I've been looking a little closer at the Remastered Oracle. It isn't as interesting as the original oracle in terms of unique abilities, but it does look like it has some nice abilities like Foretell Harm and Mysterious Repertoire.
How is this class? How does it perform in battle?
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I play alongside a Flames oracle. When PC2 was released, the oracle was rebuilt using the reamster rules. We were level 15 or 16 at the time, I think. The player chose to get basically no curseboud feat - other than foretell harm which he got for free, of course. His reasoning was that there's simply no need to get more abilities if you have 4 slots per rank and a very solid spell list.
I don't feel like his combat performance has changed much compared to pre-master. He barely interacts with his curse anymore since he rarely uses any coursebound abilities and his focus spells (of which he mostly uses whirling flames) don't affect the curse any longer.
So other than the spell list, he doesn't feel much different from what a fire elemental sorcerer would feel. He's a bit more sturdy as an oracle, of course, but my gut reaction tells me he would overall be more effective as a blaster sorcerer, even more so if he would add the oracle archetype for Foretell Harm.
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The new Oracle from what I've seen performs exceptionally well in battle, but it's generally difficult to grok because it happens in ways you don't really expect from a caster. They have the spell slot output of a Sorcerer, and while they don't have a direct boost to damage or healing, they have significantly better defenses, which makes a big difference at all stages of play. Earlier on, they can get much better AC for less investment, and later on they have extremely good Will saves, which is particularly important given how those tend to become the most important saves you'll be making. All throughout, they also have more HP, which makes it more difficult for them to go down even if they get focused. As a result, they're not the flashiest of casters, but in my opinion they're one of the most powerful, if not the strongest.
As for the mysteries, revelation spells and curses, it's very hit-or-miss: I've seen mostly a Cosmos Oracle just stick to spray of stars and select cursebound feats liberally, because their curse has been largely inconsequential to the point where they often didn't bother Refocusing more than once, just so that they could get that near-free +3 to their allies' initiative (Oracular Warning is ridiculously powerful and has has a large impact on most encounters). I can't imagine that player doing the same with an Ancestors Oracle, as the latter's curse is atrocious. Thus, your Oracle's power will vary heavily depending on which mystery they'll use, but only insofar as the severity of their curse will determine whether or not it's worth using cursebound actions.
TL;DR: Oracle is among the strongest casters in my opinion, even if they're not terribly exciting, and perform exceptionally well in battle due to their combination of raw spell output and survivability. Pick a mystery with an inconsequential curse, like Cosmos, and you'll get to use cursebound actions, which are often really powerful, with relative impunity, and that I think is what really pushes the class over the line.
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I agree with Teridax, the remaster Oracle is one of the strongest casters in the game. For me, the remaster Oracle is just another Sorcerer (and considering the natural synergy between Sorcerer and Oracle, pushing to get Sorcerer Dedication on an Oracle or Oracle Dedication on a Sorcerer, they even end up with the same abilities). So as I know you like the Sorcerer, you should like the Oracle.
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It's got the most gas out of any caster now. More flexible than divine sorcerer with its choice of spells in its repertoire plus an additional pool of focus powers in its cursbound abilities.
I'm planning on playing a battle oracle in an upcoming fists campaign. (Starting at 11th level means patching in proficiencies isn't as painful). I imagine it will perform pretty well. I just wish battle had better focus spells. The greater revelation is decent at least
With gifted power and divine effusion, I'll have 5 rank 8 slots and 6 rank 9 slots lmao
That many? Crazy.
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If you're coming at it fresh and building the Remaster Oracle around what it's good at, it's quite strong. Lots of spell slots & a large repitoire give you a lot of power and flexibility. There's some good focus spells. I'm playing one in Kingmaker and between Intersteller Void, Oracular Warning, and my piles of spell slots: I'm plenty effective.
