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I wonder if the Oracle would have been better with only 3 spell slots but a new mechanic related to their mystery.
So right now you either ignore the curse or you use your curse bound abilities and endure the curse you got. It would have been more interesting if the curse levels became a resource once it hit stage 3. So at that stage or at 4 for a bigger benefit you could use a unique ability for that oracular mystery.
Like tempest could release a storm or something throwing the storm you've been enduring at your enemies.
This would have made building up the curse once again a gameplay goal to be able to access your most powerful ability even though it would come with risks.
Slap on a once every ten minute rule to the ability to consume all cursebound stages and there you go.
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They could have done that with the current mechanics by making more interesting high level cursebound feats that do things like bump your cursebound level by 2, as well. That would work within the current framework and hopefully also make some interesting higher level cursebound feats (because the current high level ones are mostly not worth taking).
Building up your curse deliberately to do something is a callback to the original Oracle which they went away from in the remaster version (except when they didn't with the cursebound feats that scale based on how cursed you are). Would it have been better if they didn't? Maybe. I'd have liked it more if nothing else since it would have felt more like the original class.
IMO it's pretty clear the 4 slots was a last minute decision on the class (given all the problems with the text not being changed and part of it still not being fixed to this day), and I still believe that it was a reaction to how other stuff was panning out to at least make the class powerful.
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There are a few feats that work off of or gain benefits from the oracle's cursebound level, such as Waters of Creation, Trial by Skyfire, Lighter than Air, and Conduit of Void and Vitality.
Unfortunately, other than Blaze of Revelation, most of them are small potatoes compared to the drawbacks of the oracle's curse. And Blaze of Revelation is probably only suited to certain specific oracles; for example leveraging the catfolk ancestry feats Cat's Luck, Lucky Break, and possibly Reliable Luck to make dying from a critical failure on the Fort save much less likely.
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I like the Remastered Oracle. I do miss some of the unique powers, but only one or two were any good. In the future, I'd like some more refinement. But the base chassis of the oracle is very good. I'm glad they made the change as the new oracle is much more playable than the old one.
About all I would like in the future is some refinement of the curses and unique oracle powers to make the class feel more like the curses give abilities that fit their theme.
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They need to rework the crap mysteries like Ancestors, Battle, Blight, Bones, and Life. Horrific curses, utterly useless focus & domain spells, and garbage bonus spells render these mysteries unplayable.
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There are a few feats that work off of or gain benefits from the oracle's cursebound level, such as Waters of Creation, Trial by Skyfire, Lighter than Air, and Conduit of Void and Vitality.
Which is funny since one of their stated design goals for the remaster Oracle was literally "curse going up should be a bad thing rather than the old case where sometimes it was good." Then they... put in stuff that scales off it, which now that its a resource you probably don't want to do and will only happen when chaining fights. And most of those don't scale very well.
Oraclar Warning scales that way and I think I've had that come up once because 3 fights got chained (Spore War book 2 seems to chain nasty encounters way more often than a normal AP).
The high level cursebound feats are largely "meh" in general and it's one of the big misfires of the class redesign that the best cursebound stuff is front loaded.
Unfortunately, other than Blaze of Revelation, most of them are small potatoes compared to the drawbacks of the oracle's curse. And Blaze of Revelation is probably only suited to certain specific oracles; for example leveraging the catfolk ancestry feats Cat's Luck, Lucky Break, and possibly Reliable Luck to make dying from a critical failure on the Fort save much less likely.
The biggest problem with Blaze of Revelation aside from the "you die" outcome (and the other outcomes also being pretty rough) is that when the class has so many resources, why would you use it?
You already need to be Cursebound 4, out of focus spells, and want to spam focus spells to make it worth doing. How often does that happen? Especially when the same level has Divine Effusion and it's "here's another 9th and another 8th rank spell slot", which is way better?
Like this is a truly desperate situation feat, but on a class with so many resources you need a REALLY specific situation to be so low on resources that the situation almost never happens in PF2. Otherwise you can have six 9th rank slots at this point and if the situation is that dire, those are probably going to help you more than a focus spell.
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I wonder if the Oracle would have been better with only 3 spell slots but a new mechanic related to their mystery.
Yes. Putting aside all the other points of contention around the Oracle, I think it stands to reason that if they had less generic power in the form of additional spell slots, and more bespoke power tied to their mystery, that would not only help the class feel less generic, but also give players more reasons to pick specific mysteries instead of just going for the one with the least impactful curse, especially as the cursebound feats offered by mysteries are also themselves generic. It's not like this is a concept that's alien to the class either: the Oracle used to have unique mystery benefits prior to the remaster, and the baby just happened to get thrown out with the bathwater.
