Exton Land's page

Thanks everyone for all the well wishes, and thank you to anyone who ever sat at one of my tables! It was special finishing the fifth glyph at Gencon.

-Loren

Book 6 Final Fight TPK

First round and the Psychic goes down in the first round and is dead dead. Four rounds later the Kineticist is dead. One round after that the Ranger is dead. The disappeared Thaumaturge is unable to kill the creature who heals with every hit before it goes to massacre the school and heal to full. They fly away and carry the Magambayaa with them to find allies to return only to find Nantambu slaughtered and the Vesicant Guardian turned into a Vesicant Annihilator.

Jatembe is not to blame of course

I really hope the Kobolds win by killing the fighter... I mean jeesh. Let's kill a bunch of sentient creatures for funzies... Wait that's Friday night age of ashes. I feel attacked!

What about death? Lets say my Eidolon gets hit by a death effect and brought to 0 HP. They dead. But are they really? If I get some HP from a heal spell, can I just manifest them again on my turn?

Please note, unlike animal companions and familiars there doesn't appear to be language about getting another eidolon...

As it stands, you can't use multiple reactions/free actions twice on the same activity, and since the rules already compile it all into one activity, even if it triggers on multiple levels (ranged attack + manipulate), it won't work because it's the same trigger on the same activity.

To be clear, I've seen a few people bandying about the idea that you can AOO twice if you have two reactions etc, and Darksol is on the money here. On pg. 462 of the CRB there is a limitation on triggers. It reads

You can use only one action in response to a given trigger. For example, if you had a reaction and a free action that both

had a trigger of “your turn begins,” you could use either of them at the start of your turn—but not both. If two triggers are similar, but not identical, the GM determines whether you can use one action in response to each or whether they’re effectively the same thing. Usually, this decision will be based on what’s happening in the narrative.

So you know, firing your bow with reload 0, would run into this limitation. It's also why you can't use combat reflexes and a reach weapon to smack a guy twice for running away, or whack him and chase him if you had those two reactions available.

Someone check to make sure Tonya didn't just meet a shadowy ninja associated with a certain museum owning family...

So author lack of foresight to mention that the DC will increase on repeated uses and that failure stops you from making attempts to get more information takes an action that should be incredibly appealing to players to use to get some hints as to what kind of things to do that have better odds of being good for their character/party and turns it into "I wasted an action"

I actually have argued that it's a misreading of the rules that a failure means you cannot try again. I think only on a failure after you've already succeeded once does that section apply since it's literally titled Additional Knowledge. The word successful may have been edited out. Should probably read as, "Sometimes a character might want to follow up on a successful check to Recall Knowledge". In the recall knowledge action description itself there is no failure outcome which seems like a glaring omission if it was intended indeed that a PC can't try again.

Reading the tea leaves of the post it seems to me that they've sold the One-shots and bounties better than expected, particularly in the market segment which purchases books and APs, but not Org play content. With that said, I have to concur with Paul. Once there is sufficient quantity of low-level one shots and bounties there isn't much reason to continue to produce more unless you think the people who run such content will continue to purchase it, which is a pretty shaky proposition. The one thing the one-shots have over PFS early content is there's story hooks that allow a GM to launch a campaign from, which is great, but its a different product from org play content that really just doesn't mesh well. I expect that org play die-hards will continue to run the one-shot content, but the ones who don't pick it up are going to off-set any gains in non-org play customers. (For instance, I haven't purchased bounties past #4, and never got the second one-shot). I believe that Org play is a good place for future GMs to practice and get better, for players to learn and find others they like to adventure with. And frankly it broadens paizo products to a different market segment than APs and one-shots. Trying to blend them will run you into what Furious Thrune talks about.

Putting the 700k words per year into context, the 2e APs are ~60k each book meaning each year the OP team is putting out two six book APs worth of content (split between the two systems). What it means is that org play character adventures are significantly more costly per word than an AP character given that there are at most 8 levels of content produced for org play use each year. Doubtless this is because PFS/SFS has a lot of green-text, and context not given in APs, though significantly less art.

