Introduction
The Oracle is to the Cleric what the Sorcerer is to the Wizard. Oracles are Charisma-based spontaneous spellcasters that share a spell list (and several other aspects) with the Cleric. Because their abilities are so similar, the Oracle can fill any role that the Cleric can, and because they are Charisma-based, the Oracle makes for a much better Face than a Cleric.
Disclaimer
We support a limited subset of Pathfinder’s rules content. If you would like help with Pathfinder options not covered here, please email me and I may be able to provide additional assistance.
RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks. Also note that many colored items are also links to the Paizo SRD.
- : Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
- : OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
- : Good options. Useful often.
- : Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.
Oracle Class Features
: d8 hit points can be hard if you’re on the front lines, especially with only medium armor and no real need for Dexterity. If you prefer to stay in the back you’re probably fine, but if you’re in the front be sure to boost your AC and Constitution.
: 2/3 BAB and you can buff yourself to make up the difference.
: The Oracle’s only good save is Will, and with no other need for Wisdom even the Oracle’s best save likely won’t be spectacular.
: Simple weapons are plenty, and medium armor and shield provide good AC. If you need more AC, take Heavy Armor Proficiency or cast some buff spells.
: 4+ skill ranks is great for a straight caster, and your choice of mystery allows for some interesting class skills.
: The Oracle uses the Cleric spell list, which is excellent. You have a limited number of spells known which greatly limits your versatility, but you still have access to all of the Cleric’s best spells. Don’t forget that you get to select all Cure or all Inflict spells as spells known for free. The text is buried in the “Spells” section for Oracles, and it’s easy to miss.
: Your choice of mystery is much like the Cleric’s choice of domain, but more like a Sorcerer’s Bloodline. It greatly determines the feel and flavor of your character, and greatly influences your play style. See my Oracle Mystery Breakdown for help selecting a mystery.
: The Oracle’s Curse is a handicap. Each option provides some other benefit which grows as you level, but for the most part the curses are a burden. If you plan to multiclass, remember that half of your other class levels count toward your level for the effects of Oracle’s Curse, which can make for some very clever multiclassing options.
- : If you have ever wanted to play a blind character (and I know that people want to do that), this is the best way to do it. You aren’t truly blind, but you’re handicapped enough for it to be a huge hindrance.
- : Hearing is much less important in Pathfinder than sight.
- : Pulling items out of your bag shouldn’t happen in combat most of the time, and dropping things ten feet from you isn’t a huge problem. The free spells known are great.
- : The only reason you would want this is for a class dip from Barbarian so that you could rage cycle. An 8th level Barbarian can take one level of Oracle, and immediately start Rage cycling 8 levels early.
- : Hilarious. Be sure to coordinate with your party to make sure that someone speaks your language.
- : The least invasive curse. If you don’t plan to be the party’s face, this is a good default option. Of course, Oracles are Charisma-based and get two of the four face skills and you can get the other two with traits or mysteries, so if your party needs a face you’re a fantastic candidate.
: The Oracle’s pseudo-feat, Revelations are a great way to customize your Oracle, and provide a lot of fantastic abilities.
: Varies by mystery.
Abilities
The Oracle, like the Cleric, can be either a strict spellcaster or a front-line combat spellcaster. Your choice of abilities depends on what role you plan to fill in your party.
: If you plan to be a combat caster, you need Strength for attack and damage. If you’re a straight caster, dump Strength.
: Boosts AC and Reflex saves. If AC is a problem or if you plan to be a combat caster, pick up Heavy Armor Proficiency so that a 12 is an acceptable score. For straight casters, pick up a little more dexterity to improve your AC and your ranged attacks.
: Everyone needs hit points and Fortitude saves.
: With 4+ skill ranks and not a lot of important skills, you can afford to dump Intelligence if you really need to. However, many Oracle Mysteries grant access to all knowledge skills, which can make you an excellent Librarian with a little bit of Intelligence.
: Only required for Will saves, and Will is the Oracle’s good save.
: Your spellcasting ability.
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Races
Bonuses to Charisma are key, but bonuses to other abilities are nice for combat caster builds.
: The penalty to Charisma is too much of a problem to overcome for a primary spellcaster.
: Bonuses to two of the Oracle’s least important abilities, and a penalty to constitution.
: A bonus to Constitution and Charisma is a great combination for a straight caster build. If you want to play a small straight caster Oracle, the Gnome is your best bet. The favored class bonus lets you get the higher level abilities of your Oracle’s curse sooner, but remember that the abilities have an upper limit, and once you get all of the abilities your investment will be wasted.
: The Flexible bonus goes into Charisma, but that’s all that we really get from the Half-Elf unless you take some alternate racial traits. The favored class bonus grants extra spells known, which will really help improve the Oracle’s versatility.