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To be fair, the pre-Remaster oracle had absolutely horrible balance between the mysteries. Much worse than the Remaster oracle; there were literally mysteries that you did not ever want to take because they were so bad.
Yes, to an extent "the baby just happened to get thrown out with the bathwater." However, the pre-Remaster oracle class and mysteries probably needed a complete redesign; making the Remaster version more generic was likely much easier than starting over almost from scratch.
To be fair, the pre-Remaster oracle had absolutely horrible balance between the mysteries. Much worse than the Remaster oracle; there were literally mysteries that you did not ever want to take because they were so bad.
Yes, to an extent "the baby just happened to get thrown out with the bathwater." However, the pre-Remaster oracle class and mysteries probably needed a complete redesign; making the Remaster version more generic was likely much easier than starting over almost from scratch.
Ancestors is still a mystery you do not ever want to take because it is so bad, and Cosmos is still a mystery with a trivial curse. Of all the things that changed with the Oracle, that much has stayed the same. I would even go as far as to argue that the inter-mystery balance has gotten worse, not better, because not only did several mysteries get their niche gutted, like Battle or Life, the fact that cursebound feats are both the most impactful benefit of any mystery and something that can be selected regardless of subclass means it's easier than ever before to pick the mystery with the least impactful curse and get all the benefits of cursebound feats with minimal tradeoffs.
I don't disagree with you though that the Oracle needed a remaster: the old class was not only weak, but also really messy, and needed some cleaning up. I also suspect that the designers were working on an overly tight schedule, and my conjecture is that the generic fourth slot per rank was a last-minute bit of power slapped onto the class because there was not enough time to properly update the mystery benefits, which would explain the erroneous text around the class's spell repertoire. I can thus understand the reasons behind the new class's design, and the compromises Paizo had to make between quality, scheduling, and legal self-preservation.
At the same time, though, I still think that can sit comfortably alongside wanting better for the class: people mention that getting benefits from getting cursed is a bad thing and that's why curse benefits were taken out, for instance, but in practice that's not true, since as Tridus points out several cursebound feats scale off your cursebound value. This, in my opinion, is actually a really smart bit of design that delivers some of the premaster Oracle's gameplay in cleaner, more modular form, and my only major criticism there is that it wasn't applied to the rest of the Oracle's cursebound feats. Inbuilt curse scaling in every cursebound feat would not only have incentivized the Oracle to lean into their curse more, but would also have helped made that power less poachable from characters archetyping into the class (and I still believe that your cursebound condition as an archetype Oracle should be capped at 1 until you take a higher-level feat to raise it to 2). Similarly, if the Oracle's focus spells had instead been made into mystery-specific cursebound feats, that could similarly have given each mystery more bespoke power tied to their curse, instead of saddling the class with the equivalent of two focus pools on top of the greatest amount of spell slots per rank that a caster can have in 2e. For me, the greatest shame about the Oracle remaster isn't that it changed the premaster Oracle, but that it could have delivered better on its goals and satisfied fans of the old class a lot better if its driving design philosophy were applied more consistently.
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To be fair, the pre-Remaster oracle had absolutely horrible balance between the mysteries. Much worse than the Remaster oracle; there were literally mysteries that you did not ever want to take because they were so bad.
But that's the thing: you'd think one of the goals of the remaster would be to fix that. They didn't. The idea that Enfeebled and Clumsy are even remotely equivalent is wild at this stage of the game's life.
There's still garbage mysteries. They just changed which ones they are, and created silly situations like how Life doesn't really do what it says it does and is arguably a worse healer than some other Oracle.
The fact that they didn't fix this is one of the big failures in the redesign.
Yes, to an extent "the baby just happened to get thrown out with the bathwater." However, the pre-Remaster oracle class and mysteries probably needed a complete redesign; making the Remaster version more generic was likely much easier than starting over almost from scratch.
Well, people whose characters got broken by that were never going to like it. I don't think any other class had close to the number of "well I have to retire this character now" situations in PFS that Oracle had.
So doing that and not fixing the mystery balance, and a year later still not having fixed things like the repertoire size is pretty galling.
I don't disagree with you though that the Oracle needed a remaster: the old class was not only weak, but also really messy, and needed some cleaning up. I also suspect that the designers were working on an overly tight schedule, and my conjecture is that the generic fourth slot per rank was a last-minute bit of power slapped onto the class because there was not enough time to properly update the mystery benefits, which would explain the erroneous text around the class's spell repertoire. I can thus understand the reasons behind the new class's design, and the compromises Paizo had to make between quality, scheduling, and legal self-preservation.
