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The Thassilonian Rune Magic focus spells are all really good, except for the Sloth one ("Reclined Apport"), which is a focus-point Telekinetic Hand.

Cutting Eye is a very strong Reaction, like a focus "Interposing Earth" but also works against all spells with saves.

All-Encompassing Hunger is 1 Action for a bit of damage, though having a rank 1 (focus) spell with a death effect is unique.

Precious Gleam adds a whole lot of damage to a weapon, 1d6 per rank, and makes it silver or cold iron on top. Stacks with Runic Weapon.

Heart's Hook is really strong, with the 120 ft range and no incapacitation trait, and the fact that you can choose whom the creature has to approach (e.g. your party's Fighter or Champion).

Crescent Scepter doesn't seem like something you want to use on a Wizard... but it's probably cool on an unholy Champion.

Sloth... meh. I mean if your party uses Disarm (though I don't know many who do), you could ready the spell to immediately steal the weapon, but as a focus spell it's pretty useless.

Vengeful Glare is useful to trigger fire/cold weaknesses, being able to freely apply persistent cold or fire damage to it. With just 1 Action to cast this can be a cool thing to add spellshapes like Chaotic Spell to it!

Bluemagetim wrote:

A summon will cause indirect harm.

If you are reaching to this level of abstraction, the class will begin to have basic functionality issues.

Any aid whatsoever they lend to the party would then count as indirect harm.

That's nonsense.

Just look at it from the perspective that is already established in game:
If an action counts as a hostile action (e.g. to break Invisibility), then it should be considered active involvement. And if it causes injury, then it is doing harm.

Sure, you can summon a Fire Elemental, but once you command (sustain) it to attack someone, then that is definitely using your magic to cause harm with an element.

For at what point would that be different than casting Floating Flame? Both are temporarily summoned forms of elemental fire that require your direct command to harm others.

Envy Runelords cannot deal damage with the elements nor the void.

Careful here: the Anathema does not just prohibit damage spells, but all spells that harm someone:

Anathema: Use your magic to cause harm with the elements or void.

That can be interpreted in a wide way.

For example, I think this also includes summoning creatures that utilize offensive abilities with the elemental or void trait/damage - a Skeleton Guard should be fine, but a Wraith or Fire Elemental is forbidden.

You can make sure it's fine though if it corresponds to your sin of Envy: as long as the spell/ability is used to take away something, rather than just causing harm, you should be fine. That's why you have both Tangle Vine and Earthbind as sin spells, to take away someone's (fly) speed.

As of RoE, we have defined the elements as: Air, Earth, Fire, Metal, Water & Wood.

Yes and no.

There are several different elemental philosophies, and each philosophy differs in what are elements. For example Minkai's elemental philosophy also classifies mental and void as elements.

However, the Runelords of old were active in the Inner Sea region, which would imply the philosophy that knows only those four elements: air, earth, fire, water.

Notably, the Runelords also existed during the absence of the planes of wood & metal, which would further corroborate the idea that neither wood nor metal are part of their elemental anathema.

Rank 2 — Divine, Occult

2 Actions — RARE, Concentrate, Holy, Manipulate

Area 30-foot emanation

Duration sustained for up to 1 minute

You perform a dance that seeks to pass on the knowledge and wisdom of a naga. Your allies in the area are filled with sacred energy, making their spells and attacks holy. Creatures or effects that would be unholy don't gain this benefit.

When you cast or Sustain this spell, you can choose an ally in the area that's Grabbed, Immobilized, or Restrained. They can immediately use a reaction to Escape; they can use your Occultism or Religion modifier for the check instead of their unarmed attack, Acrobatics, or Athletics modifier if that would be better.

Is it intentional that this spell doesn't make your own spells & attacks holy, since you don't count as your own ally?

At first this looked like a way to finally get some (at least temporary) holy/sanctification going on non-Cleric divine casters, but no... .

It seems weird to me that you can cast this holy spell to infuse everyone, except yourself. Maybe rephrase it to "Creatures of your choice in the area..." for the first part and leave only the second part of the spell for allies?

Occult spells that can still be very useful at level 10:

1: Bless, Fear, Helpful Steps, Illusory Object, Liberating Command, Lock, Loose the Path, Sanctuary, Sure Strike
2: Animus Mine, Augury, False Vitality, Humanoid Form, Illusory Object/Creature, Invisibility, Knock, Laughing Fit, Loose Time's Arrow, Mind Games, Mirror Image, Revealing Light

Going beyond the exact RaW, it is not spelled out if the 20ft burst is "Surface only" or if it's a dome of effect. I presume most GMs rule that it's surface only, and a creature airborne > 5ft off the ground will not be affected.

The spell makes no mention of ground, surfaces or anything. I'm reading it as the slithering snakes to come from a globe of shadow and can thus be used in mid-air (spherical). I personally prefer that to make it more distinct from the Black Tentacles spell and to have a rank-appropriate effect against fliers.

Generalize the OP's suggestion for Flash of Grandeur:

Reactions with a duration need some overhaul in general, as durations of "1 round" technically end on the beginning of the user's turn instead of lasting for "1 round".
This also includes reaction abilities with similar phrasing (e.g. "until beginning/end of your turn"), which is too often prohibitively short, e.g. a support witch using Portents of the Haruspex when an ally kills an enemy, only to have your turn start immediately after without ever giving any ally the chance to make use of it.

These rules/abilities should instead be made to last 1 actual round (i.e. tick down on the initiative they were used on, not the completely unrelated initiative of the user).

How does Dragon play as a blaster? The starting focus spell d8+d4 per rank on two targets seems like a decent blaster build opening shot, but I've never tried it.

Dragon is a very good blaster caster, and even better than Elemental below level 10.

