For Scrying, the target of the spell gets minuses to its Will save versus the spell based on the kind of "connection" you have of the target, like a picture/likeness, a possession, or at the highest penalty, a body part of some kind. It seems clear that these modifiers stack with ones granted by the "knowledge" measure, how well you know the person, but do they stack with themselves?
If I had a picture of someone and their hairbrush complete with some hair on it, for example, would they take a -16 to their will save against my scrying from "connection" or would they only take the highest negative (-10 for the hair)? I seem to remember that penalties always stack unless they say otherwise, but I wanted to get confirmation in this case.
Thanks for any insight.
Generally, no, you just take the worse penalty. If anything, you would follow the rule of "this spell is giving you a penalty to saves/your save against it" and because you can't stack penalties from the same source, just take the worse.
Sorry but the Core Rule book actually says that penalties do not have a type and usually stack.
Penalty: Penalties are numerical values that are subtracted from a check or statistical score. Penalties do not have a type and most penalties stack with one another.
So the real question is are these actual penalties, or are they modifiers? The description of the spell calls them modifiers. As far as I know Pathfinder does not have a rule for modifiers that are not either bonuses or penalties.
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The difficulty of the save depends on how well your knowledge of the subject and what sort of physical connection (if any) you have to that creature.
It says "physical connection", not "connections", and it is a scale of the level of the connection, it seems clear that you use the greater modifier, the same as for the knowledge of the target.
I've always treated it as you take one penalty/bonus from the knowledge section and one from the connection section.
So no, having a picture, possession, and body part do not stack to give a -16 to the save. You would get a -10 because you have a body part, which is the strongest connection option you have.
The reason they don't stack (IMO) is that it (the connections) are a continuous track of circumstances and you're choosing where you land on it, so you would generally want to take the best 1. But it's still only 1 bonus/penalty as it is the "connection" penalty the target takes.
Sorry but the Core Rule book actually says that penalties do not have a type and usually stack.
Penalty: Penalties are numerical values that are subtracted from a check or statistical score. Penalties do not have a type and most penalties stack with one another.
So the real question is are these actual penalties, or are they modifiers? The description of the spell calls them modifiers. As far as I know Pathfinder does not have a rule for modifiers that are not either bonuses or penalties.
This is still overridden by the spell effects rule that says nothing from the same (spell) source ever stacks.
But the real question seems to be whether the tables for this spell are meant to be a bunch of separate penalties or two tables to determine the values of two penalties. If it is the latter, then stacking rules would be irrelevant as we already all agree that the connection penalty and the familiarity penalty should stack.
The fact that there is two tables can be considered a specific>general for a person scrying a target with a body part and familiar knowledge, but that doesn't override the general of having two things from the same table (e.g. a lock hair and their comb) not stacking as they are both from the same spell.
One is the physical connection table, the other table is your actual knowledge of the target. So singular or not (which it actually isn't, see below), you may have both tables but you can't stack more than one penalty from the latter table and the first has no way to even get more than one option (as you can't have multiple levels of knowledge of a target).
...what sort of physical connection (if any) you have to that creature.
"Multiple" would fit as a "sort of physical connection, but that doesn't matter when you can't benefit from more than one.