I share this theory. It makes a lot of sense considering how half-baked some stuff on the class feels, the obvious errors it shipped with, and the extra spell slot that came seemingly out of nowhere. It wasn't the only thing that felt rushed in the second half of 2024 (looking at you, Mythic).
Of course, even if we accept that it was a rush job and that's why it went the way it did, there is zero excuse for it taking 5 months to fix the spell slot issue and over a year later the repertoire one still not being addressed. That's below any acceptable standard of product quality.
At the same time, though, I still think that can sit comfortably alongside wanting better for the class: people mention that getting benefits from getting cursed is a bad thing and that's why curse benefits were taken out, for instance, but in practice that's not true, since as Tridus points out several cursebound feats scale off your cursebound value. This, in my opinion, is actually a really smart bit of design that delivers some of the premaster Oracle's gameplay in cleaner, more modular form, and my only major criticism there is that it wasn't applied to the rest of the Oracle's cursebound feats. Inbuilt curse scaling in every cursebound feat would not only have incentivized the Oracle to lean into their curse more, but would also have helped made that power less poachable from characters archetyping into the class (and I still believe that your cursebound condition as an archetype Oracle should be capped at 1 until you take a higher-level feat to raise it to 2). Similarly, if the Oracle's focus spells had instead been made into mystery-specific cursebound feats, that could similarly have given each mystery more bespoke power tied to their curse, instead of saddling the class with the equivalent of two focus pools on top of the greatest amount of spell slots per rank that a caster can have in 2e. For me, the greatest shame about the Oracle remaster isn't that it changed the premaster Oracle, but that it could have delivered better on its goals and satisfied fans of the old class a lot better if the its driving design philosophy were applied more consistently.
100%. I'm totally fine with cursebound ablities scaling that way, but when its a stated design goal to not have "curse going up is good", turning around and doing it anyway just smacks of a half-baked design. Especially when some of the places they removed it from really weakened some things the mysteries could do. It's just very inconsistent and scattershot, and when they did what amounted to a full rewrite of the class, those kinds of problems really shouldn't be happening.
You can't throw everything out to start again to make it easier to do and then screw this stuff up again without people being annoyed by it.
Even if you like the class now, this was not a well handled class remaster at all.
It seemed to me the old oracle was trying to make subclasses that went different class design directions but held it all inder one roof.
The right way in this system to do that was what they did with cleric.
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The Cleric's doctrines don't really define a new class direction so much as how much of a gish you want to be, though, whereas deities and divine fonts aren't really enough to push a specific playstyle. The premaster Oracle, for all its flaws, did encourage very distinct playstyles thanks to its mysteries' unique benefits as well as its curses, both for their drawbacks and their own bonuses. Life Oracles really were focused on healing, Battle Oracles were functional gishes, and Tempest Oracles really did synergize with air and water spells. When the remaster did away with those mystery benefits, those unique playstyles were lost and mysteries ended up making much less of an impact on the Oracle's build diversity, so to me it doesn't take a forensic expert to observe that unique mystery benefits played a big part in driving the premaster Oracle's gameplay variety.
And to be clear: curses providing both benefits and drawbacks made each stage of those curses really messy and difficult for many players to parse. I can fully understand why Paizo wanted to rework that and make curses purely detrimental as their name would suggest. However, I also think the designers gave us the solution to that problem when they baked curse scaling into cursebound feats: by making those feats scale based on how cursed you are, you get to draw benefits from your curse in a manner that is not only much easier to understand, but also easier to mold onto the mechanics of each feat.
Not only do I believe this mechanic could have been generalized, I also think this could have been added onto mystery benefits, had they remained, as a way of separating the benefits of being cursed from the drawbacks. This I think would make it a lot easier to drive unique playstyles across the Oracle's subclasses, encourage the class to curse themselves with more benefits, and also balance mysteries alongside each other: if one mystery has a curse that's more serious than others, that could be fine if the mystery also offered greater benefits for taking on that more serious curse (and also didn't have a curse that made the class nigh-unplayable, as is the case with the Ancestors mystery). There's a lot of current problems with the Oracle that I think could be solved by taking things a little further and applying more mystery- and curse- specific benefits, and who knows, perhaps going in that direction could even help mend the rift in the class's playerbase.
The Cleric's doctrines don't really define a new class direction so much as how much of a gish you want to be, though, whereas deities and divine fonts aren't really enough to push a specific playstyle. The premaster Oracle, for all its flaws, did encourage very distinct playstyles thanks to its mysteries' unique benefits as well as its curses, both for their drawbacks and their own bonuses. Life Oracles really were focused on healing, Battle Oracles were functional gishes, and Tempest Oracles really did synergize with air and water spells. When the remaster did away with those mystery benefits, those unique playstyles were lost and mysteries ended up making much less of an impact on the Oracle's build diversity, so to me it doesn't take a forensic expert to observe that unique mystery benefits played a big part in driving the premaster Oracle's gameplay variety.