Overall, this reduction being a big deal to Org Play will hinge on how many repeatables are produced each year, and expanding them upwards to 3-6. We all know they are longer and cost more to produce, so if this is a re-allocation of time and money I don't see more being produced sadly. But bounties in the 3-6 range can help here, so fingers crossed for level 5 and up bounties :)

WatersLethe wrote:

Rule:

"In your spider shape, you aren't flat-footed when climbing, but you can't use weapons, shields, or other held items of any sort nor can you take any action that has the manipulate trait"

Going off a conversation with a Dev I believe that was supposed to the intent, not to lock Anadi out of all Actions, and is on the Errata block.

It's not even the intent, it's exactly how that works as its written. The limitation on using weapons, shields, or other items isn't an independent clause. If it was independent it would've read as a list without the conjunction. The but explicitly modifies what happens when you're climbing.

You get this good thing, but these other things also occur as well.

Not to imply that the mechanics of the game should necessarily model real life, but I have found that, in general, no human falling from any height is likely to go any deeper than about 16' (whether or not they survive impact with the water's surface).

At the risk of stating the obvious, I feel like the Rules as Written are designed to give maximum cinematic leeway to characters attempting heroic dives off seaside cliffs.

Only so long as they turn into a fish on their way down though.

You can of course climb down if you don't want to take damage.

This seems to contradict the sidebar on page 622. It says that if you get stunned on your turn, you don't change the number of actions you have in that moment. This section, unless I am misreading, talks about Stunned (value):

On the contrary, they're restating the rules from 462. One of the rules there is if a condition says "can't act" you cannot spend actions. Stunned has three primary effects.

So yeah, getting stunned on your turn is super bad no good fun times. There are Auras which if you fail make you stunned, not sure if the designers intended it, but yeah, you fail that you lost a turn.

@Exton The idea is that someone running past will only get 1 AoO even if that means he leaves 3 different squares while running past (or getting into flanking position) - or 5 with a reach weapon.

So how do you get 2 AoO?

You can get a second reaction from various class feats. Fighters get one that allows them to AoO twice in a round. But there's this weird sentence saying you can only ever Use one reaction per round, and none of the feats which grant extra reactions specify that they allow you to ignore this rule. It is patently silly to gain a reaction you cannot use, but pg 444 that everyone is relying on to say that specific trumps the general. But that same inset says "If a rule doesn’t specify otherwise, default to the general rules presented in this chapter." Functionally people are arguing that the gaining of the reaction means you can use it within its limitations. I truly wonder if they meant turn.

As for the silliness of the movement limitation on reactions, for me it breaks the verisimilitude. Pg 474's limitation of a single AoO per move action doesn't end up really working very well, being a little parenthetical tucked in without a hint of its existence anywhere else in the rules on reactions.

What is different about a creature moving up to me, getting whacked and continuing to move in threatened squares on a single action, vs someone moves up to me gets whacked, ran out of movement on that action, then moves again and now I can whack him again? The only thing in the rules which makes the one reaction per action taken make sense is that there is a thing in the triggers section on reactions that states that two triggers which are very similar cannot be used twice up to the GM. The movement rules are basically saying this is that overlapping trigger that won't trigger two reactions. It's obvious the rules were trying to keep the old PF1 you only provoke once from striding, but then mangled it since there are multiple move actions that are possible in a round. The trigger limitations for AoOs are pretty explicit and easy to understand, then there's a carve out specifically against Combat Reflexes, nothing else in the rules (for players) would allow for two AoOs against movement. Maybe it's for high level monsters to not just nuke you for getting close each round.

Exton Land wrote:

Speaking of how would all you single check people deal with a constant innate spell True Seeing devil? Still a single check? Make them have their exploration mode activity be to constantly cast it to get another check?

They can't use it as an Exploration Activity as they would be fatigued after 10 minutes.

But otherwise, yes: A creature with a constant or at will True Seeing should be able to see through pretty much anything if given the proper time. That seems logical to me.

Sure they can. They're not sustaining the spell for more than 10 minutes, the spell isn't even Sustainable. They're casting it repeatedly, and there is nothing in the rules which says you cannot cast a spell repeatedly without becoming fatigued. It suggests you might be fatigued, but there's nothing actually saying you gain fatigued after casting spells for 10 minutes straight.