The Elemental bloodline suffers a lot from its blasting focus spell only coming on at level 10; before level 10 you only have Elemental Toss, which is a great 3rd action, but not a main blast. Meanwhile the Draconic bloodline has better damage on its Flurry of Claws right from 1st level and gets the Dragon Breath at level 6.

The Draconic bloodline is also extremely versatile in that it can choose any spell-list and even has different damage type options for its Draconic Breath. So if your campaign ends at level 11, I would honestly recommend Draconic over Elemental. If your campaign goes/starts at 10+, then Elemental is stronger since the blasting focus spell is so versatile (choose cone/line/burst each time you cast it).

In regard to the Draconic bloodline, I think it's also extremely important to mention that you are not limited to the Draconic Exemplars given in Player Core 2, as PC2 explicitly states that you can take other Draconic Exemplars and build them with your GM. From my experience every GM out there allows you to switch to the damage types listed in Paizo's PFS Organized Play section which you can find over at this link. The rules also state that you can then fill the 2nd-, 5th-, and 8th-rank bonus spells with a spell from that draconic exemplar's family spellcasting entry.

For example, I'm playing an Umbral Dragon Sorcerer in a Gatewalkers campaign (will continue with Spore Wars), and the GM allowed me to use void damage (instead of fire) on my Flurry of Claws and Dragon Breath. As the bonus spells I chose from the Umbral Dragon spellcasters entry the spells (2) Humanoid Form, (5) Shadow Siphon, and (8) Disappearance; apart from the 2nd-rank spell these are amazing additions to the primal spell-list, where you worry more about having the spells rather than triggering the blood magic effect tbh.

So depending on the campaign it can be quite worthwhile to choose certain damage types for your Dragon blaster. Especially noteworthy are those dragons that combine a spell-list with an atypical damage type or that offer you an atypical/rare saving throw against the Dragon Breath focus spell.

Typical means something like getting mental damage on an occult spellcaster or a Reflex save blast on fire/cold/acid/... ("primal") damage. But Poison & Fort saves are atypical for occult casters, as is void damage vs a Reflex save, or early Will save AoE spells. Thus the most noteworthy dragons are, in my opinion, the Sky Dragon (divine tradition + electricity damage), the Mirage Dragon (arcane tradition + Dragon Breath vs Will save), the Umbral Dragon (primal tradition + void damage vs Reflex), and the Conspirator Dragon (occult tradition + Dragon Breath vs Fortitude).

Finally, it also depends on your variant rules. If you have Free Archetype and go into the Flames Oracle to get Whirling Flames, then the Elemental bloodline focus spell doesn't do much for you anymore, as Whirling Flames already offer a unique and amazing versatility in the positioning of the blasts. In this case I would recommend the Draconic or Imperial bloodline as well, since you want to have arcane spellcasting if you go for a divine spellcasting archetype already.

I'm playing an arcane Dragon + FA: Flames Oracle blaster in Prey for Death atm, and it's a blast. With the Dragon Claws, the Dragon Breath & the Whirling Flames, I have all the versatility in blasting I need from focus spells, use my spell-slots for other blasts, and apply Foretell Harm to up the damage (especially when you hit someone's weakness).

Btw, at levels 11+ you might want to choose utility cantrips over the usual blasting cantrips, as you can a) afford cheap Spellhearts to get blasty cantrips, and b) have enough spell-slots to no longer need to blast with cantrips. For example Message & Tremor Signs for stealth communication, Tangle Vine as free rope, Prestidigidation to clean things up quickly, Eat Fire for defense, Detect Metal to help find hidden doors/traps/items, but most importantly Deep Breath as air poisons and suffocation are bigger threats than at low levels.

As an example, in the aforementioned Prey for Death campaign I had my Sorceress voluntarily engulf herself into the huge fire elemental as she took hardly any damage from being engulfed (high fire resistance), had no need to breathe (Deep Breath), had greater cover against the other enemies, and was also safe from being hit with the elemental's bludgeoning attacks, while the elemental was constantly offguard to her spell attacks; surpassing the Rupture value allows you to escape, but RAW you don't have to. :D

I agree with the others, though would add a little to that specific level range:

The Free Archetype for a Flames Oracle would get you the wonderful Whirling Flames focus spell as well as the Foretell Harm cursebound ability, adding even more damage with rechargeable resources. The Whirling Flames also help you with a problem most non-divine blasters have, which is targeting enemies with AoE's without hitting your allies, as placing a few 5-ft-bursts is easier than placing a big burst, so this focus spell is good for following rounds once melee has begun.

For Crossblooded Evolution I recommend the Psychopomp bloodline, since nothing is really resistant to both vitality & void damage (except constructs), and it's great for triggering weaknesses, as most Sorcerers have trouble getting both vitality & void damage blasts.

Some other choices depending on the campaign and the rest of the party.

For example, if you have a party member who can reliably tell you which weaknesses enemies have, you should absolutely go with the Sorcerer's Energy Fusion feat; this lets you utilize your low-level spell-slots to boost your damage even further and change half the damage to the type triggering the weakness. Thunderstrike and Swallow Light are very low level spells that cover 4 damage types already: electricity, sonic, cold, void.

And if your campaign has very long adventuring days, with 5+ encounters per day (in some dungeon crawls), I can recommend the Wellspring Mage archetype for the Sorcerer (& Oracle).

I'd like to see a universal black blade archetype, one that can be taken by people who aren't arcane casters. (Or failing that, one that's simply available for characters in PF2E.)

I'd like to see a Gunslinger archetype that works with non-arcane casters, like Kurumi Tokisaki: Gunslinger + Time Oracle.

PFS is a real-life Westmarches server.

Yes but the gifted power slot is only for your mystery granted spells, your divine access spells, and the spell you can grab from mysterious repertoire. The two extra slots from divine effusion can be whatever though.

