Recently, I soloed my way through Pathfinder Adventure: Threshold of Knowledge (19 pages, free at DriveThruRPG). It is for the second edition of the rules. I changed four lines of Ars Magica RPG and made it my solo engine. I used the five PC characters that are included in the adventure. So, the PCs picked up the quest from their teacher. Soon, they were in a footrace/obstacle course with Haibram. Haibram won. When they got to Alandri, she gave them their test. They were able to catch three fish which gave them a passing grade. They went back to their school and discovered that their teacher had been taken. They gathered clues and had to solve a puzzle (success). This led them to a canal. Here they encountered a Leshy. They were able to use diplomacy against him.

Next, they encountered two river devils. The PCs killed them and collected the treasure. They continued on and were surprised to see a crocodile eating a thief. The PCs killed it but Ekene the PC went down. The PCs were able to bring Ekene’s hit points up to 12. The big battle was with a sea hag. She was the one causing problems. This battle was a disaster. She took down four of the PCs. Zane made a deal with her. The sea hag took all of their treasure and Zane’s courage. So, all of the PCs survived, but they failed the quest. Maybe you will have better luck.

Give this fun adventure a try!

Having bought, read through and played some of these, I am afraid the quality of this one doesn’t feel to be on par with the witches + or something I could call a well thought out supplement. There are several issues here;

MYSTERIES

The new mysteries especially feel very separate from the original ones and not in a good way.

Most of them give permanent, massive and constant debuffs to the oracle that are applicable to almost every situation in combat and outside of it. Since the curse doesn’t go down below from the minor stage after a focus spell is cast, meaning someone with these mysteries would have to play with constantly deafened character, constantly frightened one, constantly sickened one which affects everything the oracles would want to do outside of combat for the day. Especially the deafened one just closes one person out of any social encounters even to the extent of observing them properly.

Compared to Paizo ones, the downsides (especially minor ones) could always be worked around. Battle oracle doesn’t suffer penalties when they play in a way their mystery encourages, and only affects combat. Tempest only affects situations with non-magical lights around you. Time makes you enfeebled which affects rolls you don’t want to do in the first place as Time oracle etc.

And unlike the universal downsides of the mysteries, the benefits rarely are so. Beast oracles gain imprecise scent which really doesn’t matter against good amount of enemies, nor do they get much support or incentive to using said unarmed attacks due to not getting any + to hit bonuses until major stage while being terribly behind in + to hit progression to everyone else. Fate oracles turn crit failures on fear effects into failures, which won’t happen every fight but even when they do, the curse already makes them frightened 2 (which wouldn’t stack) making the effect somewhat redundant in most scenarios. Reveries just receive a permanent penalty to perception checks which again discourages out of combat maneuvering constantly.

I have to call out beast oracle specifically in terms of balance; Bestial Howl is very much overtuned with some technical design errors. It has the incapacitation for one despite not including any kind of incapacitating effect. At a base level, its better than Fear spell at 4th level, except you get hands on it even faster and it doesn't use a spell slot. Barbarians meanwhile can get a level 10 feat to AoE demoralize everyone within same radius 4 levels later, and one level of fear lower.

Frost Oracle is the only one I wouldn’t have much design complaints (might be partly due to their mystery only affecting encounter mode). Their focus spells leaves quite a bit to be desired unfortunately.

FEATS

1) Trances (all); Using a trance disrupts all spellcasting without cursebound trait (something that Oracle can use in very limited amounts). This kind of brings the question what the oracle is meant to do once they enter a trance. The minor effects are hardly ever worth the downside (or even the opportunity cost of entering a trance), while the major effects replicate nigh gamebreaking effects. My players were actually really excited about the trances until they read the trait, and realized after going into a trance they pretty much became passive objects that buff others and get stuck there. I think the author has a bit different image of how often cursebound spells can be cast; Assuming you are already on minor level, you can only cast one spell during trance, and they usually are 1 action spells. A nice concept, that in practice ends up as one action to enter a trance into not participating in the game for the remainer of combat.

2) Inexplicable Knowledge (lvl 6). This one has to some extent the same design flaw as certain Paizo-made feats. Recall Knowledge is a secret check and you are not supposed to know the result of it, and there is a chance the information is false. This feat makes everyone practically immune to critical failures on recall knowledge checks since they will know that they crit failed by the virtue of not gaining a status bonus.

3) Intuitive Maneuver (lvl 8) might be the single strongest feat in the game on certain builds. Any oracle with a reach weapon with a trip or shove trait (like a whip for instance, since Battle Oracles can now use martial weapons baseline) can interrupt movement of any foe approaching from range, canceling their movement and dropping them prone. Any attempts to get up from the ground on future turns are immediately met with another trip since ‘Stand Up’ has the move trait. And due to the trance itself, the oracle has a very high likelihood in succeeding on said trip actions. Essentially, as a reaction you can take 2 actions away from an enemy that will extend to more if they cannot use those on their turn.