And to be clear: curses providing both benefits and drawbacks made each stage of those curses really messy and difficult for many players to parse. I can fully understand why Paizo wanted to rework that and make curses purely detrimental as their name would suggest. However, I also think the designers gave us the solution to that problem when they baked curse scaling into cursebound feats: by making those feats scale based on how cursed you are, you get to draw benefits from your curse in a manner that is not only much easier to understand, but also easier to mold onto the mechanics of each feat.
Not only do I believe this mechanic could have been generalized, I also think this could have been added onto mystery benefits, had they remained, as a way of separating the benefits of being cursed from the drawbacks. This I think would make it a lot easier to drive unique playstyles across the Oracle's subclasses, encourage the class to curse themselves with more benefits, and also balance mysteries alongside each other: if one mystery has a curse that's more serious than others, that could be fine if the mystery also offered greater benefits for...
By class direction i meant how a class set of proficiency and resources through features define it.
If battle oracle is still a full caster but allows a martial playstyle then i would define that as achieving two distinct class directions. That direction has been better defined under the wavecasting design and if they wanted to make this mystery function they should have made this subclass a wavecaster for example.
By class direction i meant how a class set of proficiency and resources through features define it.
If battle oracle is still a full caster but allows a martial playstyle then i would define that as achieving two distinct class directions. That direction has been better defined under the wavecasting design and if they wanted to make this mystery function they should have made this subclass a wavecaster for example.
Okay, so what set of proficiencies do you propose to make Life Oracles excel at healing? What proficiency track will make a Tempest Oracle synergize with air and water spells, or a Fire Oracle with flame spells?
Even for the one mystery where different proficiencies could be applicable, I also think there are more nuanced answers out there: the Animist, for instance, has a focus spell that significantly boosts your attack rolls in exchange for dampening your spell attack modifier and DC... which, incidentally, is how the premaster Battle Oracle worked. Although the premaster Battle Oracle wasn't an incredible gish by any stretch of the imagination, they were held back in the same way as the premaster Warpriest, in that they did not have the gish proficiency or feats to support them fully. The solution there, in my opinion, isn't to try to reinvent the wheel with every Oracle mystery, but to reinstate mystery benefits that'd nudge the class towards specific playstyles in exchange for at least one of their spell slots per rank. It would also help for the Battle mystery's curse to do something other than make the class worse at fighting, such as by instead going back to reducing their spellcasting or straight-up making them stupefied.
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By class direction i meant how a class set of proficiency and resources through features define it.
If battle oracle is still a full caster but allows a martial playstyle then i would define that as achieving two distinct class directions. That direction has been better defined under the wavecasting design and if they wanted to make this mystery function they should have made this subclass a wavecaster for example.
Okay, so what set of proficiencies do you propose to make Life Oracles excel at healing? What proficiency track will make a Tempest Oracle synergize with air and water spells, or a Fire Oracle with flame spells?
Even for the one mystery where different proficiencies could be applicable, I also think there are more nuanced answers out there: the Animist, for instance, has a focus spell that significantly boosts your attack rolls in exchange for dampening your spell attack modifier and DC... which, incidentally, is how the premaster Battle Oracle worked. Although the premaster Battle Oracle wasn't an incredible gish by any stretch of the imagination, they were held back in the same way as the premaster Warpriest, in that they did not have the gish proficiency or feats to support them fully. The solution there, in my opinion, isn't to try to reinvent the wheel with every Oracle mystery, but to reinstate mystery benefits that'd nudge the class towards specific playstyles in exchange for at least one of their spell slots per rank. It would also help for the Battle mystery's curse to do something other than make the class worse at fighting, such as by instead going back to reducing their spellcasting or straight-up making them stupefied.
By no means do I think any way forward would come without drawbacks but If I were designing the class. Also I am saying all of this in hindsight of what the designers did put out.
I would think more broadly about what a wavecaster could consist of.With the Oracle I would think of it as needing the ability to cast divine spells and needing to interact with/tap into their mystery.
Instead of a full caster legendary spell casting (let them cap at master) I think they could have a fast progression to legendary class proficiency and given several ways to interact with their mystery.
The first would be a general tapping into mysteries that increased cursebound levels. They could use the general framework they have but with some added direct uses, maybe something directly offense shared by oracles in general.(in a way this is like being a hybrid of kineticist and spell caster but without the full buildout of choices available to a kineticist)
The second would be a specific focus spell per mystery that gets better the higher the cursebound level.