There are some really good options among applicable deities for some (most?) mysteries. I admit I'll never bothered with a Battle, Ancestors, or Blight Oracle due to their bad curses; Life & Bones are so flavorful and I'd love to play them more often, but it hurts that their curses are... well, others talked about that already.

I took Kerkamoth on one of my Cosmos Oracles, so I could get Disintegrate right when 6th-rank spells came online; the Shadow Siphon spell is also amazing and you don't even need to make Shadow Siphon a signature spell if you have Gifted Power.

The divine spell list is actually very rich at higher levels, even for offense, but still, taking Synesthesia on a Lore Oracle from Narriseminek is very flavorful and effective; Confusion I haven't used much, but with Gifted Power it's a good choice for that eventual 8th rank slot.

For reasons others have pointed out, the Cosmos mystery was the best one to play, but lately I've switched my favorite mystery over to Time. As long as you're careful to avoid enemy reactions you can deal with the curse. I feel this is much better than the Cosmos curse, which never really mattered; the Time curse requires you to be very mindful of it, which makes it much more present at all times for me as a player and that increases the fun.

Now if only there were a Spellshot archetype for Oracles so I can play Kurumi Tokisaki...

p.s.: If you can, convince your GM to give you Time Jump instead of Time Pocket as your 3rd-rank mystery gifted spell; the latter reigns supreme upon the heap of garbage spells (unless you play some kind of Thief Oracle but don't have Trickery/Stealth?), while the former is one you'd literally kill for as a Time-cursed Oracle. I don't understand for one second why Paizo made this choice.

How exactly does the Lore Oracle's revelation spell Brain Drain work at the table (or VTT)?

After the enemy failed their Will save and you get your chance to RK:

You probe the target's mind to glean knowledge. This deals 1d8 mental damage with a basic Will save. If the target fails the save, you sort through the stolen memories to attempt a single check to Recall Knowledge. Choose a skill that has the Recall Knowledge action, and use the target's skill modifier for the check.

The first major issue is: You don't even know which skills the target is untrained/trained/exp/mas/leg in, or is the GM supposed to tell the player that? Because not knowing the modifier you roll with, in fact not even knowing the Lore skill options the target has, really makes this borderline unusable.

Example: You successfully brain-drain a car expert [Legendary in these Lores: "Sports Cars", "Race Cars", "Luxury Cars", "Historic Cars", "Modern Cars"] and you ask the GM to roll RK with "Lore: Cars" because you expect him to have that, and the GM then rolls with a +0 modifier [because untrained in "Lore: Cars"]... seems RAW how it should be done but also too bad to be true.

The second major issue is: Which skills do you roll if you want to access a target's very individual knowledge: Where are the traps in your headquarters? What's the secret passphrase to enter the crypt? What are the plans of your BBEG boss?

The victim most likely knows the answers to these questions (maybe partially, GM decision), but which skill can be used to access this information? Especially considering that the target might not be trained in a single RK skill.

Or, even more trivial things: What's your name? Where do you live? Who are your friends? What's your favorite food? The target definitely knows these things, but they might not be trained in Society at all [assuming they're a Humanoid]. So as per RAW it would basically be impossible for a target to even access that information.

Example: Would a Baomal be able to know that it can swim or breathe underwater? It's a level 20 aberration, not trained in Occultism nor any applicable Lore, and has an INT modifier of -3. It would fail a RK check on that question 15% of the time, even if the GM were to set a DC of 1.

tl;dr

How should this spell be interpreted and how would it be used at the table, step-by-step?

For RAI purposes, if it's applicable even, here's the Pf1e Lore Oracle's Brain Drain revelation:

Brain Drain (Su): You can take a standard action to violently probe the mind of a single intelligent enemy within 100 feet. The target receives a Will save to negate the effect and immediately knows the source of this harmful mental prying. Those who fail this save are wracked with pain, taking 1d4 points of damage per oracle level. After successfully attacking with this ability, you may use a fullround action to sort through the jumble of stolen thoughts and memories to make a single Knowledge check using the victim’s skill bonus. The randomly stolen thoughts remain in your mind for a number of rounds equal to your Charisma modifier. Treat the knowledge gained as if you used detect thoughts. This is a mind-affecting effect. You can use this ability once per day at 1st level, plus one additional time per day at 5th level and for every 5 levels beyond 5th.

I'd actually recommend Yaoguai over Automaton, as they can be objects as well and they can change shape which Boxxo does a lot too.

Basic Face Mask - rarely useful but super cheap

Scorpion Whip - same as Whip, but less bulk (L instead of 1), not nonlethal

Folding Ladder - same as Ladder, but a lot less bulk

Clothing (Desert & Cold Weather) - rarely useful but indispensable in some areas

Elixir of Life - 25% cheaper than Healing Potion, gets the job (bringing someone back up) done, also has a nice bonus if someone was brought down by poison

Crowbar, Ten Foot Pole, Climbing Kit & Writing Set - every party needs 1

Scroll Robes - little bit more expensive than Explorer's Clothing, but can be inscribed with a reaction spell (e.g. Gentle Landing)

Kilted Breastplate - Light Armor, strictly superior to Studded Leather

(Spiked) Gauntlet - indispensable if you play a Ghost, so you can open doors et.al.!

The rules say that an action is hostile if the actor knows that it could cause harm. He doesn't have to suspect it to cause harm.

Otherwise the dumber your character is, the more hostility he can get away with: Just dump INT/WIS, roll an applicable check before AoE Heal and say "I didn't know that skeleton would take damage from the spell." (failed your Religion / Undead Lore check)

Heal is used to cause harm 50% of the time (roughly speaking), so anyone casting it knows that it could cause harm.

I'm pretty sure that a spellcaster knows very well that the Heal spell could cause harm. There is neither ignorance nor unawareness at play here. Just like you can't walk around the marketplace casting Vitality Lash on everyone, thinking everyone here is a living creature has vitality healing, declaring it a non-hostile action.

