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Just a little tip I haven't seen mentioned anywhere.
Here are the rules on spells that last until your daily preparations:
If a spell’s duration says it lasts until your next daily preparations, on the next day you can refrain from preparing a new spell in that spell’s slot. (If you are a spontaneous caster, you can instead expend a spell slot during your preparations.) Doing so extends the spell’s duration until your next daily preparations. This effectively Sustains the spell over a long period of time. If you prepare a new spell in the slot (or don’t expend a spell slot), the spell ends. You can’t do this if the spell didn’t come from one of your spell slots. If you are dead or otherwise incapacitated at the 24-hour mark after the time you Cast the Spell or the last time you extended its duration, the spell ends. Spells with an unlimited duration last until counteracted or Dismissed. You don’t need to keep a spell slot open for these spells.
A lot of spontaneous casters, especially Sorcerers & Psychics, but also Oracles & Bards can benefit from this rule for spells they want to keep up indefinitely, like Mystic Armor. You only need to expend a spell-slot during daily preparations to keep the spell up, there's no need to have the spell still in your repertoire!
For example, you can cast Mystic Armor at the beginning of your adventuring career at humble level 1, then replace the spell with something else at level 2 (or during retraining), but you can still keep Mystic Armor up and running as long as you diligently expend the spell-slot every day during daily preparations.
Considering how few spells spontaneous casters have in their repertoire, especially at early levels, this can allow you to take that one extra spell you wanted to know besides Mystic Armor (or other daily buff spell of your choice).
Have fun!
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That feels like an exploit. I expect that a lot of GMs - including myself - would shut that down pretty fast.
Good GMs would instead recommend just buying a Wand with Mystic Armor on it. Then you could not only swap out the spell from your Repertoire, but you would get the spell slot back too.
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And bad GMs would allow it but then contrive some reason to interrupt your daily preparations to break the chain of having Mystic Armor up. Then you wouldn't be able to restart it without swapping back in Mystic Armor into your Repertoire again.
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One, Oracles & Bards get light armor which is typically better.
Two, you'd quickly age out of level 1 Mystic Armor, then what?
Three, slots are the more valuable commodity at low levels IMO. I feel Mage Armor lost its oomph in the PF2 transition, too much to use except in contrived situations.
Four, what both of them said. Stating that such an option were reasonable would raise a red flag with me re: that player's ability to participate in good faith. There's a mindset behind seeking out such exploits that can poison a table. And advising it... *eyeroll*
Five, according the rules, the rules are not law. One can reasonably determine that the passage was written with the understanding the caster could still cast the spell, and that this was a benefit for the sake of continuity. Otherwise there'd be odd hiccups re: vulnerable windows or lapses in enchantment durations. This smooths those over for cleaner narration.
Buying scrolls of Mystic Armor and using them every day that an encounter even feels probable is probably going to end up being a better use of resources than burning spell slots on it everyday as a spontaneous caster. Even from the beginning, losing the repertoire spot is brutal, and you should be getting approximately 4 gold for every moderate encounter your first level character finds themselves in. Maybe that results in the very occasional ambush encounter where you haven't cast it, but any day you are entering a dungeon, or running an errand for someone that feels likely to result in an encounter, your freed up spell slot will be more useful to you than any other scroll you might have had instead, if it meant you were going to burn a spell slot on Mystic Armor.
It is not that big a deal for prepared casters to burn slots on Mystic Armor, because their slots are not a flexible in an encounter, but for a spontaneous caster, losing slots to static things you are going to cast every day can really hurt.
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There is no way this flies at most tables because its so clearly a loophole. How do you sustain a spell that you don't know? These days many GMS have largely moved on from "RAW doesn't specifically say you can't, so you can no matter how nonsensical it is" mentality.
On the broader conversation - I'm not sure I've seen anyone ever bother heightening Mystic Armor in PF2. When 4th rank spell slots are your best ones, those are way more valuable than the 500 gold +1 Resilient Explorer's Clothing costs for the same effect.
Ditto with a wand of Mystic Armor, since the wand to heighten it is far more expensive than just buying the appropriate runes in the first place.
How do you sustain a spell that you don't know?
People do that all the time, e.g. when casting Bless from a wand you can even sustain the spell for additional effect - without the wand and without knowing the spell. Expending a slot just to keep the magic alive seems much easier than enhancing a spell you never knew and didn't even cast yourself.
Besides, not having a spell in your repertoire is not the same thing as "not knowing" the spell. You can learn an infinite number of spells with the Learn a Spell activity; afterwards you know the spell but don't have it in your repertoire until you swap it in. (It's also how the Arcane Evolution feat works.)