The Cursebound abilities are an extra pool of resource, though I find the actual abilities front loaded in terms of value (which is great for someone taking the archetype). Higher level ones are a mixed bag at best. Some of them also are situational or just don't apply outside certain situations. Like if you only have Oracular Curse, you effectively can't use more than one a combat even if you want to so you fire it off when rolling initiative and then just forget about your Curse entirely the rest of the combat. Until you spend a feat to pick up another one... that's it. It's good, but its not very interesting.
One of its big problems is that the curses themselves are not even remotely balanced. You know that thread people talking about Fury Barbarian being a weak choice vs the other Instincts? Barbarian has nothing on Oracle in that department.
Curses range from "you usually won't notice this effect at all and can spam your Cursebound abilities" (Cosmos) to "this is not a big deal outside low level" (Flames) all the way up to "this will massively reduce your lifespan" (Ancestors). There's also a mixed bag of "its not really clear how this works" (Bones) and "this has anti-synergy with the stuff the mystery is giving you" (Tempest, Life), and of course the poor sad "this doesn't do what the description says it does and has a meme-worthy initial focus spell" (Battle).
The other problem is on the flavor end: the interesting parts largely got removed in the remaster. The unique mystery abilities are gone and unless you're burning feats on having Cursebound powers, you will spend a lot of the time effectively not having a curse at all, making you effectively a generic spellcaster. Quite a good one, but still, remembering all the really interesting stuff that used to be here and now isn't stings. I also have some Oracle players that just flat out refuse to change to the remaster version because it would severely harm how their characters work, as some of what you used to build a character around just no longer exists.
But overall, if you want to make a powerful spellcaster with extra abilities you can grab to augment your spells? Oracle is great at that, and you get 8HP and Light Armor in the deal. For this kind of character, its easily in the upper tier of casting classes.
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With gifted power and divine effusion, I'll have 5 rank 8 slots and 6 rank 9 slots lmaoThat many? Crazy.
Yes but the gifted power slot is only for your mystery granted spells, your divine access spells, and the spell you can grab from mysterious repertoire. The two extra slots from divine effusion can be whatever though.
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Yes but the gifted power slot is only for your mystery granted spells, your divine access spells, and the spell you can grab from mysterious repertoire. The two extra slots from divine effusion can be whatever though.
There are some really good options among applicable deities for some (most?) mysteries. I admit I'll never bothered with a Battle, Ancestors, or Blight Oracle due to their bad curses; Life & Bones are so flavorful and I'd love to play them more often, but it hurts that their curses are... well, others talked about that already.
I took Kerkamoth on one of my Cosmos Oracles, so I could get Disintegrate right when 6th-rank spells came online; the Shadow Siphon spell is also amazing and you don't even need to make Shadow Siphon a signature spell if you have Gifted Power.
The divine spell list is actually very rich at higher levels, even for offense, but still, taking Synesthesia on a Lore Oracle from Narriseminek is very flavorful and effective; Confusion I haven't used much, but with Gifted Power it's a good choice for that eventual 8th rank slot.
For reasons others have pointed out, the Cosmos mystery was the best one to play, but lately I've switched my favorite mystery over to Time. As long as you're careful to avoid enemy reactions you can deal with the curse. I feel this is much better than the Cosmos curse, which never really mattered; the Time curse requires you to be very mindful of it, which makes it much more present at all times for me as a player and that increases the fun.
Now if only there were a Spellshot archetype for Oracles so I can play Kurumi Tokisaki...
p.s.: If you can, convince your GM to give you Time Jump instead of Time Pocket as your 3rd-rank mystery gifted spell; the latter reigns supreme upon the heap of garbage spells (unless you play some kind of Thief Oracle but don't have Trickery/Stealth?), while the former is one you'd literally kill for as a Time-cursed Oracle. I don't understand for one second why Paizo made this choice.
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The chassis is strong, but the subclass is intended to be a pure negative. If you lean into the spellcasting and ignore your curse, you'll be powerful. If you build your defenses up alongside what the base class gives you, you'll be very hard to take down. If you use Divine Access well, you'll be flexible. If you choose curses that don't harm you more than they help you (e.g., Cosmos & Flames), you can spam very potent Cursebound feats without problem.
