eltrai's page

Hi,

I’m wondering what is supposed to happen when you cast mind swap and one of the bodies dies.
I’ve always interpreted the spell as perfectly symmetrical (per the "As if you each has cast possession on the other"). I think this mean that the spells ends whenever one of the bodies die and that the original soul it hosted is dead.

However, I guess it could also mean that temporarily the two souls share the same host, neither being dead (until the end of the spell). Who is in control then ?

Btw, this is highly relevant to the psychic bloodline capstone (true thought form), which performs mind swap when you die. I wonder why they used this spell and not possession directly, though. Or maybe they meant major mind swap, which would be more in line to the description but suffers from the target requirement (unless it doesn’t apply).

Any thoughts? I’m interested in RAI as well as RAW.

Hi,

Could you please cancel my campaign setting and companion subscriptions (after November's shipment). I'm in need of a bit of a pause here.

Thanks for all you great work nonetheless.

Sincerely,

Dear support,

Could you please cancel my Pathfinder AP and my Pathfinder Battles subscriptions?

Best regards,

Hi folks,

Currently, it is not possible to start a subscription for pathfinder battle, as there is no option of which set to start by. Apparently, I’m not the only one having seen this issue, but it’s been a few days and this situation has perdured.

Is something going on?

"Reduce by a total of 3" is the wording. I think it is pretty clear that it is meaning that you spend a full round, then a move, then Blast. Either way nothing about that changes the fact that you can effect A Blast, not ALL Blasts.

Nobody said you could effect all blasts.

But since nothing in the "if you gathered last round" sentence that Chess Pwn highlighted says that it is instead of the benefit for just one round of gathering, you could first take it (on A blast) then apply the sentence and gain it's benefit on another blast. (still, not all blast, just 2).

Now that is probably not the intention but, alas, that is what the wording they used implies.

Hi,

I've been reading the kineticist gather power class ability and it occured to me that the wording is not very clear on something.

Gather Power (Su): If she has both hands free (or all of her prehensile appendages free, for unusual kineticists), a kineticist can gather energy or elemental matter as a move action. Gathering power creates an extremely loud, visible display in a 20-foot radius centered on the kineticist, as the energy or matter swirls around her. Gathering power in this way allows the kineticist to reduce the total burn cost of a blast wild talent she uses in the same round by 1 point. The kineticist can instead gather power for 1 full round in order to reduce the total burn cost of a blast wild talent used on her next turn by 2 points (to a minimum of 0 points). If she does so, she can also gather power as a move action during her next turn to reduce the burn cost by a total of 3 points. If the kineticist takes damage during or after gathering power and before using the kinetic blast that releases it, she must succeed at a concentration check (DC = 10 + damage taken + effective spell level of her kinetic blast) or lose the energy in a wild surge that forces her to accept a number of points of burn equal to the number of points by which her gathered power would have reduced the burn cost. This ability can never reduce the burn cost of a wild talent below 0 points.

It seems clear that the intend is that by gathering power for a full turn, you either benefit from a -2 or a -3 on your next round, depending on whether you also sacrifice a move action.

However, the way this is worded, I think you could argue that you can in fact benefit from both, on different kinetic blasts. This would naturally require to quicken one of those, which is possible. Say for instance : 1/ gather power for a full turn, 2/ use a blast wild talent for -2 burn, 3/ gather power as a move action, 4/ use a quickened blast wilt talent for -3 burn (=0 with the quicken cost).

I'm aware that no sane GM would allow this, but is there anything RAW that forbids it?

Hi folks,

I've updated my address for my subscriptions. Could you please ship this order to the new address? The previous one will not work.

Thanks!

Since the real RAW-approved way seem to be very costly and this is a very thematic choice for a kineticist, I think the most reasonable thing to do is to work with your GM.

Not too sure why they didn't include it officially. Maybe it should require to sacrifice something (I'm thinking 1 point of burn), for balance.

The new FAQ gimps Magi quite a bit, since it used to be common practice to cast a multi-touch spell such as Frostbite or Calcific Touch on one round and deliver it multiple times during full attacks on subsequent rounds.

Now you can only deliver it once a round, as a Standard Action, beyond the initial free touch.

Which FAQ? I only see a FAQ allowing exactly what you said used to be common practice on Ultimate Magic FAQ

To be clarified, you may then use a Full-round Attack or Standard action to deliver the touch through the weapon on subsequent rounds, as per the rules on Holding a Touch Spell. So you could,

Turn 1: Cast Shocking Grasp.
Turn Two: Start Spell Combat (DO NOT CAST SECOND SPELL YET), attack with the first spells effects, cast second spell, do the second attack, take remaining attacks from spells/iteratives

Hum, you can hold the charge so that it delivers on your first successful attack next round, but not cast the second spell in the middle of your iteratives.