The third would be an powerful ability usable only when at cursebound 3 or 4 that is designed as a way to turn the curse they have onto foes.
This in theory would give oracles a play loop that has some things in common to all oracles for generating cursebound, unique focus spells that fit the mystry specifically, and a mystery specific cursebound consuming ability that is built toward and using it resets the loop.
The spellcasting of divine spells would be a secondary ability of the class with limited slots but Oracles would have a whole mechanic of their own as their main thing.
Throw in some class feats that create interaction between casting slotted spells and cursebound and it would connect the two features in a meaningful way.
Of course this is not specific and doesnt address any of the existing concerns for subclass balance, the devil is always in the details. Balancing each mystery specific features would be difficult as it always is for subclasses.
It just would have been more appealing to me at least for Oracle to not just be another full caster. Not that that is what others would want. I'm sure some like the class as its landed.
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The first would be a general tapping into mysteries that increased cursebound levels. They could use the general framework they have but with some added direct uses, maybe something directly offense shared by oracles in general.(in a way this is like being a hybrid of kineticist and spell caster but without the full buildout of choices available to a kineticist)
The second would be a specific focus spell per mystery that gets better the higher the cursebound level.
The third would be an powerful ability usable only when at cursebound 3 or 4 that is designed as a way to turn the curse they have onto foes.
Although I really don't think the Oracle needs to be a wave caster, I quite like these ideas. More curse scaling would be great to have, and it would be especially good to have more options that are only available to Oracles when their curse is at its most intense. Were the Oracle given mystery-specific benefits along with a much greater focus on their curse, I believe the class could end up in much better shape.
To give a better idea of my own perspective: on my side, I've been using some homebrew Oracle variant rules that I've developed based on player feedback, and so my ideal Oracle would be one that had fewer spell slots and no focus spells specifically, but many more benefits and cursebound actions unique to each mystery. Though some mystery benefits probably ought to be curse-agnostic, I do think baking cursebound scaling into both mystery benefits and cursebound actions would be a good way of incentivizing players to lean into their Oracle's curse for a higher-risk, higher-reward playstyle that I think ought to define the class. I suppose you could apply the above framework to a wave caster chassis, though that in my opinion ought to incur much stronger benefits even when not cursebound at all.
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I just like the idea of the build up to climactic ability then reset.
it feels as epic as the oracles curse concept to me.
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To be fair, the pre-Remaster oracle had absolutely horrible balance between the mysteries. Much worse than the Remaster oracle; there were literally mysteries that you did not ever want to take because they were so bad.
Ugh, no way. Because the old mysteries had unique benefits as well, even the jankiest mystery (premaster Ancestors) had people willing to try it. Now, though? Nothing except the granted spells and focus spells are unique, and the divine list hardly needs most of them. The bad ones are theoretically less bad but they also are almost strictly worse than just running Cosmos, whereas before they were at least entertainingly bad in a unique way.
I'd rather they staple the 4 slots and the granted spells onto premaster Oracle if they were that rushed.
Arguably, that would have made a better Oracle than the current one we have now.
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I just like the idea of the build up to climactic ability then reset.
it feels as epic as the oracles curse concept to me.
I don't want this. It's one of those ideas that seems theoretically interesting, but the way PF2 combat works it would rarely occur because fights rarely last that long. Single targets last even less long. So any "ramp" would have to be very, very fast to have a chance of even doing it once against a prominent target.
I do not like ramp up abilities. Too much movement, too many other PCs doing their stuff, and targets often don't last long with the crit rules whether a spell crit or melee crit from multiple party members launching attacks.
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I do not like ramp up abilities. Too much movement, too many other PCs doing their stuff, and targets often don't last long with the crit rules whether a spell crit or melee crit from multiple party members launching attacks.
Yeah, same. Ramp-up works if fights are long enough that the thing you're ramping up to still has a significant impact; however, the early turns of an encounter are the ones that matter most here because fights don't go on long enough for it to be otherwise. It's not great to spend a few turns getting ready for your big attack, only to realize that the fight is mostly decided by the time it goes off—and that's exactly what'd happen with backloaded abilities in this game.
Dragged out fights can exist in this game, but they're so far outside the normal course of play that designing backloaded abilities for them is a rough sell. And sustained spells kind of fill that backload niche better anyways; you do get progressively more value from them the longer a fight drags out.
i think cursebound status continues after a combat ends. So you go into the next encounter with whatever cursebound level you left at unless you lower it somehow inbetween.