: The Flexible bonus goes into Charisma, and Darkvision is nice, but that’s really all that we get. The favored class bonus grants extra spells known, which will really help improve the Oracle’s versatility.
: Similar to the Gnome, Halflings get a bonus to the Charisma, and make a great straight caster option. Their favored class bonus is the same as the Gnome’s.
: The ability bonus goes into Charisma, the skill ranks can help offset dumping Intelligence if you choose to do so, and a bonus feat is always fantastic. The favored class bonus grants extra spells known, which will really help improve the Oracle’s versatility.
Traits
Your choice of traits depends largely on your character concept. Because Mysteries and spell lists make Oracles so diverse, it’s largely impossible to determine what traits would be good for all Oracles.
Skills
- (Cha): One of the most important skills in the game, especially if you plan to be the party’s Face. Oracles don’t get Bluff and Intimidate as class skills by default, but you can get them from traits or from several Mysteries.
- (Wis): Excellent way to supplement your magical healing abilities, but you won’t be as good as a Cleric because you don’t rely on Wisdom.
- (Int): Situational, but it can tell you a lot about the world in some campaigns.
- (Int):
- (Int): One of the best and most important Knowledge skills.
- (Wis): Excellent if you plan to be the party’s Face.
- (Int): Crucial for identifying spells and creating magic items, even with poor Intelligence.
Feats
Your choice of feats depends largely on your character concept, but some feats work well for any Oracle.
- : One extra use of a revelation is really hard to justify unless the revelation is exceptionally good. I might consider this on the Dual-Cursed Oracle’s Fortune revelation, but I would never take this on anything less powerful than that.
- : If you’re going into melee, you should be able to handle weapons well enough to not need this.
- : Sacrifice a 1st-level spell slot to make an enemy reroll an attack roll. The reroll is much more important than the penalty, especially if the attack is a critical hit.
- : When this feat was written it was a constant benefit, which made it an absolutely stellar option for Oracles. However, it was updated to only apply once per day as an immediate action. Unfortunately, once per day just isn’t enough to justify the feat no matter how absurd your Charisma bonus is.
-
: Sorcerer bloodlines
have a lot to offer. Most of the 1st-level powers aren’t worth a feat, but a
handful of them are very good. If you want a bloodline with a poor 1st-level
power but better powers at higher levels, consider delaying this feat to 9th
level. You need Skill Focus to qualify, so try to capitalize on Skill Focus
as much as you can by building yourself to use the requisite skill
effectively. For help selecting a bloodline, see my
Sorcerer Bloodlines Breakdown.
-
: You get one
of the two mid-level abilities from a sorcerer bloodline. Most
bloodlines will have one option which is clearly better than the other,
but for those few bloodlines that have two good options you can take
this twice.
- : Many bloodlines have very exciting high-level abilities.
-
: You get one
of the two mid-level abilities from a sorcerer bloodline. Most
bloodlines will have one option which is clearly better than the other,
but for those few bloodlines that have two good options you can take
this twice.
- : If you want to know more spells, take the Human or Half-elf racial favored class bonus.
- : Many revelations are better than most feats. If your mystery has enough good revelations that you won’t normally be able to take them all, this is a good choice.
- : The Oracle doesn’t need mobility in most cases, and additional armor can really reduce your dependence on Dexterity and spells for AC.
- : Excellent on almost any spellcaster.
- : Just learn Augury. The 25gp material component isn’t that bad.
-
: At high levels Spell
Resistance will become increasingly problematic. You may be able to get by
on options which don’t allow spell resistance, but if you can’t this is a
great idea.
- : Another +2.
- : Improved Initiative is better.
Weapons
- : Your weapon’s damage die matters very little beyond low levels, so once you have enough spell slots to get you through the day without constantly grabbing a weapon a gauntlet (spiked or otherwise) is a great weapon option because you can still use a heavy shield.
- : The Cleric’s iconic weapon, the Heavy Mace is strictly worse than a Morningstar and there is literally no reason to select it.
- : Your only option with reach.
- : The best one-handed simple weapon, the Morningstar does just as much damage as a Heavy Mace, and can overcome two types of DR.
- : A tiny bit less damage than the Morningstar, but you can throw it.
Armor
- : Probably your starting armor at 1st level.
- : Never goes out of style. If you find that you frequently switch back and forth between a weapon and a free hand for spellcasting, switch to a buckler or a light shield so that you have a free hand to cast spells. If you find that you enjoy the AC of a heavy shield, consider using a spiked gauntless as your go-to weapon.
- : Your best option at any and every level, unless you spend feat on Heavy Armor Proficiency.
