New Tempest Oracle is a divine sorcerer that got some electric spells somehow. Old Life Oracle had a completely unique healing playstyle. New Life Oracle is angelic sorcerer. Let's not even talk about Battle.

For Old Oracle players, that unique playstyle was the class. So yeah, people saying 'I'd like to play Oracle if they removed all the unique curse enabled playstyle in favour of everything being generic and poachable' basically are saying they don't want the premaster Oracle.

[Unicore]

I played a cosmos Oracle pre-remaster that was a lot of fun, but I am looking forward to my next character, maybe my first return to PFS, being a remastered Lore Oracle.

I really like that they moved the curse to class feat activated. The 4th spell slot really feels like overkill to me, but I won't complain about more spell slots ever.

[Ferious Thune]

Omega Metroid wrote:

Just to throw my two cents in here... I haven't done a full comparison yet, but the thing that stands out the most to me isn't just the loss of Mystery benefits (and by extension, the effective loss of your Mystery as a whole, since there aren't really any class feats that key off of it), but the whole "choose your Mystery, and by 'Mystery' we mean Curse" thing means that Oracle's subclasses are anathema to the game's standard subclass design.

Normally, if a class has a subclass, then you use that subclass to specialise. It lets you choose what you're best at, and how you want to narrow your focus & define your character. Oracle, however, chooses how they want to get screwed over.

They're the only class in the game that uses their subclass to choose what they want to be worst at.

Yes, this. Very much this. As someone posted above, the blog said that they removed the benefits of the curse. But they didn’t. They moved the benefits of the curse (and changed them). They removed the benefit of the Mysteries, and that’s just weird to me. It was weird to me pre-remaster that your major abilities came from your curse. I don’t know at what point in the development of the original class that it was decided that Oracles are defined by their curse instead of their Mystery, but that’s where things ended up, and why I didn’t want to play the class pre-remaster. Now, they are still mostly defined by their curse, at least thematically, and then they have a bunch of mostly generic abilities that either other Oracles can get or other classes can get. It’s down to, what, three focus spells that are unique to a mystery?

[Baarogue]

SuperBidi wrote:

Baarogue wrote:

I welcome all testimonies. It'll be interesting to hear how many players who like the changes play Bones or Lore, who lost nothing, or less affected mysteries like Flames or Tempest

I play both a Tempest and a Life Oracle in PFS. I won't play my Tempest Oracle again as it lost its identity (no more personal tempest) and mechanics (no more blasting). I will continue to play my Life Oracle because I really like it and some of its flavor and mechanics were not coming from the Oracle class anyway.

That sucks about your Tempest oracle. I was only looking at the benefits list. I forgot to account for the benefits and flavor of the old curses. Where did the flavor and mechanics come from that you like about your Life oracle?

[yarrchives]

I'm a little unsure how to evaluate the Bones curse. By "You can be hurt by both vitality and void damage even if one or the other normally has no effect on you", does that mean both Heal and Harm damage you no matter your healing alignment? That's pretty huge for a cursebound 1 effect, but if not, the curse is one of the more manageable ones.

I do think it's a missed opportunity they gave the mysteries a set of 3 granted spells instead of letting them choose the 3 spells from a deity within their given domains à la Cleric/Divine Font.

[Baarogue]

yarrchives wrote:

I'm a little unsure how to evaluate the Bones curse. By "You can be hurt by both vitality and void damage even if one or the other normally has no effect on you", does that mean both Heal and Harm damage you no matter your healing alignment? That's pretty huge for a cursebound 1 effect, but if not, the curse is one of the more manageable ones.

Unless they errata that so only one effect from those spells can affect you at a time, yes that is what that means

Someone upthread said something about only two of the remastered mysteries having been playtested. What were the two, and where can I read that myself? So much about this book keeps making me think it got rushed, not just in the oracle (but definitely especially in the oracle) but other extra text that showed the care for clarity that went into the APG is just missing from PC2

[Bluemagetim]

One thing I like about reading and posting on these threads is that it gets me to read the books.
I'm just looking at the difference between tempest pre and re master tempest oracle since thats what I would go for cause its the closest to lighting themed.
Now I never played an oracle so im not looking at this from that perspective. I understand the loss of having something you liked and now its all different so im not judging anyone who liked the old oracle.