The change to Whispers of the Void to target any creature shows another way that this problem could be resolved. Simply don't have spells change their targeting based on undead/living status.

Even Heal and Harm could work under that design. Heal would just do both Vitality damage and Vitality healing to any target. Same with Harm doing both Void damage and Void healing to all of its targets. Let the Void Healing rules and the Damage Type rules sort out which of the two gets ignored and which has an effect.

While I do agree in principle, I would have to caution here that casting Heal to heal someone would then be a hostile action, due to dealing vitality damage, even if they are immune. Same with Harm.

"nerf into oblivion" is an odd way to describe a change that doesn't change the primary effect of the ability at all. For a character that only Sure Strikes occasionally (most likely a pure caster) it might not alter how they use the spell at all.

I've been playing many full casters, and I tell you this ruins a lot of spells for me that require Sure Strike. It's true that you only cast Sure Strike occasionally, heck, I'd even say that you only cast it rarely as a full caster, but when those rare occasions come up you are likely to cast it more than once during the encounter.

Sure Strike was the only way of making AC targeting spells worth taking. Now they're to avoid like the plague.

In order to avoid non-pure casters spamming that spell they ruined it for everyone, despite claiming they want abilities to work for the intended classes. So I still maintain that this change sucks hard and that my solution "Sure Strike works only for spell attack rolls" is much better, as it stops the spam without hurting full casters.

It is only considered a nerf if you were thinking that the ruling was that the dedication alone was sufficient.

Well, that's what I was thinking because Logan Bonner said so.

(This might be the thing that Red Griffyn was referring to.)

Matthew Jaluvka wrote:

the errata finally loaded for me and I think the live wire nerf is actually more impactful than the sure strike nerf

We all knew that was coming, right? It was clearly way out of line. That one was a "enjoy the party while it lasts" situation.

But now the spell is entirely useless, because it's strictly inferior to Electric Arc.

EA rank 1: 2d4 vs 2 targets basic Reflex
LW rank 1: 2d4 vs 1 target "basic AC"

EA rank 2: 3d4
LW rank 2: 2d4

EA rank 3: 4d4
LW rank 3: 4d4

EA rank 4: 5d4
LW rank 4: 4d4

Scales worse than Electric Arc even on a single target, i.e. EA now does more than double damage of Live Wire.

And the persistent damage can safely be ignored because casters never crit with attack rolls anyway. So where's the point in Live Wire now?

Player Core

Several feats got improvements to be more appealing for the characters they’re meant for.

If that were true they would have changed Sure Strike to only work with spell attack rolls, not nerf it into oblivion.

That would have stopped the abuse of others using it to enhance their Strikes, while leaving it usable for casters, who already have crap attack rolls.

"Using arcana to recall knowledge about a zombie is never using an applicable lore skill to RK on a zombie."

Yeah, but that part is obviously wrong, as you can see in how they continue to say:

"I do not even allow any of the broad lore skills (bardic/gossip/loremaster) to work in place of a specific lore either"

while paying no attention to the fact that broad lore skills work completely different than Tap into Blood. It's just one person's statement on how they use Lore skills.

The Tap into Blood feat has a unique way of using one skill instead of another skill, so any comparisons of Tap into Blood to other replacements without acknowledging that merely signal the fact that they haven't grasped what is actually written.

And the lack of factual rules references in such "arguments" is therefore only "supported" by tangential rhetoric about other things.

Personally, I make a huge difference between reading rules & how I feel about those rules. Many others do not; they let their emotions dictate what they read, not the text right in front of them.

Probably because there is time manipulation in the form of fitting 6 Recall Knowledge actions in the space (and cost) of 1 action. Very thematic.

Recall Knowledge is something very thematic for a Lore Oracle, but memory tricks don't fit a Time Oracle as well as an actual time manipulation spell.

Haste, Slow, Temporal Twin, and Curse of Lost Time seem like much better time manipulation spells as well.

Both Hypercognition and Time Jump would be worthy choices for the mystery's spells, but if I had to guess why Hypercognition won out, I'd speculate they wanted such a substitution to be part of the core assumption so as to avoid forcing a Time Oracle who was unaware of the change to buy an additional book to use their mystery's granted spells.

I don't think PFS rules require you to buy a book for a spell that was given to you by the PFS rules themselves. But I'm not sure. Does anyone know?

Because if spells that you get automatically require additional books, then is it even PFS-legal to play a Time Oracle without the old Dark Archive book? Because the Time mystery grants the cantrip Time Sense, which has not been republished & only ever appeared in Dark Archive as well.

If a Ghost uses transformations, like Morphs, Polymorphs, or an ancestry-given Change Shape, what happens? Does it remain ghostly/incorporeal?

The polymorph rules say that "the special statistics can be adjusted only by circumstance bonuses, status bonuses, and penalties", however the Ghost's Float ability would change any Land Speed to a Fly Speed without being such a bonus. Can a polymorphed Ghost-Deer fly really fast?

Is the Ghost recognizable as a ghost/incorporeal? What if it merged/turned into a plant or stone?

As far as I can tell the mystery never had time pocket associated with it, though.

Time Pocket is the 3rd-rank bonus spell granted by the new Time mystery from Lost Omens: Divine Mysteries.

I got the opposite impression from that thread, especially things like this post:

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4vf0v&page=2?Problems-with-Tap-Into-Blood# 67

That person voices its general issues with Lore skills, not on the applicability of using Arcana instead of a Lore skill.

The Oracle's Time mystery had the 3rd-rank spell Time Pocket replaced, which I understand. But why was the Hypercognition spell chosen as a replacement instead of the far more thematic Time Jump spell???

I'm not convinced (nor does it seem most people are convinced) that situations like this allow you to use the lower Lore check. But I could absolutely use Arcana instead of Religion/Society/Nature/Occult.