Also, Aw3some is correct that this once a round is an arbitrary length of time. Personally, I think Ubertron has the right idea with shifting your perspective. If anything makes sense, it would be giving the True Seeing another counteract check if the players uses a Seek action on the illusion.

I fail to see a trigger for "enters within 60 feet" on the counteract check. It is much simpler decision. Is it within 60 feet? Attempt a counteract check. Game time flow is tied to the round whether you think it makes sense or not, and is the easiest way for a GM to adjudicate how often to make a check for a spell, other than the ever popular, single check.

Why do people not read the whole rule / just ignore part of it.

I believe the problem lies in them creating a silly loop of logic.

You are Stunned 1.
You cannot act.
Start of turn comes.
You cannot act, as such you do not regain actions.
You cannot reduce 0 to less than 0. You have not gained any actions to lose to stunned, and it thus stays at Stunned 1.
Repeat.

That's too good to be true for anyone who stuns though. So, everyone can safely ignore the don't regain actions bit and trust it'll get errat'd and we can all laugh about the infinite stun lock bug of v2.1 and v2.2 of the CRB.

Numerous class feats give you more than one reaction that is limited in some way (see Combat Reflexes). Yet there is explicit language on pg 472 of the Crb that says "Once your first turn begins, you gain your actions and reaction. You can use 1 reaction per round. You can use a reaction on anyone’s turn (including your own), but only when its trigger occurs. If you don’t use your reaction, you lose it at the start of your next turn, though you typically then gain a reaction at the start of that turn."

Does combat reflexes lack enabling language to actually use the reaction you gain? What's even the point of that throw away sentence? How could I spend more actions than I have?

And while we're on the topic, it seems that attacks of opportunity are triggered when you leave a threatened square using a move action. Yet language on pg 474 limits this to 1 reaction per move action explicitly overriding the plain text of the AoO trigger. With this guidance how are we to treat a two action activity that moves thru two threatened squares? If you had them could you take two AoOs or other reactions during that movement? Just one if they could have moved thru only provoking once if they had just used Stride? How does this make sense if a creature has to end its movement from a first Stride and then strides again? Should they strategically end a Stride outside of the threatened range and then Stride again to only provoke once?

Absent any language limiting the spell to a single check we must assume that there is a meaningful distinction to be made here since there are instances where spells with a duration that could counteract each round are proscribed from doing so. Maybe you think it's an oversight, but the history of the spell strongly suggests that it's a constant battle for magics to beat true seeing. It used to just negate things, now at least a party has a chance to cast a high level invisibility sphere and sneak past the true seeing (constant) devil.

Speaking of how would all you single check people deal with a constant innate spell True Seeing devil? Still a single check? Make them have their exploration mode activity be to constantly cast it to get another check?

RAW the two feats would not interact. Terrifying Howl would be subject to the -4 circumstance penalty for not using a language. Though a case could be made that you could howl something in a language in order to avoid that penalty.

I don't think that is RAI though. Especially since Intimidating Glare is a prerequisite. I would go along with Kelseus and say that Terrifying Howl would let you make the Demoralize check against all enemies within 30 ft and with no penalty for not using a language.

RAW they do interact. Terrifying Howl calls on the demoralize action, which can be modified by intimidating glare. If something calls on making a Make an Impression check it's possible to do so with Performance using Impressive Performance. If you also had say, Group Impression you could not however use Impressive Performance as written since it specifies the Diplomacy check result that doesn't exist.

Terrifying Howl when using Auditory is subject to the -4 since you are not using a language to demoralize. If you apply Intimidating Glare then it does not take the -4, but gains the Visual trait. Why does this matter? Well some creatures are actually blind and cannot be intimidated with intimidating glare due to the Visual trait.

If someone can point to a notable section of the player-base ruling 0HP non-dying characters are unable to die in any way, then I will support Devs spending their time on this. Until then I think there are more pressing concerns XD

If you are unconscious and at 0 Hit Points, but not dying, you naturally return to 1 Hit Point and awaken after sufficient time passes. If you take damage while unconscious at 0 Hp, you gain the dying condition as if reduced to 0 hp. The GM determines how long you remain unconscious, from a minimum of 10 minutes to several hours. If you receive healing during this time, you lose the unconscious condition and can act normally on your next turn.

