[Pathfinder] The Oracle of Lore

Sadly, Varen, my Jade Regent monk died an ignoble death at the hands (or proboscis) of some giant vermin (my group’s first PC death in the AP). To keep things rolling, my GM (and co-blogger) allowed me to reroll as one of the caravan NPCs. I decided to go with a cleric of Nethys.

Now, my GM has a habit of enabling PC crowning moments of awesome, often linking it to a mid-session level up. For example, our party’s paladin gained a level, mid-flight, while leaping off of a castle tower to smite a flying enemy. The mid-flight level gave her the necessary boost to kill the bad guy and survive the fall. It’s pretty cool, if you consider that the paladin uses the warrior of the holy light archetype and began to shine (for the first time) as she jumped through the air. My crowning moment of awesome happened a little differently:

Things were looking bad during the final conflict of book 1 of the Jade Regent AP. The party had split up, the paladin was down and the bad guy barely had a scratch. Then my cleric took a hit and went down. That’s when my GM decided to call me to a separate room. While unconscious, my cleric had a vision of her god, Nethys. Nethys asked her what she’d be willing to sacrifice to beat the big bad guy. I answered:

The paladin.

After a short laugh, we returned to the table. There, my GM described the scene as follows: my cleric became a font of positive energy, healing the party and reviving the paladin. However, it came at a cost – her holy symbol, a mask she wore over her face, began to burn her. The heat burned half her face, melting the skin and ruining her eye (fitting for a worshipper of Nethys – see image). The fight didn’t last much longer and the party soon defeated the villain.

And that’s how my cleric became an oracle. I haven’t really played around with oracle’s yet, so it took me awhile to get my head around it. However, I liked the idea of having to build a character within certain restrictions (I had to build an oracle of lore). Of course, this isn’t for every player (some might get upset by it), but I like the challenge.

In the end, I came up with the following build (currently level 4):

Oracle (Seer Archetype)

Curse: Clouded Vision
Mystery: Lore

S 16 D 8 C 14 I 10 W 10 C 18

FEATS

Extra Revelation (Side Step Secret)
Skill Focus (Knowledge (Religion))
Eldritch Heritage (Arcane) (Turtle Familiar)

REVELATIONS

Gift of Prophecy
Natural Divination
Side Step Secret

SPELLS

0 – detect poison, light, purify food and drink, read magic, stabilize
1 – cure light wounds, divine favor, identify, protection from evil, shield of faith
2 – bull’s strength, cure moderate wounds, detect thoughts

PROGRESSION

FEATS

5 – Power Attack
7 – Extra Revelation (Focused Trance)
9 – Improved Familiar (Pseudodragon)
11 – Improved Eldritch Heritage (Arcane)

REVELATIONS:

7 – Mental Acuity
11 – Spontaneous Symbology

Now I just have to hope that she doesn’t morph into a mystic theurge at the next near-death moment.

- Jerall