Kerx's page

1) Same as everyone else: save stats (Wis/Con/Dex). Dex also applies to AC and TAC so be sure to bump it a fair bit, the chain shirt you ought wear shouldn't be a problem for the dex cap.

2) That's a bit of a groty question for a lot of the people who frown on power-gaming. To parrot a variation of what will be inevitably said by someone: "having an interesting character is more important than a mechanically robust one." Now that that's out of the way the question is whether or not your friend is willing to be boring and go human because humans are the catch-all of all catch-alls. Their heritages are all solid and their feats allow you to do things like have 2 of the 1st level bard feats at first level.

3) Lore or Polymath, bardic lore feels good as a player and versatile performance lets you just focus on being good at performance instead of rating out skill increases to stay viable as a party face. The spells true strike and summon monster are both pretty usable so go hog wild with either. I don't recommend maestro because it feels like someone other than bard should be spending the action economy for healing in this game and their name is cleric.

4) Being a human means you can take another 1st level feat via (bards get class feats in their progression only on even levels and from Muse) if that's what you mean, In that case I'd grab any of them. Every 1st level bard feat is at least decent. 4th level I'd say cantrip expansion because cantrips are utilitous and can be used creatively by players to make the game more enjoyable for everyone. Unless you want to do steady spellcasting by RAW (don't. Technically it makes bards immune to counterspelling).

5) Performance. It's kind of your thing as a bard. You should roll it a lot as a bard. If you aren't idk what you're doing as a bard.

Yes, so long as the round you cast the second one you do commit the action to concentrate on the first (Edit:) assuming the first spell's duration is concentration.

If you don’t Concentrate on the Spell during your turn, the creature takes no actions, assuming it isn’t dismissed due to the spell having a duration of concentration.

Was in fact saying that a lack of clarity in the RAW regarding damage distribution to multiple targets means that it would apply the combined damage to both targets, an idea I shortened into saying auto crits which I guess wasn't clear, my b.

2nd column of page 291 has the penalties rules, I wouldn't bother with the math. Can confirm conditionals stack with FF/circumstance.

If you've been playing without stacking them makes perfect sense why you might think critting is possible only on a 20.

Regardless this isn't the discussion topic and I'd like to think we've successfully covered the question at hand.

RAW yes multiple targets.
RAI no multiple targets.

I'm just going to wind up saying what draco said but longer. By RAW there's nothing stopping you from hitting multiple things and annihilating your enemies with what are effectively auto crits at that point but RAI I'm pretty sure they want you to stick to one target so the system isn't too busted since they don't actually tell you to distribute the damage.

they are not the 'holy tank' they are a Deities Wrath made flesh, standing alone if needed against any and all, destroying the enemies of the faith when ever and where ever they are found, with fire and sword.

I think the problem here lies mostly with this perception of a paladin being different then what I think is typically held by your average nerd these days. It has basis in arthurian myth sure but isn't really how the class has developed through modern RPG supplements. If I wanted "a Deities Wrath made flesh" from day one I'd make a barbarian and flavor him as a paladin.

As already stated you can take a paladin down the face smashy path through the things that already exist in the system. I don't think them saying "Hey, you can help the team with this neato reaction and hit people" is such a slight against a paladin's ability to smashy smash. One obligate reaction that still increases your damage output isn't the end of a bruiser's character concept to me.

It seems to me as though you're expecting paladins to be these unstoppable plated engines of war which is some great stuff for a crusades-era approach to the matter. Thanks to modern context and reflection on historical events though I just don't think crusader when I think paladin.

Retraining will be almost impossible though.

Think: every feat you have that relies on that original choice needs to be retrained. And retrained first to something that is a valid choice.

Say, 3 feats.

So you retrain all 3.

Then you retrain the class feature.

Now you have to retrain those 3 feats again.

Its not viable in a campaign setting.

About 2.5 months of downtime yeah, I wouldn't say that's wholly nonviable in-game. Everyone has a different pace: to some retraining in general is nonviable, to others this idea is completely within reason.

