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So I'm running into an odd interaction between a handful of rules that I'm not entirely sure how it works. The rules in question are:

Some fan dancer abilities require you to be wielding one or more fans, which can be a fighting fan or a normal fan used as an improvised weapon.

You can Raise a Shield with your buckler as long as you have that hand free or are holding a light object that's not a weapon in that hand.

Some abilities require you to wield an item, typically a weapon. You’re wielding an item any time you’re holding it in the number of hands needed to use it effectively.

If you attack with something that wasn’t built to be a weapon, such as a chair or a vase, you’re making an attack with an improvised weapon. Improvised weapons are simple weapons.

So the crux of the question: if I have a pair of (ordinary, not-inherently-weapon) fans in each hand, and a buckler strapped to one arm... what can I do?

Can I raise my buckler, since I'm only "holding a light object that's not a weapon in that hand"? Can I use my Fan Dancer abilities, since I'm "holding [the fan] in the number of hands needed to use it effectively"?

Or do I need to choose whether I'm "holding a light object that's not a weapon" or "wielding... a normal fan used as an improvised weapon" at any given time? If so, how do you switch between the two modes?

Presumably you can switch so you're no longer wielding the object as an improvised weapon, since it doesn't seem like raising a Buckler was intended to be blocked by any light object that could (even in theory) be used as an improvised weapon. But... then that seems to go against the "Wielding Items" rule for what is required to be considered "wielding"...?

I dunno, I've gone back and forth multiple times, convincing myself one way and then the other, and I was curious to get a second opinion. Especially if there are any other rules that I've missed.

So I'm building a Swashbuckler, and looking ahead at Continuous Flair, only to find myself a bit confused. Its description says that "The circumstance bonus from Stylish Combatant applies in exploration mode."

Okay, so... what circumstance bonus is getting that boost? Well, the text from Stylish Combatant says "You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to skill checks with the bravado trait while in a combat encounter."

Okay, so which skill checks are those, that now get the bonus out of combat as well? I did a search as best I could, and this was the list I came up with of the different skill checks that have (or can get) the "bravado" trait.

Perform
Create a Diversion
Bon Mot
Demoralize
Tumble Through
Feint
Grapple
Reposition
Shove
Trip
Dirty Trick
Disarm(via Disarming Flair)
Aid(via One for All)

Of all of those, Perform (if you're a Battledancer) was the only one I could see getting ANY kind of real use outside of combat. Maaaaybe Create a Diversion, Demoralize or Bon Mot, in niche cases where you wanted a one-round debuff? But in almost all those cases, wouldn't that usually just qualify as starting combat with a surprise round? It seems like most Intimidate uses outside of combat are going to be be things like Coerce rather than Demoralize.

Am I just reading this wrong? How is this ability intended to be used? Does it expand to all uses of the larger skills that are associated with the skill checks? And if so, how would that interact with something like Versatile Performance, if obtained through a multiclass?

So, playing a Bard, about to take Craft Magic Arms and Armor next level, and so was perusing the various weapon abilities that might be able to synergize with the various buffs and debuffs I'm throwing out.

But then I came across the FAQ entry for Defending weapons which explained that "Merely holding a defending weapon is not sufficient. Unless otherwise specified, you have to use a magic item in the manner it is designed (use a weapon to make attacks, wear a shield on your arm so you can defend with it, and so on) to gain its benefits. Therefore, if you don't make an attack roll with a defending weapon on your turn, you don't gain its defensive benefit."

And while the particular example being used was for the Defending property, Defending uses the same language about what the "wielder" can do as the other properties which (up until that point) I'd assumed were just passive bonuses. (e.g. stuff like Menacing, Ominous, Courageous, etc.) So does the same "attack required" criteria for Defending apply to all of those weapon properties as well? That seems to be what the FAQ is saying.

Except, applying that across the board that seems to make the Intimidate buff part of the Ominous ability, in particular, pretty near to useless. It applies a bonus to Intimidate checks... which are (for most characters) a standard action, which means that you can't make the attack roll you need to have the Ominous ability activate in the first place.

Is this really the intended way that Ominous is supposed to work? I mean, the bonus still isn't completely useless, as long as you have a feat like Cornugon Smash which lets you make an Intimidate check on the same turn as the required attack roll... but that really seems a more niche sort of thing than I would have expected, and I wanted to make sure I'm really interpreting this right.

So I was considering the spell Sepia Snake Sigil, and a question occurred to me, one which also extends beyond just that spell into several related areas. (Areas which I'm not sure would all necessarily have the same answer.) Basically, if there is a task, spell or action that takes an extended period of time to complete, such that bonuses affecting the task can go up or down over the course of it, then how is the final DC roll at the end calculated?

For some examples, let's say we have Sammy the Sorcerer who likes to buff himself with Eagle's Splendor, giving him a +2 to his save DCs:

1) Sammy buffs himself in a quiet moment, and casts Sepia Snake Sigil on a letter he carries around in his pocket. Weeks later (when the buff isn't active) an enemy pickpockets the letter and tries to read it, triggering the spell. Is the save DC the value at the time of casting, or at the time of triggering?

