So waiting for the experts, but do we know how are we going to attack and the like? It seems this build focuses a lot on stealth and utility spells, but we have no party and we can't just hide all the time, so better have a strategy for dealing damage(or incapacitating enemies in other ways).
I assume we gonna use a weapon as we don't have lots of spell slots yet. so what sort should we aim for? And how do we make it effective?
With spell selection limited early on and caster level further restricting damage potential, I think we should try to avoid melee combat as much as possible. A light crossbow does decent damage and will let us attack from a good range, plus it's not too expensive for our budget.
I actually do not want to take friendless. It restricts our social abilities too much to me.
I am interested in
Child curse, if DragonParadox allows it. Other interesting variants for me are Tongues (funny and could be even useful in planes), God-Meddled (more chaos!), Phlegmatic (imperturbable MC... but again, if DragonParadox allows it, because it's 3PP).
Readers in my quest for Taylor-Oracle started with
Legalistic curse... but quickly begin to try to change it for
anything else. At the end Egyptian god Set changed Legalitic for Lich... things escalated from there. So I do not advise to use theese curses.
Restricting our social abilities is kind of my goal here. I don't want to play another Diplomacy-focused character, that's why I latched onto Friendless when I found it. That it fits so well with Akorian's race and backstory is just icing on the cake for me.
Feel free to put together a different build plan, though. There are several good alternatives to choose from, IMO.
[X]
Wisp & Whimsy
-[X] Class: Duel Cursed Oracle (Shadow Mystery) [Friendless & Unchained Curses]
-[X] Favored Class Bonus: +1 Skill Point
-[X] Attributes (20-point Buy; +2 DEX, +2 CON, -2 INT): STR 8, DEX 14, CON 12, INT 12, WIS 14 CHA 16
-[X] Feat: Extra Revelation
-[X] Skills (6 points): +1 Bluff, +1 Knowledge (Dungeoneering), +1 Perception, +1 Sense Motive, +1 Stealth, +1 Disguise
-[X] Drawback:
--[X] Umbral Unmasking: The shadow you cast is monstrous. Under normal lighted conditions, this is not hard to observe—but uncommon to notice. Creatures that succeed at a DC 15 Wisdom check notice it plainly (an additional Perception check may be required based on environmental conditions). This telltale sign of wickedness cannot be concealed by misdirection, nondetection, or illusions, except those that also affect shadows (such as invisibility).
-[X] Traits:
--[X] Reactionary (Combat): You gain a +2 trait bonus on initiative checks.
--[X] Secret-Keeper (Faith): You gain a +3 trait bonus on Bluff checks when they are opposed by another's Sense Motive check.
--[X] Seeker (Social): You gain a +1 trait bonus on Perception checks, and Perception is always a class skill for you.
-[X] Revelations: Stealth Mastery & Living Shadow
-[X] Spells:
--[X] Orisons: Create Water, Detect Magic, Guidance, Mending
--[X] 1st Level: Cure Light Wounds (B), Inflict Light Wounds, Shadow Trap
Alright.
So I went and did a thing myself, because I do really want the dual cursed mysterious stranger build.
It's probably not that optimised; we're very good at running and hiding, but we're not very tough in a straight fight.
I disagreed with goldfish about Improved Initiative because I just thought it was boring, not because I think an extra revelation is actually better (although Living Shadow does seem pretty sick).
I got a way higher wisdom score, and a better intelligence score, because we're going on our own, and I like seeing things and a wide skill set. I dropped Con and Charisma to pay for it, because I don't really believe in the rpg weirdness where characters who've had it really tough growing up are also somehow really hearty despite realistically not being in the greatest of healths, and charisma because 17 seems… a lot? Is a +1 Cha score worth a +2 in anything else? I don't think so. It does mean we're a little frail, but we're very good at running and hiding.
Also, I just fundamentally love Will saves. Forget all the other saves, give me anti mind control.
I didn't get Spell Craft. I got Sense Motive, because there is literally no good reason for us to have Spell Craft, while infinite reasons for us to have Sense Motive.
And finally, I swapped out Protection from Evil for Inflict Light Wounds, because I don't really see us meeting Evil beings at least until we gain another level, but our weapon skills are kind of shit, and we have no one else to do dps for us.
The first issue I see with your build is that the Dual-Cursed archetype takes away class skills we gain from the Shadow Mystery. That's Bluff, Disguise, Knowledge (Dungeoneering) and Stealth. This is why I decided against using the archetype when I was making my build. Without those skill bonuses, we're in a much worse starting position, IMO. Also, one of the Curses, either Friendless or Unchained, will never advanced beyond 1st level, meaning we don't get any of the good stuff to offset the negatives. That's not a huge issue, but it's worth considering if you hadn't noticed it already.
I would like more skill points, too, but starting off getting them from our Favored Class bonus is not where I would want them to come from. We're not going to have much HP to start off with, and the Darklands is not a safe place to be on your own. Reducing our CON and changing the Favored Class bonus lowers our starting HP by 2 points. Even with CLW for healing, we're going to have a very small buffer between healthy and dead for a few levels.
I like succeeding on Will saves as much as the next guy, but we're actually not too bad on that front, even with a WIS of 10. The Friendless Curse adds our CHA bonus to Will saves against Enchantment effects, so we'll be starting off with an extra +3 bonus there. I'm much more concerned about our Fortitude saves. There's a lot of stuff in the Darklands that targets Fort; poison, disease, fungus, etc.
I do agree with you about the importance of Sense Motive, however, especially after reading the latest chapter. Kori already seems to have some skill at that from what we've seen of his interactions with others, so I swapped out Spellcraft for Sense Motive in my plan.
As for spells, ILW does 1d8+1 damage at 1st level, while a light crossbow does 1d6. Yeah, ILW does more, but it also requires a touch attack, and we should be avoiding melee combat if possible for now. Our spells per day is low to start with, too, so wouldn't be able to use it but a handful of times, and that's if we don't need to heal ourselves. More importantly, Protection from Evil gives us a +2 bonus to AC and saving throws against Evil beings (the vast, overwhelming majority of all enemies), and it also protects us from most types of mind control while active.
I thought about getting the Extra Revelation feat to start with, but Improved Initiative is so foundational that I went with it instead. You can never have enough initiative, after all. I'm still debating whether it would be worth the trade-off, since picking up Cloak of Darkness now would allow us to boost our Stealth by another +2 in addition to the nice bonus to AC.
EDIT:
@Shine, forgot to point out that we can't learn the Living Shadow Revelation until 7th level.