But on the flip side, if you try to lean into what your mystery is supposed to specialise in, you'll usually be disappointed. Ancestors is a trap option (and the feat that replicates the legacy curse is, mathematically speaking, always harmful to use), Battle doesn't help you melee (and requires at least two feats (either archetype or general feats, IIRC) to regain legacy Battle's defenses), Bones is ambiguous and needs cleanup (as written, it either renders you effectively unhealable or does literally nothing, since it makes you vulnerable to but not targetable by vitality damage), Life is explicitly the worst subclass at using life link (and, weirdly enough, explicitly had its lore rewritten to be less enjoyable), Tempest gives you access to a domain spell that's incompatible with your curse, and so on. Meanwhile, Cosmos does basically nothing, Flames is hilariously ignorable, Lore is pretty much only a problem if you let it hit Cursebound 4, and so on.
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Generally, if you lean into being a tanky spellbot, you'll love it, and find that it performs that role very well. And if you minmax your curse, you won't feel the intended downside of using the powerful Cursebound class feats you'll have access to. But if you actually wanted to lean into a specific Mystery, you're probably going to end up being disappointed.
The Tempest mystery doesn't look too bad. Why do people hate it? It has some good focus spells and mystery spells.
Battle is unusable. I can't even imagine using Battle mystery in high level play with Spell DCs and damage as high as it is. You would be asking to die. I'm surprised anyone thought the Battle Mystery curse was even remotely playable the way this game works. I really wish they had someone on the design staff to look at the designers and go, "You know this is unplayable? This is absolutely too bad to be part of a curse. Only a player interested in self-torture would even try to play this."
And Clumsy is absolutely terrible as well. Lower AC, lower reflex saves. Just asking to get destroyed. It's like synesthesia-ing yourself which we all know is not a great idea.
Flame, Cosmos, and Tempest have effects I can stomach, though Tempest would be very situational. You definitely don't want to be getting hit by electricity while your curse is up.
Tempest is the best mystery. it gets all the lighting magic.
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The Tempest mystery doesn't look too bad. Why do people hate it? It has some good focus spells and mystery spells.
Tempest is fine as long as you avoid the parts that don't work with itself. An example is that they added the Lightning Domain as an option in PC2 as one of the new domains. For its two focus spells, one is a ranged spell attack (which gets a -2 from Cursebound 2 on what is already the worst attack roll in the game, though some folks dispute that), and the other gives you electricity resistance and thus is functionally useless if you are Cursebound. The other new one is Cold, and it's initial domain spell has the same problem.
It's not the worst offender by far as far as Mysteries go, but generally speaking people don't like this kind of anti-synergy where they give you two things that actively don't work together. Cursebound 2 here also kinda sucks in general given that it's debuffing something that already feels lousy.
Life is worse about that though, with it going from being a really good healer to being arguably the worst Oracle at healing since any other Oracle can take Nudge the Scales and not lose the ability to heal themselves (which of course negates the point of Life Link).
Battle is unusable. I can't even imagine using Battle mystery in high level play with Spell DCs and damage as high as it is. You would be asking to die. I'm surprised anyone thought the Battle Mystery curse was even remotely playable the way this game works. I really wish they had someone on the design staff to look at the designers and go, "You know this is unplayable? This is absolutely too bad to be part of a curse. Only a player interested in self-torture would even try to play this."
Yeah, Battle is actively insulting at this point. It has what is definitely in the top 3 worst focus spells in the game, it needs multiple general/archetype feats to even attempt to function, and it's so out of whack that its own example character in the book is wearing armor the mystery can't use anymore. It flat out doesn't do what its description says it does.
Premaster Battle Oracles that PFS forced to convert were bricked by the remaster and I feel pretty bad for them.