As this thread shows most people are convinced that this is how the rule works, even if they personally would run it differently.

Wouldn't the opposite be true -- focus everything on Int because you're using it to recall knowledge on everything? If anything it could let me drop Wis in favor of more Dex or Con.

No. Failing a Will save is exponentially worse than failing a RK check.

And you can always get Dubious Knowledge to get information out of a failed RK check, but there's nothing to protect you from those failed Will saves.

Also race is set as human already, but he is Imperial bloodline.

So what? Rebuilding a character from scratch, because it doesn't work with your group's demands, is perfectly fine. If they force you to play a character you're no longer comfortable with, then you have some serious problems to address at your table.

I'm basically being relied on to be the party face and the party knowledge bot.

Combat optimally, I'd start with 10 str/14 dex/14 con/10 int/12 wis/18 cha I believe.

But in this case I'm planning on starting with 10 str/10 dex/12 con/14 int/14 wis/18 cha.

Since the group put that huge demand on you, you should feel no hesitancy when it comes to using the rules to your advantage.

Go for Imperial Sorcerer and take the Tap into Blood feat. Then use Arcana instead of whatever skill you want to Recall Knowledge with. You're facing a bunch of Zombies? Use Arcana instead of Zombie Lore. Investigating a murder in Absalom? Use Arcana instead of Absalom Crime Lore.

Basically, by utilizing Arcana instead of a specific Lore skill, you drop the DC of whatever you Recall Knowledge on by 5. The Zombies might have needed a Religion DC 20, but with Arcana (Zombie Lore) it's just DC 15. This is equivalent to a +5 bonus to the Arcana skill for Recall Knowledge. You're still limited by triggering bloodmagic first, so you'll want to have enough focus points to use the skill.

Once you hit level 6 you could also use the weird Extend Blood Magic spell, that should trigger bloodmagic on its own and extend it (though the spell is badly written and basically up to GM fiat), allowing you to Recall Knowledge up to 5 times for just 1 focus point (& 5 Tap into Blood actions, so probably good out of combat only). And while you're benefitting from bloodmagic, you would also get a +1 status bonus to either AC or saves from the Imperial bloodline, for extra defenses.

If you use that, then there's no need to raise your Intelligence sky high, a +1 or +2 should suffice - a Sprite or Gnome would be a good ancestry here. Investing in bonuses to Arcana would make this even better, so ask the Warpriest to put Heroism on you if he wants to know something, because you have unfortunately forgotten everything recently.

That should give you a very good stat spread -- STR-1 | DEX+2 | CON+2 | INT+1 | WIS+2 | CHA+4 -- with an effective INT bonus to Recall Knowledge equal to +6. Feel free to move 1 point WIS or CON towards INT. If that has you worried about too low defenses, the Cleric should also cast Dancing Shield on a Fortress Shield to give you +3 circumstance AC and have spells like Martyr's Intervention at the ready.

Instead of Sprite or Gnome, you could also go for an Elf with Ageless Patience, so you can spend 2 actions on Tap into Blood to get that +2 circumstance bonus to the Recall Knowledge check.

tl;dr
Stacking bonuses to Arcana for Recall Knowledge with Tap into Blood is more useful than to trash your entire stat build.

Latest legendary addition: Runesmith!

So, how does the Elf ancestry feat Magic Rider

Your people used powerful magic to travel between distant worlds in the distant past, and the remnants of that magic make such transportation easier for you. When you are the target of a teleportation spell that transports more than one person, it can affect an additional person beyond the normal limit, chosen by the caster. Additionally, when you're the target of a teleport spell, you and the other targets arrive no farther than 1 mile off target, regardless of distance traveled.

work with the spell Unexpected Transposition

Cast [reaction] verbal; Trigger You are targeted with an enemy's Strike.

When attacked, you attempt to quickly swap your own position with that of another creature. A creature that is unwilling to swap places with you must attempt a Will save. Willing creatures automatically fail. If you successfully switch places with the target, the triggering attack is resolved against that creature as if it had been the original target of the attack. After the swap, you and the target are both temporarily immune to unexpected transposition spells for 1 minute. You automatically switch places if the target is willing. If it's unwilling, it can attempt a Will save. Neither of you teleports if the target succeeds at its save.

since the spell does indeed teleport more than one person?

So the issue really becomes, can a spontaneous caster sustain spells from scrolls from day to day without having them committed to the repertoire?

No, the rules say:

You can’t do this if the spell didn’t come from one of your spell slots.

How do you sustain a spell that you don't know?

People do that all the time, e.g. when casting Bless from a wand you can even sustain the spell for additional effect - without the wand and without knowing the spell. Expending a slot just to keep the magic alive seems much easier than enhancing a spell you never knew and didn't even cast yourself.

Besides, not having a spell in your repertoire is not the same thing as "not knowing" the spell. You can learn an infinite number of spells with the Learn a Spell activity; afterwards you know the spell but don't have it in your repertoire until you swap it in. (It's also how the Arcane Evolution feat works.)

----

On the broader conversation - I'm not sure I've seen anyone ever bother heightening Mystic Armor in PF2. When 4th rank spell slots are your best ones, those are way more valuable than the 500 gold +1 Resilient Explorer's Clothing costs for the same effect.

Ditto with a wand of Mystic Armor, since the wand to heighten it is far more expensive than just buying the appropriate runes in the first place.

Good GMs would instead recommend just buying a Wand with Mystic Armor on it. Then you could not only swap out the spell from your Repertoire, but you would get the spell slot back too.

Buying scrolls of Mystic Armor and using them every day that an encounter even feels probable is probably going to end up being a better use of resources than burning spell slots on it everyday as a spontaneous caster. Even from the beginning, losing the repertoire spot is brutal, and you should be getting approximately 4 gold for every moderate encounter your first level character finds themselves in.

