Inquisitor and Oracle alignment and spell choices?

[paradox42]

Agreed on both healing and Undead. There are, after all, Good Undead in existence with the Book of Exalted Deeds (don't smite me! I'm only bringing up the existence of Good Undead! ), so Good Clerics could arguably have power to rebuke/command them now. And certainly, Inflict is less useful overall than healing.

One of my favorite additions to my homebrew was a series of spells from the god of Corruption, called the Black Cures, which worked like regular Cure spells except for having a duration- the hit points they grant are temporary. And they also form a curse on the targets, such that those creatures have SR against regular Cure spells, and always have to make a save (higher-level versions of the Black Cures actually render the targets immune to regular Cures). So it gets the target addicted to the power of the god of Corruption, see.

 

[TanisFrey]

Agreed on both healing and Undead. There are, after all, Good Undead in existence with the Book of Exalted Deeds (don't smite me! I'm only bringing up the existence of Good Undead! ), so Good Clerics could arguably have power to rebuke/command them now. And certainly, Inflict is less useful overall than healing.

Mummy can be non-evil, they are listed as Usually Lawful Evil
and in Monsters of Farune has a Lich, Good.

 

[Celtavian]

To be fair, rebuke/command undead is just plain better than turn/destroy undead. Both solve your undead pest control problem, but only the former adds numbers to your side.

So I always saw spont. cures being a generally better deal than spont. inflicts to be the counterpoint to that.

That would be poor design if that were the counterpoint.

Not every evil priest employs undead. Most evil NPC priests support evil parties of living creatures. If they can't keep up with the healing, it's pretty hard for that evil party to stand even close to an equal chance against the PCs even with level advantages.

The way evil priests are designed right now, you would have to make every evil NPC party undead for them to equal the capability of an good priest. And almost every good priest also has a means to crush undead, and against a Sun priest an evil priest with undead stands almost no chance even with Command Undead being better.

Spontaneous inflicts and Command undead cannot match a good priest unless the evil priest employs all undead and is undead himself. My players will focus fire him. And if he can't heal himself to keep up, he's done. Rare is the single evil priest that can heal well enough to withstand damage from multiple melee and arcane casters.

My fighter and barbarian are lvl 6 and they are averaging 24 points a hit with power attack. And as someone stated, most ACs are designed for medium BAB. Which means the fighter-types can power attack every round and have a great chance to hit. A crit pretty much destroys any evil priest. That one hit is usually 3/4s of his hit points or more.

There is no comparison. I doubt spontaneous inflicts was ever tested to ensure that it was balanced against spontaneous cures when non-undead were involved in the fight. If it had been tested, it would have been obvious how much of a disadvantage it puts evil priests at. It's one of those design choices involving flavor that I think could have been done better, especially given the Positive and Negative energy planes are not aligned. Both evil and good have a vested interest in staying alive and that should have fueled design choice when it came to spontaneously casting cure spells.