Revelation Cantrips and Cursebound Epiphanies: Ponder your Mystery with Noodles' Oracle!
What is this? This module is the foundry implementation for a homebrew project I've been working on for some time. Noodles' Oracle is a full write-up of a version of the Oracle class, using pre-remaster (legacy) Oracle as a base chassis, and incorporating elements of remastered Oracle's best ideas. It contains a full class description, all 10 official Mysteries each with their own detailed curse and effects, 45 class feats, 37 revelation cantrips, a multiclass archetype, and a few footnotes explaining my thoughts and design choices.
What is this not? This is not intended as a replacement to the official remastered Oracle. That class as it appears in the Player Core 2 is a perfectly good and enjoyable class that fulfills the function many people want from it. The problem, as I see it, is that that class is a wholly different class from legacy Oracle in the way it feels and plays. This project, then, is my attempt to preserve the playstyle, feel, and best parts of legacy Oracle while making it better balanced and less difficult to use.
What's actually different? For the full details of this class's functions, you can read the google doc linked above, or install this module and see for yourself! Here, however, is a summary of the major things this class does:
- As with legacy Oracle, you are a charisma-based, spontaneous, divine spellcaster with three spell slots per rank.
- At level 1, you pick your Mystery, which grants you two revelation cantrips, an oracular curse, a trained skill, and a set of ten Mystery Spells of different ranks, all of which are added to the divine spell list for you.
- You learn revelation cantrips, powerful cantrips with effects analagous to focus spells, but burdened with the cursebound trait. Your unique spells therefore do not cost focus points, but are limited by your oracular curse, a bit like remaster Oracle's cursebound feats. At level 1, you gain your Mystery's initial revelation cantrip, plus another from one of your Mystery's 4 divine domains.
- You gain an oracular curse, whose effects are represented by the cursebound condition in the same way remaster Oracle does it. At each stage of your curse, you gain a powerful cursebound benefit and an impactful cursebound drawback, each increasing in intensity as your curse progresses. These benefits and drawbacks are balanced between Mysteries, ensuring that no Mystery is unusable and no curse is meaningless.
- The Ash Mystery's curse, for example, has the following cumulative effects: Cursebound 1: You gain temporary Hit Points at the start of each turn, but gain weakness to fire damage. Cursebound 2: Enemies near you in an aura gain weakness to physical damage, but you are drained and take a penalty to your Speed. Cursebound 3: You are concealed, but creatures outside your aura are concealed to you. Cursebound 4: Enemies in your aura are sickened, but you take fire damage whenever you speak (including to Cast a Spell).
- You gain the Ponder activity, allowing you to take ten minutes in exploration mode to reset yourself to Cursebound 1. It's not so simple to rid yourself of your curse entirely, but then, maybe you don't want to. The allure of your curse's benefits and the dangers of its drawbacks force an Oracle to play a dangerous game.
- You can use epiphany feats to customize your curse, adding new benefits to its effects inspired by the cursebound benefits of other Mysteries. If an epiphany feat takes its mechanics from your own Mystery, taking that feat instead imparts some extra effects.