Spells
The Oracle’s spells are largely the same as the Cleric’s. However, Oracles get a handful of exclusive spells. Also keep in mind that, since you can’t trade your spells on a daily basis, you’ll want to stick to spells you need on a consistent basis.
I’ll address Oracle-exclusive spells here, but for additional analysis of cleric/oracle spells, see my Cleric Handbook.
2nd-Level Spells
- : The effectiveness of this spell depends wholly on your choice of curse. If you’re a Dual-Cursed Oracle you apply the drawbacks of both curses. The best way I can think to use this is with the Clouded Vision curse, but at that point Blindness/Deafness is considerably better.
3rd-Level Spells
- : Save this for save-or-suck effects, then spend the next two turns playing it safe.
4th-Level Spells
- : If you have Clouded Vision, this is blindsight.
8th-Level Spells
- Divine Vessel: Very similar to divine power, but you get more defensive benefits and you don’t get a luck bonus to attacks or an extra haste-style attack.
Magic Items
Armor/Shields
- (22,400 gp): Unless you have heavy armor proficiency and a Dexterity modifier of at most +5, Celestial Armor is the best armor in the game if all you need from your armor is AC. For more, check out my Practical Guide to Celestial Armor.
- (8,158 gp): This is a weird item. It’s a bit more expensive than your typical +2 shield, so it may not be worth the cost compared to a mithral buckler. However, it allows you to perform somatic components with the hand holding the shield, which means that you can hold a weapon in your other hand without issue, and because it has no armor check penalty or arcane spell failure anyone can use it without issue. The ability to automatically damage enemies while in a grapple is a helpful deterrent for small or physical weak characters, but ion’t go looking for excuses to use it.
- (+X): Magic Vestment comes online at 5th level, and will generally outpace or match the amount you could reasonably invest in your armor. As you gain more levels, Magic Vestment will get better and the cost to enhance your armor will gradually become less appealing. A 3rd-level Pearl of Power costs 9000gp, which is as much as a suit of +3 armor and slightly more than two +2 armor items, but with this pearl and one spell slot you can enhance both your armor and your shield, and get the advantages of Magic Vestment’s scaling without spending another coin.
- (10,300): Unless you’re staying out of melee, it’s hard to justify giving up better AC just to get an extra revelation when you can take the Extra Revalation feat instead.
Rings
- : Orances spend a lot of time casting buff spells, often on themselves. If you put on a ring of counterspells and fill it with Dispel Magic and Improved Dispel Magic, you’re protected from losing all of your buffs when you run into enemy spellcasters.
- : Healbots are dumb, and this is nowhere near worth 10,000 gold. I might consider it at 2,000, but even then I would consider it vendor trash if I found it on the floor of a dungeon.
- : A lot of cleric/oracle spells grant Deflection bonuses to AC, and they obviously won’t stack with your ring.
Rods
- : Many crucial cleric/oracle buffs are 3rd-level or less, including several communal spells. If you can’t spare a feat for Extend Spell, a rod can be a nice substitute. Once the durations are long enough, you can cast extended spells at night before you go to sleep and the durations will last well into the next day.
- : Cure spells have a range of touch, which can be a problem if one of your allies falls below 0 hit points and you’re not right next to them. A low-level cure spell will at least stabilize them until you can get in range for something bigger. If you’re worried that you’ll need Breath of Life frequently, consider the regular rod.
Staffs
It’s difficult to recommend specific staffs without knowing your individual character, so instead I want to make a general endorsement of the concept of magic staffs in Pathfinder. If you are a 3.5 native, go read Pathfinder’s rules for staffs because they have improved dramatically.
Staffs are a reliable, rechargeable source of extra spellcasting that can give spellcasters easy and reliable access to spells from their spell list which they might not want to learn, or which they might like to use so frequently that they can’t prepare the spell enough times in a given day. On days when you’re not adventuring (traveling, resting, etc.) you can easily recharge any staff even if you can only cast one of the spells which the staff contains.
Wands
- : You have more spell slots to burn than a cleric, but a wand of Cure Light Wounds is still a great investment. You can’t always rest to restore your spell slots, so it often makes sense to save the spell slots for solving other problems and use a wand for healing between fights.
Wondrous Items
- : Too crucial to forgo.
- : A great way to get extra spells known. I think Ring of Spell Knowledge is better for anything that you can find in a Wizard’s or Magus’s spellbook, but for divine spells that you might need on a regular basis Page of Spell Knowledge makes more sense because you don’t need to pay NPC’s to cast the spell for you and you don’t need to consume scrolls.
Multiclassing and Prestige Classes
Oracles are full casters, so generally multiclassing isn’t a good option. Other classes, such as Barbarians, might dip into Oracle in order to abuse the higher level bonuses provided by the Oracle’s Curse.
