How Would You Optimize A Dark Tapestry Oracle To It's Fullest?

[SaturnSolaris]

The name says it all.

I'm looking for ideas as I create a character, that is supposed to be highly op. This is meant for a High Level/High CR game. Starting at Level 17.

I see spamming of Black Tentacles as a (plausible) way to stack up DoT.

Flying Has Some Nice Uses.

You could Plausibly Variant Multi-Class into Cleric and take Channel Smiting and Guided Hand. I'm not sure If there's a feat route to getting channeling for Oracles. Buy a Spell Storing Weapon, and use Inflict Serious Wounds.

Weapon Damage + 7d6 Channeling (Negative) + 3d8+15.

Or, Sorcerer and the Protean Bloodline for some creative use of Spacial Tear. Or, Use Eldritch Heritage (and Derivatives.)

[Alexvrahr]

At CR 17 you need much better than CL + casting stat mod to land effects targeting CMD. Black tentacles will be a waste of time. Make sure you get a means of making spell saves land a bit more often - feats like persistent spell or spell focus, probably.

You can get the spell perfection feat by this level. A spell of 5th level or less so you can quicken it for free (maybe 6th if you get the magical lineage trait) seems like a good idea. Chains of light is a good 6th level spell, flame strike is a 5th level spell if you like blasting, or various oracle curses provide interesting or useful spells e.g. Explosion of rot.

It looks like you get planar binding as a mystery spell. This can be useful and it can even be wildly abused.

[SaturnSolaris]

Yeah, I just realized that black tentacles is going to basically be useless except against maybe grunts.

Which might save me some feats honestly.

[Psyren]

Let's see... you get 6 revelations over the course of your 1-19 career, with the (pretty decent) Final Revelation coming at 20.

Many Forms is powerful enough on its own that you could be a decent gish, especially combined with buffs from the Cleric list. The Alter Self version you start with as well as the Greater Polymorph version you get at 15 let you pick forms that you can continue to cast in. The shapeshifting also means that you can potentially skip the wings. It combos particularly well with Cloak of Darkness, which lets you get a large all-day armor bonus (up to +12 armor) even while in another form, that stacks with the natural armor your chosen form gives you. The Cloak isn't particularly good before then however since it won't stack with armor you can just buy and wear. Since you're starting at 17 however, you can get both casting forms and a huge armor buff from Cloak right away.

Gift of Madness is a great save-or-suck that helps you save your spell slots. 75% chance to miss their turn with no spell resistance is pretty nice, and "forced to attack whatever attacked you" raises that to 100% with a modicum of tactics.

Pierce the Veil combined with some darkness-granting abilities help you control the battlefield well against certain foes.

Read the Tapestry is great to get a hint about the next day or plot point before bed, and saves you from having to blow a precious spell known on that.

The remaining abilities are pretty meh. Brain Drain... if you can get them to fail a mind-affecting will save you can usually do far worse things to them than d4/level and detect thoughts. Dweller in Darkness is too limited at 1/day. Interstellar Void is nice as a scaling fort save or suck, but is only 2/day. Touch of the Void is very weak both in damage and effect. Wings of Darkness is largely obviated by Many Forms, but if you want a form that can't fly and cast then it's useful. Wings or Interstellar Void would probably be my 6th choice.

As for the spells - black tentacles is nice when you get it, but as mentioned, it scales poorly. Planar Binding is of course very good, especially in a high-op campaign and on a Cha-focused class. Reverse Gravity is great battlefield control. Interplanetary Teleport is... well, it's a good way to get around, but again, campaign-dependent on whether you'll actually get use out of it.

TL;DR - Dark Tapestry makes you a decent gish as a pseudo-druid with cleric spells, so that's probably the angle I would go for if you're trying to optimize it.

[SaturnSolaris]

I was looking at,

Cloak Of Darkness
Many Forms
Pierce The Veil
And, Wings Of Darkness

Going either Black-Blooded
and picking up, Dark Resilience

Or, Dual-Cursed
and picking up, Misfortune or Fortune
possibly taking Extra Revelation for the other. Or, getting rid of Many Forms, and taking that as my last revelation.
and maybe, Divine Interference.

