(Oh dear, this again)
So, I tagged paizo on Bluesky a few days ago regarding this because it's come up in my playgroup and we need to figure out an answer. This has been an ongoing issue since remastered oracle came out just over a year ago. The person running the Paizo Bluesky account directed me to make a thread here even if it's been brought up and not answered before, so here we are!
Remastered oracle, under the spell repertoire section, says the following:
The collection of spells you can cast is called your spell repertoire. At 1st level, you learn two 1st-rank divine spells of your choice and five divine cantrips of your choice. You choose these from the common spells on the divine list or from other divine spells to which you have access. You can cast any spell in your spell repertoire by using a spell slot of an appropriate spell rank.
You add to this spell repertoire as you increase in level. Each time you get a spell slot (see the Oracle Spells per Day table), you add a spell to your spell repertoire of the same rank. At 2nd level, you select another 1st-rank spell; at 3rd level, you select two 2nd-rank spells, and so on. When you add spells, you might add a higher-rank version of a spell you already have, so you can cast a heightened version of that spell.
The question here is how many spells does an oracle know?
Rules as written it's actually unclear as it says two different things:
- > A first level oracle knows two first rank spells
- > Every time an oracle gets a spell slot, they learn a new spell.
So does an oracle know two or three spells of a rank when they first unlocks that rank, and would they then know three or four spells when they get their next spell of that rank in the next level? The only errata given for this is that the table (which only displays spell slots and not spells known) is correct. This doesn't help anyone determine if they should know three or four spells per rank.
It's been over a year, Paizo. Please give us a solid answer about how many spells oracle knows D:
The majority view seems to be "the numbers in the text weren't fully corrected in the first errata, and thus follow the second paragraph." aka: 3 and then 4 spells known per rank.
Most of that thread is from 2024, but the last few posts are fairly recent and on this topic. That's also what the tools like Pathbuilder do, which while not evidence of what RAI actually is, does mean it's the ruling of least resistance.
And yeah: the fact that the text still contradicts itself a year and two errata cycles later is a really bad look. This is such a fundamental part of a spellcasting class that it really shouldn't be confusing like this. Like, there's no debate about how many spells a Sorcerer knows.
Pathbuilder recently removed one spell per rank , which is how I found out about this whole debacle. And yeah, I read that thread and tagged Paizo on Bluesky; they don't answer rules questions on socmed, so they said to make a thread here explaining that perhaps the Paizo staff that trawl these parts for rules explanations missed it.
Personally I don't think they're bothering to look, because that thread you've linked has been around for a loooong time.
I agree that it should be 3 and then 4 spells but my GM doesn't want to mess with it unless Paizo actually makes a statement, which they absolutely need to do independent of how my GM operates.
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Pathbuilder recently removed one spell per rank , which is how I found out about this whole debacle.
... huh. That must have happened very recently. I built my Spore War Oracle in there a couple months ago and it wasn't doing that (but opening the character now has simply erased some of my spell picks by reducing the repertoire size). Well that's another wrinkle in this saga.
And yeah, I read that thread and tagged Paizo on Bluesky; they don't answer rules questions on socmed, so they said to make a thread here explaining that perhaps the Paizo staff that trawl these parts for rules explanations missed it.
Personally I don't think they're bothering to look, because that thread you've linked has been around for a loooong time.
They don't answer rules questions here, and haven't for years. James answers lore questions and interacts on AP related conversations a lot and Maya is here for community support, and those things are great. Rules questions do not get answered by Paizo here.
We're on our own unless another errata comes out. It's extremely frustrating because this should take literally 60 seconds to clarify.
I agree that it should be 3 and then 4 spells but my GM doesn't want to mess with it unless Paizo actually makes a statement, which they absolutely need to do independent of how my GM operates.
Yeah I really don't understand their aversion to fixing things like this. It really doesn't reflect well on their support of the system that basic class function like this is so hard to get clarified.
They don't answer rules questions here, and haven't for years. James answers lore questions and interacts on AP related conversations a lot and Maya is here for community support, and those things are great. Rules questions do not get answered by Paizo here.
We're on our own unless another errata comes out. It's extremely frustrating because this should take literally 60 seconds to clarify.
So they don't answer rules questions by email, or on social media, or on the forums where I was specifically directed to to ask this question. Where do they answer rules questions?
Also the update to Pathbuilder seems to have happened on 5 August.
Where do they answer rules questions?
The only place seems to be on random podcasts or streams or in the errata passes. Which means there isn't a way to directly ask them. I'm not sure why they'd send you here for an official answer: we can give you our best guesses, but we can't make a Paizo statement appear. If i could, I have a list of things I'd like answered...
I'm not sure why they'd send you here for an official answer
Probably the same reason this question needs to be asked in the first place: Paizo has more employees than it has communication and a chunk of them have zero idea what's going on with the other chunks.
This sort of rules issue wouldn't even be a thing if the editors and writers communicated better.
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To answer the question of why the devs don't answer rules questions here: they delegate that to the community in general. I have seen a couple of times where it does still happen, but it is incredibly rare.
