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I did see mention that Ancestors Curse will KILL you, could someone please explain the math on that one?
Every cursebound stage gives you a -1 status penalty to AC, up to a total -4 to your AC at clumsy 4, among other nasty effects like reduced Reflex saves. At 17th level and cursebound 4, an at-level monster with a typical +33 to their attack rolls would have only a 5% chance of failing their attack roll against you (and it would just be a regular failure, rather than a crit failure), and would crit against you a whopping 50% of the time. This is effectively a death sentence, and when you compare the curse to that on a mystery like Cosmos, where you can completely ignore the effects most of the time, it's clear that the curses aren't balanced relative to one another.
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Alternative Idea for my idea of changing the focus spells on battle oracle to lean less gishy but still encourage you to get up into the mix of combat.
Mutually Assured Destruction
1 action
Sustained up to 1 minute
You gain the Reaction: Mutual Destruction
Trigger, you take damage.
You deal half the damage you just took (rounded down) to all creatures in a 10 emanation.
Heighten 3rd Rank: the emanation increases to 30 ft
Heighten 5th Rank: you gain a second reaction at the start of your turn that can only be used for Mutual Destruction
Heighten 7th rank: you gain a reaction at the start of each characters turn that can only be used for Mutual Destruction.
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For what it's worth:
I also had no intention of playing a PF1 Oracle or and PF2 Premaster Oracle. They did not suit my tastes at all. The PF2 Remaster Oracle now looks like a nice option I might play sometime, and I now think about it as an option when I'm making various builds.
That dramatic of a shift in target audience does feel a bit like going to check out the new shopping center that was built on top of the bulldozed mom-and-pop grocer that lots of people loved but honestly had some rodent problems.
1-4 persistent fire damageWell, to think of it, even 1 persistent fire damage which is completely unmitigatable is great at killing you if you don't have time to Refocus. 60 damage per 10 minutes is very substantial. Depending on what you think "you cannot mitigate, reduce, or remove the effects of your curse" means in this case (and whether fire resistance works), this curse is either nothing at all or a PC killer in some circumstances. Which is very junky.
No, the rules for refocusing are permissive enough that players should be able to always start refocusing after combat unless another fight is iminent and you're effectively still in encounter mode. If all else fails, a flames oracle can Repeat a Spell to stare at their own ignition cantrip, so you're refocusing as you move.
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That dramatic of a shift in target audience does feel a bit like going to check out the new shopping center that was built on top of the bulldozed mom-and-pop grocer that lots of people loved but honestly had some rodent problems.
Agreed. I think there are a lot of valid reasons to prefer the new Oracle to the old one, or generally just not like the pre-remaster Oracle, because the old Oracle had a lot of problems and needed to change. At the same time, though, there's equally many valid reasons to dislike the new Oracle, especially coming from those who played a lot of the class before the remaster, because the rework kinda threw out the baby with the bathwater. Not only are both perspectives valid, in my opinion there oughtn't normally be much reason to argue, because these perspectives tend to come from different starting points and don't actually contradict one another hugely in practice, at least not unless they're weaponized against each other.
While I don't have as much experience with the Oracle as others on here, my take on the pre-remaster Oracle was that the class was horrendously undertuned, to the point where the downside of their curse didn't justify the benefits, and most curses were implemented in a manner that was difficult to parse, full of anti-synergy (e.g. Curse of Torrential Knowledge making you unable to share the results of your RK checks, which was perplexingly kept in the remaster), and often extremely disruptive in a way that just felt bad and didn't push the class into a specific playstyle, e.g. Curse of Ancestral Meddling (which is still the worst curse post-remaster, so hey, consistency!). The Oracle desperately needed some buffs, including better access to non-divine spells, and it would certainly have helped to clean up their curse so that it was easier to understand and established a clearer niche, like the pre-remaster Battle Oracle becoming better at martial combat but worse at spellcasting.
However, the Oracle I think also had a lot of stuff going for them that was worth preserving: in particular, many mysteries did a really good job of pushing the class towards a certain niche, and some curses contributed to that too (again, Battle Oracle pre-remaster was probably the best example of this). Because of this, the pre-remaster Oracle I think had the merit of being the most specialized caster in the game, with each subclass representing a totally different playstyle. That, in my opinion, should have been something to preserve, perhaps even develop on by buffing those mystery benefits and revelation spells even further. Had something been done along those lines, which in my opinion would have been perfectly possible to do and would have required the same amount of developer time and resources, the Oracle rework would've been received far more positively overall.