So with the loop i described you could enter a boss fight at cursebound 4 and then decide how long to keep it up before consuming it all for the strong ability. Like maybe you want it at 4 for the scaling focus spell I suggested then next round consume your cursebound levels to unleash the powerful ability. Also you risk a bit too because your curse at level 4 can be dangerous, but you have a method to lower it too.
This conception of the oracle makes curse and mystery management at the adventuring day level across its multiple encounters.
Yeah, same. Ramp-up works if fights are long enough that the thing you're ramping up to still has a significant impact; however, the early turns of an encounter are the ones that matter most here because fights don't go on long enough for it to be otherwise. It's not great to spend a few turns getting ready for your big attack, only to realize that the fight is mostly decided by the time it goes off—and that's exactly what'd happen with backloaded abilities in this game.
Team+ has a magic system developed by Mark Seifter that has you ramp up your spellcasting power over the course of encounters and it works a charm, so I don't think this is really true. While I agree that the first few turns in combat tend to be the most impactful, I feel that would be something that would be more interesting to lean against, not into: we don't need everyone to be a rocket tag specialist, and if delaying a bit of scaling until turn 2 or 3 is a big drawback, that to me sounds like the perfect justification to make cursebound scaling really impactful. As much as encounters often end quickly, they don't end on turn 1, so there is still room for some degree of ramping power.
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i think cursebound status continues after a combat ends. So you go into the next encounter with whatever cursebound level you left at unless you lower it somehow inbetween.
So with the loop i described you could enter a boss fight at cursebound 4 and then decide how long to keep it up before consuming it all for the strong ability. Like maybe you want it at 4 for the scaling focus spell I suggested then next round consume your cursebound levels to unleash the powerful ability. Also you risk a bit too because your curse at level 4 can be dangerous, but you have a method to lower it too.
This conception of the oracle makes curse and mystery management at the adventuring day level across its multiple encounters.
It can continue but "You remain cursebound until you Refocus, which reduces your cursebound condition by 1 in addition to restoring a Focus Point." This means you aren't likely to walk into a fight with all of your focus points and cursebound 4 unless you aren't using focus spells which seems like a fairly big loss.
I don't want this.
Add me to the list too. They finally made an oracle with a curse that I don't mind interacting with so I'd rather not move it back to one I'd hate.
i think cursebound status continues after a combat ends. So you go into the next encounter with whatever cursebound level you left at unless you lower it somehow inbetween.
So with the loop i described you could enter a boss fight at cursebound 4 and then decide how long to keep it up before consuming it all for the strong ability. Like maybe you want it at 4 for the scaling focus spell I suggested then next round consume your cursebound levels to unleash the powerful ability. Also you risk a bit too because your curse at level 4 can be dangerous, but you have a method to lower it too.
This conception of the oracle makes curse and mystery management at the adventuring day level across its multiple encounters.It can continue but "You remain cursebound until you Refocus, which reduces your cursebound condition by 1 in addition to restoring a Focus Point." This means you aren't likely to walk into a fight with all of your focus points and cursebound 4 unless you aren't using focus spells which seems like a fairly big loss.
I don't want this.Add me to the list too. They finally made an oracle with a curse that I don't mind interacting with so I'd rather not move it back to one I'd hate.
Ah your right about the focus spells. That would have to become a choice to lower when you refocus instead of just lowering it when you do this loop idea to work.
Looking at the necromancer, the concept of a class that has less spell slots along with a playstyle around class abilities is already a design space Paizo has went.
The old battle oracle worked really well for ramping up because it wasn't about charging up one big shot. You could start advancing your curse as soon as you rolled initiative, and the fast healing mattered more in long fights. The major curse stage in particular was useful for when you'd exhausted all your resources and had to switch to barbarian mode.
It also worked fine as a 3 slot caster because it could fall back on weapon usage instead of needing to constantly burn all spells to contribute. Use a big opener spell, then hit with the bastard sword instead of cantrips.
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If they do a ramp class design, it has to be fast enough and controlled enough by the player where the DM doesn't have to do a lot of work to make it work. Player control over their abilities is very important. The only way the ramp works is if it can be done by the player within the duration of the battle consistently to be a viable play-style.
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Honestly, my preferred outcome would be maintaining the flavorful and complex Mysteries from before, but reworked, along with the new feats.
I like that older Mysteries had a lot of moving parts and a ton of flavor baked into them. However, most of them were, by far, a huge wastes of opportunity with passives that could've offered more interesting things.
The fact that each tier just increased debuff numbers or added extra penalties was a missed opportunity. In a perfect world, each Curse tier would bring the penalties, but also offer an ability that made sense with its theme.
Personally, I think Oracles should be entirely redesigned whenever we get PF3e. Along with Wizards, Alchemists (they're in a good spot, but far from fully realized potential), Psychics and Inventors.