Cleric VMC looks more useful at the moment. (As opposed to Eldritch Heritage, or Sorcerer VMC. All the Bloodlines that work with this concept are kinda, meh. Except maybe Arcane.)
Channeling Negative Energy, could be useful.
If I take Black-Blooded I could heal myself with it too.

Does Channel Smite work with natural weapons?

[Psyren]

Divine Interference is nice because you can use it while shapeshifted. It also works on touch attacks and CMB.

There are some nice VMC options out there but that would take a deeper dive than I have time for at the moment. Cleric and Sorcerer both sound decent. (Note that your Cha is high though, so rather than Sorcerer VMC, consider Eldritch Heritage.)

Yes, Channel Smite works with any melee attack, so natural weapons qualify.

[Spore]

My approach is not incredibly OP but imho a DP oracle is about negative energy, disables and shutdown/madness. Imho the flavorful thing to do is dual-cursed to make sure you hit Inflict Wounds spells and the target fails their saves. Now melee, even pseudomelee is not the best thing to do at 17th level but you do have mass-inflict wounds at your level.

Honestly I would just optimize the flip out of Divine Vessel (Fiend) (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/d/divine-vessel). Stack buff spells in a way your action economy is used smartly and start combat off with Divine Vessel and go to town.

[EmptyHedgehog]

Hi there

I'm playing a Dark Tapestry oracle right now in the Strange Aeons AP. Started at level 1 and now at level 12, with the plan to go up to level 17. Here's my experience.

You have to choose between casting-focus and melee-focus. I first tried to focus on melee, using Many Forms and natural attack, but it didn't really work. The problem was that Many Forms has you doing very different things at different levels. 1-6 you are in humanoid form making weapon attacks; 7-10 you get the deinonychus, which is awesome; 11-15 you get medium magical beasts, which are distinctly non-awesome, and your deinonychus doesn't get any better.

After level 15 you have a lot more options, so melee-focus might be viable if you're starting at level 17. Just remember that a gish build almost certainly won't work because you don't meet the requirements for Natural Spell (absent a house rule). You can cast in Form of the Dragon I but it's a bit underwhelming compared to the large magical beasts or huge animals. You can hit things in combat and cast buff/healing spells out of combat, though.

My preference was to focus on spells, and my GM was kind enough to let me re-build once this became clear. It's particularly useful because my character is the only full caster in a team of melee hack-and-slash.

The most important thing is to take the Dual-Cursed archetype. (You can easily find a second curse which isn't much of a handicap.) It gives you some awesome re-roll abilities: good both for helping your friends and getting another crack at an enemy who just made its save. It replaces the lower-level spells, which for Dark Tapestry are a bit lacklustre and which you won't really care about at level 17 anyway.

Max out charisma and you can make a good save-or-suck caster. I took the Blackened curse to get access to a few blasts, and the Eldritch Heritage (Arcane Bloodline) feat chain to get access to some wizard spells. My plan is to get Spell Perfection (Enervation). By level 17 I'll be able to cast Quickened Enervation as a 4th level spell and Maximized Empowered Enervation as a 6th level spell. 7-10 negative levels every round, for quite a lot of rounds. It should be awesome.

The advantage over a sorcerer is that you're more versatile and more robust. Be a human and get extra spells known from the FCB; get more from your curses and Eldritch Heritage. Use Many Forms to increase your AC (medium magical beast gets you +4 natural armor, and a jackalwere can cast spells, or at level 17 be an air elemental for even more bonuses).

At level 12 my character reaches 39 AC when fully buffed. He's got decent HP and with 3/4 BAB it's easy to land touch attacks. He's got control spells, debuffs, buffs and heals. The build is very useful, especially in a party with no other full casters.

It's also been a lot of fun, and is very thematic in Strange Aeons. Let me know if you'd like me to post the full build.