And Clumsy is absolutely terrible as well. Lower AC, lower reflex saves. Just asking to get destroyed. It's like synesthesia-ing yourself which we all know is not a great idea.
Some part of me is amused by the fact that Ancestors was already not a great mystery originally as it was very difficult to play effectively but had super interesting flavor. Paizo's remaster treatment of it amounted to "what if we remove the flavor and also make it worse at the same time?"
Flame, Cosmos, and Tempest have effects I can stomach, though Tempest would be very situational. You definitely don't want to be getting hit by electricity while your curse is up.
Flames is pretty manageable except in the uncommon situation where something like a chase breaks out immediately after an encounter. If you don't get time to refocus, you're still on fire. A lot of GMs will do something like let you forego an action in the early part of the chase to effectively "follow along and refocus" just so you're not out of the entire scene, because playing it any other way would suck.
I'm not aware of any other class/subclass that has such a "you must be allowed to refocus before something else happens or else you're just totally screwed" mechanic, though.
I'm playing Cosmos right now (converted my premaster Oracle) and I literally don't care about my curse at all. If you build planning on not using Strength in combat (which isn't hard on a caster like this), it just doesn't matter in the slightest. It feels absolutely wild that someone thought it was okay to give one Mystery a functionally irrelevant curse while giving another mystery a borderline suicidal one.
I've found spray of stars to actually be quite useful: it's not going to top the damage charts anytime soon, but the dazzled condition has made it very annoying for certain enemies to land heavy-hitting effects, and its AoE has come in handy a few times too. You're probably still better off hanging back and casting slot spells from way farther away, but it's quite handy when enemies get too close for comfort.
The issue I see with Tempest is that becoming cursebound 2 interferes with several of the domain spells you could pick, such as winter bolt and charged javelin. Even more specifically, bottle the storm gets its electricity resistance suppressed by your curse, making the Tempest Oracle exceptionally poorly-suited for using lightning domain spells. The rest of the curse is situational enough that you will often not feel its effects very much or at all, but if you're planning on using certain focus spells, this isn't the best mystery for it. On the flipside, if you don't intend on making any attacks and end up fighting in encounters with little to no electricity damage, you may as well have no curse at all most of the time.
I'm trying very hard on this thread to keep the floodgates closed and not just rant about the Oracle's bad balance and design, but I will echo the sentiment that the balancing of the mysteries is all over the place. The most impactful factor when choosing your subclass in my opinion is not really the focus spells, the domains, the extra spells, or even the cursebound feat you get, but how irrelevant you can make your curse. Even if you don't engage with your curse at all, you'd still be a really powerful character (and it's very easy to just never tap into your curse at all), but several curses can be ignored almost entirely, giving you even more power at no real downside.
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They are extremely powerful.
They are a 4 slot spontaneous caster with effectively 2 separate focus pools.
One traditional focus pool, and a secondary cursebound pool.
As for the rest of their chassis they get 8+HP, 5+ Int skills. Normal light armor progression (expert at 13) and normal Spell DC (Expert at 7, Master at 15, Legendary at 19). Their weapon proficiency sucks, and the Battle Oracle focus spell is offensively bad. No matter how cool battle sounds, they don't make good weapon users. As mentioned above, with 4 slots and a double focus pool their magical power is virtually unmatched.
They have one of the best Will Save progressions, only behind Exemplar and Thaumaturge and only at very high levels.
Their reflex save makes me sad. Clerics (and now Animists) have a reflex save that's 2 levels worse than any other class. That's okay clerics are traditionally very poor at reflex saves and its a nice nod to the past. It feel like somebody thought hey, Oracles are like clerics, lets give them that same -2 level progression, and copied over cleric progression and then made it 2 levels worse than that. :(
They have nearly the worst fort progression as well (Only Inventor and Runesmith are worse)
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So while a lot of the number on their chassis aren't great they at least get 8+ hp and more magical power than they know what to do with.