This would neatly move your initiative to whatever took you to dying again and just requires a single sentence. I can't imagine anyone doesn't run it this way, but it's easy to add simple fixes and a developer is tasked with these things.

I know individual developers don't comment, but it'd be nice if they would acknowledge something has been added to the list of things for future errata from time to time.

From my own interpretation, the RAW is clear, they are dead in your above scenario. Their turn doesn't magically extend until their new spot in the initiative, which by the way is their own damn turn as in this case they're actually moving to just before their current turn; Cordell is wrong on this point you move before the TURN that's active, not the creature's turn that knocked you out. This is an errata so check the 2nd printing (CRB 459).

This is actually pretty explicitly the player led to their own demise, so no agency was lost in that sense, which is the only time I as a GM try go out of my way to not kill a player character. If the party did something that led to someone being killed, well that's on them.

The specific case of Aqueous Orb comes from the fact that the counteract check is generated by a repeatable event: moving the orb. If the line forbidding multiple counteract checks was missing, they would be allowed.

In the case of Nondetection and True Seeing, there's no such line because there's no repeatable event. They attempt one counteract check per effect and that's all.

Ah, but what if for True Seeing the person moves outside of 60 feet and then returns? That is a repeatable trigger.

And Scrying is a sustained spell as well, does that mean when it's sustained Nondetection or Mindblank try to counteract it again?

Font of Serenity is a spell without sustain that specifies that emotion effects are immune to counteracting by it for a day (even though this is much longer than the duration of the spell).

Some of the spells in 2e allow you to attempt a counteract check but have durations greater than a single round. Some examples include: True Seeing, Nondetection, and Aqueous Orb. The CRB is broadly silent about how these spells are meant to function after their initial counteract check.

Interestingly some spells do specify what happens after a failed initial check (Aqueous Orb for instance). There it'll say that after a failed check the spell/effect cannot try to counteract again. But that makes it an interesting problem. Many times in the CRB for 2e it's significant when there is a specifically called out example of something not being possible in one instance, but in others it is silent and often presumed to be permissive.

Here we are left to wonder. Is there a general rule that the limitations of Aqueous Orb and the like are circumscribing such that True Seeing attempts to counteract an illusion/transmutation every round so long as you are within 60 feet of the effect and the spell's duration has yet to expire. Or is the specific callout of Aqeous Orb restating what was already true and you attempt the counteract only once per effect? How would this interact with Constant True Seeing and the like. Maybe I'm missing something in the rules, but this looks like it needs an FAQ.

I've run it twice now, and both times the players guessed correctly prior to me saying it aloud :)

I understand that the food is supposed to be a limitation, but Create Food is a 2nd level divine spell, so parties with Clerics are going to have a very easy time of this without any time pressures.

Possessed you say? That can't be good for Mr/Ms Sapphire.

===Influence Subsystem===
Given the secondary success condition is tied to the influence system, a reminder that the Discover checks of are secret, and that you reveal what the Player wants. A skill, the weakness, or the resistance. If revealing a skill you must start with the lowest DC skill and work your way up.

This has a big impact on how the skill challenge plays. Particularly the weakness as it's two free influence points for just mentioning Gloriana and a connection to her.

===Secondary Success Conditions===
Ouch that first one is rough, as Muesello has no way of knowing if they PCs ID'd the tails or not, if the PCs ask him about it I considered him assuming they ID'd them and gave it to the players.

I have no idea what "attracting unwanted attention" is other than outright saying "We're pathfinders" during the influence section given you're supposed to be in several very public places. This one is super wishy-washy.

The Recall Knowledge skill action doesn't have a failure outcome (presumably you don't learn anything at all). In the gamemastering section of the CRB (pg 506) the rules expand upon follow up Recall Knowledge checks in a section titled Additional Knowledge:

"Sometimes a character might want to follow up on a check to Recall Knowledge, rolling another check to discover more information. After a success, further uses of Recall Knowledge can yield more information, but you should adjust the difficulty to be higher for each attempt. Once a character has attempted an incredibly hard check or failed a check, further attempts are fruitless—the character has recalled everything they know about the subject.