All of these comments address the same thing, and I completely agree. In 99% of cases it's better to just get a wand of Mystic Armor or the appropriate runes on your Explorer's Clothing or buy Bands of Force.

However, there is an edge case where my proposal is very useful: I was looking into ways to make the Wellspring Mage class archetype for spontaneous casters more useful. This archetype basically requires you to expend a spell-slot of each of your top 3 ranks every morning, in order to actually gain any temporary spell-slots from surges. Thus I was looking at good buff spells to use at every level & for every tradition, when stumbling across this rules interaction.

It also happens to be good at the first levels, when you want to have Mystic Armor on, but can't afford a wand for it yet.

As such I think it's a very good "loophole", because it buffs things that are otherwise underpowered (early caster levels & wellspring mage). To compare, others often suggest to give casters free 1st-rank scrolls (or similar things) at very low levels to make it easier on these hard levels, yet that would be much more powerful as the casters wouldn't have to expend a spell-slot for Mystic Armor.

Just a little tip I haven't seen mentioned anywhere.

Here are the rules on spells that last until your daily preparations:

If a spell’s duration says it lasts until your next daily preparations, on the next day you can refrain from preparing a new spell in that spell’s slot. (If you are a spontaneous caster, you can instead expend a spell slot during your preparations.) Doing so extends the spell’s duration until your next daily preparations. This effectively Sustains the spell over a long period of time. If you prepare a new spell in the slot (or don’t expend a spell slot), the spell ends. You can’t do this if the spell didn’t come from one of your spell slots. If you are dead or otherwise incapacitated at the 24-hour mark after the time you Cast the Spell or the last time you extended its duration, the spell ends. Spells with an unlimited duration last until counteracted or Dismissed. You don’t need to keep a spell slot open for these spells.

A lot of spontaneous casters, especially Sorcerers & Psychics, but also Oracles & Bards can benefit from this rule for spells they want to keep up indefinitely, like Mystic Armor. You only need to expend a spell-slot during daily preparations to keep the spell up, there's no need to have the spell still in your repertoire!

For example, you can cast Mystic Armor at the beginning of your adventuring career at humble level 1, then replace the spell with something else at level 2 (or during retraining), but you can still keep Mystic Armor up and running as long as you diligently expend the spell-slot every day during daily preparations.

Considering how few spells spontaneous casters have in their repertoire, especially at early levels, this can allow you to take that one extra spell you wanted to know besides Mystic Armor (or other daily buff spell of your choice).

Have fun!

I really don't see how using Reach Spell to extend the touch to a 30 ft range is "TGTBT". I'd say that's the entire purpose of that feat...

And then you also invent things like range on sustain...

I've heard your opinion, thank you.

To be fair, I think the Blight mystery is utter garbage.

The curse gives you a -1/-2 penalty to saves against poison, and you get poison weakness 2/twice your level at cursebound 3. This is easily a death sentence. However, unlike the other, similar sounding curses, this one doesn't remove poison immunity/resistance. You wouldn't be able to ignore poison damage completely, as curses cannot be mitigated, but you can certainly use resistance against the damage and spells to counteract the poison.

The revelation spells are super weak:

Just compare Ulcerous Canker to the Live Wire cantrip, which has the same damage but scales twice as fast. If it were Heightened +1 then it would be a useful focus spell, but this straight out loses against a cantrip.

Purging Toxins seems unnecessarily restrictive, as you can use it only once per day on any given target. This is a good anti-poison spell, basically taking a known number of damage for a good chance to undo the poison. But this 1/day restriction makes it worthless. You'll want Cleanse Affliction as a signature spell anyway to survive your own curse, and that spell can be used as often as needed, making this focus spell a waste.

Accelerated Decomposition is weak for a 6th-rank spell, with 9d6 damage at 30 ft range against a single target. The Ash Oracle's second focus spell, Incendiary Ashes, is a 120 ft range & 20 ft burst spell that deals 10d6 damage at the same rank, also against a Fortitude save. It barely beats Live Wire's 12d4 (=30 average) damage with its 9d6 (=31.5 average) damage when you get it at 6th rank, but is beaten again at rank 7+.

With 2 less-than-cantrip-damage focus spells and a needlessly restrictive & niche anti-poison spell, the Blight Oracle is Ancestor-tier bad.

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The Ash Oracle remains mostly as it was before, but cursebound 3 is now much more dangerous, especially since your curse suppresses all resistance/immunity against fire damage.

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The Time Oracle might give the Cosmos Oracle a run for its money. The curse inflicts a penalty to fatigue & slow effects, which are few and far between. Yeah, the status penalty to AC is dangerous, but it only applies to Reactive Strikes & similar, which should make it manageable with increased player skill. The very opposite of the Ancestors Oracle, which gets a straight penalty equal to cursebound on its AC at all times. The two are not the same.
The first three granted spells are trash tier, with Time Beacon and the focus spells remaining good.

What are your thoughts on the remastered/new Oracle mysteries?

For information:

ASH is basically the same as before in terms of flavor and focus spells.

The domains are: Destruction, Dust, Fire, Nothingness (remastered Void)
Free feat: Whispers of Weakness
Granted spells: Ignition (0), Breathe Fire (1), Mist (2; takes the form of ash), Disintegrate (6)
Curse of Creeping Ashes:
Cursebound 1 You gain weakness 2 to fire damage. Any immunity or resistance you have to fire is suppressed.
Cursebound 2 Swirling ash imposes a -2 circumstance penalty to ranged attack rolls you make.
Cursebound 3 Your weakness to fire damage is equal to 5 + your level.
Cursebound 4 You take a –10-foot status penalty to all your Speeds as your limbs begin to crumble like ash.

TIME is basically the same as before in terms of flavor and focus spells.

