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I'm unsure of the intent of the entry in the additional resources document for Blood of Elements.
Note: Racial feats, racial traits, and racial spells are only available for characters of the assigned race.
There are many racial traits in the book and they are explicitly labeled "race traits". They are clearly covered by the above entry.
There is only one feat and it has no apparent relationship to the races in the book.
There are only two spells in the book, prefaced by the below text.
New Spells The following spells are available to all characters, but are used frequently by sylph spellcasters.
An overly broad (to my thinking) reading of the additional resources entry would make the spells legal only for Sylphs. A strict reading shows there are no spells limited by race in the book, and so are both legal for any race.
Yes? No?
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Race traits are traits in much the same way as magic traits or social traits, and you can take one of them as one of your starting allotment of two traits.
Racial Traits, however are a very different sort of thing. They are in the listing for the race itself, much as keen senses for elves and gnomes, or darkvision for dwarves and half-orcs.
Be careful with that dichotomy.
As far as racial spells, this is a specific limit for the campaign. It also applies to the Advanced Race Guide. If the spells have the listing for sylph in its text, then it is restricted to just sylphs by the Additional Resources listing. If you name the two spells, we could look them up; I don't have Blood of the Elements yet, myself.
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Race traits are traits in much the same way as magic traits or social traits, and you can take one of them as one of your starting allotment of two traits.
Racial Traits, however are a very different sort of thing. They are in the listing for the race itself, much as keen senses for elves and gnomes, or darkvision for dwarves and half-orcs.
Be careful with that dichotomy.
Tell that to the writer of the additional resources entry.
Regardless, the spells don't have any mention of race in their descriptions. The spells are Storm Step and Enshrouded Thoughts.
I just wanted to make sure I wasn't letting "that would be a super cool spell for my magus" bias color my interpretation.
Venture-Captain, Germany—Hamburg
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Looks like, as in the Advanced Race Guide, for PFS these spells etc. are deliberately limited to the race they are listed for.
That means that in PFS
- although the book says any race can cast them, you can't choose those spells for a non-sylph spellcaster.
- you can't use tricks such as the "Adopted" trait to gain access to content from this book without the character actually being of the assoiciated race.
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I'm sick in bed at the moment so I'm not really up to doing a lot of forum-searching, but I believe that there was a ruling re: Inner Sea Gods that stated that "available to all but are used frequently by followers of X god/goddess" in PFS meant open to all, which would apply to this book as well (i.e. open to all unless it specifies one particular race-only).
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Andreas has the right of it. For PFS the line "The following spells are available to all characters, but are used frequently by sylph spellcasters." means "Sylphs only, barring a boon that says otherwise."
The problem, Jeff, is that that isn't what it SAYS. In PFS you can't say something means something other than what it says. I mean no disrespect by disagreeing with you, by the way, hopefully my post doesn't come across as such.
I will point out that the spells in Advanced Race Guide are explicitly called out as racial spells. They are labeled 'Sylph Spells', 'Ifrit Spells', 'Gnome Spells', etc. Each spell section says, "X have access to these spells." It doesn't say, "Everyone can cast these, but X race frequently uses them" as it does in Blood of the Elements.
The passage in the Blood of the Elements entry of the additional resources mentions racial spells, racial traits and racial feats. I maintain that, as written, there are no racial spells or racial feats in the book. Unless the additional resources entry is changed, or Mike Brock posts otherwise, that's how the RAW reads.
Was it the intent to limit these spells to sylphs? Maybe. I don't think that's at all clear though. I think that whoever wrote the additional resources glanced through the book and saw that there were one or more traits, spells and feats. They then wrote a boilerplate entry to make certain that any racial items were limited to the appropriate races. They evidently didn't realize that there actually weren't any items in two of those categories.
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Indeed, anyone in PF may do anything with GM permission. Why it was put in the book I can't fathom. That line merely serves to underline that the ARG spells are, by the rules, limited to the corresponding race. It requires a GM invoking Rule 0 to allow a non-member of the race to use the spell.
Blood of the Elements doesn't say the same thing. It explicitly says the opposite, that any character can learn the spells. No limitations whatsoever. None. Just because some words are in a similar arrangement doesn't mean they actually say something similar.
I understand the tendency to stretch the meaning of the additional resources text to mean something that it doesn't say just so it means something. But PFS isn't about stretching the meaning of RAW to mean what you think it probably means, except in the most egregious of circumstances.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if you're correct about the intent. But I maintain that it just doesn't say what you say it does. Until it does say it, then it doesn't mean it either.
Global Organized Play Coordinator
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Looks like, as in the Advanced Race Guide, for PFS these spells etc. are deliberately limited to the race they are listed for.
That means that in PFS
- although the book says any race can cast them, you can't choose those spells for a non-sylph spellcaster.
- you can't use tricks such as the "Adopted" trait to gain access to content from this book without the character actually being of the assoiciated race.
^^^^ This.
I will clean up the language in the next update.