No two oracles are created the same, and that’s more true than ever with the addition of archetypes. The archetypes make a lot of choices for you, apply additional penalties to your character, and offer new and unique options beyond traditional mysteries. Some are also “mystery lite,” allowing you to conceptually combine two mysteries like Lore or Heavens with your personal favorite.
Ancient Lorekeeper (Elf): Warrior, Controller, Enabler, Blaster, Socialite, Medic, Textbook
Skills (****): Two knowledge skills, one of which is one of the “big four” so this is a solidly good. Plus you get a free bonus on any kind of knowledge check if it somehow relates to elves. Considering how prolific the elves are, I don’t see this being an issue to use.
Elven Arcana (****): Oh my god, this is amazing. The biggest issue with bonus spells is that even though some lists are great, they’re still predefined. The best lists offer good spells from other class lists to round out your abilities. So what you’re looking at here is quite possibly the greatest oracle archetype available. You trade away all of your mystery’s spells for ones of your choice. They’re treated as one level higher but that’s a very small price to pay to be the only oracle who’s cherry-picking her favorite wizard spells and casting them
as divine. This here is everything the Mystic Theurge should have been and more. The only true downside is that you’re stuck with a cantrip in your 1st level bonus spell slot.
Community Guardian (Halfling): Enabler, Medic, Textbook
Skills (****): Perception is great, and Knowledge (local) is worth a few points as well.
Bonus Spells (*): Wow, this list is awful. Just a series of marginally useful corner cases. Heroes’ Feast might be of some use, but good luck with the rest.
Spirit of Community (**): Sort of like a lesser Inspire Competence that requires everyone to give up their bonus to help a single ally out. And you’re forced to take this as your first revelation.
Renewing Radiance (*): This doesn’t have a listed action, which means that it defaults to a standard action, which further means that it’s not as great as it might have been. The healing this provides will be very significant at 3rd level when you’re forced to take this, but it quickly becomes useless. Even the tiny boost to AC won’t matter when a full caster is giving up her standard action to heal about a dozen hitpoints or offset a flanking bonus. Oh, and it’s once per day, so you’re really going to struggle with this oracle at lower levels.
Dual Cursed Oracle: Controller
Oracle’s Curse (*): You have to take two curses, but one of them never improves. That’s really, really rough.
Bonus Spells (***): Ill omen is a no-save debuff that requires the target roll twice and take the lower roll 1-5 times, but they can negate it by spending a move action. It’s never particularly amazing unless you’re only fighting a single enemy, but the fact that it’s no save and has a scaling effect means you’ll be enjoying this curse for your entire career. Oracle’s Burden generally isn’t worth the time it takes to cast, though it has the potential to be more worth it for you. For instance, if you took both the clouded vision and deaf curses. In which case, why do you hate fun?? Bestow Curse is fun for creative types and lenient DMs, but the prepackaged curses are just as good.
Revelations (****): You gain two additional revelations over the course of your oracle levels with no restrictions. This is pure, shiny gold. You even get a few new options!
Misfortune (****): Oh my god, this is amazing. As an immediate action you cause any creature, friend or foe, to reroll a single d20. Sure, it’s only once per day for each creature, but it only costs a swift action, doesn’t allow a save, and has unlimited uses. Wag your finger at your DM every time he says “Crit!” or an ally fumbles an important roll.
Fortune (****): Rerolls are a very powerful thing in Pathfinder, and this one isn’t even specific beyond it needing to be a d20. You’ll gain another one every few levels, meaning that you won’t fail (as often) on the really important rolls.
Enlightened Philosopher: Enabler, Textbook
Alignment Restriction (**): Ok, it won’t destroy most character concepts, but alignment restrictions are never something to get excited about. It’s just one way to chip away at your freedoms. Fight the man! Most oracles won’t mind this restriction, but the chaotically inclined (like myself) are going to be frustrated.
Skills (****): Linguistics is thematic but ultimately useless. All of the knowledge skills are amazing.