The domains are: Change, Fate, Nothingness (remastered Void), Time
Free feat: Oracular Warning
Granted spells: Time Sense (0), Déjà Vu (1), Time Pocket (3), Time Beacon (7)
Curse of Turbulent Moments:
You take a status penalty to your AC against attacks made against you from reactions or free actions and a status penalty to saving throws against effects that would make you fatigued or slowed equal to your cursebound value.

BLIGHT

The domains are: Death, Decay, Disorientation, Plague
Free feat: Whispers of Weakness
Granted spells: Caustic Blast (0), Noxious Vapors (1), Fungal Infestation (2), Toxic Cloud (5)
Curse of Inevitable Rot:
Cursebound 1 You gain weakness 2 to acid and poison damage.
Cursebound 2 You take a –1 status penalty to saving throws against diseases and poisons. In addition, anyone attempting to Treat your Disease, Poison, or Wounds takes a –1 status penalty to the associated skill check.
Cursebound 3 Your weakness to acid and poison damage increases to twice your level.
Cursebound 4 Your status penalty to saving throws against diseases and poisons and the status penalty for anyone attempting to Treat your Disease, Poison, or Wounds increases to –2.

The Blight revelation spells are all 2-action cast, 30 ft range spells:

ULCEROUS CANKER

UNCOMMON CONCENTRATE MANIPULATE ORACLE POISON VOID
Targets 1 living creature
Defense Fortitude
Weeping sores open on the target as you expose it to decay, dealing 1d4 void damage and 1d4 poison damage plus 1 persistent bleed damage. The target must attempt a Fortitude save.
Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target takes half the initial damage and no persistent bleed damage.
Failure The target takes full damage.
Critical Failure The creature takes double initial damage and double persistent bleed damage.
Heightened (+2) The void damage and poison damage each increase by 1d4, and the persistent bleed damage increases by 2.

PURGING TOXINS

UNCOMMON CONCENTRATE MANIPULATE ORACLE POISON
Targets 1 willing creature
In the right dose, a scourge can become a cure. Deal poison damage equal to the spell’s level to the target, then attempt a counteract check against one disease or poison afflicting the target. The target is then temporarily immune for 24 hours. If the target is immune to poison, this spell has no effect.
Heightened (5th) You can attempt counteract checks against
any number of poisons or diseases afflicting the target.

ACCELERATED DECOMPOSITION

UNCOMMON CONCENTRATE MANIPULATE ORACLE VOID
Targets 1 creature
Defense Fortitude
You speed the natural process of a creature’s decline and debilitation. As its body withers, the target takes 9d6 void damage and must attempt a Fortitude save.
Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target takes half damage and is your choice of clumsy 1, drained 1, or enfeebled 1 for 1 round.
Failure The target takes full damage and is clumsy 1, drained 1, and enfeebled 1 for 1 round.
Critical Failure The creature takes double damage and is clumsy 1, drained 1, and enfeebled 1 for 1 minute.
Heightened (+1) The void damage increases by 1d6.

3. Reach Spell only works on the Range entry of the spell, and not any other parameters, meaning it will only increase the range at which you can Sustain the spell (90 feet instead of 60 feet). You must still be in range of Touch for a given shield, and your range of Touch is actually your natural reach (in most cases, 5 feet), not 0 feet (unless you are a Tiny or smaller creature).

The thing is, Reach Spell is "wrong". The feat is paraphrasing the rules, which are slightly different from the actual rules (as linked in my post). The full reasoning develops as follows (& requires to read the rules).

The relevant part from Reach Spell is only:

If the next action you use is to Cast a Spell that has a range, increase that spell’s range by 30 feet.

Dancing Shield has definitely a range, thus that spell's range is increased by 30 feet.

The actual rules say about touch spells:

If an ability increases the range of a touch spell, start at 0 feet and increase from there.

Now, it says "touch spells", not "spells with a range of touch". If Dancing Shield is a touch spell, then the range of that touch should be increased from 0 ft to 30 ft according to the rules.

It is a weird interaction, but that is mostly due to Dancing Shield being weird in having both touch and range at the same time.

I'd like to know what the community thinks about three issues I have with the Dancing Shield spell:

#1: It seems to me that this spell can be used on a Fortress Shield to increase an ally's AC by +3, right?

#2: It also seems that this spell can be used on any (touched) shield, regardless if it is worn, held, or in possession of an unwilling creature even. As such it is an "automatic disarm" on a shield. Probably not RAI, but RAW, right?

#3: Where it gets wonky is when this spell is used with the Reach Spell spellshape. The rules on touch spells aren't quite clear if the spell requires a touch but has a non-touch range. The last sentence can be interpreted as "touch" basically meaning "0 ft range". As such, could Reach Spell + Dancing Shield be used to target shields 30 ft away instead of just those in touch range?

It's even funnier if you have a class archetype and the Ancient Elf heritage. Technically selecting a class archetype isn't prevented by having a dedication feat at level 1, and since you don't have the class archetype's dedication feat until level 2 you aren't prevented from being an Ancient Elf.

But what happens at level 2? The class archetype says you MUST take the dedication feat, but the multiclass dedication says you CANNOT take another archetype dedication yet.

I'd say that the class archetype rule that you must take the dedication feat is more specific than the general archetype dedication rule, and thus you can have both archetypes concurrently from level 2 on, but must still satisfy the 2 feats requirement for both archetypes before you can pick up a 3rd one.

The Divine Evolution feat gives you another max rank Heal (or Harm) per day, which is very good.

And as Kyrone said, Sorcerous Potency increases your healing by +1 per spell rank as well, stackable with a Staff of Healing too.

The Diabolic bloodline is really good, and their Diabolic Edict focus spell is basically Guidance but without the 1 hour immunity.