It's also for this reason that I think the rework felt so jarring, for myself and visibly for many others too: the Oracle went from being the most specialized caster in the game to the most generic. Although the remaster did bring changes many players had asked for, like a clearer curse and better non-divine spell access, it also sidelined the class's defining mechanic in favor of giving them power in a form none of the class's fans had really asked for, i.e. more spell slots. It's entirely possible now to play an Oracle, never touch your curse, and still be an extremely powerful class, and that to me feels wrong from both a balance and roleplaying standpoint. The class needed changes, but in my opinion didn't need to lose their unique mystery benefits or gain more spell slots per rank, so I wish the Oracle had been remastered in a different way.
1-4 persistent fire damageWell, to think of it, even 1 persistent fire damage which is completely unmitigatable is great at killing you if you don't have time to Refocus. 60 damage per 10 minutes is very substantial. Depending on what you think "you cannot mitigate, reduce, or remove the effects of your curse" means in this case (and whether fire resistance works), this curse is either nothing at all or a PC killer in some circumstances. Which is very junky.
In that situation, it's a very bad curse. That's a fairly uncommon situation, but it can happen. In a more typical situation, 1 damage per round is a rounding error to a level 11 character, especially one that can probably cast Heal.
That's why it's not the easiest curse to deal with, but it's on the easier end.
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That dramatic of a shift in target audience does feel a bit like going to check out the new shopping center that was built on top of the bulldozed mom-and-pop grocer that lots of people loved but honestly had some rodent problems.Agreed. I think there are a lot of valid reasons to prefer the new Oracle to the old one, or generally just not like the pre-remaster Oracle, because the old Oracle had a lot of problems and needed to change. At the same time, though, there's equally many valid reasons to dislike the new Oracle, especially coming from those who played a lot of the class before the remaster, because the rework kinda threw out the baby with the bathwater. Not only are both perspectives valid, in my opinion there oughtn't normally be much reason to argue, because these perspectives tend to come from different starting points and don't actually contradict one another hugely in practice, at least not unless they're weaponized against each other.
Yeah, this is definitely true.
While I don't have as much experience with the Oracle as others on here, my take on the pre-remaster Oracle was that the class was horrendously undertuned, to the point where the downside of their curse didn't justify the benefits, and most curses were implemented in a manner that was difficult to parse, full of anti-synergy (e.g. Curse of Torrential Knowledge making you unable to share the results of your RK checks, which was perplexingly kept in the remaster), and often extremely disruptive in a way that just felt bad and didn't push the class into a specific playstyle, e.g. Curse of Ancestral Meddling (which is still the worst curse post-remaster, so hey, consistency!). The Oracle desperately needed some buffs, including better access to non-divine spells, and it would certainly have helped to clean up their curse so that it was easier to understand and established a clearer niche, like the pre-remaster Battle Oracle becoming better at martial combat but worse at spellcasting.
However, the Oracle I think also had a lot of stuff going for them that was worth preserving: in particular, many mysteries did a really good job of pushing the class towards a certain niche, and some curses contributed to that too (again, Battle Oracle pre-remaster was probably the best example of this). Because of this, the pre-remaster Oracle I think had the merit of being the most specialized caster in the game, with each subclass representing a totally different playstyle. That, in my opinion, should have been something to preserve, perhaps even develop on by buffing those mystery benefits and revelation spells even further. Had something been done along those lines, which in my opinion would have been perfectly possible to do and would have required the same amount of developer time and resources, the Oracle rework would've been received far more positively overall.
Some of the curses did a better job of this than others. Life for example caused you problems but would also amp up your healing, playing up its theme really well. It wasn't (significantly) anti-synergistic, curse going up put you at some risk but also really boosted your ability to keep a group up and have positive energy flying all over the place. There was nothing like it in the game.
