Please share the stories of your favorite pre-Remaster characters and then explain why you believe you can't recapture the magic with a remastered version of the character.
For me it was my studious and steadfast cavern elf draconic sorcerer, Riva Sarjenka. She traveled across the Mwangi Expanse, saved a metropolis from an infestation of oozes, freed slaves, started a kingdom and trade empire, and adopted a kobold orphan to fill the void left by her biological daughter's death.
Formerly of black dragon descent, none of the current dragons aestheticly or magically match what she had or could do. Also, she was a multiclassed wizard, with tons of utility spells in her spellbook. But with all the changes to the wizard class and with the new sorcerer feats being too good to not take, I have difficulty justifying a similar path for her today. It just doesn't feel the same when I try to rebuild her.
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While still fun to play, and stronger in some ways, I do kinda mourn the support Alchemist.
At the end of Outlaws of Alkenstar, my Core Rulebook L10 Bomber was handing out 4 Elixirs of Life per day as emergency healing, one for each of us. He was giving 4 Silvertongue Elixirs to the Bard, 4 Numbing Tonics to the Inventor, and a couple of Life Shot bullets to the Vanguard. And he had enough Batches of Infused Reagents leftover to have 4 Quicksilver Mutagens, 9 Bombs and had three Batches left over for Alchemical Rabbits through Quick Alchemy.
(In case you were wondering, he leaned pretty hard on his Perpetual Infusion Bombs with the Sticky Bomb feat. So much fun.)
Just can't do that anymore. I have a PC2 L12 Alchemist Bomber... he can do 11 Items a day in Advanced Alchemy. His Versatile Vials he saves for Sticky Bombs... and he's needed to.
So yeah, RIP support Alchemist.
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It wasn't the Remaster that killed my Bloodrager. It was War of Immortals. I managed to port the character from PF1 to PF2 with a homebrew Bloodline instinct: PF1 Bloodrager Val Baine Converted to PF2. But when bloodrager was officially ported to PF2 as a barbarian-only archetype in War of Immortals, the official PF2 bloodrager was too far from by former PF1 character to port her to that archetype. If she ever makes another cameo appearance, I will have to stop calling her a bloodrager.
I would suggest a Witch that has a familiar that is incapable of participating in combat. However, the Familiar of Flowing Script ability is of so low impact and high risk that it still qualifies.
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I have a Leshy Champion in PFS with the Finadar Leshy background. A creepy little dude that used to be demonically tainted, but now got redeemed by Sarenrae. The fire and sun themes are so very on point. That all still works fine.
The issue is that I took the Sorcerer dedication for the Demonic bloodline for Glutton's Jaw. I could bite people and get some temporary HP back, which worked well on a Champion build. But with the remaster, that whole flavour got lost.
I have a Leshy Champion in PFS with the Finadar Leshy background. A creepy little dude that used to be demonically tainted, but now got redeemed by Sarenrae. The fire and sun themes are so very on point. That all still works fine.
The issue is that I took the Sorcerer dedication for the Demonic bloodline for Glutton's Jaw. I could bite people and get some temporary HP back, which worked well on a Champion build. But with the remaster, that whole flavour got lost.
What broke here?
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I dont even want to call oracles victims, I think they are just better outright in pretty much every single way.
There have been long discussions about that. Those who love the preremaster Oracle loathe the new one and vice versa.
I also have 2 Oracle victims but I'll speak about my Barbarian:
Czav is... well, was, a Dhampir from Ustalav. He spent his youth bullied because of his blood, mostly by divine servants who were seeing in him an undead abomination. It fueled his rage, rage he fully embraced once he reached Rahadoum and called it home. After decades fighting divine casters and developing specific anti-divine abilities (Superstition Barbarian) he decided to become a Pathfinder. He realized that his anti-divine abilities were actually effective against all traditions of magic and he became a mix of clericide, witch hunter and mage slayer.
Unfortunately, the new Superstition Barbarian is just an idiot who's frightened by magic and can't even accept to wield it while my character was actually extremely knowledgeable about magic with even some magic abilities (Arcane Sense feat to be able to Detect Magic as it's rather useful for a mage slayer). Overall, the new Superstition Barbarian is different enough that my character stopped making much sense.
