Protean Subdomain for Groetus

[Dragontamer]

I have a cleric of Groetus. According to this blog post:

http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lbwn&page=6?Golarion-Day-Subdomain s-for-Everyone

The protean subdomain was legal, so my cleric chose it. According to the just released Inner Sea Gods, Groetus does not have access to the Protean subdomain.

Is Protean no longer legal in PFS for clerics of Groetus? Is there a grandfather clause? Thanks!

[Dragontamer]

No one knows???

[Codanous]

Unfortunately with Inner Sea Gods release you'll have to use the new list of domains/sub-domains for Groetus. Sorry Dragontamer, sometimes this happens when we use fringe builds.

Happens to everyone at some point if they play PFS long enough.

[Acedio]

The guide to organized play outlines the rules for what to do when a new source book makes a character build you have illegal.

[FLite]

Except this is the animal archive problem all over again.

If you don't own inner sea gods, (and haven't read this thread) you don't know about this rule and can go on playing your cleric.

If you spend $40 to buy this book, it makes your character illegal.

That is just not good for the game or the campaign.

To play devils advocate for a bit (I don't have a dog in this fight,) does the ISG book list any subdomains for Groetus?

Usually when a new version of something replaces an old version, the old version is specifically called out as no longer PFS legal. Is there such a declaration anywhere?

[thistledown]

Groetus Domains: Chaos, Darkness, Destruction, Madness Void
Subdomains: Catastrophe, Entropy, Insanity, Loss, Night, Stars

From Inner Sea Gods

[Dragnmoon]

It most likely was not noticed. With this post hopefully Mike and John will become aware of the differences between the blog and book and make a comment.

[Dragontamer]

It appears that technically I don't need to change anything yet as the old blog post is still listed as legal on the Additional Resources page.

If the blog post does get removed from the list, the Guide to Organized Play is not 100% clear on what the remedy is, as it only addresses changed feats, traits, ability scores, and proficiency.

[Andrew Christian]

I'd treat it similarly.

Free change of that domain to a legal one.

[Acedio]

So, given that a change to the list of subdomains made available by God X has consequences that can in the worst case completely break a character concept, I'm wondering if some exceptions can be made to the retrain rules for changes to domains (such as this case) that would allow Clerics to take the separatist archetype for free or a reduced cost for the purpose of keeping their character concept legal.

Allowing people to take the separatist route could be a nice option to help people deal with changes that could break their character concept. The separatist archetype has a number of penalties that reduce usage of domain powers, but such an option might be nice.

That a new book comes along and mucks around with the subdomains given by gods and contradicts with long established content, or just entirely deprecates a domain ability entirely (see whimsy) is kind of irritating, and has been a barrier for me to purchase ISG (I'm voting with my dollars that this is uncool).

[Andrew Christian]

I have a hard time believing that a single choice can break a character.

Unless the build unwisely depended on a single thing to be useful.

The retrain rules are what they are, so that character choices mean something, but aren't going to leave you with a dead ability should something change.

[Acedio]

This concern comes from building a negative energy cleric basically around the Death domain 8th level ability Death's Embrace. It's pretty integral to the build. If a change was made to the domain list such that Death became unavailable it would have a negative impact on the concept, although it wouldn't outright ruin it. But I probably wouldn't want to play it anymore.

I imagine there are similar things out there that are equally problematic.

I don't know if I can buy into the idea that it's inherently unwise to depend disproportionately on certain build options when there's no indication of them being a candidate for a drastic change (such as them being broken, having alarmingly poor language, or being 'culturally' questionable). It is absolutely not a good idea to depend on obscure jenky cheese build combinations or rule ambiguity, but this doesn't strike me as such a situation.

A new book should not come along and ruin a build that was perfectly valid previously, at least without some other concessions (or good reason). A class feature change is a little bit more drastic (in my opinion) than a change to a feat or spell. Given that there's an archetype that relatively cleanly circumvents the need to change domain/subdomain build choices, I'm suggesting it might be a nice option to allow people to retrain into it a little easier when this situation arises. With such an option, you can mostly keep an existing build in tact while allowing it to be legal for the rules. The changes are less dramatic than having to change a domain/subdomain entirely.

EDIT: Fixed some poor phrasing

[Andrew Christian]

Well lets wait and see if this problem happens before we assume a huge issue.

[Jiggy]

Dragontamer wrote:

I have a cleric of Groetus. According to this blog post:

http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lbwn&page=6?Golarion-Day-Subdomain s-for-Everyone

The protean subdomain was legal, so my cleric chose it.

According to the current Additional Resources page (just checked) that blog is still legal. So unless it gets removed/modified (keep an eye on the AR, just in case) your character is still legal.