Cleric vs. Oracle
I feel as though putting in time at the “prayers answered” stand is like working the front desk at any other job. Everyone has to do an hour or so each week, and sometimes you get partnered with Tina from accounting. Nobody wants to work with Tina from accounting.
Anywho, today’s installment of our ongoing Heroes vs. Anti-Party series brings you Cleric vs. Oracle. While everybody who knows gaming knows clerics, the oracle is a little less familiar. It’s a Pathfinder class with a neat spin on the whole “holy man with healing spells” schtick. You can read all about it right here, but the big difference is that, where clerics choose to serve their patron god, the gods choose their oracles. They’re more like vessels of holy energy than traditional priests, which means that they get their powers without having to put in all that time and energy reading holy books and begging the pantheon for favors.
In the case of our pal Cleric and this particular Oracle, the two of them were actually novices together, graduating with their 1st Level Diplomas on the same day. Cleric had come to the Order as a beardling, and spent no less than 51 years learning his orisons and rituals. Oracle, on the other hand, had shown up the Tuesday before graduation. This has caused some friction between the two ever since.
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You are giving me so many little bits I can add into my Monster-of-the-Week campaign- my first solo-dm of dnd. 😀
As an interesting side note, the “prayers answered stand” doubles as an “adventurers for hire” stand.
That’s fair. It just says answered, not that you’ll like what the answer is.
There’s actually a very thematically and mechanically similar 3.5e class called the Favored Soul. It’s got much of the same stuff going on: spontaneous divine caster, innate connection to their god, charisma based, etc.
I only ever played one 3.5 campaign before the group switched over to Pathfinder, so I don’t know much about Favored Souls. However, if their name is anything to go by, the comparison is pretty amusing.
Favored Soul: “You’re a spontaneous divine caster too? Gee whiz, aren’t the gods swell?”
Blind/Lame/Plagued/etc. Oracle: “Oh yeah. They’re the best.”
No idea where oracles fall in this kind of comparison. Maybe colleges aren’t the best point of comparison…clerics get ordained because they have a diploma, oracles get ordained because their god needs a warm body?