Specifically, spell combat states:

A magus can choose to cast the spell first or make the weapon attacks first, but if he has more than one attack, he cannot cast the spell between weapon attacks.

However, you could:

FAQ wrote:

...the extra damage from Point Blank Shot only applies to the target of a direct hit with a splash weapon (including direct hits from an alchemist's bomb).

The word ONLY is important here, because that means Point Blank doesn't apply to splash damage whatsoever, double-dip or otherwise.

It even mentions Alchemist Bombs as being an inclusion to this rule, so stating that Alchemist Bombs have special rules that circumvent this sort of thing won't help. Which further means any aspect of adding Point Blank Shot damage to your Splash Damage calculation is incorrect by the FAQ.

Technically, with your reading of the FAQ, it directly modifies the calculation of the bomb's damage (not taking into account bonuses from other sources than the bomb itself), and should have been an errata (or at least state it would be reflected in the next errata as they usually do).

I still think you are correct (it really makes no sense for PBS to add damage to the splash of the bomb), but it could be clearer.

Thanks for the answers, Fen !

A few thoughts:

2) No more of a trace than normal walking which could still be tracked by someone using the survival skill.

The spell has a provision for collapsing loose material, so shouldn't it at least disturb things a bit more than footprints?

5b) No. There are feats that allow for combing burrowing or earth glide with attack actions.

Oh, I didn't know that. Which ones?

eltrai wrote:

Conceptually, I'm all for trying to address the special material pricing, which makes no sense.

Yeah, no. They are not priced "Conceptually", they are priced for balance, supposedly.

Then, I don't see what is stopping them from reducing mithral base price to be more consistent.

Also, given the number of mithral armors I see around players (myself included), I'd say it could be more expensive and still good.

Hi everyone,

So, I'm trying to understand how burrowing is supposed to work, and there are a few things that are not clear to me.

Assume either:
A) You are the subject of a Burrow spell (Ultimate magic)
B) You have a natural burrow speed (ex: purple worm)
C) You have a natural burrow speed with the earth glide ability (ex: earth elemental)

Now, in those 3 situations what are the answers to:
1) Is the burrowing noisy?
2) Does it leave traces? Ie could someone, later, tell if some burrowing occurred?
3) What happens with wood/roots? Are they impeding your movement in any way?
4) Can you stay inside the earth without moving?
5) Can you attack/cast a spell while partially or totally inside the earth?

Conceptually, I'm all for trying to address the special material pricing, which makes no sense.

Consider a Large mithral breastplate.
With the new ruling, it's worth (150+4000)*2 = 8300gp
With the old ruling, it was 150*2+4000 = 4300gp
If you melt it down to a huge pile of mithral, it's worth 30*2*500= 30000gp

No matter what, something is wrong here. I would be fine with it being worth less when melt down, but not (way) more... Especially given the rules are very affirmative on the fact that it is no plating.

So, this FAQ solves nothing, and has a bunch of issues, most notably the fact that it invalidates many, many printed material.

Honestly, this needs a PF 2.0, you can't reliably address it with FAQ, unless you are prepared to errata almost everything.

Hi everyone,

In a few days my group is going to attempt the stage fight with Helskarg.
I like the fact that vehicule combat is a thing as it has the potential to mess up a bit with the usual combat strategies. I love the image of the very mobile opponent (but with poor manoeuvrability) that is taking periodic shots with his grappel when not overrunning people.

However, after looking into the Vehicules's combat rules, I have the following issues:

1) The ogres are intelligent creatures, and so they increase the driving DC, making it a 40 in combat, so Helskarg cannot actually use the charriot.

2) Even ignoring point 1 (maybe by saying as the ogres are accustomed to this task), it's a DC20 check, with a +10 bonus. This means Helskarg succeeds half of the time. If so, he can make the charriot accelerate 15ft. Otherwise, being muscle-powered, it descelerate 15ft. Hence it seems the charriot will not move a lot...

3) The overrun suggested action simply does not work on medium PC, since the vehicule is only large and Helskarg does not have improved overrun. The character can simply choose to "let the charriot pass", no dice rolled and everything is fine.