1) What does the failed check refer to. Any failed Recall Knowledge check, or to checks after you've already gotten some information from a Critical Success, Success, or Critical Failure, meaning you can keep Recalling knowledge till you get one of those three success conditions after which failures mean future Recall Knowledge checks are fruitless.

2) These rules imply you cannot ever succeed at a future check to Recall Knowledge about a topic until you learn more about it; how is this abstracted in the rules, we can try again after level up, after a skill increase in the relevant skills, only after specifically learning about the creature?

3) How does the rules on Additional Knowledge work with the Known Weakness investigator feat? Are players barred from taking the Recall Knowledge action even if it'd be "fruitless" with regard to additional information? If they can take the action are they able to critically succeed at the Recall Knowledge action do they get a +1 to hit on the Devise a Stratagem roll?

4) As in Question #3 above. The Rogue racket Mastermind says "If you successfully identify a creature using Recall Knowledge, that creature is flat-footed against your attacks until the start of your next turn; if you critically succeed, it's flat-footed against your attacks for 1 minute." If you first fail your recall knowledge check, can you try again to successfully identify it again to make it flat-footed? Or are you barred from future Recall Knowledge attempts because they are "fruitless".

5) The Rogue feat Analyze Weakness calls out as the requirement "You must have identified a creature with Recall Knowledge." Is this requirement satisfied with a Critical Failure, but not a Failure since there is not "correctly" limitation on the ID (noting its difference from the Mastermind racket's requirements.

tivadar27 wrote:

Recall Knowledge likely needs text similar to Identify Magic preventing retry on a failure/in general.

Sorry, this is apparently covered on page 506. So maybe just *also* have it with the skill check. Relevant text:

CRB p.506 wrote:

Additional Knowledge

Sometimes a character might want to follow up on a check
to Recall Knowledge, rolling another check to discover
more information. After a success, further uses of Recall
Knowledge can yield more information, but you should
adjust the difficulty to be higher for each attempt. Once a
character has attempted an incredibly hard check or failed
a check, further attempts are fruitless—the character has
recalled everything they know about the subject.

It's a fiddly rule, but there is nothing stopping you from recalling again, it's just not "fruitful".

I personally think it's a bit strange that you can't recall again...seemingly ever. Nothing in the Additional Knowledge tells you when you can try again. If I fail to ID the troll when I come across it at level 1, I'll never know anything about them unless I learn about it by researching them, or asking around and someone telling me that info. If I level all the way up to 20, and somehow never learn about trolls, RAW I can't roll again and learn anything useful, it's fruitless, I never learned about those things.

So no, it definitely needs to be FAQ'd or Errata'd in some way since that's crazy town levels of silly, but RAW it's black and white if you assume your first failure is also your last since you can't try again... it's fruitless after all.

I'm very excited for the playable Sprite ancestry and have been trying to wrap my head around them a bit more after getting my copy of the Ancestry Guide. Here are a few things I've absorbed so far.

1. This is the first playable ancestry that does NOT have the Humanoid trait. I'm interested to know what spells/abilities/special things this might impact. I haven't had time to go through all the spells to see what needs a Humanoid target or any other special quirks this might mean, but am really interested to know. Any thoughts?

Master's form familiar ability could be impacted if a GM reads the ability to require the master to be a humanoid for it to work. Arguably, it works and the familiar gains the humanoid trait even though the master doesn't have it, or it doesn't work since the master isn't a humanoid.

Nefreet wrote:

Exactly.

Same for the other examples I listed earlier.

If you want a Wolverine, you use the Badger stats.

If you want a Tiger, you use the Cat stats.

Etc.

In fact, horse specifically allows you to pick large or medium for your companion size, depending on whether you want a horse or a pony (or some other medium equine)

Just don't ever get a mature animal companion horse or you don't have a pony anymore *grumble in halfling*

Corresponding refers to the success conditions. So yes, if you critically fail you damage someone for 1d8. if you critically succeed you can restore double the dice and double the dice rolled. You'll notice the bonus healing from Expert/Master/Legendary DCs isn't doubled (something I see mistaken a lot).