I may speak later of my Oracles. I've been able to turn one into an Animist, I find that the Animist embodies quite well what the preremaster Oracle was. But for the other one... well, it's currently in retirement.
Yes. Premaster it was a single action to have a bite attack for a minute. In the remaster it's become a ranged attack.
I agree that the spell overall is better, but a lot of the flavour has been lost. I miss my little ankle biter.
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My cosmos oracle with damage resistance healing tank is no more.
I have to admit the remaster oracle is a pretty amazing caster. Far more playable than the previous version, though not as interesting.
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I had an idea for a ranged character with Alchemist archetype to load up on alchemical ammo, and that doesn't work nearly as well anymore since quick alchemy elemental ammunition is 3 actions with a bow. Gunslinger also has this problem with Munitions Machinist being extremely hard to use now (since it's 4 actions with the need to reload), but the campaign that had one of those ended before remaster Gunslinger came out (I'd have let them keep the old version if it had come up).
My cosmos oracle with damage resistance healing tank is no more.
Me too, hah. Though I kept the character and adapted to the new version, that aspect is totally gone. Another character in the party was a Pristmatic Ray Cleric and so we wrote a little thing where my character was a sufficiecntly bad influence on their Priestess that Desna decided to remove the cosmos powers from my character as a warning.
So I made it work, but it was a frustrating thing to do. I was the only Oracle I know that did: the others in our play groups nope'd out of the remaster changes entirely, and the only PFS one I know of is no longer playing Oracle at all.
I have to admit the remaster oracle is a pretty amazing caster. Far more playable than the previous version, though not as interesting.
It is. It gained power and ease of use at the expense of what actually made it interesting in the first place.
As was already said: this was great if you didn't like the old Oracle. If you did, it was decidedly not great. And Cosmos at least came out of it pretty well.
Nobody else in my play groups was significantly impacted by the remaster at all except in positive ways (though no one was playing a wizard at the time), so its pretty telling that every Oracle player I know was unhappy and literally no one else was.
I dont even want to call oracles victims, I think they are just better outright in pretty much every single way. But there was certainly a few themes and build ideas lost.
In terms of raw power? Sure. But Life Oracle lost what made it actually worth playing & interesting, and replaced it with antisynergistic abilities instead. More spell slots is an upgrade, but the "unique Life Mystery stuff" got far worse. And hell, Ancestors went from "a difficult but very unique play style" to "nothing particularly unique at all and a curse that will get you killed if you actually use abilities that stack it."
That's basically Remaster Oracle in a nutshell. The "generic caster" part got better, and the "unique Oracle playstyle" parts became worse to non-existant.
There's a reason why so many people that were playing Oracles loathe the Remaster changes: it broke character concepts across a huge swath of the class and removed a bunch of the reason why those people chose to play the class in the first place. They decided to fix the class by throwing out the most interesting parts.
If your character just flat out doesn't work anymore the way you envisioned it, then you definitely qualify as a victim of the remaster even if the raw power level went up. Lets be honest: if people wanted raw power, they probably weren't playing a lot of these mysteries to start with.
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Battle oracle, battle oracle, battle oracle.
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But the victims here are the people that fell in love with the old oracle, not the oracle class itself
That's a very weird statement.
The old oracle had quite a bit of friction that made it a problem if the group couldnt handle it. And I personally dreaded the sight of an oracle at public tables.
Is it an overstatement? Because your experience is nowhere close to mine. I've had much more issues with Barbarians and Paladins than with Oracles.
Instead it seems like more people are actually playing an enjoying oracles
I don't say it's wrong, but I think it's unfounded and also doesn't change the fact that those who played preremaster Oracles have a real reason to feel screwed.
an oracle rolled up to a group not built to handle them
What does that mean? What has to be "handled" when an Oracle walks into a bar... sorry, group?
But I dont think its entirely unfounded to say that people that would never touch the oracle is now willing to do so.
I fully agree with you on that. The remaster and preremaster Oracle are so different they don't target the same players. It's actually a brand new class.
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But I dont think its entirely unfounded to say that people that would never touch the oracle is now willing to do so.
To some extent.
But I'm also not sure how good "the changes were made for people who hated the class" actually is as a practical goal.
But I'm talking about someone playing a premaster life-oracle in a group without non-magical incombat healing or otherwise being overly hindered by Ash's Concealment/difficult terrain aura.