Losing the +1 electricity damage per rank to air and water spells hurts but that is oftset IMO enough by gaining Fortell Harm, even though the application of fortell is more limited. I just am not sure how much the limits on fortell harm actually are limiting though. it might even be more applicable since its not restricted by tag. I think for the 1 or 2 ranked damaging spells i may cast in a fight im still getting extra probably electricity damage based on the rank of those spells.
Additionally here as this oracle levels the options of what i want to use 2 curse increases per battle for can widen.

The curse being 4 stages instead of 3 looks to be a better curse situation and not going up when casting a revelation spell is for the better. Cursebound now a resource that cursbound feat actions use opened up what you can do in exchange for ramping the curse. I see that as an upgrade since your free to use the revelation spells independent of the curse.

Now the main benefits as far as im concerned are the spells you get added to repertoire and access to the lightning domain.
Pre only got electric arc
Re gets it too but also thunderstrike and chain lighting and hydraulic torrent.

All together I think the remaster package is better but getting chain lighting makes everything better in my very biased opinion.

[Ferious Thune]

I think there is definitely an argument for Oracle being a stronger class overall. That doesn’t mean it’s a better class overall. Thunderstrike, Chain Lighting, and Hydraulic Torrent are all things other classes can get. Oracle lost a lot of its uniqueness and filled it in with more spells and access to domains that other classes can get. The cursebound feats are unique to Oracle (and Oracle archetype), yet they aren’t unique to a mystery, and had therefore lost a lot of their flavor.

[thenobledrake]

Captain Morgan wrote:

...but like a third of the curses are so bad you'll rarely want to risk them.

This is exactly where people insisting former oracle was "better" lose me.

All of the new curses are far easier to tolerate in practical campaign scenarios than the former curses are, but there's some kind of mental block making it so that where new curses can be bad because they're hard to deal with old curses are good because they're hard to deal with and that doesn't register as nonsense.

Turning the whole discussion into a kind of No True Scottsman because anybody that had a problem with old oracle's mechanical implementation, and apparently also anyone that thinks the new oracle actually does have the same lore despite mechanical differences, isn't a real oracle fan.

[Teridax]

By the way, for anyone who's interested, I've written a brew that lets you sacrifice spell slots to gain mystery benefits on your Oracle, as well as use your focus spells like cursebound actions if you want. The balance is likely not 100% there, but it should still give a taste of what each Oracle could look like when fully committed to their mystery (including a Battle Oracle with actual martial proficiencies).

[Bluemagetim]

Ferious Thune wrote:

I think there is definitely an argument for Oracle being a stronger class overall. That doesn’t mean it’s a better class overall. Thunderstrike, Chain Lighting, and Hydraulic Torrent are all things other classes can get. Oracle lost a lot of its uniqueness and filled it in with more spells and access to domains that other classes can get. The cursebound feats are unique to Oracle (and Oracle archetype), yet they aren’t unique to a mystery, and had therefore lost a lot of their flavor.

I am not sure I am convinced on flavor just yet at least in the case of the Tempest Oracle. It may be true for ones like battle. Here is what im thinking.

The way it plays out tempest oracle can cast thunderstrike then following it up with fortell harm for 2 extra electricity damage procing on the enemies turn. So even though this oracle could use actions from other feats if they have them, using fortell harm with the new spells they are granted fits flavor well.

One difference I noticed (correct me if im missing something) being pre oracle didnt actually have any spells with air or water tags at level 1 except for focus spells.

Also Thunderstrike, Chain Lighting, and Hydraulic Torrent were not things an oracle was just given in chassis before now and they fit tempest flavorwise very well. I think some feats were able to give access to these spells but now its in chassis and that to me seems like a step in the flavor direction. At least in terms of how I understand flavor.

The benefits from the cursebound stages were one way to add flavor to the curse itself but im ok with getting spells that fit the theme instead. Im not crazy missing putting out non magic fires or the fire resistance and 1d6 electricity damage for getting attacked.

[SuperBidi]

Baarogue wrote:

Where did the flavor and mechanics come from that you like about your Life oracle?

Well, first and foremost the Life Oracle was a healer. It was very easy to get to Moderate Curse where you were rolling d12 for healing (and I must admit I like the d12 as a die, it rolls much better than a d8 and there's a feeling of power when you roll one as it is rather rare otherwise).