2.5 months derived from: (1 week per feat trained into <arbitrary> -> 1 month for class feature swap -> 1 week per feat trained into <the things you want>) / (3 weeks + 4 weeks + 3 weeks)

Outsourced opinion from the barbarian among my players:

2 or 3

2 if its not annoying would be fun
I wouldn't want 2 if u couldn't rage for another round 100%
would be cool if the longer you were in it the better it was
how they have it right now its just as powerful but now its RNG which as you know is 100% worse in every way
buffing the dmg is nice but I would like it to buff your actual STR so you get a decent + to hit

Also on board with Rysky's idea for it being a selection and a branching path from there. Feels like where we're headed from the most recent update anyways with the Rogue/Ranger/Druid having playstyles that are largely dictated through their low level class feature choices. (retraining is still a thing, I'm not trying to say this route is restrictive)

3 I think, I could definately go for rage as a sort of stance like ability that feels like more of a trade-off. ATM it feels like it's only a matter of whether my party's barbarian has the action economy to do rage and hit people and he's said as much on multiple occasions.

My complaint is that they took Enfeeble away from Retributive Strike. Debuffing enemies that don't attack you is a great ability. The fact that it's now the redeemer that does the debuff ("you make enemies sad") is kinda weird.

HARD agree. That they managed to implement a taunt so simply was my actually one of my favorite thing in the entire system.

Don't know what this business about paladins not being defensive is about. The ones classically depicted as having a minimum of half-plate on and a shield aren't defensive? I get there could be a mechanical argument but my understanding thematically...

The paladin is a champion of her deity who uses divine power to enhance her heroics and protect her allies.

You have powerful defenses that you share freely with your allies and innocent bystanders

When I think rage I think of people getting extremely angry, flying off the handle in a berserking deathblossom and then all tuckered out 6 seconds in because they rolled a 3 on a d20.

I genuinely don't understand this change. I don't think it fits within the overall design philosophy of this system thus far and it just confuses me that this is the direction they'd take this. Maybe I've powergamed too much in my life and I'm ignoring the funny little kinda pointless things (Waking Nightmare) they put in that I do think are fun in a way (but only if you want to piss people off in the case of Waking Nightmare).

Things that you can't wear more than one of it would seem:
"garment" (robes + Inexplicable Apparatus will exclude one another)
"shoes"
"armor"
"circlet"
"mask"
"backpack"
"horseshoes"
"gloves"
"headwear" (not explicitly exclusionary of circlets)
"collar"
"eyepeice"
"belt"
"cloak" (not explicitly exclusionary of robes I guess)
"bracers"
"barding"

This brings an interesting issue with regards to the etching of magic armor runes (+1, 2, etc.) onto Elven Chain/Mithral chain shirt: you can't. If you make a chain shirt out of Mithral though then you can.

No one said you had to play pathfinder in Golarion or use the other paladins. You can anyways just not, that's the beauty of tabletop.

I don't know why I'm so surprised people dedicated to Paladin are dying on a seemingly arbitrary hill because they refuse to compromise but hey, we're here now.

Did I miss a substantial balance change that turned them into clerics or fighters (took away their magic hands or weapons)?

Everyone's favorite place for a ruling: a sidebar in the fighter class feats! (No worries on not finding it)

You can never increase your weapon damage dice more than once.[/qoute]

I might suggest you blast this around in places other than specifically this forum if you haven't already. I love the whole idea personally.

Yeah it would probably be hell to implement a way that works and feels unbiased but hoo, boy. I want it.

It doesn't prohibit you to use an activity for said Strike.

I mean it kind of does but once again down to interpretation. In the CRB the next sentence is "If you do anything else, you become seen just before you act." So I guess what I'm saying is the strict reading would say that committing to the Double Slice counts as "anything else" since you commit to using Double Slice before making the two strikes, making you seen prior to the strikes that are a component of that.

