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Old 07-15-2021, 01:21 PM   #11
ericthered
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Oracle

Generally, precognition is more useful. Its not that much more expensive, and you can limit it. Psionic powers has just such limited versions. Some of the Psi-wars session reports show it used in such a way that I originally thought it was oracle.
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Old 07-15-2021, 02:14 PM   #12
Kromm
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Oracle

As I intimated in that response Christopher quoted, Oracle's utility and appropriateness are very much dependent on the GM's style and the mode of gaming preferred at the table. The idea is that:
  • Most or all adventures depend on clues that would require hard work to obtain, or that are unobtainable.

  • If the clues normally require hard work, Oracle replaces the hard work with "I spent 15 points to be lazy." Part of that expenditure buys insurance that the GM won't move the goalposts of the adventure after giving out the clues. The whole idea is that the provided clues make the adventure easier, on a par with how 15 points in, say, Luck tends to, or just as Intuition or +3 to Per might greatly simplify a mystery-solving campaign.

  • If the clues are normally unobtainable, Oracle amounts to a spotlight-time generator for the PC who has it. It's a lot like having the prophetic version of Blessed and getting quests from the gods, or being the only person with a group-affecting Jumper ability in a campaign about visiting other worlds, or having the person who gives the PCs all their quests as a Patron. Its value resides in (1) the other characters being more-or-less obliged to protect their oracle or end up plot-stuck, (2) the character with Oracle being able to control when and how the group starts its quests, allowing them to hold things up to prepare, study, or whatever, and (3) the somewhat jerk-ish possibility of brokering the information for even greater concessions.

  • Regardless of all that, Oracle needs some kind of supernatural or superscience window-dressing to excuse how meta-game it is.
If the GM isn't fond of occasional plot short-circuiting, or is prone to altering adventures mid-course to increase the challenge level after a player short-circuits something, or doesn't want one PC buying de facto puppet-mastery (and all the gaming-table strife it can cause) for 15 points, or doesn't want the overtly weird in the campaign, or just hates meta-game traits . . . well, Oracle is a horrible fit. Then again, so are many other advantages and a lot of spells.

On topic: I've had Oracle work out okay in campaigns where someone wanted what the Divination spell on GURPS Magic, p. 108 gives without using that spell for whatever reason, and without playing the sort of character who'd be favored by the gods and have Blessed. That is, for mystics who are neither holy nor spellcasters – usually because the player sees them as being more like supernatural savants, or folksy fortunetellers, or just intuitive on a more "strategic" plane than the "tactical" one that is Intuition. I always followed the general guidelines for Divination in terms of what's learned, what's fair, what's mutable, what's certain, etc.
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Old 07-15-2021, 03:20 PM   #13
vicky_molokh
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Oracle

For the record, my comment was in reference to the trait strictly as written in the book. As a GM I diverged from that significantly when PCs had it, in line with '15 points of useful information-generating abilities', instead of the RAW text.
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