4) I'm not sure how the autograpnel is supposed to work. It is a +16 CMB manoeuver, but what happens if it succeeds? Is the creature pulled the whole way? 20ft? less to account for the weight (this woud make it very useless)? Also, this is not very consistent with the max 100lb for objects.

Looking for advices on how other people ran this encounter.

Funny how we can read the same text and reach slightly different conclusions.

For a Magus the obvious choice would be an elf. This means the stats for the characters are probably going to be about the same. CHA is the dump stat of the magus, so the android ends up with dangerously low CHA, but the CON penalty hurts the elf. I would say at this point they are about even.

Not sure how you say this is even. You gain 1 hp per level and +1 fortitude in one cas. You're never going to be great a charisma skills, so the -2 has no effect, except in case of charisma damage/drain, which is not that common (and then, 2 points is not going to make a lot of difference).

Making your save by +4 is no different than just making it. At this point the androids other immunities are giving him a slight advantage.

I don't know in what kind of game you have been playing, but +4 always means 20% more dice faces where you save. The only exception would be if your save is already going to pass in all cases except on a 1, which is not likely to happen here since even though will is a fast save, the magus is not wisdom-based.

You are correct, however, in the fact that the immunities have less value when you are already going to make your save in most cases.

The elf swaps out elven weapon familiarity for arcane focus. Getting the +2 on concentration checks is a definite advantage to a character that is going to be casting spells in melee. The elf also gets elven magic for a +2 bonus to overcome spell resistance, which will stack with spell penetration. Both of these abilities are always on and directly affect the primary function of the magus.

Those are indeed good.

The elf uses his favored class bonus to get extra arcana. By 12th level the elf has 2 additional arcana over the android. This is the equivalent to getting 2 extra feats. Since the elf’s bonus to vs spell resistance is the same as if he took the feat spell penetration the elf is actually up the equivalent of 3 feats.

The FCB is crazy-good, though to be fair it's worth 1 feats (by level 12) as you have to compensate for the HP (~Toughness).

The android also takes a -4 on sense motive and has a lower CHA which put him at a severe disadvantage in most social circumstances.

Doesn't really change anything. You are already not a great talker, and -1 or not isn't going to change that. The sense motive issue is fun and not very threatening as long as you are not alone.

The elf also takes the elf only archetype of spell dancer. This means that he no longer gets medium and heavy armor...

This archetype is good, especially the insight bonus to AC. However, you lose one feat at level 5. Also, remember the bonus vs AoO & speed is at the cost of +n increase on the weapon's enchantment, I'm not sure that's worth it (let's say it's about even).

Trying to put everything on a common scale, I'm going to try counting out of feat equivalence (even though you can't actually take those to compensate)

-2 Con is worth -1,5 feat (toughness, 1/2 Fortitude)
Let's say darkvision is worth -1 feats (aspect of the beast, though it's weaker and hard to get)
+2 Concentration is worth +0,5 feat (combat casting)
+2 vs spell resistance is worth +1 feat (spell penetration)
FCB: 2 feat by level 12, -1 to compensate for the extra hp lost, total 1 feat
Spell dancer: -1 feat (level 5), but crazy bonus to AC (let's call it 2 feats given the loss of armor proficiency), so in the end: +1 feat
Will save: -1 to -2 feats (enchantment is not everything, but mind-affecting + emotion roughly is)
Total : 0 feat.

So I'd say the races are roughly even. I did not count some of the Android's immunities (paralysis, poison) and emotion only as a +4, but the FCB and armor advantage is going to get better with time. Seems like it is achieving the same level of power, though without having to look so much into how to opimize, which is maybe why I got the impression it was way too strong. Or the magus is not the right metric to compare, but that's what was chosen anyway.

Being immune to emotions and fear is counting the same thing twice because fear is an emotion. Being immune to exhausted and fatigued is also really the same thing as well since the exhausted condition is really just a worse form of fatigued. Immune to sleep and disease is not really that powerful. Getting a +4 save on mind affecting spells is not as powerful as it sounds since androids are already immune to emotions and fear. The bonus to paralysis is good, but it really does not come up that much. Poison is actually fairly weak so again it is not really over powering. Androids give the impression that they have more defenses than they do because a lot of their defenses are redundant or overlapping.

I'm at a loss understanding how being immune to emotion can be both not a big deal and enough to make the +4 mind affecting less relevant. IMO, this covers most of the will save, widely considered as the most critical one.

That brings me to my next point. The core races have a lot more material and option than any other race. They can for the most part swap out most of their racial abilities for something else. [...] All the core races have alternative favored class bonuses for every class. Some of them are incredibly powerful. Humans for example can usually get extra spells know for spontaneous casters.