Having played a Life Oracle in PFS I can state by experience that it had no impact on the parties tactics.
A 10-foot aura of Concealment/difficult terrain can be annoying but it's hardly a reason to consider the Oracle has to be "handled" by the party.However just as SuperBidi said, It absolutely feels like a brand new class .
For me it's the core of the grudge: A lot of characters became incompatible with the new class. When you change a class, you can't just throw characters with the bathwater, at least not without experiencing a significant backlash by those who played these characters.
We learn to love these little things...
Did they ever clarify if Oracles are supposed to get 4 spells known per rank? Cuz I saw something suggesting that was the case for PFS and was seriously unsure what the divine sorcerer had going for it if that's intended.
Regardless, That was one of my experiences, with the final outcome being that the oracle died a preventable death because of his curse as none of the others could heal him from a nasty source of persistent damage. Something that could've been prevented with better communication or preparation for such a moment, Something that the oracle himself handled with stride as a player. The same could not be said for a few others at the table.
Sad experience. But you can be healed while unconscious as a Life Oracle, just not above 1 hp (but then the Oracle can heal themselves). So I feel it has more to do with a player who played badly than with the Oracle itself.
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But I'm also not sure how good "the changes were made for people who hated the class" actually is as a practical goal.This is unuseful spin specifically spun in order to try and present an attempt to make a class work better for a group of players that happens to not include one's self as having been motivated by idiocy and thus label it as both inherently and obviously bad.
This is unuseful spin specifically spun in order to try and present dissatisfaction with the remaster as claiming that Paizo was motivated by idiocy in changing it. You're just attempting to discredit people by making something up that doesn't exist.
That's not what happened with the oracle. What did happen is that a class which a lot of people found appealing but struggled to actually make use of as a direct result of its design got a revision that makes it far easier for them to work with.
We know, because they told us. But the net effect was breaking a lot of existing characters in unfixable ways, and then forcibly imposing that change on existing PFS characters for no apparent reason.
It's not the "Paizo changed it for people that never had any interest in playing the class" people that liked the prior version better than the newer version want to pretend it was.
That wasn't the intent of the changes, but it was the result. The changes are VASTLY less popular with people who were playing Oracles at the time they landed than they are with people who weren't doing that. No other remaster class really came to close this level of negativity except maybe Wizard, because no other class broke characters on this scale.
And presenting it as if it were has no upside - Paizo isn't going to look at someone mischaracterizing their intentions to improve a class and go "ah man, we should be listening to what this person thinks, their inability to even give us the benefit of the doubt is a clear indicator they know what's what."
No one did that, you're just making stuff up. Multiple posts do in fact point out that some other things got better. But that wasn't free.
Also, this is a thread specifically talking about characters that got broken by the remaster. So naturally it's going to talk about what got broken by the remaster. Oracle is going to come up because a lot of Oracle characters were broken by the remaster. What else were you expecting here, exactly?
You're basically arguing semantics here.
When other people say "handled" they are talking about the same things you are when you say "can be annoying". The difference is not that you know how things were and the people that don't agree with you don't know, it's that you think the situation we're all accurately aware of was fine and other people don't.
There doesn't have to be some insurmountable level of difficulty in making an oracle work well in order for someone to be unhappy with the feeling that oracle takes extra effort and, because it'd be unbalanced otherwise, doesn't really get extra cool stuff compared to "I could just play a sorcerer" or "I could just play a cleric."
Sorry, but I don't get what you're trying to convey.
It looks like you are disagreeing with me while also agreeing with me and ultimately I'm lost.
Seems like they intended to make the curse a buy in, but for some reason also took away the majority of mystery perks while only drip feeding some of them back in as feats. A simple fix would be to put all the mystery benefits back in, but a lot of the new curses have major anti synergy with what the mystery used to do.
I don't think any of my non oracle characters/concepts have been effected. I rarely base a character idea on one singular specific aspect or ability of a class so a few changes here or there don't change my concepts.
That wasn't the intent of the changes, but it was the result. The changes are VASTLY less popular with people who were playing Oracles at the time they landed than they are with people who weren't doing that. No other remaster class really came to close this level of negativity except maybe Wizard, because no other class broke characters on this scale.