While I like the divine list better as a prepared caster, a lot of the divine list weakness has been solved by the remaster. Reasonable Cantrip damage, condensing of condition removal spells and effective offensive spells have gone a long way to not making it feel sad.
There are certainty some real s#+&ty options you have to avoid. Like thinking battle will make you good at hitting things and there are some extremely good options like Cosmos that give you a curse you don't care about, a starting cursebound free action for +2 status bonus to initiative and some temp HP for the whole party along with a very usable focus spell.
Oracles are missing the weird bespoke cursebound powers of before that let people make interesting/weird characters.
I certainty miss the oddness you could do before, but from a power standpoint, they are notably more powerful casters after the remaster than before. Their focus point management did need fixing, and the remaster fixed it. So that's a big plus.
Also, can they take the legacy Divine Access feat, or do they have to wait for the level 11 Divine Access class feature? Access to that in early levels makes a big difference in the ability to customize the Oracle's spell list and gives their combat a more unique personality.
Also, can they take the legacy Divine Access feat, or do they have to wait for the level 11 Divine Access class feature? Access to that in early levels makes a big difference in the ability to customize the Oracle's spell list and gives their combat a more unique personality.
I think it's pretty clear that the intention is Divine Access (the old feat) has been replaced by Divine Access (the class feature) an thus the feat shouldn't be allowed anymore. Since it has the same name, PFS would typically view it as an errata change and thus the feat is now a class feature. Can you make a heavily legalistic attempt to bend the words to claim it's "not technically forbidden since class features are distinct from feats so it doesn't invalidate it"? Likely, but the intent on this one is pretty clear.
Compare to Sorcerer, which did the same thing with Dangerous Sorcerer except changed the name to Sorcerous Potency, meaning the old feat is still PFS Legal. (I wouldn't allow that one in a home game either since I think the intent was to make it Sorcerer only, but the way they handled it does leave it PFS legal.)
cosmos flame and time have the weakest curse
cosmos and flame also have pretty useless level 1 focus spell
Spray of Stars is a cone AoE on a spell list that doesn't have a lot of those that does fire damage on a spell list that doesn't have a lot of that, and also applies a decent condition.
This is strictly better than say Haunting Hymn. It's not the best thing ever, but I've gotten a lot of mileage out of it. Especially the first time we ran into a troll and that was our best source of fire damage outside of "the Thaumaturge is now wielding a torch".
and didn't have whisper of weakness by default
Oracular Warning is really good, so I don't really view this as a big problem for Cosmos. Easy initiative bonuses that stack with things like the Scout exploration activity make a big difference in turn order, and going first makes a difference.
still divine sorcerer with oracle archetype maybe still better than oracle
At some things (if you're not allowed to take Dangerous Sorcery then blasting is one of those things), but not others. More HP, Light Armor, and better Will saves aren't irrelevant, and Oracle's feats to get extra spell slots give it a lot of oomph. You can pick up some good Sorcerer stuff with that archetype if you want it too.
Ranged spell attacks are still ranged attacks. "Ranged attack" describes any kind of attack, whether it's a Strike, a spell attack, or something else, and so does affect focus spells that make a ranged spell attack.Save spells generally don't have the attack trait. Tempest Cursebound 2 would not impact Tempest Touch or Thunderburst (i.e. the two damage-dealing Tempest Oracle focus spells). But it would affect, say, Needle Darts. At least the way our table plays. I'd agree with Jonobi that this counts as 'relatively minor' since most of the spells the Oracle is going to want to cast anyway are save spells.
Yes it is minor because you have easy ranged damage alternatives and you aren't forced to pay for a feature with negative synergy. Lots of classes have some bad combinations.
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Lots of classes have bad combinations but I don't think it's controversial to suggest that it's kind of crummy design for an option to combine badly with itself. We're not talking about cherry picking some obscure thing here.
I don't get why anyone would defend this.
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Yes it is minor because you have easy ranged damage alternatives and you aren't forced to pay for a feature with negative synergy. Lots of classes have some bad combinations.