There is no need to swap anything, all android's abilities are generic enough that they are never irrelevant, regardless of the build.

Instead of focusing on all the stuff the android gets look at how powerful the character really is. Take any class you want and build it with an android and I can build a...

Fine. Can you build a better magus using core races ? (That's the character's class)

I don’t think androids are really all that powerful. While they have immunity to a lot of stuff they also cannot benefit from a morale bonus. Considering how many spells and class abilities provide moral bonuses that is a huge drawback. They are also vulnerable to anything that affects either constructs or humanoids.

Not benefiting from morale bonus is another of those drawbacks that gives the impression that it'll have an effect but actually doesn't, as you can build around it. At the moment, the party has a medium, that most often acts as a bard, except his bonuses are not morale.

When I look at Androids, I see an immunity to a bunch of things that rarely come up anyway. We've never had more than one character with a disease at a time... the DCs are low enough that most people save. Fatigue and exhaustion can be detrimental, but we work so hard to avoid that condition that we've never really SUFFERED from it. Unless we have a paladin or spell to remove it..

Yes, exhaustion and disease do not appear very often (and sleep never). However, everyone seems to be forgetting the immunity to fear and emotion effects. This does come up a lot, and makes a big difference. Also, +4 mind-affecting is no small thing.

@Cyrad: I don't want to remove anything from the character as it is my fault trusting too much the game/AP balancing. The player chose a legit option suggested to him.

@Sandal Fury: A bonus feat from a limited list seems a good idea. I'll probably not give 2 (and 1 to the android), though, as the party is already overpowering the AP quite a bit (which is not as much of an issue as in-party balance imo)

Hi all,

I'm currently running an Iron gods campaign, where one of the player is an Android (the others are an halfling, an half-orc and a catfolk). This is actually suggested in the AP, with no mention of GM oversight, so I didn't spare too much thought on it at character creation.

However, having played a few games and looking a bit more into the race, I feel there is a significant gap in terms of racial powers. Android is priced at 16RP which is already a lot more than any core race, and this seems even way too cheap to me considering the constructed trait (which gives tons of immunities for a mere 10RP).

Given that, I'm considering giving some sort of boon (a feat ?) to the less-favored characters. I don't want to punish the player that choose an AP-sanctioned and flavorful race, but I'd like the party to be somewhat balanced.

What do you think would be reasonable ?

The limitation is all the way back in the spirit ability "By channeling a spirit, the medium allows the spirit to gain 1 influence over him." So you can safely do it twice per legend per day with no influence penalties, and theoretically up to 4 times per legend per day without losing control. But yes, you can definitely use it to get different feats each time.

This makes a lot of sense. I somehow always thought of it as "You start the day with 1 point of influence", but indeed this applies to.

Seems much more reasonable now :-)

Thanks!

Hi,

I've been looking at the Medium and the wording of Astral Beacon puzzles me.

Astral Beacon (Su): At 20th level, a medium is an open connection to the Astral Plane and a shining beacon for spirits. As a free action, he can channel spirits of any of the five legends he did not contact via his seance. This ability lasts for 1 round and grants access to the intermediate, greater, and supreme spirit powers of the chosen spirits.

Unlike trance of three, astral beacon allows spirits of the chosen legends (for instance, archmage) to gain influence over the medium until 24 hours from when the medium contacted his primary spirit. Also unlike trance of three, if the medium would incur influence by using one of the new spirits’ abilities, that influence is added to the medium’s total influence from that spirit rather than from his primary spirit.

Now, from the wording, I get:

Hence, it seems to me that this is a awkward way of saying that you always have the intermediate, greater and supreme spirit power of all spirits.
Is this really what is intended? This seems very powerful compared to all other capstones that I've seen. Did some intended limitation (usage per day maybe) somehow not made it to print? Or am I misunderstanding something?

And then the thread is discreetly moved to an hidden corner of the messageboard.

I'm not too sure that is an appropriate answer... This definitely is not really a "website" issue.

There are a number of factors which go into whether we get an answer on something, and number of FAQ clicks is only one of them. (Others include but are not limited to: Is it an easy answer? Does it actually require errata? Do we need to write a whole blog post? What else does this break? Has the collective wisdom of the message boards sufficiently answered this? Has Jason had enough Scotch to tackle this question?)

I agree that not everything is simple to answer and that some complex things with a broad scope may require time to consider everything.