Somewhat ironically, remaster Life is far more anti-synergistic because it gives you Life Link and Nudge the Scales, while also severely punishing your ability to heal yourself (required for Life Link) if you use Nudge the Scales. You effectively never want to use both of the abilities the Mystery gives you at the same time because you're far, far worse at healing yourself than you are at healing someone else. And if you're never using Life Link, any other Oracle can heal just as effectively as Life Oracle by simply taking Nudge the Scales (a renewable 1 action ranged heal is a solid option almost across the board).
And that's one of the problems here: for some of the Mysteries, the remaster made the anti-synergy worse, which is really not what you want if the goal is to make the class easier to get into and less janky feeling.
It's also for this reason that I think the rework felt so jarring, for myself and visibly for many others too: the Oracle went from being the most specialized caster in the game to the most generic. Although the remaster did bring changes many players had asked for, like a clearer curse and better non-divine spell access, it also sidelined the class's defining mechanic in favor of giving them power in a form none of the class's fans had really asked for, i.e. more spell slots. It's entirely possible now to play an Oracle, never touch your curse, and still be an extremely powerful class, and that to me feels wrong from both a balance and roleplaying standpoint. The class needed changes, but in my opinion didn't need to lose their unique mystery benefits or gain more spell slots per rank, so I wish the Oracle had been remastered in a different way.
Well said. Some Oracles can now spam Cursebound stuff pretty freely while others really want to avoid doing that, and those ones end up not really having a unique class feature. With how easily Cursebound stuff can be picked up via the archetype, the class itself leans very heavily on being a 4 slot caster... and while that's certainly effective, it's not a class identity now that it's becoming more common.
So we went from something with a bunch of problems and an extremely pronounced unique playstyle to something with a bunch of problems and a relatively generic caster playstyle.
I don't view that as an improvement since that was already something that existed.
Alternative Idea for my idea of changing the focus spells on battle oracle to lean less gishy but still encourage you to get up into the mix of combat.
Mutually Assured Destruction
1 action
Sustained up to 1 minute
You gain the Reaction: Mutual Destruction
Trigger, you take damage.
You deal half the damage you just took (rounded down) to all creatures in a 10 emanation.Heighten 3rd Rank: the emanation increases to 30 ft
Heighten 5th Rank: you gain a second reaction at the start of your turn that can only be used for Mutual Destruction
Heighten 7th rank: you gain a reaction at the start of each characters turn that can only be used for Mutual Destruction.
This would worth sustaining far more than Weapon Trance is, that's for sure. The obvious danger is you're going to hit your allies for what could potentially be sizable amounts of damage, so I don't view the emanination increase as an improvement.
It's a neat concept though!
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It's a shame, really. Oracle before was one of my favourite classes thematically and on paper, which also happened to be really awful. The Remaster made it undeniably better; in fact it's very good I'd say. But it's also stripped out all the identity that made me want to play Oracle in the first place. So it went from a cool class that I was discouraged from playing because of how bad it was to a class I'm discouraged from playing because it doesn't do what I want from it. Life Oracle was one of my favourite niches, but man does it have very little of what actually drew me to it originally. The Fighter HP to make it more desirable to spread Life Link around, the d12 Heal, the involuntary aoe Heal... It was exactly what I wanted, just very underwhelming mechanically. I could still build a Life Oracle, but it doesn't feel all that difficult from any other Oracle, or a divine Sorcerer.
...also side note why does Life Oracle get Soothe on a spell list with Heal and Harm on it? When am I ever not going to make one of these my signature if I'm trying to be a healer?
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...also side note why does Life Oracle get Soothe on a spell list with Heal and Harm on it? When am I ever not going to make one of these my signature if I'm trying to be a healer?
Soothe can heal undead [errata says "It can be used to heal undead, constructs, and so on."], so it'd be a good spell in a party with both living and undead in it as the same spell can heal both.
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I’m one of those folks who was a huge fan of the old oracle, and not so much the new one.
I remember flipping through the classes when I was first looking into the system, and when I scrolled through the Oracle mysteries, and saw the curses, the vivid descriptions of what each curse does to you, how going up in the stage makes the curse worse, but also turns it into a boon of sorts, I thought, holy cow that’s AWESOME. Instantly set my mind racing.
I was SOO exicted for the Remaster. I kept on talking to my friends about it.