Gnomish Flickmace was considered a massive problem that had to be errata’d since it could do this on a crit. This feat does the same effect on a success, and with a status bonus on the roll.

ERRATA

Spell lists

Adding spells to expand the possibilities of expressing mystery thematics is a good idea. They do intrude on the sorcerer territory a little bit by the virtue of being straight added to repertoire to give them extremely large spell availability at all times when I think just making certain spells available to them could have done the trick. However they are not without their oversights, and most of theme seem to be oddly targeted at a certain mystery that was already having a bad time.

Ancestor’s Oracles gain Spiritual Guardian on 5th level. Casting Spiritual Guardian has a requirement of needing a deity, which oracles do not have. They can opt on level 4 to gain a deity, but giving a baseline feature that requires picking certain optional feats tends to not go without bitterness.

Domain changes

I shall leave it to individual opinions on whether soul fits better than death to ancestor oracle. The downside of this change though regardless of one’s opinion is that Ancestor’s Oracle has been quite widely considered to be the weakest of the oracle mysteries if not the weakest subclass in the game. Essentially, they suffer from a flaw where they are encouraged to make strikes without having anything that supports them being in melee or using strikes over spells even with penalties and bonuses calculated. Death Domain’s focus spell allowed them to gain a flow of temp hp that made being on close range manageable if suboptimal.

The rest, seems solid. Giving Lightning domain to Tempest seems especially fitting.

Focus Spells

I do like the change on Life Link. But if we are buffing the underpowered focus spells why was the list of buffs confined to just Life link?

This pops up a lot now in this but if one is making errata to oracle to an extent where existing focus spells are buffed one could consider not even addressing Ancestral Touch is a design error on its own. The spell is known to be a worse version of base demoralize action, with lower chance to succeed, touch range, focus point cost. The only real downside of base demoralize is once per target limitation and linguistic trait. Meanwhile most other mysteries gain access to immensely powerful effects on level 1 such as causing drained while almost all of them gain some value even if enemy succeeds on a save. On average, assuming the 50% chance to succeed, it deals 1.25 mental damage which is hardly a factor.

...and considering all this, the ancestor’s mostly took more hits without anything compensate. Any particular reason why?

Conclusions

Overall I like the base ideas and concepts presented. However, their execution does not really make this a viable product to be applied to a pf2e game without heavy scrutiny or modifications.

EDIT: After the most recent updates, most of the stuff here is fixed and updated to functional. Great job!

Excellent sourcebook for additional Witch-themed game mechanics in PF2. Highly recommended. The high number of feats are on-theme, innovatively designed and well-balanced game mechanic. My Witch players love this book! More please!

Team Plus books hit it out of the park. My only complaint with them is that there is so much in them that I may not ever get the chance to use all of their content!!! Every book, and I mean every book, is fantastic. If you are looking to add something amazing to your PF2E games then look no further than Team Plus books like Barbarians+!!!!

Also don't let the one bad review on Oracles+ dissuade you. It is a fantastic book, with amazing ideas, feats, and mysteries!!!

New Patrons, feats, lessons, and even suggested errata to make the base class all the more enjoyable and balanced. What more could you want? A plus supplement after my own heart - and my favorite class, to boot. I think the art in this class+ is my favorite so far, but that's the least of my enjoyment because everything I've seen in this feels "right". Sorely needed new themes like Chaos, Fey, Sea, and woah! Tapestry! A creative and cool one there. And who doesn't want a Mutable Familiar, really?? What great flavor, and nice options.

As mentioned right on the first page, this really did feel like a "love letter" to this class. I'm already talking about it at my table (which happens to contain a passionate Witch who now wishes they knew these options sooner! Hah!)

After checking this out in-full, it almost makes the base class seem empty by comparison. They sought to really expand on the feeling of Witch, creating an assortment of new paths but all of them feeling sufficiently "witchy"! Not a single thing feels out-of-place. My favorite supplement of the lot, and sure to see use at my table. Thanks for the love, for this class.

Another great Class+ Supplement! I didn't think Oracles were for me really until going through this Oracles+ book, which offers a lot of fun in new Mysteries. Beyond that, there's some great and creative feats (Mystery Cult! The Bell Tolls Three Times! So neat and robust!).

I also want to give a shout out to the thoughtful entries on things like Relics and Drugs for instance, and how you can engage with them (or not) in your campaigns. I won't spoil too much, but definitely give Awakened Oracle a special look, because wow. Excellent work from the plus team again :)

A great Class+ supplement with wonderful art and awesome additional options for the Barbarian. Especially fond of the "Runic" Barbarian, which adds a whole aesthetic angle to the class. Plus, unraveling into runes is very cool to imagine. If you're looking for a fun supplement to your axe-swinging, rage-bashing experience, this is the book for you.