But I'd like that whenever the answer is "easy" or if "the collective wisdom has sufficiently answered this", we get a response. Even they don't want to escalate to an official faq, a simple "this answer is the correct one", would do a lot in having a streamlined experience.

Further, I note the OP said (I paraphrase) "multiple threads with 20 FAQ clicks", which doesn't help - those are all separate FAQs and they don't get amalgamated, if one question has 5 threads each with 20 clicks, it's not as high up the count queue as a single thread with 21. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a minimum click threshold before it starts dropping alerts to PDT. And if there is, no, we're never going to be told what it is, and we shouldn't want to know because we shouldn't figure out how to game the system.

I agree having multiple FAQed threads is not optimal for the purpose of getting an answer, but that is the way it happens. My guess is that a first thread was started, got some momentum, then faded away with no answer. Then another was created (either because the author did not see the previous one or felt it was too old to have any chance at attracting attention), and the same happens.

Also, I'd like to quote the official topic on the FAQ System :

Every message that gets flagged in this way will be brought to our attention (although those with more flags will rise higher on the list).

Which means that, officially, there should be no threshold for consideration, even though it does seem that in practice if you don't have 40+ votes you have no chance of getting an answer.

Hey everyone,

So, I was wondering what is going on with the FAQ system.

I may be a bit candid, but my understanding was that pathfinder was supposed to be a very consistent RPG, in such a way that there was as little ambiguity in the rules on whether anything was allowed or not. I take the existence of PFS as a strong commitment that this should be the case, since you can't have an understanding with the GM beforehand.

Of course, everything can't be taken account of beforehand, so we have this FAQing system that is supposed to disambiguate anything still unclear once it's reported back to Paizo.

However, in my experience, it seems that anytime I start looking into things, wondering if something is ok or not, what I can find is multiple threads from years ago, with people asking the same question and average of 20 FAQ requests. But official answer (or even unofficial dev answer) is very scarce.

In practice this means that, as a GM, I've to do more balancing work to determine if it's ok or not. As a PFS player, I can't have nice things because I can't reliably determine what is allowed.

I understand that devoting some time on promoting quality has maybe less of a return in sales for Paizo than creating new stuff. But would it really be that much of a struggle to have someone working full-time on answering issues?

What is going on? Was I mistaken in hoping for more than "We'll answer only the most problematic things and let other issues rot"?

Am I the only one feeling it's hurting the game to have so many rules questions ignored?

I would warrant, that when it was published in 2011 in a splat book, it was intended to work with the just the feat, however that was almost 3 years before the publication of the ACG and the swashbuckler class. The ACG was an admittedly poorly edited book. It took another 3 years for this to be raised as an issue, so as far as ambiguous wording it's not been the biggest issue. And that's probably been because most people assumed the majority opinion from this thread that it should work. That being said it low on the FAQ totem pole.

While I do agree that it seems of minor consequence, I take the existence of PFS as a strong commitment by Paizo to make sure that Pathfinder is as unambiguous as possible.

Unfortunately, it does seem that unless you get many "FAQ" clicks on a post, you have no chance to get any kind of official answers. This is not the way FAQing is supposed to work (the official post explicitly says that you'll be considered no matter the number of FAQ requests), but it does seem to be that way.

Bump, as I'd like a RAW/official answer.

Btw, the folks at Hero Lab don't allow it.

I'm sorry, it seems our interpretations differ. I would say that the benefits of weapon finesse are distinct from the feat itself. After all, the benefit (allowing attacks to use some other attribute) is a somewhat common feature of different abilities.

Perhaps paizo's devs could weigh in?

since it would eat up an infusion slot (of which I had too many)

If that doesn't work out, maybe you could get your GM to approve replacing one of those useless infusion slots by an utility talent of the same level (that's what I did in your situation). Going air, there is not shortage of very good low-level utility talents.

I do think Spell Immunity is only supposed to protect you from specific spells, and just allows you to additionally be immune to any spell-like abilities that happen to replicate that specific spell, so it does not work against spell-like abilities that don't replicate spells.

RAW, it's clear it's not going to work as kinetic blast is not a spell and thus cannot be made the target of spell immunity.

Also, even ignoring that, as a GM I would tread very carefully in allowing spell immunity to work against kinetic blast. This spell is meant to block a single spell from working, but kinetic blast is much more essential to the class than any single spell.

If you give a way to block it, it will likely mean said kineticist has very little to do in combat, which can be very frustrating.