Bonus Spells (**): You only keep your 2nd level spell, and replace the rest with this truly bland list. Owl’s Wisdom, Water Walk, and Discern Lies aren’t likely to see much play in the average campaign. In fact, the spell list doesn’t even start getting good until the halfway mark. True Seeing and Astral Projection both have
material component costs, and Wind Walk is almost certainly better on a scroll (it’s a cleric spell anyways).
Ethereal Jaunt and Moment of Prescience are both solid spells worth their space.
Mental Acuity (**): Intelligence is great! But not really for you. It can slowly help your knowledge skills, and it’ll start granting bonus skill points by level 10 if you’ve got an even int score, so that’s something.
Planar Oracle: Enabler, Socialite, Textbook
Bonus Spells (**): Wow, this just straight up replaces your entire spell list, but not in a good way. In a game with an eye towards planar travel this could be very very good, but for your average player half the list may not ever see use. You’ll get Planar adaptation before it’s useful, and Plane Shift before you can protect your allies. Elemental Speech gives you the ability to talk to things that potentially don’t have language, so that’s fun. At least the list ends strong with Shadow Walk, Etherealness, and Gate.
Planar Resistance (**): Nothing says mediocrity like being forced to take energy resistance that doesn’t even have the decency to properly scale like all of the other energy resistance revelations.
Possessed Oracle: Warrior, Controller, Enabler, Socialite
Oracle’s Curse (***): You have to choose between Haunted and Tongues, but those are both really good options and you should have been considering them anyways. Telekinesis is already on your spell list here, so that lessens the beauty of Haunted (but reverse gravity is still awesome!).
Bonus Spells (***): Sort of a mixed bag here. Ventriloquism is as useless as ever, but Spider Climb is the spelunker’s Fly. Screech is fantastic for Warrior sorts. You’re going to struggle to get any use out of Sleepwalk, but Animate Objects is fun of beauty and the beast proportions. Divine Vessel is a really solid buff, just so long as you aren’t true neutral.
Two Minds (**): It’s pretty lame until 7th level, but since it’s your starting revelation that’s a strike against it. On the whole this is probably a green ability, particularly with the usefulness of retrying a failed will save.
But until level 7 it sucks pretty good, and it hurts the strength of your character the whole time.
Psychic Searcher: Textbook
Spells (***): If you want to play a magical detective, these are the spells to do it. It’s a lot of the same, with Foresight being amazingly weak for a 9th level spell.
Inspiration (****): This pool is really useful, particularly because you can choose to add your bonus after you roll. You can also add a +1d6 to every diplomacy, sense motive, or select knowledge skill at no cost. That’s super nice. It’s based on Wisdom, which sucks, but I wouldn’t suggest dumping Intelligence to raise your Wisdom score- you’re going to need a lot of skill points. This pool also fuels your Psychic Talents.
Psychic Talent: You’re forced to take one of these talents at 3rd level, and then after that you’ve got the option to take them in place of your other revelations. That’s not a bad deal, and a lot of these are good.
Amazing Inspiration (***): Bumps your +1d6 to +1d8 and doesn’t cost anything.
Eidetic Recollection (***): A fantastic way to make sure you’re not failing knowledge checks when you need them to succeed.
Empathy (***): Sense motive isn’t a fantastic skill, but this will let you milk it for all it’s worth. It’s also a Detect Thoughts once per day that doesn’t require a three round setup.
Inspired Alertness (*): Flat Footed isn’t particularly debilitating for an oracle, unless you’ve taken a revelation to swap your Dexterity for your Charisma bonus. Even then, it’s not a common enough condition to warrant taking this.
Item Lore (*): Just take Detect Magic.
Perceptive Tracking (**): It’s not bad, but you’ve got several spells that do this for you. Very useful if paired with Empathy.
Rogue Talent: Hard to Fool (*): Why would you take this if you can take Empathy?
Tenacious Inspiration (****): This helps keep the averages in your favor.
Purifier (Aasimar): Warrior, Controller, Enabler, Socialite, Medic
Spells (*): These are a lot of spells that aren’t on your spell list, but unfortunately they’re so specifically narrow in their focus that most days you won’t find a use for these. Seriously, you might not ever use a few of these at all. Confess might get some use in a social campaign, and Denounce could be fun for starting riots in town, but nothing else shines here.