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A big amount of the issues come from the team having a fundamentally different read on the class when they remastered it. They said curses should be purely negative, but the dual nature of the curses was some of the funnest parts of oracle to play around with. The risk reward of increasing your curse value for bigger buffs felt great to me at least, and removing the positives of the curse is the main reason the class now feels blander. Imo they should have just changed the flavor text of curses to be "drawbacks the oracle has learned to live with and turn into unexpected strengths" so it became about overcoming the bad hand they were dealt with. Then just touch up some of the more troublesome mechanics in certain curses, and it would have been good.
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Now Oracle have a weird side mechanic which no one seems to really like. Hey you need healing? Well grab stuff like Cosmos Oracle and spam 2+Levelx2 Healing 4 times because -4 to STR checks isn't gonna matter. The Cursebound status/effect feels very under whelming since you get literally no buffs to do it. There is no reason generally to go back cursebond 1-2 since cursebound actions feels weak compared to your focus spells
The only curse which can be read with a side order of wonder is the one that makes you immune to spell immunities. Which can be used in a positive way to spam stuff like True strike on yourself repeatedly or other stuffs which have any sort of cool-down. I have a friend who dislikes that reading but it is clear as day rather or not it is meant to be it is written that way.
Is this intentional, probably not? Has it been Errata'd yet, no it has not. Has Paizo stated they will errata Oracle, no. Can we expect any time soon any errata to Oracle? No, since they haven't even touched Kineticist which doesn't even work with Mythic period.
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Now Oracle have a weird side mechanic which no one seems to really like. Hey you need healing? Well grab stuff like Cosmos Oracle and spam 2+Levelx2 Healing 4 times because -4 to STR checks isn't gonna matter. The Cursebound status/effect feels very under whelming since you get literally no buffs to do it. There is no reason generally to go back cursebond 1-2 since cursebound actions feels weak compared to your focus spells
This, to me, is a prime reason why the remaster made the Oracle's inter-mystery balance worse, not better: prior to the remaster the Oracle had some mysteries that were for sure stronger than others, but at least each mystery had quite a few unique things going for it that others couldn't access, such as the unique mystery benefits and the curse benefits in addition to the revelation spells. With the remaster, however, the Oracle's mysteries lost their unique benefits and their curse benefits, and their revelation spells are a distant second to their much more powerful cursebound feats, all of which can be accessed regardless of subclass. Previously, opting into one mystery meant locking oneself out of those many benefits, whereas now, there are no such benefits to miss out on, so the optimal choice is to just pick the mystery with the weakest curse and exploit those generic cursebound feats to the fullest. This is a balance issue that exists in the PF1e Oracle as well, and that unique mystery benefits would help prevent as they have already done.
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And to be clear: curses providing both benefits and drawbacks made each stage of those curses really messy and difficult for many players to parse. I can fully understand why Paizo wanted to rework that and make curses purely detrimental as their name would suggest. However, I also think the designers gave us the solution to that problem when they baked curse scaling into cursebound feats: by making those feats scale based on how cursed you are, you get to draw benefits from your curse in a manner that is not only much easier to understand, but also easier to mold onto the mechanics of each feat.
I never understood why people didn't like a class from the Advanced Players Guide was more complex. This was kind of the point. Swash was also more difficult to play for needing to juggle your Panache, Finisher, and applicable skill. It was nice this wasn't removed just made easier with Bravado.
Why did Oracle have to have its complexity neutered? I never thought these were classes for first time players. I didn't try Oracle till I had some game experience under my belt. And I loved it. It wasn't stronger for being complex, but it was different and gave me a lot to think about when I wanted that as a player. I would have loved some extra attention to the Legacy Oracle in the remaster so the weaknesses were addressed and brought into parity with the stronger parts.
Teridax, your ideas in the next paragraph are great. I would have been happy with the curses benefit being put on steroids is the curse negatives were as debilitating like Ancestry. If they wanted to add more spell slots, thats nice too.
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Agreed that is the biggest problem. The new Oracle suffers from the same problem as the Pyschic - you can poach the best part. I for one prefer a sorcerer - oracle over a straight oracle.
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Agreed that is the biggest problem. The new Oracle suffers from the same problem as the Pyschic - you can poach the best part. I for one prefer a sorcerer - oracle over a straight oracle.
Eh. I disagree, ever so slightly though, Gortle. In that the Psychic Dedication does not grant access to the deeper psi cantrips.
I will agree, however, that for the most part, it encourages people to play a different class, then take the dedication, rather than just play that class.
