Shadow Oracle help

[Nintendogeek01]

Never made an Oracle before and the only things I've found thus far have been decidedly unhelpful with the different Mysteries; the Shadow mystery looks interesting for flavor reasons but what would an Oracle with this mystery be good at? What other spells should the Oracle get? Helpful feats and skills? What is the Shadow Oracle's primary combat role? Really I need as much advice as you can spare.

[Geddy2112]

Although the mystery gives you some cool boosts to shadow spells and summoning, you can really do anything any oracle can with it.

As far as your revelations, your cloak of shadows will replace the need for armor once you reach mid to high levels. You might want something cheap like hide armor just to have as backup, or maybe a chain shirt once you can afford it to sleep in it for those times your armor won't last all day. Army of darkness is great to meet a feat prerequisite if you want to go for summoning, but otherwise it is worth skipping. You don't have an aura like a cleric, so sacred summons is not something you can take and being a spontaneous caster, I would pass on summoning altogether.

Dark secrets is outright incredible, and a good way to grab the shadow evocation/conjuration/enchantment spells. You want to grab it about the same time you grab shadow mastery, as the oracle list does not have many shadow spells,and the only one you get is greater shadow evocation/ shades through your mystery at really high level. I would grab evocation, conjuration, and greater conjuration at level 7 along with shadow mastery as a bonus feat.

Pierce the shadows is good once you hit level 11 to ignore all forms of darkness. The skill focus: stealth and HIPS are good, although the skill unlock is meh, I would consider taking it right around level 10 to get the +6 from 10+ ranks in stealth, and certainly by level 16 to HIPS. Wings of darkness is good if you don't want to waste a spell slot on fly/overland flight. Living shadow and shadow armament are pretty bad revelations you should pass on.

If you take extra revelation and the game ends up going to 20 you are going to be stuck with some loser revelations, so I would ask if retraining is possible. Combined with diplomacy and sense motive class skills, gaining bluff through the mystery makes you a decent face candidate. You can choose not to max stealth but it is kind of the point of the mystery, and disguise/dungeneoneering only need one rank for class bonus. Being stuck to simple weapons you can go a sniper build with a crossbow, or a melee oracle focused on strength that is just really sneaky, but the strongest contender is to focus on casting, namely using shadow con/evo at higher levels to cast whatever the heck you need. Shadow conjuration in particular is really useful to make things you need like mounts, etc.

If you go melee, power attack/furious focus/2 handing a spear or something is probably the way to go. Sniper with a crossbow uses deadly aim, point blank shot, rapid reload, rapid shot, etc etc. Both builds need decent dex, the ranged build needing more. The ranged build can forgo as much con and dump strength but the melee build needs both. Take as much INT as you feel comfortable, dump wis, max charisma. For spellcasting, consider spell focus(illusion) and the solid shadows metamagic feat, which allows your (shadow) spells to count as 20% more real than normal, combined with your revelation this can make a 100% real illusion spell. There are other good metamagic feats if those are your thing. Improved initiative is always a good feat, more important for casters. Eldritch heritage is good to nab a familiar.

[Florian]

Shadow Oracles can be quite powerful offensive spellcasters. Geddy already mentioned shadow-type spells that can mimic some arcane schools and the ability of that mystery to push the reality percentage of them even higher. That´s a powerful ability to build upon. As a side-effect, you can push the save DC for these spells to a limit and can also make it into a powerful illusionist, depending on race.

- Elves can get the Ancient Lorekeeper archetype to swap the bonus spells known for wizard spells, their FCB gives +1/2 to a selected revelation.
- Gnomes have their general +1 DC bonus for illusions and can get arcane illusions as bonus spells known vis FCB, which works pretty well with the Shadow Gambit feat.
- Wayangs start with a pretty good bonus to stealth and gain a +1 DC bonus on shadow spells. Same FCB as gnomes.

If a (borderline) evil and very creepy character is ok, then going for at least a dip into Umbral Court Agent will also give access to the Darkness domain and an upgraded version of the Tenebrous Spell feat.

This will be a little feat intensive (Believable Veils, Shadow Gambit, Solid Shadows, Spell Focus: Illusion, Spell Penetration, Tenebrous Spell), so weapon-based combat options will mostly be melee supported by Combat Reflexes and Power Attack.

[Nintendogeek01]

Thanks for the advice guys. It's been a huge help. :smallbiggrin:

[Serafina]

If you want to focus on the Shadow-spells, remember one thing about them: Bonuses to the Save-DC are really really good with them.
That's mostly because the enemy effectively gets two saves against them (one to notice it's just a shadow-illusion and then treat it as quasi-real, the other versus the actual effect of the spell) - and because the quasi-real nature of shadow-spells only matters if they make the first save.

So you really want high saves. As a primary caster, that means you'll want to start out with 20 Charisma if possible. You'll also want Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus (Illusion). Tenebrous Spell (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/tenebrous-spell-metamagic) is also a good idea, since it effectively adds +1 to caster level and DC for free on the spells you're going to use it on, with the only drawback being that they're easier to dispel in bright light.
Being a Wayang or Gnome (or some other race with a bonus to the DC of Shadow- or Illusion-spells) is also recommended.
If you do buff your save-DCs sufficiently, there's very little need to boost the percentage of realness of your shadow-spells - the difference between 20% real and 90% real doesn't matter if they don't make their save.

For the Oracle Curse, I've found Deaf to be particularly flavorful. Getting Silent Spell on everything just goes so well with a darkness-theme. If you can somehow pick up an Improved Familiar, you could take one with telepathy (such as the faerie dragon) and entirely circumvent the communication problem - but even without that, you can just invest into linguistics for sign language and lip reading (each shoud count as one language-selection). And remember that you're deaf, not mute, so you can still shout to alert allies.

[balegar]

It appears there's been an errata or something on the gnome favored class bonus. It shows on d20pfsrd and paizo that it increases your effective level for your curse.