Few classes have part of their big remaster change being "we added two new domain options to your mystery but they don't work properly with the rest of your mystery."
You don't normally see anti-synergy as flagrant as Oracle got in the remaster, especially when one of the goals of the remaster was to clean up problems like that. Tempest isn't the worst of that (Life got it way worse), but its like very little thought went into if these options actually make sense beyond "its called Lightning". And its not like its an obscure combination: those two domains were added specifically to the one mystery that has problems using them.
Its not a class breaking problem or anything, but it makes no sense. Which describes a LOT of the remaster Oracle changes in a nutshell.
I just think you are overselling this particular problem. Oracles often don't lean into their curses for the side effects. The ranged penalty doesn't apply until after you are cursebound 2. So you can cast those spells in many encounters with no penalty until after you have used 2 cursebound abilities. You can refocus to cursebound 0.
They are useful spells. It depends on how you build and play your character. It is reasonable to play an oracle below cursebound 2 most of the time. You have a lot of other spells to cast including winter bolt and charged javelin.
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I feel that, ideally, oracles should always be tempted to lean hard into their theme at every opportunity, and that suffering the consequences should be a regular part of the experience or else it becomes vestigial.
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I just think you are overselling this particular problem. Oracles often don't lean into their curses for the side effects. The ranged penalty doesn't apply until after you are cursebound 2. So you can cast those spells in many encounters with no penalty until after you have used 2 cursebound abilities. You can refocus to cursebound 0.
They are useful spells. It depends on how you build and play your character. It is reasonable to play an oracle below cursebound 2 most of the time. You have a lot of other spells to cast including winter bolt and charged javelin.
I mean, no one is saying its class breaking, so I don't think anyone is overselling anything. But its not like these are holdover legacy options or difficult to get: these were explicitly added as part of the remaster to the one mystery that was reworked to be bad at using them.
And it's not just those two spells taking a penalty: Bottle the Storm doesn't function whatsoever if you're Cursebound 1. So this is a case of "either have Cursebound abilities or have the Lightning domain, but don't have both", and that was explicitly added in the remaster.
It demonstrates just how uneven this whole thing is, since only some of the mysteries have problems like this.
I feel that, ideally, oracles should always be tempted to lean hard into their theme at every opportunity, and that suffering the consequences should be a regular part of the experience or else it becomes vestigial.
That was much closer to how premaster Oracle worked. They moved away from that into making the curse an optional thing that the class can ignore entirely if it wants. Some mysteries kind of have to do that because their curses are so awful, but others don't have that problem and get an extra pool of focus spells out of the deal.
The redesign encourages you to just avoid a bad curse far more than the old design, which encouraged you to pick a mystery that fit the theme you were trying to do since it would actually support that in some way. Thats why the old design was so much better flavor wise.
But since all that got shifted into "more spellcasting power", it makes a really good generic spellcaster.
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I love the remastered oracle, but I'm surprised that some of his power is so easily pilferable.
Paizo went to great pains to make it so most classes main shtick cannot be taken through a dedication. In the remaster, they nerfed Flurry of Blows on dedications and they put Sorcerous Potency in the sorcerer chassis. A ranger archetype has no hunt prey bonus, a magus archetype can spellstrike only once per fight, and so on. But any class can take an oracle dedication and grab cursebound feats, especially since most of the best ones are level 1.
The go-to move for a legacy blaster was to take sorcerer archetype for sorcerous potency - and now it's to take oracle archetype for foretell harm.
Since you can get to cursebound 2, you're exactly as effective as an oracle with your cursebound spells up till level 11 - and even so, a lot of oracles won't supercharge their curse to level 3 or 4.
So yeah, the remastered oracle is pretty great (provided you stick to the "good" mysteries and not the broken ones). But a divine sorcerer with oracle dedication has the same CHA stat, the same number of slots, the same spontaneous casting, while being better at healing, better at dpsing, with arguably better focus spells and feats, AND can use cursebound spells just as well. Apart from roleplaying reason, the only thing you get from going Oracle is light armor, d8hp, better will save and worse ref save.
