Porting Oracle (PF) into a 3.5 game

[Amphetryon]

The question should be apparent from the thread title. What changes, if any, do you feel would be necessary to port an Oracle into a 3.5 game? No other materials introduced in PF would be used, which excludes most of the Favored Class bonuses and 3rd party Archetypes/ACFs.

Thanks for your time.

[Craft (Cheese)]

My advice:

- Change the class skills to reflect the different skill lists in 3.5. Same thing you have to do for every backport.

- Make the curse optional: You can either choose a curse and get the penalty and the benefits, or you can choose to get neither. You must have a curse to benefit from ACFs and spells that affect oracle curses, which shouldn't be a problem since you said you're not using that stuff. Many players just end up picking a curse that's irrelevant to their character concept and ignore it: This skips beating around the bush while giving players who want the extra flavor the option.

- Allow all Oracles to Turn or Rebuke Undead, as a cleric of their Oracle level. Revelations that grant you channeling instead give you 4 more turn attempts per day (like the Extra Turning feat). In 3.5 lots more stuff depends upon turning (divine feats and PrC qualification) so the lack of it by default hurts the class much more than it does in PF. I'd also make this recommendation for anyone who wants to run a 3.P game.


Aside from that, I'd say Oracle's good. It's much better off than, say, a Favored Soul.

[Renegade Paladin]

If you're just taking the class mechanics and porting them to 3.5, basically the only things you'd have to change is the class skills (since skills were consolidated in Pathfinder, some of the 3.5 ones that it should have aren't on the list), note that it gets x4 skill points at first level, and define what number of 0-level spell slots it has (since that's not a thing in Pathfinder).

Note that 3.5 already has an equivalent in the Favored Soul. Oracle trades in two good saves, some spells known, and a curse in exchange for actual class features and single-ability dependent casting (the Favored Soul needs both Charisma and Wisdom; the Oracle only needs the former). Note that among those class features are bonus spells known at every even level up to 18th, so the numbers on the respective Spells Known charts aren't as skewed in favor of the Favored Soul as they appear.

[Psyren]

The skills are the only thing I'd change, everything else works fine.

The curse is a good thing to take out if you want to simplify it, particularly since no other class in 3.5 is going to advance curse progression and so the player will be discouraged from multiclassing/PrCing out. You could tone it down further by making Revelations only available at 11+ , similar to rogue talents in 3.5.

You could also consider replacing the mystery with a domain of the player's choice as an ACF or something.

[Perturbulent]

I might consider clarifying whether if they're any discrepancy on the spell lists (3.5 and pathfinder shifted a lot of them. Such as the oracle specific ones: embrace destiny, oracle's burden, borrow fortune, oracle's vessel, divine vessel.
I could imagine someone wanting to decrease their skill points to 2 rather than 4 (but skill points are wonky on a lot of classes to begin with.)

I think the Curse and Mysteries are pretty defining in the Oracle. It'd be weird to remove them. Also, I don't see any reason to give them turn/rebuke abilities. I would suggest updating the energy channeling of the mysteries that grant it. The way turning occurs in Pathfinder is funny.