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If you sunder a splash weapon, it doesn't RAW deal splash damage. So whether it breaks or not when you drop it, it should be assumed that it wouldn't deal splash damage to adjacent squares because you didn't use the standard action to make an attack roll with it.

GM rules all, whether the rules say you can or not.

I'm wary of saying that "Ain't no rule" is a justification of oversized shields, because as far as I can tell they are treated as armour except in the cases of making attacks with them.

And I'm definitely in agreement on that part. Not having a rule about it doesn't really lend credence to the idea one way or another, it simply means that we don't have anything to base our opinions and house rulings on other than abstractions and drawing parallels.

However, using oversized weapons is very much a factual thing in the rules so without a doubt you could use an oversized shield as a two handed weapon to bash with. Whether or not it would provide an AC bonus when it's not appropriately sized for you is what's up in the air right now...

Also:

Btw. a large heavy shield has the same size and weight as a medium tower shield. With a tower shield you cannot shield bash by RAW.

Actually a medium tower shield (made of wood, as per the description on the item) is over FOUR times as heavy as a medium heavy wooden shield, or over TWICE as heavy as a large heavy wooden shield (not to mention 1.5x as heavy as a large heavy steel shield). At 45 lbs and made of wood a medium tower shield is closest to a huge heavy wooden shield (at 50 lbs) or a gargantuan light wooden shield (at 40 lbs).

Which is pretty much irrelevant anyway, considering that they are not the same item at all. Arguing that you can't make a bash with an oversized heavy shield because it's roughly the same dimensions as a tower shield is like arguing that you can make a bash with an oversized buckler because it's roughly the same dimensions as a heavy shield.

That's cool and all for a house rule, but the description of the item specifically says which types of shields can be used to make bash attacks and which cannot. You technically CAN still attack with a tower shield, but because it cannot be used to bash you're making an improvised weapon attack by slamming them with a door that you strapped onto your arm.

As it stands we're all trying to think this out and find rules that actually apply to this or approximations of other rules that would conceivably cover it. You are just shouting "no" over and over again and saying "because the rules don't specifically say that you can"... which is the same argument as "there's nothing specifically in the rules that says I can't do this".

And that's a terrible argument to make.

And a scizore (sp?) is a weapon that gives a shield bonus. It's not specifically a shield so you can't use shield related feats with it, but because it gives a shield bonus there's nothing specifically that says you can't put an enhancement bonus on the shield AC part.

It honestly doesn't matter whether or not the shield is considered a weapon or armor, because it functions as both and can be treated as both.

It is considered a weapon for all applicable purposes when you are making as bash attack with it. It is considered a shield at all other times (I'm not going to say considered an armor, since armor and shields are different things).

There are easily applied rules for size adjustments on weapons (such as the shield is treated as when making a bash attack).

The only place I can find that mentions size rules on armor is under full-plate which says it needs to be individually fitted to the owner (even if the previous owner is medium size and the new owner is medium size). Shields also do not use exactly the same rules as armor, so that's twice the amount of not rules there are.

So even assuming that a shield cannot be used to provide a shield bonus if it is not sized to the user, it would still function perfectly fine as a weapon.

If there are no rules for it, saying "you can't do it" doesn't fall under the rules. There is not a rule against or supporting it so technically you can do it. RAW.

A shield bash is a martial weapon attack. Therefore a shield is a martial weapon if it is used for bashing. RAW.

I have been wondering about a related situation:

Can a monk Deflect a ranged touch attack such as alchemist's fire or acid? If so, what happens to the item? Where does it land to determine splash damage?

Technically the effect of Deflect Arrows specifically states that once per round you can deflect a ranged attack that would have hit you so that you take no damage from it. The FAQ states that this is not counted as a miss (the attack still hits you), you just take no damage.

Since splash damage is only adjacent to the squares in which the splash weapon lands, you would not take any splash damage from the attack that hit you but dealt no damage.

I actually had a character using Missile Shield (does the same thing as deflect arrows, but with a shield) and was surrounded once, so I told our alchemist to throw a bomb at me.

Well if you really want to be silly about it...

A blinkback belt makes a thrown weapon teleport instantly back to you (on the belt) so that it can be drawn and used again (assuming you have quickdraw).

The quickdraw feat allows you to don a quickdraw shield as a free action.

+50g cost modification to a shield makes it into a throwing shield, which allows you to throw it as a free action.

Free action + Free action + Free action = MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUD AMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMU DAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAM UDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA until you feel like stopping.