It's an interesting class thats very, very, very metamagic heavy. It's full of flavor and nice character art but lacking in its functionality (for me). For example, there is a feat in the material that allows for splitting a spell akin to split hex, but is so restrictive that it feels like a trap option rather than something that could potentially be useful. Other feats follow similarly odd design choices such as destroying grimoires rather than temporarily draining them in one feat and the insistance on not assigning more of the metamagic feats to the classes index spells (focus spells).

I'd recommend the class as it is now with the caveat that you might want to make some tweaks and changes for your games.

Spelldancer go brrrrr.

Need I say more? Well fine, I will.

Team+ continues to be the best at what it does and shows that even when not focusing on a singular class, they can easily create fun and engaging options. GMs, if your players are asking to use third-party conent, then Impossible Lands+ should be a no brainer.

Overall, it's interesting but parts of this class are intensely overpowered. Many spells / feats need to be balanced and quite a bit of the spell effects need editing. It has the potential to be an excellent class, but is not there currently.

Excoriate, for instance, gives you the chance to deliver 3 Slow spells every round for 10 rounds for the cost of a single action, level 2 focus spell. Slow is a 2 action level 3 spell. Further, you inflict 1d8 persistent bleed damage initially and up to 4d8 persistent bleed damage on a critical success at level 7 - again, at the cost of a single action level 2 focus spell. Compare this to the 'Wounding' weapon rune which only becomes available at level 7 and deals 1d6 persistent bleed damage (2d6 on a critical success).

Judgment of Eons literally ages your target as a level 1 focus spell and deals 2d6 damage. Meanwhile Judgment of Repulsion (also a level 1 focus spell) deals 1d8 damage and nudges your target 5 feet. Judgment of Silver outright prevents Wild Shape.

Many of the effects are also not bounded as of its current printing - effects delivered by level 1 focus spells are permanent in many cases.

Please note - I believe that Excoriate is intended to be a single attack spell which might bring its power into line but as is, the wording may be interpreted differently. Again, polishing this class is all it would take to make it great.

I love the theming and concept for this class, and it carries the whole product. It has an interesting design where you can customize your own affliction. The three subclasses also feel distinct. The class itself is very distinct compared to the rest of the core classes, as it relies on afflictions and persistent damage to deal damage.

I find the power level of the class and specifically the class feats to be incredibly weak. There are many options that feel like they were added to fulfill a number quote and there are no exciting options save from the lv 20 feats. Despite three subclasses, there are only 2 feasts that are exclusive to one of the subclasses and both are for the divine subclass. The two other subclasses have nothing exclusive to themselves. A good thing is that nearly all of the feasts are original and maybe only three are copies of core feats, two of them being the focus regaining feats.

Since this class has a key ability score of Constitution, you'd always be -1 compared to all other martial classes in ranged and melee combat. Having a key ability score of constitution is a cool design decision, but doesn't help the overall power level of the class.

I found it weird that the class progression is very bog standard martial progression, and compared to the core classes, the Symbiote class doesn’t get any additional bonuses from class progression other than more options on the affliction table.

The layout of the book is good and not confusing to read.

I'd only recommend buying this if the theme captures you wholly and you don't mind playing on a weaker power level. Alternatively this product can serve as a base for you to design a on top of (which I intend to do)

PS: don’t buy the foundry module as it has not been updated for a year (the last time it was last updated 2022-05-23)

Awesome book, if you like playing barbarians you need this book.

Overall, this is a wonderful add on for Pathfinder, and I hope to use it in an actual campaign in the near future. However HoweverHowever, I was a little disappointed in the lack of wind rules. Using the weather gage is the key to seafaring combat. And these are ships, with sails they require the wind to come from specific directions, and that affects speed, maneuverability, shot accuracy, &c. Obviously, in a game like Pathfinder, there has to be some give. No one (except maybe me) wants to do a bunch of trigonometry in the middle of combat. But there are zero rules about it, and instead the ships will feel like cars instead of ships, just going back and forth against each other.Overall, this is a wonderful add on for Pathfinder, and I hope to use it in an actual campaign in the near future.However, I was a little disappointed in the lack of wind rules. Using the weather gage is the key to seafaring combat. And these are ships, with sails they require the wind to come from specific directions, and that affects speed, maneuverability, shot accuracy, &c. Obviously, in a game like Pathfinder, there has to be some give. No one (except maybe me) wants to do a bunch of trigonometry in the middle of combat. But there are zero rules about it, and instead the ships will feel like cars instead of ships, just going back and forth against each other.

I really enjoy the improvements to feats and additional patrons. As one of my favorite classes this was truly needed.

Made my interrogation investiagtor with swashbuckler archetype not feel like a mistake!