2) In the middle of a pitched battle, while he's had his buff going for a while now, Sammy casts "Hold Person" on a foe and has it stick, locking the opponent in place. They keep failing the saves... but halfway through the spell's duration, his Eagle's Splendor runs out. Are the remaining saves in subsequent rounds done using the DC at the time the spell was cast, or his newly diminished DC?

3a) Later on, Sammy sees Billy the Bard start to cast Silence on an enemy spellcaster. Since it's a one round casting time, he gets a chance to take an action before the spell finishes completion, and casts his Eagle's Splendor on Billy. Assuming Billy does get the spell off, does the enemy caster save at the DC from the start of the casting, or the DC at completion?

3b) Either way, the Silence fails, so Billy tries to cast it again, this time with Eagle's Splendor from the beginning. This time it goes in the exact opposite way: he starts with the +2, but the enemy caster dispels his buff with Dispel Magic while he's casting. Does that make any difference if it's going down in mid-cast instead of up?

4) Sammy then decides he wants to get into crafting... but he hasn't been pumping Spellcraft nearly as much as he should have been. So he gets a Crafting Hat, a +2 INT headband set to give him max ranks in Spellcraft. He then puts it on, and immediate starts crafting something that takes him two weeks to complete. By the time he's done, 24 hours have long since past, and thanks to the headband he has max ranks in Spellcraft at the time he goes to make his check. Does he make the check with his current ranks at the time he makes the check, or is it affected by the fact that for one day out of the fourteen, he had a much lower skill level?

I don't know if there's a single, official method of resolving such situations listed anywhere, but if there is, I couldn't find it. Some of these I do have a gut feel about (the Sigil, at the very least, seems like it should use the higher DC given that it was completely cast) but I'm not entirely sure, and some of the others seem even less clear, so I figured I'd ask to see if there was some official RAW somewhere that I'd missed.

So, my character is a shrimp, who is almost always operating under medium encumbrance. Not ideal, of course, but I'd weighed the tradeoffs, the pros and the cons, and made my peace with it, figuring what I could contribute to the party with the character built this way outweighed (no pun intended) the cost of the encumbrance penalties, given the sort of role he tries to play, both in-combat and out of it, and the style of the campaign.

But lately I've been doubting my original reading of one particular line in the rules, which is making me worried that I've been playing him completely wrong thus far: "A medium or heavy load counts as medium or heavy armor for the purpose of abilities or skills that are restricted by armor."

Until recently, I'd just assumed that line to be saying that the load counted as the corresponding type of armor for abilities and skills that were already stated as being affected by armor, normally. (DEX and STR based skills, monk abilities, etc.) But I realized you could also read that line as saying that it counts as that type of armor for the purpose of determining which skills or abilities are restricted by armor. And for someone who doesn't have medium armor proficiency, that significantly expands the list of skills and abilities affected (attack rolls, and all skills that involve movement).

On the other hand... if it were being completely treated as armor in every ability that armor limits, one would also expect spells with arcane failure to be one of those abilities. Which it doesn't seem to be, given that there's no specific arcane failure chance given for a medium encumbrance (that I've been able to find).

And would attacking really count as an "ability or skill" in that sense?

I dunno, it's kinda turning my brain into knots figuring out just exactly how far that line is supposed to apply. Couldn't find much that's specific on the subject, but I just want to try and make sure that I'm not giving myself an improper leg-up as I'm playing my character.

So in short, is there a difference between a medium-encumbered character with medium armor proficiency, and one without? Does the later have the encumbrance penalty applied to their attack? Does the latter have the encumbrance applied to any skill check involving movement, even beyond the DEX and STR skills that are listed as already having an armor check penalty?

So as I read the RAW in the "Magic" section of the Core ruleset, there are three ways that a wizard can learn new spells: "Spells Gained at a New Level", "Spells Copied from Another's Spellbook or a Scroll", and "Independent Research".

Now, my gaming group is starting a Pathfinder campaign (our first!) and I'm playing a Bard while one of my friends is playing a Wizard. And I expect that there could easily be instances where I take spells at level-up that he hasn't happened to get ahold of yet. Of course, since Wizards can learn arbitrarily many spells, I figure that in many cases it might make sense to pass on as many of such spells as I could to him as well (if he were interested, and they were in both of our spell lists) so that he could prepare them himself should the need ever arise.

My question is, how would this work according to the rules?

The pure-RAW way I could see would be for the two of us to scribe a scroll with that spell (under the collaborative item creation rules, with him providing the Scribe Scroll feat and me providing the "knowledge of the spell" requirement) and then he could turn right around and learn the spell from said scroll via Official Spell-learning Option #2. But that just seems... a bit silly to me, honestly, not to mention somewhat costly and convoluted. If the two of us are able to collaborate on writing the spell into a scroll, then realistically (a very different beast from RAW, I know) I would expect we could just collaborate on writing it straight into his spellbook to begin with. In effect, it would be me just teaching him the spell directly.

My question is, does RAW account for this kind of direct magical instruction anywhere, and I've just completely missed it? Or are Wizards just limited to those three methods of spell acquisition described in their section on learning new spells, and we would, in fact, need to use scrolls as an intermediary for any knowledge transfer we decided we wanted to do?