Diminished Spellcasting (*): Losing the cure or inflict spells isn’t awful, though it sucks. The real issue here is that you’re losing a spell per level, which puts you firmly behind those snooty clerics.
See Sin (*): It’s a bonus to sensing enchantments which aren’t particularly common and really aren’t that hard to make. They cap at 25, which means that if you’re investing ranks here you’ll overcome the DC before your teens. You also gain the same bonus on spellcraft checks for a very select subset of the enchantment school. Awful.
Celestial Armor (****): It’s not flashy, but it’s a very nice bonus. This will keep you both mobile and protected throughout your career.
Sin Eater (*): Curses/enchantments/emotion spells are so rare that being able to use this multiple times per day just isn’t exciting. The worst part of this whole ability is that dispel magic gets rid of half of the abilities, greater dispel magic gets rid of the other half (available 1 level later at 12th), and neither leave the oracle sickened or require a melee touch.
Sacred Scourge (**): Specifically only hurts outsiders, but it does a good job of laying down the hurt. Too bad it’s only effective against outsiders.
Holy Terror (**): You’re really great against evil outsiders. This is useless against everything else.
Celestial Master (***): Something about this ability strikes me as kinda evil, but fluff aside, this is amazing. Pair this with the Planar Ally series and you’ll only have to worry about the initial payment (500-2500gp) because you can enslave the minion when it arrives. I mean persuade. With magical shackles of goodness. Or something. The only thing keeping this from blue is that you’ll still need to spend a lot of cash to really make this ability worth it. On its own you’re unlikely to find celestials just wandering around, and if you’re decent with diplomacy it’s even less like that they wouldn’t want to help you.
Reincarnated Oracle (Samsaran): Controller, Textbook
Oracle’s Curse (****): Limiting your options sucks, but these are both good curses to choose.
Bonus Spells (***): An odd mix of spells. See alignment probably won’t be much use, and Contact Other Plane is so awful you’d be a fool to ever use it- and probably more of a fool afterwards with your severe penalties to intelligence and charisma. Detect Thoughts works as a fantastic mental radar. Moment of Prescience means you’ll never fail another check you really want to make (barring natural 1s, of course), and Overwhelming Presence is great for any oracle so obviously it’s good for you.
Location Memories (***): Scent and low-light vision on demand for the low cost of a swift action. You can use it a lot, too. Even better is that you can put this off until 3rd level so that you’ll start with something useful.
Spirit Memories (***): This is a really poorly written mystery. It’s listed as both once per day and a number of times per day equal to 3+your charisma modifier. Maybe it’s both? I dunno. Perhaps once per day you can activate this ability and then make a number of attacks equal to 3+cha. Either way, it’s pretty decent for an attack. Gaze attacks use the attack action when used against a single creature, so you’ll gain more uses per round as your BAB rises. Staggered is a pretty great debuff, and is better when mixed with sickened.
Seer:Textbook
Bonus Spells (***): If you enjoy divination types, this is a really great list. If you’re a little less subtle in your playstyle this list is likely to frustrate you. But this is a seer, so we’ll assume the former. Legend Lore is wasted space with its stupidly long casting time, and Foresight never quite feels worth a 9th level spell. Still, if knowing things is what you like to do, this will let you do it.
Natural Divination (****): A very versatile and powerful ability that puts you a full head and shoulders above the competition when you need it. Taking it at first level isn’t awesome because of its limited uses per day, but it’s still a really great revelation.
Gift of Prophesy (***): Once per day, yuck. This ability gives you access to three decent spells that essentially allow you to quiz your DM about whatever you like. It’s a very thematically appropriate choice for the Seer, and this is probably the sort of thing you’re looking to do anyways, so it gets a boost in its rating.
Shigenjo (Tengu): Warrior, Blaster, Textbook
Alignment (***): It’s limiting, but no worse than the druids have. You’ll find something you like.