4 mounted chevaliers or 1 mounted chevalier and 3 chevaliers without a mount?

What do you say?

When I'm focusing on the rider, they all somehow seem to have a mount, when I look at the horse it's very obvious there's only one horse with a rider that has four images. Magic is very weird and any practitioners must be eliminated.

You cannot use Press with a ready since you are not suffering from a MAP since MAP disappears at the end of your turn. Lets say you use the Ready action to throw a dagger at someone to disarm them if they draw an item, but you also have Attack of Opportunity. The ready will suffer from an inherited MAP that is unique to that reaction, but you yourself do not suffer from MAP. You could do an Attack of Opportunity without MAP.

If Press said, "You can only use an action with the Press trait if the action suffers from MAP" then you'd be correct Samir, however it does not and so the others are correct.

As long as you are mounted, no, you cannot use spring attack to move the mount. If you were hasted, you could in theory, command an animal to move you/whatever. Attack with hasted action, dismount, and then spring attack.

So for Vigilante's there are the Social Feats and the Vigilante Feats.

If you're in your social identity, you can use your social feats without restriction. You could use vigilante feats in your social persona, but you risk exposing your secret identity.

So what happens if your secret identity (batman) is exposed to the public? Well now you can use any feats so long as they don't require your identity as batman being secret. For instance, lets say you're in your social identity as Bruce Wayne Reynolds. Normally Quick draw couldn't be used without blowing your identity. But if everyone knew you were Batman already, they'd not bat an eye at it, and you could use it without restriction or possibility of exposing your secret.

Social Purview applies ONLY to the dedication feats. There's nothing which discusses Vigilante feats. In the example provided in the book, a Fighter Vigilante who chooses Wizard as a social purview could cast cantrips without exposing their secret identity. Trying to use Quick draw however would still expose them.

I am not aware of a list, but Machiol Quinto has drawn numerous Hellknights over the years. That said, look at the Frontmatter, it'll have a list of all the artists who drew for the book. They all have an artstation or deviant art page you can browse to see some of the selections of their work.

Fantastic work this year all. Thanks for everything that you do bringing us engaging stories and adventures to make new friends with even when we're all stuck behind our keyboards and screens.

This seems like the kind of thing where the boon should open the option up to a different character than played the scenario, since choosing a Patron is something only one class does, and that it does at character creation. It's probably too much to hope that's the case.

The boon indeed does allow it to be applied to a character other than the one who played it. It seems to be a trend that character options in terms of feats, patrons, etc are either opened up for all characters (see Fire Embers stance) or for only one character who doesn't have to be the character who unlocked the option. Items and spells are the exception to this, and without Bequethal options after the 31st (and really only for people who played a lot last year) there's no way to pass those on to other characters.

So how does one obtain a boon that allows me to play a Baba Yaga Witch?

There's a community taboo against revealing spoilers for boons as it often spoils the plot of various scenarios for everyone. I will confirm that a boon which allows you to choose Baba Yaga is in PFS, and is readily accessible to all players and does not require a charity auction boon.

]Swashbucklers give 6d6 of bleeding persistent damage with Bleeding Finisher.

Nice, missed that. But that's also at a point where you'll be having ghost touch weapons too. Those pesky things shouldn't be too difficult to deal with.

For Medicine checks Pg 248 holds for ending the persistent bleed. Pg 621's GM decides only comes into play when "there's not a specific action that applies". Here we do have a specific action, Administer First Aid. If you're doing something else, like cauterizing the wound with produce flame (ouch!), then you could do the DC 10 to end the bleed.

Exton Land wrote:

So yes Skeletons (all undead really) can bleed, but constructs and elementals cannot.

So a Ghost can bleed because bleeding immunity is not listed in the immunity stat block and not mentioned as an example in the incorporal trait either? Thats sweet...

Technically, there's nothing in the statblock of a ghost which says it cannot bleed. If it's an oversight that all undead cannot bleed because they are "non-living" then that's gone thru the CRB and both bestiaries at this point.