Then, raising the curse had bonuses and penalties. So I was painting it rather positively (my Oracle was glowing), something that I can't do anymore as it's now strictly negative. I can find a negative portrayal, my Oracle could shrivel, but I think it'd feel weird considering how Cursebound actions are weak: "Shriveling" to restore 6 hit points seems definitely overkill.

I actually think it's the major difference between preremaster and remaster Oracle: You no more want to engage with your curse. As a remaster Oracle, you'll do whatever you can to either avoid triggering your curse or trigger it when it has no impact. Because the Cursebound actions are rather weak, triggering your curse and getting actually affected by it would be a net negative.
Pre remaster, getting affected by your curse was ok because the compensation was worth it. My Life Oracle sometimes had to heal herself and it was not because "I played it badly" as the benefits of the curse were clearly compensating (actually, as I was rolling d12 I was still healing more hps despite my curse reduction).

The Curse was a bit of a super sayan transformation. My Life Oracle was not raising it by default, only when healing was needed. And it was really feeling like another level of power to handle tough situations. A very nice feeling, both mechanically and flavor-wise.

[Ryangwy]

thenobledrake wrote:

All of the new curses are far easier to tolerate in practical campaign scenarios than the former curses are, but there's some kind of mental block making it so that where new curses can be bad because they're hard to deal with old curses are good because they're hard to deal with and that doesn't register as nonsense.

Turning the whole discussion into a kind of No True Scottsman because anybody that had a problem with old oracle's mechanical implementation, and apparently also anyone that thinks the new oracle actually does have the same lore despite mechanical differences, isn't a real oracle fan.

What? No, people don't like the new curses because they're purely opt in things that don't matter if you play like a Sorcerer.

The new oracle is basically if you want to use more than one cursebound action, pick the least harmful curse, otherwise pick whichever mystery gives you your favourite spells and never engage in the curse.

Under the old oracle, the more you engaged your mystery, the more you engaged your curse. Under the new oracle, the more you engage your mystery, the less you engage your curse.

[Baarogue]

thenobledrake wrote:

Captain Morgan wrote:

...but like a third of the curses are so bad you'll rarely want to risk them.

This is exactly where people insisting former oracle was "better" lose me.

All of the new curses are far easier to tolerate in practical campaign scenarios than the former curses are, but there's some kind of mental block making it so that where new curses can be bad because they're hard to deal with old curses are good because they're hard to deal with and that doesn't register as nonsense.

Turning the whole discussion into a kind of No True Scottsman because anybody that had a problem with old oracle's mechanical implementation, and apparently also anyone that thinks the new oracle actually does have the same lore despite mechanical differences, isn't a real oracle fan.

Is it No True Scotsman to say you clearly don't know what you're talking about when you say something so reductive as boiling the complaints down to a double-standard?

My battle oracle w/undead sorcerer mc dedication was originally created for a Fist of the Ruby Phoenix game, and I later recreated him at level 1 for PFS. His concept was that he or another timeline version of him had died in the tournament and his spirit found itself inexplicably bound to a version of his pre-tournament body (along with who knows how many other timeline versions of his own spirit), but who had no memories of his inevitable death except a nagging feeling of doom

He wore full plate armor and wielded a maul (courtesy of the battle mystery benefits), because great axe would have been too problematic and munchkinly to arbitrate with the spell weapon storm (and still is, since the spell has not been changed) and I was trying to be nice to my GM

The old battle mystery curse was, and please read this

the old battle mystery curse wrote:

You thrive while adrenaline flows and your life depends on your might alone, but holding the collective battle prowess of the ages within you leaves your body weakened after a fight. You smell faintly of steel and blood no matter how you try to remove or mask the scent, you appear more muscular than you actually are, and you hear the faint clash and clamor of battle in the distance at all times.

Minor Curse Your body languishes when you aren't bringing harm to your foes. You take a –2 status penalty to AC and saving throws, but each time you make a Strike, you can suspend these penalties until the start of your next turn.

Moderate Curse The strain of conflict wears upon your body, even though you gain vitality from it. Making a Strike reduces the penalty from your minor curse to –1 rather than suspending it entirely. You gain a +2 status bonus to weapon and unarmed damage rolls. You also gain fast healing equal to half your level while in a non-trivial combat encounter.

Major Curse Your body proves capable of truly heroic feats, but doing so interferes with your mental focus. Your moderate curse's fast healing is equal to your level, and its damage bonus is +6. You gain a +1 status bonus to weapon and unarmed attack rolls, but you are stupefied 2.