Skills (****): Hawkward- the Shigenjo adds both religion and planes to her class list, except that she’s already got them from the base oracle package. Still, knowledge (nature) is a great addition and survival is nice enough.
Bonus Spells (***): True strike is the sort of spell you take Quicken Spell for later in your career, and the others are nice as well. Alter Self is great for disguises and easy bonuses. It’s not hard to find natural weapons, a swim speed, or any sort of vision you’re looking for. Divine Power shows up at exactly the time you should be picking up Blessing of Fervor, which puts you in an awkward position. Magic Jar has potential but requires a lot of setup to really be worth its space. Ki shout is awesome if you can get the stun to take.
Moment of prescience is again amazing.
Ki Pool (****): Despite having a slower rate of growth than other ki classes, the oracle will never struggle to have a large pool. You’ll probably spend most of your points boosting your DCs. All tengu will benefit from the Ki strike ability with their beak attack, and some might even choose to pursue a natural attack routine with the claws available as an alternate racial trait.
Quivering Palm (**): It kinda sucks for the monk, and it kinda sucks for you. Luckily you don’t have to take this ability, and I really recommend you don’t.
Spirit Guide: Controller, Blaster, Enabler, Socialite, Textbook, Medic Skills (****): All knowledge skills. Yes, please.
Bonded Spirit (****): Wow, this ability is amazing. It costs you 3 revelations, but it’s so totally worth it.
First, you can pick your spirit every day, which adds a huge amount of flexibility to the Oracle. You start off with a Hex (using Charisma) that you can choose from your spirit’s list and can change every day. That’s awesome. At 4th level you add all the spirit’s spells (up to your highest spell level) to your spells known. This is on top of your Mystery’s spells, and you can change it by changing your spirit. At 7th and 15th level you get the Spirit Ability and Greater Spirit Ability. Most of these are roughly equivalent to a revelation or domain
power. And again, you can change these by changing your spirit. The only limitation it comes with is that you cannot take spirits that are “incompatible” with your oracle, and that’s subject to your DM.
Stargazer:Controller, Blaster, Textbook
Skills (****): Perception and Knowledge (Nature) make this an amazing choice. Survival is here if you want it.
Bonus Spells (**): This list suffers from repetition, but at least two of the spells are good. Faerie Fire is useful when it is, which is to say not often enough. Glitterdust is an AoE blind that also does everything Faerie Fire does for a shorter time. Guiding Star just doesn’t seem worth it with how little it’s providing you.
Wandering Star Motes is a fantastic debuff that jumps around each time an enemy shrugs it off. And we finish up with a bland blast that deals fire damage at 9th level.
Guiding Star (**): This is a really specific criteria to meet before you can get the benefits of this ability.
Then, you get to add your charisma modifier to all wisdom based checks (let’s face it: it’s probably just going to be perception checks) and modify a spell with one of several metamagic feats. There are a lot of tricky things you could do with this, but the limitations of once per day and outdoors under the night sky really hamper it.
Star Chart (**): Once per day, yuck. This ability gives you access to a decent spell that essentially allows you to quiz your DM about whatever you like. It can be very useful for some players/characters, but most will likely find it lacking compared to the other revelations.
Warsighted:Warrior
Martial Flexibility (****): Flexibility is the name of the game here. This is a spectacular ability for the Warrior type, but it’s going to eat all but 2 of your revelations. This revelation starts out with enough uses per day to be used in every combat scenario (unless you have 4+ per day) and grows from there. You can, on the fly, pick a combat feat you qualify for and gain access to it for 1 minute. At 7th and 11th you gain another feat, allowing you to build into feat chains on a whim. Bonus, you can do this faster and faster as you gain in levels.
Even when you first get the revelation it only requires a move action. I’d recommend taking a few common prerequisite feats early on, like Power Attack or Combat Expertise. You’ll likely be spending a lot of your feats
Even when you first get the revelation it only requires a move action. I’d recommend taking a few common prerequisite feats early on, like Power Attack or Combat Expertise. You’ll likely be spending a lot of your feats