If you get knocked unconscious with a backpack full of alchemist fire, do you burst into a towering inferno?

Everything is cleaner if they only shatter on an attack roll because they're being thrown with enough force to break them.

Well, here's the thing about that.

As a Kasatha with multiweapon fighting you get 3 offhand attacks, and with a 6/1 BAB and rapid shot you get 3 iterative attacks with your main hand. Using multiweapon fighting and rapid shot would give you two -2 penalties to your attack roll.

Multishot, as far as I can find, is not a thing. If you're talking about Manyshot that specifically requires a bow and soul bolts are neither specifically a bow nor are they even the same type of ranged weapon (they are thrown, rather than fired).

So anyway. About the soul bolt. It does specifically say that you don't need an action to reform it after it is thrown, and that this allows you to use feats such as rapid shot with it. Using the small form does specifically say that you don't need an extra hand for it, so you're good on that.

But two-weapon (or multiweapon) fighting actually requires you to have more than one weapon. Just like you can't make 2 main hand attacks with a dagger and then pass it to your off hand as a free action to make 2 more, you can't make 3 iterative attacks with a thrown soul knife and then make attacks with the soul knife with each of your off hands. You actually need a separate weapon for each hand. The soul bolt ability does not specifically say that you can form more than one bolt at a time but it does specify that it is locked into one form once you create it and it takes a full-round action to change it to another form so you should assume that you're not intended to have multiple of them at once.

So (barring this multishot feat that I can't find) your +6/+1 BAB, four arms, multiweapon fighting, and rapid shot feats would entitle you to +2/+2/-3 with your main hand using the soul bolt, and +2 with each of your 3 off hands using a different weapon. So six attacks, if you're using all four arms to throw weapons.

Since you specified 3 weapons, that would be 3 attacks with the main hand and 2 attacks with other hands for a total of 5 attacks.

Remember that if you have cover of any type you cannot be targeted by attacks of opportunity.

What I meant, is I have seen GMs rule that a monk polymorphed into a bear, didn't know how to flurry effectively with a bear body, as their limbs are connected differently. He did allow the monk to flurry while an elemental though, so as I said, its kind of up to GM which EX or SU abilities work and how.

The problem with this logic is that it only applies to using natural attacks as a part of the flurry (which you can take that feat for). Assuming you're still using unarmed strikes when polymorphed into a bear (you're probably a size category larger now too so your strikes probably deal more damage than bear claws regardless of level) you should be able to flurry perfectly fine.

Why? Because you're considered proficient in all the natural attacks that your new form has, which infers that as a part of being polymorphed you are 'comfortable' in your new form, and there would be no reason that having a different bone structure would prevent you from using flurry.

I had a monk once that got bitten by a were-bear. Were-monks are dumb.

I could have sworn the rules were rather punishing for trying to use oversized weapons, even if you had the right feats or if you were, say, a halfling two-handing a human-sized longsword.

According to the rules on it, you take a cumulative -2 penalty for each size category adjustment (so going from a light weapon designed for huge creatures to a two-handed weapon designed for medium creatures is 2 adjustments, or a -4 penalty).

Bob Bob Bob wrote:

Don't forget Shield Trained so now your Heavy Shield counts a light weapon and you can use a Huge Heavy Shield as a 2-handed weapon (with a -4 penalty, but still).

That would actually be bad for him, as a light weapon, he would receive less strength bonus or power attack bonus.

It would... if it were actually a light weapon.

But because it counts as a light weapon that means a huge heavy shield is a light weapon for a huge creature, or a one-handed weapon for a large creature, or a two-handed weapon for a medium creature.

It bumps him up to +6 size categories worth of damage (albeit at a -4 attack penalty).

Assuming he's still an Enlarged person, double the size of that huge heavy shield to 12 feet x 12 feet and using the table for size modifiers it now goes up to 15 lbs (for a steel shield) x8 = 120 lbs. Damage is now 2 tiers above 3d6 (I think in 3.5 this jumped to 6d6).

It basically makes up for the lack of monkey grip.

And TECHNICALLY it's not a tower shield so you can bash with it, but it's TECHNICALLY multiple times the size of one yet you still can't use it to provide cover.

It says "creature touched" so you count because you're a creature (unless you're hiding something from us...).

This is something I've put a lot of thought into over the years and the answer is yes. Yes you can.

Specifically because it doesn't say that you can't. Unless a weapon specifies that you're not allowed to use it in two hands (like the rapier, or a light weapon) you can wield a one-handed weapon in two hands. A heavy shield is a martial one-handed weapon, and it doesn't say that you can't.