Sorcerer is good because of the bonus damage and healing but Oracle has more HP. It is confusing if you ask me personally. I feel like if you can't poach some stuff multiclassing would be a useless in some regards. It is a slippery slope...
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Agreed that is the biggest problem. The new Oracle suffers from the same problem as the Pyschic - you can poach the best part. I for one prefer a sorcerer - oracle over a straight oracle.
I don't know. I like the oracle. They gave the oracle the old sorcerer get one spell from any list thing and Divine Access. They have a lot of spell power. My oracle picked up synesthesia and some good blasting spells.
I do wish the curses did more interesting things though. They're kind of boring now, but powerful.
Well level 14 for Mysterious Repertoire instead of level 8 for the old sorcerer. It is befinitely a good point. You have always been more keen on higher level play. But I think you'd be more upset about missing Effortless Concentration.
Sorcerer get divine access as a level 1 feat - Blessed Blood, which is arguably better than a free class ability at level 11.
It is just that the best Oracle abilities are there level 1 cursebound feats. Which anyone can get via a couple of archetype feats.
Well level 14 for Mysterious Repertoire instead of level 8 for the old sorcerer. It is befinitely a good point. You have always been more keen on higher level play. But I think you'd be more upset about missing Effortless Concentration.
Sorcerer get divine access as a level 1 feat - Blessed Blood, which is arguably better than a free class ability at level 11.It is just that the best Oracle abilities are there level 1 cursebound feats. Which anyone can get via a couple of archetype feats.
I don't use Effortless Concentration too much. I have to admit for a divine caster effortless concentration would be nice. They seem to have really limited effortless concentration on divine casters. Witch and sorc divine casters only ones with it I believe. Divine is probably the best list for using Effortless Concentration with some of their buffs and summons.
I really thought Effortless concentration would be a lot more useful. I think I mainly use it on Quandary and Phantom Orchestra for non-divine casters. It is nice for quandary since that is primarily used for killing mooks more easily by getting rid of a mini-boss or boss type creature.
High level characters are so strong that when you get effortless concentration someone inevitably ends up landing crits that end fights fast, so this spell you want to keep up a while ends up feeling "meh."
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Now Oracle have a weird side mechanic which no one seems to really like. Hey you need healing? Well grab stuff like Cosmos Oracle and spam 2+Levelx2 Healing 4 times because -4 to STR checks isn't gonna matter. The Cursebound status/effect feels very under whelming since you get literally no buffs to do it. There is no reason generally to go back cursebond 1-2 since cursebound actions feels weak compared to your focus spellsThis, to me, is a prime reason why the remaster made the Oracle's inter-mystery balance worse, not better: prior to the remaster the Oracle had some mysteries that were for sure stronger than others, but at least each mystery had quite a few unique things going for it that others couldn't access, such as the unique mystery benefits and the curse benefits in addition to the revelation spells. With the remaster, however, the Oracle's mysteries lost their unique benefits and their curse benefits, and their revelation spells are a distant second to their much more powerful cursebound feats, all of which can be accessed regardless of subclass. Previously, opting into one mystery meant locking oneself out of those many benefits, whereas now, there are no such benefits to miss out on, so the optimal choice is to just pick the mystery with the weakest curse and exploit those generic cursebound feats to the fullest. This is a balance issue that exists in the PF1e Oracle as well, and that unique mystery benefits would help prevent as they have already done.
Yeah this is what irks me most about the remaster Oracle. Mystery balance was bad before and they... utterly failed to fix it. Now they get to be bad AND generic.
Life really got hit by that. It's a worse healer than Tempest if you care about Waters of Creation, and a worse healer than Cosmos if you don't. It's most iconic ability (Life Link) is actively crippled by its curse.
Ancestors was weird and hard to use before, but it had a unique play style. Now it has an absolutely awful curse and has nothing unique going for it. And of course, Battle has a hilariously awful initial revelation spell and requires a lot of external feat support to do the thing that it used to do out of the box.
Meanwhile you have Cosmos and it's "this curse basically doesn't exist" situation. If you're going to remake a class this drastically, there isn't an excuse to leave the subclass balance in this state.
And of course, the whole mess with the number of spell slots at release and the repertoire size now being unclear just really makes it feel rushed.
Agreed that is the biggest problem. The new Oracle suffers from the same problem as the Pyschic - you can poach the best part. I for one prefer a sorcerer - oracle over a straight oracle.
Well, Oracle has better defenses (HP, Armor, and Will Save) and I think more spell slots at high level. It's got stuff going for it. But yes, I really consider it a problem that the best Cursebound abilities are front loaded and thus easy for the archetype to get. If you had high level ones (which the archetype can't get) that were actually good it'd help somewhat with that, but that largely isn't the case.