Once you spend the last action required, your activity is complete and its effects occur.

Which makes me feel like it's not too outlandish to suggest Double Slice makes you seen before hand.

I think that distinction is more for non Strike attacks (like spells)

Yeah it probably is, but it could be written definitively if that's their intention. All I'm really trying to say here.

I would not recommend ruling the spell by the relative power of fireball. Feet to Fins is also 3rd level Arcane l. I'd say try to seek balance in all GM discretion but I know I'm alone on some levels of that opinion.

Adding a voice to the pile: only first strike of double slice has sneak attack.

Also I could see an argument from narrow reading that because it says "If you succeed at your Stealth check and then attempt to Strike a creature, the creature remains flat-footed against that attack, and then you become seen", you would potentially not be able to use double slice from stealth anyways. Only the Strike action alone is relevant by the narrow reading and is only that way because they didn't say "Attack" (capitol A to reference anything with the attack tag) where they put "Strike" (capitol S only references strike action).

I probably wouldn't run it this way because I don't think rogues are really that stellar right now but I believe it's the most literal reading.

Gang-up style flanking would be near ubiquitous in combat and would probably just serve to shoot players in the foot when fighting groups of enemies (actually not the worst thing). The system works just fine here right now though. Dip rogue or dip ranger/druid and get a pet dinosaur if you're really hungry for flanking bonuses (both things in the system which are IMO needlessly nerfed by this hypothetical change).

Large+ creatures in the proposed scenario become monumentally easier to flank, which is (I think) less intuitive. For medium creatures this does make flanking just slightly easier which buffs rogue and makes it so that new players don't have to think as hard about flanking which I support.

Flanking also doesn't only mean sides. There is room in most definitions (if not an "especially:" line) for the interpretation of it meaning any two opposite sides. In this case all of our pieces will unerringly occupy rectangles of variable dimensions so I wouldn't say that this isn't intuitive.

I think the most paizo® consistent response I can give you is that for the purposes of the playtest and submitting surveys (if that's your jam) you ought just reskin things that do exist into the things you want that don't exist.

If you want to poll in other jurisdictions here pf1's cutlass was genuinely just a reskinned scimitar.

For my own reskinning thus far: since the NPC selection in the bestiary is direly lacking I've been subbing medium size dumb/punchy monsters when necessary for when my players punch a guard in the face or any such brilliance.

As a DM who has been really digging around in the RAW with the great assistance of people on the forums who are smarter than I am, if you want to play RAW you're going to be doing intuitively ridiculous things like treating prone creatures your size as counting for screening against/for enemies. So really I'd say follow your dreams and make a cutlass with reasonable properties that isn't a reskinned scimitar. never forget!

I mean, "ki points" don't exist anymore so let me just check the CRB and see what this power is about because I don't remember it being back...

This is the playtest forum my dude. Got me hungering for a monk feat to be added that does something like this.

Anyhow, answer is yes you would always get ki from any living creature. Your confusion seems to lie within the flavor text they wove into the rules text there, understandable.

Beginning with the fact that there seems to be no price for carts/wagons/covered wagons listed within the book, continuing to the part where I haven't been able to find any rules regarding drag values relative to bulk values, and ending with the part where I understand this is reasonably arbitrary.

Honestly it's mostly about the pricing of a cart not being there that surprised/irked me. In my own campaign I'm pretty sure I made it the proportional pricing of renting for a day vs buying a pack animal applied to 25 miles of carriage rental (around a day of 30ft movement travel, which is an encumbered horse's speed) and then divided by four because carts are very much not carriages. ((10*(2*5))/4)

The price winds up being 25 silver by this logic/math.

The other question I can't see having been answered is how much my players can shove into said cart but since it seems finding out how much a horse or pack animal can carry is an adventure unto itself I'll be sparing myself from that activity.

Yeah your reasoning checks out completely to me, one of those things that I'd hope gets clarified. You've inspired me to make another post for discussing how carts work.

