Doki-Chan |
I've been a bit wary picking this to design my latest Oracle: because of the wording I was never sure on some stuff...
I'm not sure if this is correct or not, as I know sometimes RAW/RAI can get pretty fuzzy due to things missed in word-limit, but I'm surprised no -one else seems to have queried it yet (unless I have missed that...):
Oracle Ancient Lorekeeper Archetype states the following:
Elven Arcana (Ex)
At 2nd level, an ancient lorekeeper’s mastery of elven legends and philosophy has allowed her to master one spell used by elven wizards. She selects one spell from the sorcerer/wizard spell list that is at least one level lower than the highest-level oracle spell she can cast. The ancient lorekeeper gains this as a bonus spell known. The spell is treated as one level higher than its true level for all purposes.
The ancient lorekeeper *may choose* an additional spell at 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 12th, 14th, 16th, and 18th levels.This ability replaces the bonus spells she would normally gain at these levels from her chosen mystery."
(emphasis mine on bolded/italicized text)
The text from the rules above, seems to imply you only Must choose the cantrip (SL-1 spell) for your Level 2 bonus spell, and then you MAY sub in one of the SL-1 Sor/Wiz spells for an even level Mystery one if you so choose... (i.e. anything above the first bonus spell is optional...)
However, when I'm trying to design this in the Oracle Tab on "a certain electronic character sheet tool TM": when you choose this archetype, it states you MUST choose a spell for each bonus spell known above 2, and automatically wipes out any and all spells from your Mystery List.
I would have liked to have an Oracle be able to sub out only the spells they may choose to change (especially if you have the spell on the original mystery from another source - i.e. SLA - so you only wanted to "May Choose" bonus 2,6,12,16 for instance, and keep some of the original mystery spells); why would it give the option to choose a spell at each bonus level otherwise... or is this just poor semantics on RAW? They could have got one less word by saying "chooses" (or "selects" as before) if word-limit was a problem...
This is the only Oracle archetype I can see like this with "may choose". Usually on d20pfsrd you write an optional change like "(X)" {see Reincarnated Oracle Revelations where you have two revelations to select in three slots, and you choose which way round they go} so have they always got the interpretation wrong too?
I also know that if you had two other archetypes that didn't clash on level of bonus spells changed you could then select both... that's what "at these levels" is?
Now I'm not sure what would be the correct interpretation?
I am aware that this suddenly makes the AL archetype somewhat more powerful... I'm also aware that I probably won't get a ruling from the Powers That Be at this late a stage, and I know I can get house ruling from GM, but there should be support for PF1 players still, if we have enough material to run things for the next 10 years and want to design characters on electronic format for ease of play?