HH, I quoted the text. I emphasized it for further discussion. Since this is a rules question, I emphasized a rule. Your version is an interpretation that might be valid or not, more under RAI than RAW. Nowhere in the spell text does it comment that it only works on SLAs that specifically duplicate spells. There are other SLAs that do not specifically duplicate spells (look at domains and bloodlines to find examples). So to me, the question still stands as: If kinetic blast is affected by SR, then spell immunity can stop it, if not, it works. Note however the existing FAQ regarding the effective spell level of SLAs that do not duplicate known spells.

From a strictly RAW point of view, the text you quoted starts by

The warded creature is immune to the effects of one specified spell for every four levels you have.

However, kinetic blast is not a spell, so you cannot specify it with spell immunity. If you were able to specify it, I agree it would work since it's a SLA and those are called for.

Effectively, this rules out spell immunity against SLA that do not duplicate spells.

The word "usually" negates any impact this sentence could have on actual rules.

I'd say you can choose your current identity to be whichever you want, and that in most cases it would make more sense to have your vigilante identity be the one used with most of your other classes' talents. RAI, most class abilities would make you stand out from the usual "polite society member" and require disguise check in social identity, though RAW nothing is said about anything other than vigilante talents.

Btw, assuming you were planning to multiclass at level 2 anyway, nothing is stopping you from playing the whole level 1 with warpriest as your level 1 class, and switch them before receiving your first chronicle as a level 2 (ie, vigilante then warpriest).

I'd say no - you don't have the actual feat. You gain the benefits (i.e. the effects section), but that does not include counting as having the feat (otherwise, the prereq line would be redundant).

The prereq line is not redundant, no matter what, since you only get the benefit with some weapons, which is clearly by itself not enough for a feat prerequisite (which is necessarily unrestricted).

I however agree that it is unclear whether "the benefit of" implies only the actual effect or also counting as prerequisite in such a situation. RAI, I think it is meant to. RAW, I would like a clarification.

I'm wondering whether a swashbuckler with swashbuckler's finesse can benefit from an Agile weapon.

Indeed, the Agile weapons states (emphasis mine):

Agile: A character with Weapon Finesse can apply her Dexterity modifier to damage rolls with an agile weapon in place of her Strength modifier. This modifier to damage is not increased for two -handed weapons, but is still reduced for off-hand weapons. This weapon special ability can be placed only on melee weapons usable with Weapon Finesse.

While the swashbuckler finesse class ability states (emphasis mine):

Swashbuckler Finesse (Ex): At 1st level, a swashbuckler gains the benefit of the Weapon Finesse feat with light or one-handed piercing melee weapon, and she can use her Charisma score in place of her Intelligence score as a prerequisite for combat feats. This ability counts as having the Weapon Finesse feat for purpose of meeting feat prerequisites.

It was recently pointed-out to me that, RAW, it is unclear whether "gaining the benefit of Weapon Finesse with this weapon" would be enough to be considered "with Weapon Finesse" for the Agile ability.

I know how I would rule in a home game, but I'm interested in RAW/PFS answers.

Yes. This is exploited heavily in the now relatively famous Songbird of Doom line of builds.

Do you have any source for this clarification, RAW-wise? I couldn't find anything.

The kata master monk archetype has a class features called Panache, which does (emphasis mine):

Panache: At 1st level, a kata master gains the swashbuckler's panache class feature. At the start of each day, a kata master gains a number of panache points equal to his Charisma bonus (minimum 1). His panache goes up or down throughout the day, but usually cannot exceed his Charisma bonus (minimum 1). A kata master gains the swashbuckler's derring-do and dodging panache deeds. A kata master can use an unarmed strike or a monk special weapon in place of a light or one-handed piercing melee weapon for the purpose of {granted} swashbuckler class features and deeds. This ability replaces stunning fist.

To make it more confusing, the word {granted} is present in Advanced class guide book (at least the 1st printing), but not on the PRD.

Can a kata-master/swashbuckler multiclassed character treat his unarmed strike as a piercing one-handed melee weapon for swashbuckler class features not specifically granted by kata master (for instance, swashbuckler's finesse) ?

If no, can it at least do it with other kata master class features than panache ?

Why do you rate Greater Shift Earth green ?

As I See it, this is a very weak upgrade from the prereq. It does nothing more, and only multiplies the speed you work with by at most 18 (and more likely much less if your desired shape is not a 10-ft deep big square), which I don't see as a factor. You don't really need that often to shape a place quickly.

Also, RAW it doesn't work on unworked stone, which is a huge limitation.

PS : In the air section, you removed the "Engulfing wind" title, there is only the description there.