Resilient sphere doesn't make the specification that the spell fails if broken by any creature or object. I appreciate the position that it shouldn't but there simply is no preclusion for such.

I'd say that if a Kraken (as is our example) is grappling you it's not too ridiculous to suggest that he's got some healthily sized appendages and at the end of the day the sphere will only serve to prevent you from taking two constricts worth of damage. This will vary pretty wildly from creature to creature but it's the thing that makes the most sense in my head given the lack of RAW denial.

It's a cantrip you can pick up from a 14th level Bard feat of the same name.

Yeah, not sure it makes a lot of sense for a number of feats to be re-trainable in a general intuitive sense. Don't get me wrong mechanically (especially in a playtest) I love it. Regrettably it's just sometimes things like this come up and it feels real weird.

Hear me out here.

Retraining the Adopted Ancestry general feat.

To keep things exciting we'll start by making it canonically viable from a character standpoint. Pick your favorite racially diverse settlement for your starting point and make sure you have contact to such. Establish in writing a backstory that your character has been through a vast series of parents and/or there is actually a foster system in the given settlement. Either that or you take the "Hollyhock Manheim-Mannheim-Guerrero-Robinson-Zilberschlag-Hsung-Fonzerelli-McQuack" route and have a series of adoptees all in a polyamorous relationship.

How about them rules?

Some abilities can be difficult or impossible to retrain (for instance, a sorcerer can retrain her bloodline only in extraordinary circumstances).

Now that we're canonically viable, have no fear from this clause, you can retrain any non-heritage feat given "about a week".

Now I'm not saying you should be able to throw yourself through the pathfinder foster system all willy-nilly whenever without establishing a reason but as long as your character is either convincing enough or already established to have highly diverse familial background I feel like it's entirely feasible to swap the feat, dirty though it may feel.

They'd be better off bringing up the dice and abilities of other weapons than penalizing d12 weapons.

THIS.

d6s are for rogues and they could honestly also be better since they get hard out-scaled by big boy magic weapon dice if you aren't specifically a rogue doing sneak attack damage 100% of the time (unrealistic if you also like being alive).

d4s are the punchline to some sort of joke but they're just so genuinely bad (in a system that adds damage dice for item progression) that I understand the setup for that joke is as much of a waste of time as reading their entries.

d10s look like they're in a pretty decent place when they have reach. The weapons granting you the privilege of having MAP apply on your swings after you attempt a moderately helpful maneuver seem kinda insulting, much rather get a bonus to doing the given maneuver with the weapon which is designed in a way that makes it easier with the weapon. Having a free hand necessary for things like trip make me mentally picture my character crouching, knees at 45 degree angles, to grab an orcish warrior's calves one-handed before attempting to topple him as opposed to the smooth sweep the leg I want to imagine (dex for trip when?).

Yeah no that's actually just straight up borked, even past the screening part which I agree intuitively shouldn't apply. The rules regarding moving into/through those creatures squares are also in direct conflict with itself by making a blanket statement denying the player the ability to end their round of movement in a square with another creature at all in the first place.

It does say that you can move through an unwilling creatures space by using Athletics for shove or use Tumble Through but that's probably the least ideal way to go about corpses existing.

I think RAI you should be able to move through and/or share the space with a "willing, unconscious, or dead" creature as per the Prone and Incapacitated Creatures section. You can move through the space of any creature three sizes larger or smaller than you and the larger ones can move through yours. You should also be able to share/move through tiny creatures as they get an exemption.

But for now, you're right, this is either unclear or directly conflicting with itself depending on the sentence and by RAW creatures, whether prone, unconscious, or dead apply screened.