With that said, Ghosts have damage resistance 10 to all physical damage (of which bleed is included). And against non-magical bleeding this resistance is doubled to 20. As such there is no way to cause the Ghost to take bleed damage that isn't from a spell (bleed damage seems to cap at a d12 or 2d6), and even then it has resistance 10.

So yeah, not really a problem for Ghosts, they mitigate most sources of bleed entirely. Would be really in the weeds about the Wounding rune whether that bleeding is magical (I suspect it's not).

Wushu/Shaolin disciplines use shields. They make perfect sense, particularly if arrows exist. Which obviously they do.

Emptying the cart and re-adding the items resolved this issue. Which is confounding...

Using Firefox and Chrome (latest versions).

I can put items into my cart, I can get the button 1 (items), 2 (payment method) to go green. But when I push the big red button to Place Order the site won't process the order. It'll show a site processing spinning wheel briefly but the order never gets placed. The website changes and stops displaying the tabs (1,2,3) when you click the Place Order button the first time.

I've also deleted cookies and the website cache, but no dice, still fails to place the order.

Items were all digital products (Beginner box and Lost Omens: Pathfinder Society)

If you continue to have this problem make sure you clear the cache for the website and your cookies. That solved it for me (on Firefox).

I don't think that's how the rules work nobledrake. Look at bard focus cantrips. You gain those spells in your repertoire without also gaining access. Class feats are actually the opposite and always tell you what the boundaries are for options (see every spell casting class feature limiting you to common spells or those you have access to).

Oddly, neither the Cavalier or Animal order druid feats which grant you an animal companion list a rarity limitation. Other bits in the rules are explicit that class features/feats or ancestry feats can give you uncommon options, but not rare ones (CRB pg 13, pg 488).

I'm pretty sure you don't have access to uncommon options unless it says you do.

I'd argue that the cavalier dedication tells you choose from an animal companion with the mount trait (no qualification on access or rarity).

A seeming design philosophy of the game is to call out when options are limited to common options (all spell casting class features callout common cantrips and spells when leveling, adopted ancestry calling out common ancestries, etc.) or uncommon options (see multilingual). It is also explicit that common options can grant access to uncommon ones without saying you get access to them (see bard focus spell cantrips). The few times where access is explicitly granted (like deity favored weapons for clerics, human's unconventional weaponry) it's because the class features doesn't give you the item outright. Nowhere in the CRB does it explicitly state not gaining access to uncommon options from class feats except in the spellcasting areas.

Interestingly enough some animal companions have an access condition like the Arboreal sapling (leaf order). But the riding drake doesn't have any such access condition. Making it very odd indeed. There is a distinction between uncommon and rare availability in the CRB. Typically uncommon options are granted by class or ancestry feats, whereas rare ones are always by a GM rewarding players.

So if the riding drake is uncommon, and should be available via feats. Which ones?!

Given the size of the Gold and XP earned boxes, adding back in tracking functionality is trivial in itself, but there are other oddities.

Things about the sheet which drive me nuts include how big the reputation box is when we at most get reputation with MAYBE three factions, the equal numbers of lines for purchased items and sold items (this should really be a 2:1 ratio) and other minor things. (I get trying to direct players to the online ACP system, but uh the size of the boon box when it no longer carries the text kills me a little bit when it never carries the text anyways).

Heck I did it in Inkscape in an hour. (https://tinyurl.com/y2y4t34d)

Specifically, I'm pretty sure they forgot to aad a once per day frequency to the activation entry. At will glibness is absurd. The +4 status bonus completely overshadows the item bonus.

I haven't fixed it with house rules yet because generally infiltration shenanigans are fun and hard to pull off and I don't mind them getting a boost, but I can't imagine this was intended compared to other items.

It's not in line with other items of its level in that regard no, but the Greater Spectacles of Understanding also offer effectively a continuous spell effect (granted a level 2 spell). At least it's uncommon and will only come up when players are browsing for items.

We're talking past eachother Shroud. Yes, you can take things that don't have the mount trait. That is subject to the GM.

My particular question is about choosing an animal companion which DOES have the mount trait, and whether that option gives you access to uncommon animal companions like a riding drake.