I will note that it isn't all PreRemaster Oracle players that are unhappy with the changes. Not all Oracle characters got broken.
Specifically it is the Oracle characters that were built to go against the spellcasting character type. The 'Oracle Gish' characters got broken - Battle Mystery most notably, but Bones Mystery and maybe Ancestors Mystery also.
For players such as myself who were playing Oracle characters that were spellcaster types of characters roughly equivalent to a Divine tradition Sorcerer, the Remaster changes were mostly good - sometimes really good.
I can't say any character was broken: just some tweaking here and there. I HAVE had several that are now possible that weren't possible before the remaster.
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For players such as myself who were playing Oracle characters that were spellcaster types of characters roughly equivalent to a Divine tradition Sorcerer, the Remaster changes were mostly good - sometimes really good.
I was playing spellcaster Oracles, namely a Life Oracle and a Tempest Oracle. The Life Oracle lost its healing abilities and became the worst healer among all Mysteries. While the Tempest Oracle lost all its flavor, which was important to me.
Also, it's not just about being broken, it's about trading a mechanically interesting class with a bland and boring one. I already have a divine Sorcerer (my main character), getting 2 new ones is not what I wanted for my Oracles.
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The entire point of oracle, flavorwise, is to be a chuunibyou power-at-a-cost kind of character. That's the entire point of a curse, the entire point of cursebound, and the inheritance of the class from 1E. It evokes things like blind prophets and the like, or the classic idea of an often physical loss for spiritual gain.
Remaster dwindled the point and mechanics of the curse for a lot of characters, which means it directly hacksawed the thing that makes an oracle an oracle. It's hard to be happy about that. Premaster oracle is always available for play at my table as a result.
That wasn't the intent of the changes, but it was the result. The changes are VASTLY less popular with people who were playing Oracles at the time they landed than they are with people who weren't doing that. No other remaster class really came to close this level of negativity except maybe Wizard, because no other class broke characters on this scale.
I will note that it isn't all PreRemaster Oracle players that are unhappy with the changes. Not all Oracle characters got broken.
Of course, there's no absolutes here. My Cosmos Oracle didn't get broken. In terms of raw power, they got stronger. But I did lose a bunch of narratively interesting stuff, like how if my Curse was up I became so light (as a Gnome) that a strong wind was something to be worried about... and with the weather in Kingmaker, that was a thing. It was pretty narratively interesting, and the remaster version went "nah".
That wasn't game breaking. It also wasn't what I signed up for when I made the character, since my curse now is basically completely irrelevant to the point that sometimes I just don't bother removing it in Foundry. (Curse balance is seriously atrocious.)
Specifically it is the Oracle characters that were built to go against the spellcasting character type. The 'Oracle Gish' characters got broken - Battle Mystery most notably, but Bones Mystery and maybe Ancestors Mystery also.
Life is not a gish by any definition of the term, and it replaced some really interesting healing abilities with a Cursebound ability that has anti-synergy with its focus spells... making other Oracles better at the thing Life's description says it focuses on: healing. This was effectively broken since "the healing mystery is worse at healing than a Cosmos Oracle who uses Natural Ambition to pick up Nudge the Scales at level 1" is pretty ridiculous.
Ancestors had a unique but hard to get the most out of mechanic replaced with a crippling curse that isn't even remotely interesting. Pretty broken since what's the reason to pick it now that there's nothing interesting going on?
So the "broken" ones are Battle, Bones, Life, and Ancestors. That's what, half the mysteries in PC2? That's a pretty awful ratio.
For players such as myself who were playing Oracle characters that were spellcaster types of characters roughly equivalent to a Divine tradition Sorcerer, the Remaster changes were mostly good - sometimes really good.
Sure... but we already had that in Divine Sorcerer. So a class' distinct identity was largely gutted to make it more like a class we already had. It's not like people were unhappy for no reason.
Remaster Oracle is a really good spellcaster, but it's only tangently related to premaster Oracle. It's great if you were playing something that still worked because you got a big power boost, but a bunch of characters in existence didn't work anymore and "more power" isn't really a consolation prize when what you wanted out of the character is the unique stuff that was removed.