What I was hoping for from the Remaster was:
1. Some free bonus spells matching the Mystery, ie Flames to get some fire spells, Tempest to get some storm spells.
2. Doing something to handle the awkward floating focus point that you can’t access after the first time you use a focus point for the day, unless you archetyped into something else to get a non-oracle focus spell.
3. Maybe some general rebalancing for some of the curses boons/banes since some curses were notably rougher than others.
4. Other little touch ups.
I was not expecting.. well, this. I was getting a bad gut feeling on the first Oracle preview where they talked about hoisting the cool curse boon-bane stuff out, doubting the "oh but you can totally get the old gameplay back!". My gut feeling was right. :(
I loved the old oracle generally, my GM gave me a free fire spell per rank and I was completely set and happy with my flames oracle. The new one just… Doesn’t provide me with that some WOWW that the old one did. It doesn’t feel as interesting. And I wasn’t even a Battle oracle who lost my whole concept. The flames curse is just less inspiring overall for me. The curses as a whole are less inspiring, and the neat unique benefits to each just kinda being relegated to more generic feats are... Yeah the class is generally stronger now, but I just don’t feel like it at all hits what it used to do for me. If I wanted generically good I’d play a sorcerer, and in fact I’d probably be better off just running a Sorcerer and just roleplaying some soft curse effects for funsies.
This reminds me of when they changed the Hunting Horn in Monster Hunter Rise. As a Hunting Horn main in the game, it felt kinda bad. They focused on trying to make the weapon more generically appealing, instead of improving the weapon for those who loved it and its unique playstyle. Yes, the new version was much easier to play, and statistically did get used more (but was still bottom of the barrel for usage), but it lost a lot of its charm when you didn’t have to think about your songs anymore and didn’t have any weight behind it and a lot of people that played it also went back to other weapons since being that it became a more generic style, why not play the other weapons that do that.
Thankfully they changed it back in Monster Hunter Wilds to its old playstyle. Unfortunately I’m not holding out hope for that happening here. Much like I changed to Hammer during MH Rise when they removed the appeal of the Hunting Horn to appease people who didn't play it, my Oracle will be dumped too. And that’s a damn shame.
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I don't know if it's better to have a class for the main crowd or a class that generates a lot of praise by those who play it. There's no need for every class to be for everyone. So once you have the classic Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard, Barbarian, etc... that are easy to play, adding more easy to play classes doesn't really improve the game as in the end no one will play every class and every interesting build they can provide. It's better to then focus on classes that provide a very distinctive gameplay, even if most players dislike it as long as a few love it.
Would you all say that remaster oracle now plays fairly the same no matter which mystery you choose?
At least as much the same as a wizard plays much like another wizard no matter the school or thesis?
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Although any prepared spellcaster will tend to feel more samey due to changing their spell loadout every day, the Wizard I think at least has the merit of having several arcane theses that let them play quite differently from one another, so despite its own issues and largely generic nature, the class still has some differentiation. By contrast, you can have something like a Battle and Cosmos Oracle play in nearly the exact same way, because their starting cursebound action, if they use it at all, is the same, and in both cases the class can easily opt out of any of their mystery's benefits without really suffering (in fact, several players have openly stated on this thread that this is what they do). This is not something that existed before the remaster, where those exact same mysteries would play far more differently from one another simply due to their respective subclass benefits.
Would you all say that remaster oracle now plays fairly the same no matter which mystery you choose?
At least as much the same as a wizard plays much like another wizard no matter the school or thesis?
I find that a hard question to answer in one sense, since Revelation spells IMO have a far bigger impact than Wizard Schools do on what you focus on. Like, I take a lot of utility and other spells on my Cosmos Oracle because in combat I can lean hard on Intersteller Void to both do damage and debuff (which helps my melee teammates do the damage). A Flames Oracle is probably going to lean harder into direct offense and ways to mitigate any fire damage on their allies (so they can use Trial by Skyfire and its synergy with their other stuff).
Arcane Thesis is a bigger differentiator for Wizards, I think. The schools are frankly not that compelling right now (something I hope they address in Rival Academies).
On the other hand, I find it an easy question to answer: Oracle used to have some very distinct play styles and frankly "weird" builds that were totally unique within the class and even across PF2 in general. Like, nothing played like a Life Oracle for healing, and that playstyle is simply gone. Any Oracle with a mild curse can heal just as well as a Life Oracle now, and arguably better in some ways since Cosmos can spam Nudge the Scales every fight at basically no cost while Life is taking a far greater risk.