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I have seen the cursebound 2 condition of the Tempest mystery mentioned a few times as a large negative but isnt it a relatively minor one? The cursebound 2 gives a "-2 circumstance penalty to ranged attack rolls" but most (if not all?) spells use a spell attack roll which is a different thing. All types attack rolls have pretty explicit definition with very few exceptions... So I dont think the cursebound 2 condition would apply to much unless you were using a crossbow or something.
I havent played an Oracle yet but I am looking into making a Tempest mystery one and could see this point being brought up.
(Responding again because the comment providing pure mechanical clarification got mysteriously deleted.)
You're right that the curse is largely minor, though it's worth noting that spell attack rolls can also be ranged. Ranged or melee attacks describe spell attacks as well as Strikes and other effects with the attack trait, so if you were to pick winter bolt or charged javelin from the mystery's domains, both of which make ranged spell attacks, you'd incur the penalty from being cursebound 2.
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I have seen the cursebound 2 condition of the Tempest mystery mentioned a few times as a large negative but isnt it a relatively minor one? The cursebound 2 gives a "-2 circumstance penalty to ranged attack rolls" but most (if not all?) spells use a spell attack roll which is a different thing. All types attack rolls have pretty explicit definition with very few exceptions... So I dont think the cursebound 2 condition would apply to much unless you were using a crossbow or something.
I havent played an Oracle yet but I am looking into making a Tempest mystery one and could see this point being brought up.
(Responding again because the comment providing pure mechanical clarification got mysteriously deleted.)
You're right that the curse is largely minor, though it's worth noting that spell attack rolls can also be ranged. Ranged or melee attacks describe spell attacks as well as Strikes and other effects with the attack trait, so if you were to pick winter bolt or charged javelin from the mystery's domains, both of which make ranged spell attacks, you'd incur the penalty from being cursebound 2.
I agree with Teridax on this. I don't like that I cant fully theme up on lighting by picking the lighting domain without really losing out on most of its benefits while cursebound. The curse could have been something that doesnt clash with a domain given.
CURSE OF INCLEMENT HEADWINDS
CURSE DIVINE ORACLE
The weather seems to always oppose you in ways large and
small. Even when you are calm and at rest, your hair and
clothing are inconveniently blown about by gentle winds,
you are slightly damp from the faintest drizzle, and your
touch often comes with a static shock. When you have the
cursebound condition, you are opposed by the elements, with
the following effects.
Cursebound 1 Lightning is drawn to you. You gain electricity
weakness 2 and electricity spells or effects that have
additional effects for a creature wearing or holding metal
treat you as though you were wearing metal. Any immunity or
resistance you have to such spells and effects is suppressed.
Cursebound 2 Blowing winds impose a -2 circumstance penalty
to ranged attack rolls you make.
Cursebound 3 Your weakness to electricity is equal to 5 +
your level.
Cursebound 4 The raging winds push you back, imposing a -10-
foot status penalty to all your Speeds.
Lol its true I have blinders for lightning.
I think I would take a worse curse in its place.
Cursebound 1 - making it so all metal weapons have a +1 status to hit me and additional effects for a creature wearing or holding metal
treat you as though you were wearing metal. And a -1 status to saves vs lighting spell DCs. (so metal weapons, spells that affect metal, and lighting spells, I think easier to affect/hit makes more thematic sense than nullifying resistance and providing weakness)
Just dont make it revolve around weakness to lightning. That makes the effect niche in severity and the resistance suppression needed to make it work right nullifies the lightning domain advanced focus spell.
Cursebound 2 is fine with me actually. as its broadly making ranged attacks worse.
Cursebound 3 and 4 should swap and curse bound 4 can take be an increase to the bonus for metal weapons and the negative on lighting saves from cursebound 1. and now at 4 also suppress resistance to lightning.