As for errata: I am hoping to see that in the next errata cycle - along with a bunch of other things that have been errors or undefined for even longer than that. I keep waiting and hoping, but in several cases have been sorely disappointed many times. However, we don't have to wait for book reprintings to get errata any more. It used to be that way, but that policy was changed a couple of years ago (and then the schedule was torpedoed by the OGL and Remaster, but should be back on track now).
For ruling between now and then: I still recommend having 3-4 spells known per spell Rank to match the spell slots. The devs clearly tried to change Oracle from a 3-slot caster to a 4-slot caster, but didn't catch all of the details in the original conversion and only partially fixed it in the first errata. If you (like me) disagree with the GM ruling on the matter from the Pathbuilder2e app writer, you can manually add additional spells known per Rank (though you do need the full version of the app for that).
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So they don't answer rules questions by email, or on social media, or on the forums where I was specifically directed to to ask this question. Where do they answer rules questions?They don't answer rules questions here, and haven't for years. James answers lore questions and interacts on AP related conversations a lot and Maya is here for community support, and those things are great. Rules questions do not get answered by Paizo here.
We're on our own unless another errata comes out. It's extremely frustrating because this should take literally 60 seconds to clarify.
Short answer: they don't. Long answer: You occasionally see one of them on How It's Played on Youtube or pop up in a random discord chat/reddit thread, but it's not common. I can't remember the last time a rules question was answered here by Paizo (setting/lore questions are MUCH more likely to get a response).
As was said, they rely on the community for answering rules questions. And there's lots of them we can answer. So whoever sent you here probably didn't actually dig into the question itself: that's just a standard response to go where people who can answer questions are.
The problem of course is that in this case the book directly contradicts itself so we literally can't answer it. They are the only ones that can.
Since they're just... not doing it... educated guesses are the best we can do. And yes, that means Paizo specifically told you to ask Paizo a question in a place where Paizo will not answer it. The whole situation is frankly ridiculous.
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You know every time I try to reply to more than one person it destroys my whole reply and resets this text box so I'm not even going to bother formatting the replies. Good Lord.
In any case, the fact that this has gone on for over a year and is apparently (according to Finoan) not even the LONGEST wait for a clarification or errata is actually kind of depressing. Like I really enjoy Pathfinder but when we have to wait so long to get clarifications on things that would literally take a single writer FIVE MINUTES to look into and give an absolute answer? Disappointing. At least the game is free.
I've mentioned in my campaign's discord about the general consensus being one spell known per slot per rank so here's hoping the GM goes along with it. I play in... ~7 hours so I'll check in then.
I should look up what the other spontaneous casters get in terms of the number of spells known because if it's 3-4 for each of them, I have a better argument too.
Looking at things, sorcerer gets 3-4 spells known per rank but one is a bloodline spell, and bard gets 2-3 spells known per rank but only gets 2-3 slots per rank. It's safe to say that's not going to be a working argument for why my oracle should know 4 spells per rank instead of 3.
*sigh*
This is why it's necessary for publishers to stay on top of these things.
My next character is going to be a martial.
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The answer is unfortunately the same.
Make a reasonable decision for your table and move on because it is unlikely Paizo will address things any time soon.
I still have serious questions about the base damage rules, the stunned condition, battleforms, eidolons. It is frustrating in the extreme that these aren't even acknowledged.
. Like I really enjoy Pathfinder but when we have to wait so long to get clarifications on things that would literally take a single writer FIVE MINUTES to look into and give an absolute answer?
I don't think it's nearly as simple or quick as you think here. Paizo isn't a huge company, but it IS a company, which means decisions aren't unilaterally made by one person. If a question is that easy to answer, odds are the community will provide the answer without Paizo intervention. If the answer is more complicated or has significant rules/balance ramifications, a lone writer will probably want to confer with someone else. Someone else may or may not be the original author given the company's talent retention problems. Or it might be the Director of Game Design who needs to make the call, and he's busy directing all of the other game design at the company, including the creation of new books to sell which will always be a higher priority. If you work in an office environment or middle management, you'll know how often questions go unanswered when the question is hard or people are busy.
I will grant you that something as basic as how many spells a class has not being clarified is... Unimpressive. A common critique of the oracle remaster is it feels rushed, and perhaps Paizo wants to avoid making another rushed decision on the final clarification.
But I am not sure it's reasonable to expect the same level of responsiveness from the second largest company in the industry as you'd see from a more indie company like Evil Hat, where a single writer can issue decisions with much more authority and doesn't necessarily have bosses breathing down their neck to focus on other things.
Make a reasonable decision for your table and move on because it is unlikely Paizo will address things any time soon.
As much as I accept the decisions of my GM in order to play, I don't like that he's as of yet decided to reduce my versatility by going with the 3 spells known per level change that was done arbitrarily by the Pathbuilder guy. It's not a democracy; he makes the decisions, though he does take things into account.