You might want to pick up a better bloodmagic effect to make good use of Diabolic Edict, like Propelling Sorcery at level 2, which turns this into a 1-action spell to free allies (or yourself) from grapples or have them Step around reactive-strike opponents when in a bind. Don't sleep on the power of this free spell!

Also, since you're not sanctified as a Sorcerer, you are free to cast holy and unholy spells. While most spells gain the holy/unholy trait only through sanctification, a few are out there that have the trait regardless of sanctification, like Holy Cascade, Holy Light/Chilling Darkness and Summon Celestial/Summon Fiend. Holy/unholy Clerics cannot cast unholy/holy spells, as it would be anathema for them.

The Embrace the Pit spell is a waste of a class feat imo, as it's just too situational to be useful. You have Diabolic Edict already, which is better and you can absolutely target yourself with it, in case you want a self-targeting spell for some reason.

Hellfire Plume is basically the same damage as Fireball (5th rank: 8d6+5 dmg vs 10d6 dmg), even if its shape is different and range lower.

With the new Cultivator archetype (TXCG) you could even get Holy sanctification and still follow Asmodeus, if you want to I guess.

And with your bloodline's granted spells (almost all non-divine spells) you should have some good versatility - Floating Flame is a great spell. And I guess it might not quite fit Asmodeus, but using it with Chaotic Spell is a great way to debuff enemies too.

Or summon two minions at once, using the free sustain to have 3 actions left for the second summon.

I guess I can share my current Fey Sorceress, but ignore the spell selection (it is heavily tailored to the Skulls & Shackles campaign) as well as Shore Gift & Amnesiac (GM only allowed Merfolk if they "forgot" about being Merfolk).

But what I want to highlight is similar to what I wrote in Ravendork's threat about his Fey Sorcerer: Absolutely get the Bard dedication on a Fey Sorcerer!

Hitting enemies with Faerie Dust gives them a -2 penalty to Will saves and and you a +2 status bonus to Performance, then use Versatile Performance [4th level] to Demoralize them. For one action (& 1 focus point) you just shifted the balance for a successful Demoralize by 4 points, that's equivalent to increasing a martial's weapon potency by +2 and giving his enemy the off-guard condition! And since Faerie Dust is an AoE you can try to hit 2+ enemies at once and then Demoralize the two enemies that failed.

And your bloodline's spells all target Will saves, 2nd-rank Laughing Fit and 3rd-rank Fear are absolute beasts among spells, the former against (single) enemies with strong reactions and the latter against (many) enemies. Getting this on the otherwise very blasty & healy primal spell-list is amazing.

But as the others said, 2e is a lot about teamwork, so if nobody else targets Will saves it is sometimes less useful, but feinting Swashbucklers or some draconic breath weapons (with mental damage) profit a lot here.

If you instead get other bloodmagic effects via class feats, then it's a good 1-action option as well, e.g. you can reposition an enemy or an ally with Propelling Sorcery, which is not to be underestimated either.

p.s.: At level 8 you can grab Melodious Spell from the Bard, which I really love. You can now make all your spells subtle and/or use the spellshape-action as a Demoralize-action. That's great for out-of-combat use and makes this spellshape even useful in combat if you want to Demoralize anyway.

I also don't see how these Strike examples play any role here.

Let me again post the text of Elven Verve:

effects that would impose the immobilized, paralyzed, or slowed conditions

I don't think there's any doubt about the following: After being successfully grappled, the Elf would end up with the immobilized condition, even if just as part of Grabbed/Restrained.

The question seems to be only whether a Grapple would impose the immobilized condition. So does "impose" require something to be direct in name or just in effect?

Now, I also think statements such as these are misleading:

Grapple does not inflice Immobilized, it inflicts either Grabbed or Restrained

It just replaces one word ("impose") with another similar word ("inflict") without addressing the issue itself.

Theaitetos wrote:

Finoan wrote:

The Grapple action or Grab monster ability impose the grabbed or restrained conditions. Elven Verve doesn't apply to grabbed or restrained so therefore doesn't apply to the Grapple action.

What would happen if you were to (crit) succeed on the grapple of a creature that is immune to being immobilized?

Can you give us an example of such a creature?

Sure: Tolokand

The Grapple action or Grab monster ability impose the grabbed or restrained conditions. Elven Verve doesn't apply to grabbed or restrained so therefore doesn't apply to the Grapple action.

What would happen if you were to (crit) succeed on the grapple of a creature that is immune to being immobilized?

Grapple imposes Grabbed or Restrained. Not Immobilized.

Does not work (both RAW and pretty obvious RAI).

RAW both Grabbed and Restrained impose the Immobilized condition.

And from where do you get that it is "pretty obvious RAI"? Is there a developer quote somewhere you can share with us?

While all elves are immune to the paralyzing touch of ghouls, you can shake off flesh-numbing magic of all kinds. You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to saves against effects that would impose the immobilized, paralyzed, or slowed conditions. When you would be immobilized, paralyzed, or slowed for at least 2 rounds, reduce that duration by 1 round.

Grapple imposes the Grabbed condition or the Restrained condition, both of which incorporate the Immobilized condition, upon a (crit) failed save. Wouldn't then technically Grapple & similar abilities be subject to this effect as well? Thus the DC to grapple an Elf with Elven Verve should be +1 higher than usual, right?

I've checked whether a bonus to a save only applies to you rolling the save, but according to the rules the save DC does include all modifiers from the save.

Am I mistaken or does Elven Verve really work against every effect that imposes the Immobilized condition, even if that condition is just part of another condition? Or would it only work on things like Entangling Flora which directly impose that condition?

I may make something else now.

Why not just take Nudge the Scales? You can get it at level 4 on any character with the Oracle dedication + Basic Mystery feat. It's also a useful healing ability that works on everyone, living & undead, as well as being a "focus-but-not-focus"-spell.