So the curse brought with it benefits of its own in the form of fast healing and a damage bonus along with the problems. I rarely took it to the max stage because I didn't want to risk losing spells to stupefied. I admit I wasn't a fan of the reduced AC as a frontliner, but it was pretty manageable. As long as I made a Strike each turn it was no worse than a barbarian's Rage (no need to HIT with that Strike like with weapon trance), and if I was hit the fast healing helped a lot. The character fantasy of the curse was that the other timeline spirits didn't exactly learn from their deaths and spurred him to fight recklessly

When out of combat or when his curse manifested his body shrunk in on itself and the armor looked ill-fitted. He had a high charisma, natch, which means I heavily invested in Intimidation feats. He was my version of the cursed dark knight trope
-----
So, um, what can I do with that now?

No mystery benefit so I can't wear full plate or wield a maul without engaging with the terribad weapon trance spell. I could get heavy armor by investing heavily in armor-related feats and/or archetypes, and I could get the maul by taking the mauler AT. That's a lot of investment to get back to the baseline mystery benefit

I made use of the old initial revelation spell, call to arms every single combat. It was changed into the mystery's oracle feat, Oracular Warning and I still would use it every combat. BUT it has been nerfed. The spell version had its bonus to initiative raised through heightening, which as a focus spell was automatic, while the new feat version requires I be cursebound 2 or 3 when I use the feat in order to gain the +3 or +4. That means I need to intentionally NOT reduce my cursebound level between battles to gain the greater effect. ALSO, its temp HP has been rewritten from equal to the spell's level to equal to half my level. On its face one might think those are the same, no? But it doesn't say round up

How about the remastered oracles biggest and now ONLY representation of the mystery, its new curse? Please read this too and take care to compare it to the old

the new battle mystery curse wrote:

You thrive in the thick of battle, but your mystery's sheer focus on the physical and material leaves your soul weak against the tricks of spellcraft. You smell faintly of steel and blood no matter how you try to remove or mask the scent, you appear more imposing and muscular than you actually are, and you hear the faint clash and clamor of battle in the distance at all times.

Cursebound 1 Spells have an easier time wounding you. you gain weakness 2 to any damage dealt by a spell. Any immunity or resistance you have to spells is suppressed. This applies only to spells, not other magical abilities.
Cursebound 2 You take a -1 status penalty to saving throws against spells.
Cursebound 3 Your weakness to spells is equal to your level.
Cursebound 4 Your status penalty to saving throws against spells increases to -2

What necessitated the complete change from the original curse to this new one with the spell weakness bullshit tacked on? As I said, the old curse wasn't perfect but it was manageable and had a risk:value element that made engaging with it interesting. This new curse is just bad, as all the new curses are. This isn't cognitive dissonance making me see the old curse through rose-colored glasses. It's a change to the mystery's lore, is objectively worse mechanically, and more importantly, less fun

If you played an oracle, tell us about them and why you hated playing it and love its new version. If you now plan to play one since they're so grape, share that too. As I said earlier, I welcome all testimonies. Do you have one?

[SuperBidi]

thenobledrake wrote:

All of the new curses are far easier to tolerate in practical campaign scenarios than the former curses are, but there's some kind of mental block making it so that where new curses can be bad because they're hard to deal with old curses are good because they're hard to deal with and that doesn't register as nonsense.

Old curses were having strong impact but were coming with strong bonuses. New curses don't come with any bonus but the ability to use a Cursebound ability which, as nice as they are, are not worth taking any form of impactful penalty.

A perfectly played remaster Oracle should never engage with their curse, mostly by avoiding Cursebound abilities in situations where their curse could be impactful. That's not how I define an Oracle.

Also, equating a rather general backlash to a case of No True Scottsman sounds like an oversimplification, don't you agree?

[thenobledrake]

SuperBidi wrote:

Old curses were having strong impact but were coming with strong bonuses.

That's the problem, though.

The bonuses you were supposed to want came alongside the penalties that prevented the class from actually being functional - without the whole of the campaign being skewed to account for it, at least.

SuperBidi wrote:

A perfectly played remaster Oracle should never engage with their curse

That's just actually wrong because, unlike the prior curse mechanics that were always more bad than good for you despite having really strong benefits, the new cursebound stuff is actually mostly upside given the new curses are actually rather tame.