Dex isn't the super/god/omega stat it used to be IMO, I'm gonna need some convincing I guess. My thoughts: athletics is way more blanket usable than acrobatics. Initiative is now probably perception (I'm aware stealth exists, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be usable 100% of the time). AC seems equivalent between dex based characters. Also the part where only some rogues get dex to damage and only while in melee. If y'all got any of them graphs (for AC/to hit/ by class or dex v str) and the like hit me with those please, I live for that type of knowledge.
If I'm wrong and missing the part where Dex still blows Str out of the water: make it so dex builds have to take a skill feat or general feat to still be capable of doing, on average as they should, things like climbing, jumping, trip, and disarm (the ideas I side with thus far). If is as overpowered as people say this seems optimal.
To be clear I don't think dex is busted anymore and think this is just the least build killing tax to Dex builds (esp rogues if skill feat).

Let's express our disdain by blaming the whole game!

I wonder if it makes you feel good.

I think it's best if you let such things go unaddressed, everyone has a right to their opinion. I don't really see a need to comment expressly on his negative response, I don't feel like it adds to the discussion.

On the subject of the discussion, went over the rules again and didn't find anything in the treasure section rules.

There still should be acrobatics as a skill but yeah the way it works right now is funky at best. I feel like characters should be allowed to use acrobatics to jump and climb at the very least. On that matter why the hell is jump under a str based skill anyways? How many times have you seen a Schwarzenegger-esque long jumper, high jumper, or climber?
Pretty sure this is what you meant by

stole all the utility that could have been in Acrobatics.

but I had that epiphany while typing and now we're here.

Stitched together from pieces of ghoul skin, this

suit of +1 hide grants you a +1 item bonus to saving throws against
disease and paralysis

Taking a wild guess and saying this shouldn't be an item bonus since the item bonus conferred by +1 would already apply to any of the given saves. Item bonuses not stacking means I'm reasonably certain the +1 item bonus vs disease and paralysis is therefore useless.

Hey now, Waking Nightmare is the most useful power in the game if you want to make the other people at the table to hate you extend your gaming experience's length, thereby enriching it.

I don't think the rules say your character absolutely cannot craft a machine gun at level 1 and kill all the monsters.

I understand that this is supposed to be ridiculous but I just can't stop the RAW: Items not listed are level 0; machine gun is level 0. Proficiency equal to item quality; trained quaility machine gun OK. You have the formula; RIP machine gun. Appropriate tools and/or workshop; can't make those either, no formula. Raw materials; good there. If you can get your hands on the formula for that inevitably homebrew (no stats by RAW) item, yeah. Go hog wild your DM is probably the same one from the "Summoner geeks" skit (apologies for the old reference it probably hasn't aged well at all).

You are being purposefully obtuse.

I'm being purposefully (and I guess abrasively to some) literal. Players gonna cheese, not all of them, but one is too many. If we, through this discussion, make it so no-one ever feels like they can make this valid argument at any table I'll be thrilled because it means this technicality has been purged and nobody has to have this weird line of nueron firings or look at page 8 example text of all places for a ruling on feats, they could've made <Repeatable- Indicates a feat you can take multiple times> a tag as well, there's a lot of fixes. Honestly I think it's probably isn't intended as well (much like an aforementioned multiclass typo that also probably needs errata even though we can all guess the intent) but that's not the question. The question is "how is it written?" Because the answer to that is always "the way it should be played" that's RAW. That's what playtesting, betas, alphas and all the other permutations of unfinished products are supposed to be about, I'm just out here submitting a bug report, a lack of ruling intentionality.

I kind of wanted a fun hypothetical on some level while we wait for a fix but people just seem so shockingly adamant I'm wrong in spite of a deductively valid proof that I don't think we get to have the follow up meme build fun discussion I hoped for a week ago.

Edit: mobile typos

Powerful Leap - I'm not sure we can say that doesn't apply. Seems to me there are a lot of rulings that are awkwardly placed throughout the book (like pg 8's example text and not, you know, in the rules text for feats), a simple statement like seems to me to be widely applicable. But because I want to enjoy this though then yeah, I suppose if jumping 5 feet more than your speed (on the presumption it never increases) with one action is really what you want to do with 4 of your character's 5 default general feats from progression nothing's stopping you (@ lvl 15 for non-human non-ancestry jackers), parkour campaign ready my guy, leap those rooftops!