I mean, I'm glad it works for you. I made it work for me too, but I've never been happy with how it changed vs what I had, and I'm still the happiest Oracle of anyone in the play groups around me. It really sticks out to me just how the players going "I'm sitting the remaster changes out" skew Oracle so heavily. That's not a sign that this went well.
Like, why don't mysteries have benefits anymore? What purpose was served by removing all of that and replacing it with nothing? It doesn't even fit their stated reasoning around making Curses easier to understand.
(And PFS going "you must use the new one despite the remaster FAQ saying you can keep the old class chassis if you don't like the remaster updates" was just galling and tone-deaf. That was outright breaking characters because "Use the old one that already worked and had been played" wasn't an option.)
Sure... but we already had that in Divine Sorcerer. So a class' distinct identity was largely gutted to make it more like a class we already had. It's not like people were unhappy for no reason.
Not trying to say that there is no reason for some Oracle players to be unhappy with the changes. I fully agree with that.
I'm not GM'ing for any Oracle players currently, but if I was I would absolutely let them continue playing the PreRemaster Oracle if they wanted to. For this very reason - that their character may not work any more if I didn't.
I would make them choose consistently all Remaster or all PreRemaster (with errata for some things not specific to Oracle mechanics like damage types, cantrip damage calculations, Refocus rules, and similar).
I wouldn't allowing a hybrid approach such as: PreRemaster Curse with the Remaster Cursebound feats, and getting the ability to reduce cursebound level down to zero.
The remaster oracle is such a crazy powerful caster that it's hard for me to complain about the change.
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My favorite character who was killed by the Remaster was a polite and quietly-seething halfling battle oracle. He was raised by a distinguished servant family in what is now Ravounel. As a Bellflower agent he learned to both politely serve the political elite of Cheliax while scheming for freedom in the shadows. The pre-Remaster oracle gave him a range of skills and allowed him to attack from a distance with his sling staff (admittedly action intensive but good damage) and left options open for buffing the group.
With the Remaster he lost the battle oracle’s sweet bonus for attacking every round to hold off his curse. Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out how to rebuild him in the Remaster with a free PFS rebuild, so had given up on ever playing him again. The animist changed everything by providing some tools to try and return to the original concept. I decided to rebuild him with ACP as we were beyond the free rebuild time frame.
Unfortunately with the rebuild he doesn’t have as many skills (to both deceive and charm his way through social encounters), plus not having access to martial weapons all the time or heavy armor stinks. However, I’m willing to give the rebuild a try, hoping the Remaster did not completely destroy the character concept - even if it did remove some of the benefits. We’ll see how he plays out.
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You're presenting it as if people that were playing the class, whether because they felt it didn't have any meaningful problems or because they were choosing to tough them out despite how meaningful they viewed the problems as being, are innately more important than any people that counted problems as significant enough to talk them out of playing the class despite their interest in it.
They aren't inherently better in the sense of being more morally worthy or something, but I think people who play and like oracle probably deserve primacy in its design considerations over people who aren't choosing to play an oracle—provided those people are already served well by other classes. (That's because if you don't really vibe so much with other classes, yet feel like Oracle should be your main jam and isn't, you probably deserve consideration as well.) The goal of a class is to appeal to a niche or play fantasy. It is beyond obvious at this point that remaster oracle does not fill the same niche.
Remaster Oracle has this awful problem of explaining why it doesn't infringe on the Divine Sorcerer's playspace and fantasy in a way the premaster oracle had no problem whatsoever doing. Remaster Oracle is only barely incapable of being shoehorned into a Sorcerer archetype with unique bloodline options. It is that low on unique selling points that aren't just class feats.
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Fencer Swashbuckler Martial Artist for Stumbling Stance+Feint taking the Monk archetype to grab Flurry of Blows at 10th level so you can feint (to gain panache) and strike twice for one action. The Swashbuckler overall is in a better place for sure, and "letting other people poach full strength FoB" felt bad for people playing monks, but that was my Ruby Phoenix character and I had fun with it.
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You're presenting it as if people that were playing the class [...] are innately more important than any people that counted problems as significant enough to talk them out of playing the class despite their interest in it.
Of course they are. It's basic respect.
The remaster oracle is such a crazy powerful caster that it's hard for me to complain about the change.
That's good. Complaining about the class would have been off-topic.
*Winks at other posters*