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On the broader conversation - I'm not sure I've seen anyone ever bother heightening Mystic Armor in PF2. When 4th rank spell slots are your best ones, those are way more valuable than the 500 gold +1 Resilient Explorer's Clothing costs for the same effect.
Ditto with a wand of Mystic Armor, since the wand to heighten it is far more expensive than just buying the appropriate runes in the first place.
Good GMs would instead recommend just buying a Wand with Mystic Armor on it. Then you could not only swap out the spell from your Repertoire, but you would get the spell slot back too.
Buying scrolls of Mystic Armor and using them every day that an encounter even feels probable is probably going to end up being a better use of resources than burning spell slots on it everyday as a spontaneous caster. Even from the beginning, losing the repertoire spot is brutal, and you should be getting approximately 4 gold for every moderate encounter your first level character finds themselves in.
All of these comments address the same thing, and I completely agree. In 99% of cases it's better to just get a wand of Mystic Armor or the appropriate runes on your Explorer's Clothing or buy Bands of Force.
However, there is an edge case where my proposal is very useful: I was looking into ways to make the Wellspring Mage class archetype for spontaneous casters more useful. This archetype basically requires you to expend a spell-slot of each of your top 3 ranks every morning, in order to actually gain any temporary spell-slots from surges. Thus I was looking at good buff spells to use at every level & for every tradition, when stumbling across this rules interaction.
It also happens to be good at the first levels, when you want to have Mystic Armor on, but can't afford a wand for it yet.
As such I think it's a very good "loophole", because it buffs things that are otherwise underpowered (early caster levels & wellspring mage). To compare, others often suggest to give casters free 1st-rank scrolls (or similar things) at very low levels to make it easier on these hard levels, yet that would be much more powerful as the casters wouldn't have to expend a spell-slot for Mystic Armor.
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It's not a good loophole (much less "very good") unless you can find a GM that'll allow it. Feedback looks negative so far, never mind my personal repulsion should a GM of mine fail at such an easy adjudication.
If asked, I'd call it a bad loophole since it suckers the caster into wasting a spell slot on Mystic Armor. One more spell in one's repertoire for one less spell slot? At first level, that's a trap IMO, given that even 1st rank spells can turn a battle.
Speaking of which, who's suggesting passing out free 1st rank scrolls? Just rhetorical to point out that "often" seems a stretch given the lack of threads. (Unless it's on Reddit, which is foreign to me.) I'd agree if you're gonna run a low-level party through a gauntlet of attrition, it'd be wise to account for the casters' needs, but I wouldn't call such earned treasure free. I might also agree w/ casual players tossed together at a con or house party who have no sense of PF2 resource management, and just wanna go heroing. But at a weekly table? No need, no desire, learn safe tactics, get Reach, etc.
What is the point of this passage?
What is the difference between recasting a spell that lasts until your next preparation and sustaining it in this fashion?
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So I don't know of any spells like this that exist.
But I can imagine that there might be spells of that duration that keep you from dying in adverse environments. (Like Water Breathing or Endure Elements sorts of things.)
Or something embarassing like a permanent Transmutation or Illusion disguise.
And that rule allows there to never be a break in the spell being up.
Again, that space may be more theoretical than actual, but I can imagine they wanted to create room for those types of spells to exist.
I don't feel strongly one way or another about the spontaneous caster sustaining mystic Armor after having gotten rid of it from their rep. But it would certainly be brutal to have it dispelled after a week of retraining. So the issue really becomes, can a spontaneous caster sustain spells from scrolls from day to day without having them committed to the repertoire? Because that seems a bit like a strange exploit, but the far more sensible way to have spells like this be slot sinks, since then you can avoid getting the spell out of your repertoire and you can get it back any time and then keep it going the next day with slots. I don't think that is intended personally.
So the issue really becomes, can a spontaneous caster sustain spells from scrolls from day to day without having them committed to the repertoire?
No, the rules say:
You can’t do this if the spell didn’t come from one of your spell slots.
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Have fun dodging all of the spellcasters coming out of the woodwork to throw Dispel Magic in your direction.
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I still think that this rule was intended for spells such as Seashell of Stolen Sound where if the spell ends - even temporarily - then the effects are lost. Or Lock where if it is used to contain something that is constantly trying to get out, having any gap in the spell's continuing effect would be detrimental.
Or Water Breathing (4th) which has some elements of both - if the spell ends that is very detrimental, and it would be really hard to get it started again when you can't speak because you can't breathe.
Mystic Armor doesn't have any reason why it couldn't be down for a few minutes during daily preparations.
And using this rule as a way to gain effectively another spell in Repertoire still very much feels like it is not intended.