Specialty Crafting - "Select one of the specialties listed below" seems pretty clear, you should be able to pick any of them.

Quiet Allies - What I was attempting to allude to there is that the instances themselves could arguably be seen as different abilities and since I'm unaware of a robust definition for "ability" in the CRB I'm saying it's a possibility, not definitive. Honestly no armor penalty to stealth isn't that heinous. We're all still rolling dice and I get the feeling someone messes up 90%, at least that's my brief experience so far as party rogue with a group of dead men walking go-getters by my side.

Bonuses - They also haven't said anything about non-typal bonuses. Would you say fleet and nimble don't stack? If so why is Elf Step a feat in the 1.4 errata? The prerequisite is a 40ft move so only Elven Monks are eligible by the same logic. I'll grant it could be a misprint (as could the very text we're discussing), lord knows there's no reason you should need the bard dedication feat to take sorcerer spellcasting (that's the multiclassing archetype update, also see CRB page 16's abbreviation for lawful neutral).

You haven't yet said anything that makes me think I've misunderstood you somehow, fairly sure i'm looking at the right one of your proverbial pages. I understand you may not think it proper (RAI) but I'm afraid to the best of my knowledge and seemingly a few others it is the proper literal deconstruction of the phrase in English (RAW).

Way I believe it ought be worded if it helps: "The Special section appears in any feat you can select more than once, and explains what happens when you do"

Edited: made it more digestible, attempted to clarify that I understand opposing view

When you take it a second time:
Alchemical Crafting - Gives you formulas for four common lvl 1 alchemical items
Ancestral Paragon - "You gain a level-1 ancestry feat."
Fleet - Your speed increases by 5 feet
Hefty Hauler - "Increase your maximum and encumbered Bulk limits by 2."
Incredible Initiative - Nothing, circumstance bonuses don't stack
Inventor - Nothing. There's a lot of these types of things, could've picked Pickpocket, Natural Medicine, Planar Survival, etc. Feats like this are most of why this probably needs errata to me.
Powerful Leap - "you increase the distance you can jump horizontally by 5 feet." To answer the attached question "You can’t Leap farther than your Speed." - Long Jump action
Remarkable Resonance - "Increase your maximum Resonance Points by 2."
Quiet Allies - "While an ally is within 30 feet of you, their check penalty to Stealth checks from armor is reduced by 2" Though I could see an argument here dependent on whether you see having two quiet allies as being "any other ability that reduces check penalties from armor"
Snare Crafting - "you gain the formulas for four common snares"
Specialty Crafting - "Select one of the specialties listed below; you gain a +2 circumstance bonus on Crafting checks to Craft items of that type." Circumstance bonuses don't stack so if you double dip into one thing it'd be useless
Wall Jump - Nothing.

I think there might be another question regarding non-typal bonuses (for a lot of these readings). I can't find anything in the rulebook discussing them. If anyone can, big ups. That'd be really helpful for this tangent.

Yeah, I'd say it desperately needs a buff if you (paizo) would want it to be viable even as a lvl 1 ranger feat - especially with the errata feats. 10/10 agree, it looks like it's in the same vein as quiet allies except quiet allies doesn't rely on the person with the feat to have good rolls.

First things first; everything is chill my guy, hand off the shift key, we're all alright. No-one's trying to spice on anyone here.
I would recommend you divest yourself from pathfinder 1st for all discussion of pathfinder playtest. Personally I try to think of it as just as foreign as starfinder, there's no carry over for rules as far as I know.
Last, every special section you cited allows the player a selection between a set of several options when taking the feat again, I think it's natural to state what those options are.

If either of those creatures is a Roc; Rocs can't be placed in a resilient sphere in the first place, it has a size requirement of large or smaller. Grapple doesn't include anything about moving the grappled creature into the same space so both situations end the grab by way of the line

"You create an immobile sphere of force around the target’s space to either trap or protect it, blocking anything that would cross through the sphere.