Ancestors used to be a totally unique playstyle in PF2 (love it or hate it). It's now a feat that any Oracle can take.
Battle has been beaten to death in this thread but it isn't really doing anything for a gish player anymore.
These days Oracle is a full spellcaster with some other stuff, and the things you could do that were not that are largely gone. Worse: old Oracle's really unique stuff wasn't really available to the archetype as it couldn't progress its curse to those levels.
Remaster Oracle can be replicated by Sorcerer (with Oracle Dedication and Armor Training) far more easily and you're basically getting the same flavor: a 4 slot caster with Cursebound abilities.
The loss of both really unique Curse outcomes and Mystery benefits hit this aspect of Oracle hard.
My thought was part of the changes either by intent or by effect made the Oracles feel more like they are a class and not so different in subclass that they are their subclass.
Being a full caster first they really couldnt continue to to be better in melee than lets say a warpriest that gives up legendary spellcasting for example.
Being a full caster first they really couldnt continue to to be better in melee than lets say a warpriest that gives up legendary spellcasting for example.
That's what the curse is supposed to be there for, though. It's not just that the Warpriest has divine font slots and the Oracle doesn't, the whole point to having a curse is that it weighs your down in ways no-one else has to deal with, so that it lets you do things no other class is allowed to do. This obviously doesn't work so well on a four-slot caster, but if the Oracle had fewer spell slots and had to actually tap into their curse, that would have added a significant amount of power budget that could've been put into their mystery.
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Being a full caster first they really couldnt continue to to be better in melee than lets say a warpriest that gives up legendary spellcasting for example.That's what the curse is supposed to be there for, though. It's not just that the Warpriest has divine font slots and the Oracle doesn't, the whole point to having a curse is that it weighs your down in ways no-one else has to deal with, so that it lets you do things no other class is allowed to do. This obviously doesn't work so well on a four-slot caster, but if the Oracle had fewer spell slots and had to actually tap into their curse, that would have added a significant amount of power budget that could've been put into their mystery.
Doesnt that seem a bit min maxy?
Like i take a penalty I dont care about cause I can avoid its actual cost and in exchange im better at fighting than other casters?
Doesnt that seem a bit min maxy?
Like i take a penalty I dont care about cause I can avoid its actual cost and in exchange im better at fighting than other casters?
Who says you don't care about the penalty or can avoid its actual cost? It sounds like you're referring to the PF1e Oracle here, who could cherry-pick a curse they could ignore, rather than the pre-remaster PF2e Oracle, whose curse was generally (though not always) tailor-made to their niche and had a meaningful impact, like Battle becoming stupefied and thus worse at casting spells (like a Warpriest!). It's perhaps "min maxy" in the sense that you have more pronounced strengths and weaknesses than the average caster, but those weaknesses were always relevant, and a lot of players noted that the pre-remaster Oracle's curses were often quite severe. In fact, several of the post-remaster Oracle's curses are really severe, Ancestral Meddling being the most obvious example, it's just that the Oracle is no longer pushed towards a specific niche and doesn't have to ever tap into their curse if they want to be strong, so many ignore their curse entirely.
Being a full caster first they really couldnt continue to to be better in melee than lets say a warpriest that gives up legendary spellcasting for example.That's what the curse is supposed to be there for, though. It's not just that the Warpriest has divine font slots and the Oracle doesn't, the whole point to having a curse is that it weighs your down in ways no-one else has to deal with, so that it lets you do things no other class is allowed to do. This obviously doesn't work so well on a four-slot caster, but if the Oracle had fewer spell slots and had to actually tap into their curse, that would have added a significant amount of power budget that could've been put into their mystery.Doesnt that seem a bit min maxy?
Like i take a penalty I dont care about cause I can avoid its actual cost and in exchange im better at fighting than other casters?
Kind of?. Both the new and old oracle have an element of min-maxing to them (unless your curse is terrible). But The original Battle Oracle was a very different animal from the Warpriest. Even at the base level you were stuck at during the day after your first encounter, you were railroaded into striking every turn if you didn't want a nasty AC and saving throw penalty (A big problem if you need to stride and cast a 2-action spell).