This would be more severe a curse but i would take it.
It demonstrates just how uneven this whole thing is, since only some of the mysteries have problems like this.
For sure. Some mysteries don't have problems like this. There is a lot of balance in the core mechanics of PF2. But individual classes and powers are all over the place. With lots of awesome powers and lots of useless ones.
I feel that, ideally, oracles should always be tempted to lean hard into their theme at every opportunity, and that suffering the consequences should be a regular part of the experience or else it becomes vestigial.
Well that was a design choice made in the remaster. The cursebound powers are now stronger and there are no beneficial side effects. You can now refocus all the side effects away. Ultimately the cursebound powers are just another resource pool that you can choose to lean into or not. Sometimes the correct choice will be not to use them.
Is it a good design ? .....
But then would it really be much of a curse, if it only gave you -2 on the spells you never wanted to cast anyway?
That's the flipside to it: it's entirely possible, easy even, to ignore the cursebound 2 effect of the Tempest mystery entirely. As you yourself pointed out, these focus spells are entirely optional, and the Oracle can easily just not pick attack spells (this is in fact made easier by all of the save-based blast spells the Tempest mystery gives them). This is one of the reasons why Tempest is one of the stronger mysteries, because unlike something like Ancestors, whose curse is near-guaranteed to have a major impact every combat encounter, Tempest's curse has no effect if you don't use attack spells and don't go up against electricity damage, at least up until cursebound 4. It's not very much of a curse in this respect, much like how Cosmos's curse is similarly very easy to avoid and far less debilitating than other curses even when it does apply.
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if you liked the old oracle. you will most likely hate the new one, if liked sorcerers you will like the new oracle, because it's literally a sorcerer. not only is there very little reason to engage with your curse, there is zero penalty for not engaging with your curse. Just as someone mentioned above, you can just play the class as just another version of a sorcerer.
It stronger that it was previously, but it's not really an "oracle" class at least not in any meaningful sense. It is very much a class for people who never wanted to play the class in the first place.
basically it got the original release of Supreme Commander 2 treatment.
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The oracle is a really strong class.
Three useful resources to work with is pretty amazing. It's not as thematically cool as the PF1 oracle or PF2 pre-remaster oracle. But it is an extremely strong class with a lot of useful options.
The curse is much easier to use. Foretell Harm is a very good cursebound feat for a caster. Even though they are not the most thematically unique class, they are built very efficiently to the point where they have a lot of useful abilities that feel good to use.
Very well designed class for PF2.
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if you liked the old oracle. you will most likely hate the new one, if liked sorcerers you will like the new oracle, because it's literally a sorcerer. not only is there very little reason to engage with your curse, there is zero penalty for not engaging with your curse. Just as someone mentioned above, you can just play the class as just another version of a sorcerer.
It stronger that it was previously, but it's not really an "oracle" class at least not in any meaningful sense. It is very much a class for people who never wanted to play the class in the first place.
The oracle is a really strong class.
Three useful resources to work with is pretty amazing. It's not as thematically cool as the PF1 oracle or PF2 pre-remaster oracle. But it is an extremely strong class with a lot of useful options.
Both of these statements are true, heh. Remaster Oracle is one of the best spellcasters in the game with a lot going for it. If you want to play a divine spellcaster, you'll happy with what it offers.
Distinctive subclasses and flavor are no longer on offer, though. All you're doing when picking a mystery now is choosing between a really bad curse for specific revelation spells/divine access options (and avoiding cursebound abilities) or taking a curse that doesn't really matter (and being able to spam cursebound abilities with impunity).
The ones that used to actually give you alternate gameplay options no longer really do that, to the point of not being good at the thing the description says they want to be good at in the case of Battle and Life. And that's why people that were already playing Oracle when it came out mostly went "what the hell is this?", as trying to update to the remaster version effectively broke a lot of characters in a way that nothing else in the remaster really did.