Also I slept through my session today and I am sad :<
Looking at spells known per rank from their repertoire feature, Not counting additional spells from any other source or feature;
Psychic gets 1-2
Bards gets 2-3
Sorcerer gets 3-4This exactly matches the amount of spellslots they have
yes but the fact that spontaneous casters don't all get 4 slots per level is something he's going to pick up on and that will weigh into his decision. I've checked and there's no real constant for how many spell slots per day any caster gets (Wizards get 3+1, witches only get 3, for example) but that's still something he'll look at and go "Well, there's no actual consistency here so I'm just going to stick with what you've got now."
I don't think it's nearly as simple or quick as you think here. Paizo isn't a huge company, but it IS a company, which means decisions aren't unilaterally made by one person.
Oh, I know. But a bird can dream that they'd manage to put something out.
You are rather visibly here to find something to help revert your GMs decision.
There's a little bit of that. I don't know if he's made a concrete decision and I'll stick with it regardless but it'd be nice to have an actual errata on it.
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But yes, Sadly this is a result of the 2-per year errata period,Which is still preferable compared to once per reprint, and some of the more pronounced designers that helped clear up rule questions either have quit the company or are in other positions. Could also be an internal policy change since alot of these clarifications just get buried into obscurity, causing people to ask for them again few months after.
There's no blaming this one on the new errata cycle:
- The winter errata fixed Oracle's spells per day but didn't fix this, despite it having basically the same problem.- The spring errata ignored it entirely and did very little in general.
Considering its the same problem as the class originally had on release, there really isn't any excuse.
I will grant you that something as basic as how many spells a class has not being clarified is... Unimpressive. A common critique of the oracle remaster is it feels rushed, and perhaps Paizo wants to avoid making another rushed decision on the final clarification.
It's been a year and it's the most basic function of a class in a core book. Even a government committee would have figured this out by now.
But I am not sure it's reasonable to expect the same level of responsiveness from the second largest company in the industry as you'd see from a more indie company like Evil Hat, where a single writer can issue decisions with much more authority and doesn't necessarily have bosses breathing down their neck to focus on other things.
At some point those same bosses should care about the preceived quality of the product they're putting out, since the entire business is predicated on "we have a game people like and thus we sell adventures for it."
Whatever you think of the Oracle remaster as a whole, there's no world in which this kind of ambiguty over how a spellcaster's spellcasting works is acceptable. It was an editing failure (and clearly rushed) that it was put out with those problems in the first place, it was ridiculous that it took 5 months to half-fix it (and we had to rely on a PFS ruling for guidance on "how many spells per day does this spellcaster have?"), and it's absurd that a year later we still don't actually know how many spells it gets to know.
It's not like we're talking about some complex edge case, here. This is really basic, core stuff. Paizo being so unwilling to fix this stuff or address it speaks to speaks to a fundamental problem with how they deal with issues and with how they communicate.
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Also I slept through my session today and I am sad :<
oof :(
yes but the fact that spontaneous casters don't all get 4 slots per level is something he's going to pick up on and that will weigh into his decision. I've checked and there's no real constant for how many spell slots per day any caster gets (Wizards get 3+1, witches only get 3, for example) but that's still something he'll look at and go "Well, there's no actual consistency here so I'm just going to stick with what you've got now."
It really just comes down to a couple of things:
1. The book says you get two, then one, so three.2. The book also says you get one every time you gain a spell slot, which does not match those numbers (this would be three and then four).
3. We know that the book originally also said you get two and then one (so three) spells per day, while the spells per day table said three/four. We know this was an error because it directly contradicted itself, and eventually the numbers in the text were proven wrong.
Based on that, it's a pretty reasonable argument that since we have another direct contradiction, the numbers in the text that were already wrong once are still wrong and were just not corrected.
I don't really get why Pathbuilder changed it, but they used the previous ruling for a year and even in the patch notes acknowledge that it's basically just his opinion and how to change it back if you think otherwise. It's not like its errata.
I decided to see if the PFS Pregens could help out here. Korakai (the iconic Oracle) at level 5 has a repertoire of 4 spells at rank 1, 4 spells at rank 2, and 3 spells at rank 3. That lines up with the three/four version of this... except at rank 1, because as a Tempest Oracle he should get Thunderstrike granted. So he's either missing a rank 1 spell, or has too many spells known at ranks 2/3.
(He also has Cursebound on his Revelation and Domain spells, both of which are wrong and from the legacy Oracle... because apparently even Paizo doesn't know how this class works post-remaster. That's also been wrong for quite a while and hasn't been fixed, and considering that impacts new players picking up a pregen with a GM who doesn't know to fix it, that's really not great.)
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Well, my GM has made a ruling in favour of having one spell known per slot, which is what we were doing prior to the silly pathbuilder change.
As much as that's good news, still would be nice for Paizo to make a ruling about this and all the long standing errors and issues in the system.
One other thing about Oracle spells is that spells granted by your mystery
A: are not explicitly added to your tradition list, which means you cannot add them to your repertoire at a higher level (though making them signature spells still work); and
B: are able to be retrained. Other classes have specific language that prohibits retraining granted spells, like the Sorcerer saying you can't swap bloodline spells, but the Oracle does not.
I assume these are other errors that crept in when they added mystery granted spells during the Remaster, as "A" was not an issue for the Premaster cantrips at all and "B" mattered very little.