"To cast a spell from a wand, you must have the spell on your spell list..."

Spell list is distinct from spell repertoire

Likewise, I've already provided all the instances in which the rulebook grants the player the ability to take feats for which they qualify when dictated by their class. Player's don't stop being qualified for feats once they possess those feats.

Alright, this isn't going anywhere. Ty BENSLAYER

Pg 8 fails to deny the player the right to take feats multiple times on the grounds that the word "usually" predicating the statement creates the induction that it is not always the case that the special heading has been included in feats that can be taken multiple times.

All feat types contain rules text which grant the player the ability to take any feat which they qualify for.

No feat types contain text which disqualify the player from taking feats on the basis that they have taken those feats.

The logically following conclusion is that as it is an expressly granted privilege of the player to take any feat for which they qualify and as a player qualifies for feats they've already taken, they are capable of taking such feats.

This is as far as I'm willing to take this. Insanity was brought up, definition thereof would be me continuing this discussion when I've nothing to genuinely add. Shoot down any of the premises and I'll pay attention

In order of description:
Yes you would gain the full HP value again, but the +1 conditional bonus to recovery saves wouldn't stack.

No, the text refers only to the normal range of the spell, metamagic feats with the same trigger can't apply to the same spell, and you would've been able to double up with just the one feat if the RAW was bad here anyways.

Power attack or any of the feats that are literally just actions are functionally useless when taken twice, especially reactions and two action feats. I thought about whether it would let you take things explicitly stated as usable once per turn but the RAW there is quite clear.

It's not insanity, it's the literal interpretation of the rules, much like an error in the programming of a video game this can lead to weirdness and exploits and it ought be fixed with patch notes/errata. It's also not useless as I for one would happily take the general feat Adopted Ancestry more than once.

New thought to add to this: this means players can take on multiple animal companions or familiars and that doesn't strike me as particularly game-breaking due to the way the action economy plays out (granted I'm not bothering to do an analysis on hit chance and therefore DPR so, idk, sue me) but I think the idea of it is humorous at the very least, especially since animal companions are scaled by player level and not when the feat was taken. Multiple familiars would be useless by RAW though so RIP that idea.

Alright but my assertion at this point is that the phrase "you may select this feat multiple times." in the special section is made moot firstly by the fact that page 8 provides no express denial of ability (simply provides an example in which the rules text would explicitly state the ability) and secondly by the fact that page 43 for general feats says the following:

At each of these levels, you can select any general feat (including skill feats) as long as your character qualifies for it.

And for class feats they gate you with:

At every level that you gain a(n) ________ feat, you can select one of the following feats. You must satisfy any prerequisites before selecting a(n) ________ feat.

And finally for skill feats their preclusion is:

You must be trained or better in the corresponding skill to select a skill feat.

TL;DR - The book doesn't seem to adequately tell the player they can't and furthermore suggests they can

Page 8:

Quote:

Special Any special qualities of the rule are explained in

this section. Usually the special section appears in a feat you can
select more than once, and explains what happens when you do.

By using the word "Usually" they've made it so that the literal interpretation is that it's not always the case that they've used the special sub-line to indicate a feat can be taken multiple times, nor have they expressly prevented the taking of any given feats multiple times. Thus, it is the case that this does not preclude one from taking any given feat multiple times

Is there anything in the RAW stopping me from taking feats multiple times regardless of whether they are stated to be able to be taken multiple times?

I know some of them say you can take them multiple times or a certain number of times expressly. In the case of allowing us to take certain feats as many times as we can: if we haven't been prevented from taking any given feat again as many times as we functionally can by the RAW, then we can take any feat without a limiter on quantity as many times as we functionally can.

I'm genuinely uncertain as to whether this is a design decision so a clarification would be greatly appreciated, just a man trying to make a character.