Littleian's page

As written, as far as I'm aware, psychic casters are unable to use Mnemonic Vestment, due to a clarifying passage in the description that reads

"The surface of this delicate-looking blue silk robe is adorned with tiny embossed runes across its entire surface. If the wearer is a spontaneous caster, once per day she may use a spell slot to cast a spell from a written source (such as a scroll or spellbook) as if she knew that spell. The spell must be on her spell list, the same spell level or lower than the expended spell slot, and the same type of spell (arcane or divine) as the spell slot expended. The caster must also understand the written source (such as using Decipher Script or read magic) and be carrying it. Activating the robe is not an action, but casting the spell otherwise works as normal, including casting time, providing components or foci, and so on. Using a mnemonic vestment’s properties does not consume the written source. A mnemonic vestment must be worn for 24 consecutive hours before using its effects. "

It's pretty clear that this passage wasn't intended to exclude psychic casters, who didn't exist when the book was originally published. It's also a meaningless distinction for PFS where scrolls don't have a 'type' like arcane, psychic, or divine. Most items of this nature like Pages of Spell Knowledge have had analogous items created to serve identical functions for psychic casters (Shards of Psychic Power, in the former case). Mnemonic vestment remains unavailable to them though as far as I can tell.

In looking for information on this subject, I came across several threads from a number of years back of back-and-forth between folks arguing about whether psychic casters could make use of Pages of Spell Knowledge, presumably from before Shards of Psychic Power were introduced, rendering the matter irrelevant. I couldn't find anyone even asking about Mnemonic Vestment though.

Has this matter ever been ruled on? It seems like it would be unfortunate to leave psychic casters screwed because of a goofy backwards compatability issue.

Well, if cavaliers/paladins can't take Boon Companion because they don't have a class feature called "animal companion," then neither can druids (who have a class feature called "nature bond" that can be used to take an a/c) nor rangers (who have a class feature called "hunter's bond" that can be used to take an a/c). I'm not sure anyone except hunters actually has a literal "animal companion" class feature.

Oh, and wizards can't take it for their familiar because they don't have a "familiar" class feature, they have an "arcane bond" class feature that can be used to take a familiar.

My favorite dev post on why this sort of thing is okay is here. Long, but enlightening.

Hope something of the above suffices for your needs.

Thank you, this is exactly what I was looking for

Boon Companion lists "Animal companion class feature or familiar class feature" as a prereq.

Cavaliers and (some) Paladins receive a mount that 'functions as an animal companion'. Does this allow them to take the Boon Companion feat? And can anyone point me to a formal ruling, or a forum post from a dev that addresses this? I'm sure this question has been asked before, but I have been unable to find a ruling on it from a 'reputable' source.

They have taken to including handouts for the GM, rather than leaving the community to work something up.

Awesome. Thank you for clearing that up for me.

I thought the handout was a GM reference.

That would make a *lot* more sense. My question is based on the fact that the GM who ran it for the group I played it with, and is a lot more experienced than myself, gave it to us. I also couldn't think of why something would be labeled 'Handout' if you're not supposed to give it to the players. The thought did occur to me though.

I'm running this one on Wednesday. 'Handout 1' tells the players what skills to use on the various NPCs to best influence them, essentially giving them much of the same information that is earned for making most of the very low DC Sense Motive checks called for in the various NPC sidebars. I'm curious to know how most people handle this. When I played it, the GM gave us the handout at the beginning, and we pretty much walked through the NPC influence encounters... there wasn't much to figure out, since we knew that somebody could just take 10 on all of the pertinent checks. It was still fun to roleplay through, but it kind of felt like a cakewalk. I was planning to talk to my group about this and ask them if they want the handout, because it felt pretty spoiler-ey to me. Am I missing something here? I want to make this at least a little bit challenging, but I'm also not trying to screw them.

@Mathmuse

Just wanted to give you a shout out for providing excellent advice for both GMs and players regarding this AP. I'm a relatively new GM preparing to run this for a group, and I've found your suggestions and redirects to other resources to be quite helpful. Thanks!