Plus it's just asinine that we're in a conversation in which someone else is telling me "well then you really didn't want to play oracle in the first place" and you're talking about being dissuaded from using your unique class options because of the minor penalties that come along with it.

SuperBidi wrote:

Also, equating a rather general backlash to a case of No True Scottsman sounds like an oversimplification, don't you agree?

The oversimplification here is that you've taken my specific response to the specific case of me being told that where I thought I was talking about people that want to play oracle but couldn't because the old mechanics got in their way, I was actually talking about peopel that weren't interested in playing oracle, and decided to pretend that I'm saying that's the only form of people liking the old oracle better.

[Baarogue]

>without the whole of the campaign being skewed to account for it, at least

Yeah, I'm gonna have to call citation needed on this statement you keep making. Who hurt you? My curse literally never disrupted the campaign nor required anyone to cater to me. Has anyone else experienced this?

[Tridus]

yarrchives wrote:

I'm a little unsure how to evaluate the Bones curse. By "You can be hurt by both vitality and void damage even if one or the other normally has no effect on you", does that mean both Heal and Harm damage you no matter your healing alignment? That's pretty huge for a cursebound 1 effect, but if not, the curse is one of the more manageable ones.

Maybe? There's an extra problem with the Bones curse in that spells like Heal's damage can't target you because you're not undead. So even though you are now weak to vitality damage, you're not a valid target for Heal's damage. That's true of the vast majority of sources of Vitality damage: they specifically do not consider living creatures as valid targets.

Are you intended to count as undead for the purposes of targeting here? I have no idea. If so, this is an absolutely brutal curse since a 3 action heal is now going to hurt you, though since you're might also be a valid target for the healing its doing (you're alive), most of that damage may get offset. If not, then then the vast majority of the time the curse is just "you take extra Void damage", which is fairly manageable.

See why I feel this remaster is half-baked?

Quote:

I do think it's a missed opportunity they gave the mysteries a set of 3 granted spells instead of letting them choose the 3 spells from a deity within their given domains à la Cleric/Divine Font.

Divine Access does this at level 11. I don't really like how it works in that you have to pick a domain, then pick a deity with that domain, then you get spells. Finding what the spell options actually are is a lot of page flipping since some of those domains have quite a few deities (even more if alternate domains are valid).

[Squiggit]

thenobledrake wrote:

too complicated

Quote:

objectively worse than any other available option

Quote:

prevented the class from actually being functional

You keep saying things like this and like, fine sure I'm not arguing the perspective because it's fine to not like things and not really the point.

But I don't get how you can spend several posts going over all the reasons you disliked the premaster oracle and why the new version is better, then take offense to the idea that the remaster primarily benefits people who did not like the APG Oracle, which you very clearly don't. You haven't said a single good word about it.

That's not an insult, you're not required to like things. But like, you've made it very clear you do not like the old version and do like the new version, which is what I said.

thenobledrake wrote:

Turning the whole discussion into a kind of No True Scottsman

It's not "No True Scotsman" if you spend half your post telling everyone you aren't Scottish in the first place.

[SuperBidi]

thenobledrake wrote:

The bonuses you were supposed to want came alongside the penalties that prevented the class from actually being functional

Like Baarogue, I don't know where this comes from. The class was mostly functional. The penalties were not that big.

Also, the big thing of having strong benefits and strong penalties is that you play to maximize the benefits and avoid the penalties. So, even if on paper the benefits and penalties were equivalent, the actual effect in game was clearly positive.

It's like the old Bestial Mutagen: it's main effects were a +1 to hit for a -1 to AC. And lots of players were considering that "even". But as you were obviously maximizing attack and avoiding being attacked it was a net benefit.

thenobledrake wrote:

SuperBidi wrote:

A perfectly played remaster Oracle should never engage with their curse

That's just actually wrong because, unlike the prior curse mechanics that were always more bad than good for you despite having really strong benefits, the new cursebound stuff is actually mostly upside given the new curses are actually rather tame.

You haven't quoted my whole sentence, giving it a very different meaning than what I actually wrote.

The new curses are so weak and specific that you can always avoid their effects. Like you won't use any Cursebound effects when facing electricity enemies as a Tempest Oracle, functionally making your Curse irrelevant to your character.

Your "Curse" as a remaster Oracle is to be unable to use Cursebound abilities when your Curse would have an effect.