How are you gripping it? Well one would assume that it's being worn as normal heavy shield would be and the other hand is... grabbing on somewhere to give it some umph!

You could also technically use a large-sized heavy shield as a two-handed weapon at a -2 penalty (because of how the rules for weapons and size categories work) and to be perfectly honest I haven't found a rule that states using an inappropriately sized shield would penalize you in any way for AC or armor check penalties.

For size categories... a medium sized heavy shield does 1d4 damage with a bash. Shield spikes increase the damage by 1 size category to 1d6. The bashing enchantment increases the damage by 2 size categories to 1d8 and then 2d6. Assuming you start with a large size heavy shield rather than a medium size you're now going up by 4 size categories from the normal heavy shield bash value, to 3d6. Let's enlarge person you. Now you're at 5 size categories larger, at which point you've broken the table.

According to the size increase table there's nothing listed for 3d6 to increase to, but if we know that 2d6 increases to 3d6 when you go up by one size category we just need to find something else that is 2d6 and then go up by 2, right? Well 2d6 listed for tiny size lists 2d10 (2-20) as the medium size equivalent, which seems not quite right at all considering that the large is 4d8 (4-32) and before raising the size we were at 3d6 (3-18).

Damn these tables. They should really take +5 size category modifiers into account.

Conveniently, that heavy shield now Huge size, weighs 75 lbs, and is (if the descriptor of enlarge person is correct in that your size doubles) probably about 6 feet x 6 feet. You're now bashing someone with the side of a barn.

A quick search pulls up a few low level cleric spells that grant bite attacks such as Face of the Devouerer (level 1) and Savage Maw (level 2).

Otherwise you can pick up a bite attack as a part of being a half-orc or orc, and use the Enemy's Heart racial spell (it's a variant of death knell) to literally EAT THE HEARTS OF YOUR ENEMIES AND GAIN THEIR POWER.

OM NOM NOM NOM.

Get a ghost touch lasso, possibly 2-3 people with them.

Drag the ghost over to your cleric.

Have the cleric cast Magic Circle against Evil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRt0SG-hepU

Just remember not to cross the lassos.

I was thinking there was a thrown weapon feat but it turns out I was thinking of the one that lets you deal more damage from str, and it doesn't affect your attack rolls.

If your GM is cool with treating it as a bite attack you can do whatever you want with it, because IIRC 1d3 is the damage of a bite attack for a medium creature. However since the ability doesn't specify and just says "you may do this as a full round action to a helpless or dead creature" it probably isn't intended to be treated as a weapon attack. Especially since biting a helpless creature as a full round action would be a coupe de grace and deal 1d3 x2 damage... right? =D

Damnit Tarantula. There go my fantasies of having a supernatural Randy Savage join the Ghostbusters crew for some zany escapades.

...unless I make him a tetori monk...

Glad to be of service! Ooray!

If I make a suit of ghost touch full-plate and then try to grapple a ghost... does it work?

If my character is a ghost, can it wear ghost touch full-plate and then pretend to be Alphonse Elric?

I started typing about bite attacks in general and then paused to go look at the cannibalism subdomain to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding. I was.

The power granted by the subdomain is not a bite attack, so it doesn't follow the rules of attack rolls (which includes weapons and weapon damage). As it stands the ability simply deals 1d3 damage to a helpless or freshly killed creature. Since this is not weapon damage, it shouldn't be expected to increase with size or with enhancement bonuses to weapons.

Unfortunately, you'd have to interpret it as something other than "an ability that deals 1d3 damage as a full round action" for your suggestion to work.

...now, the stuff I'd started typing about bite attacks before I stopped to look that up for realz:

Technically speaking this only works if you have a bite attack already.

There are a number of low level spells out there that GRANT bite attacks, as well as a few class abilities. And a few player races (including common races like half-orc) that have options for gaining bite attacks or already have them.

If you wanted to have a hungry hungry hippo of a character.

Yes, that is true. Though if you have Improved Grapple they don't get to make an attack of opportunity against you and you get +2 on your CMB and CMD involving grapples.

With Greater Grapple you can maintain a grapple as a move action (meaning you can use your standard action to initiate a grapple and your move action to maintain the grapple and establish a pin) which would let you fling that unfortunate sack of meat in 2 rounds rather than 3. It also gives you an additional +2 to your grapple checks.

If you pick up Rapid Grappler this allows you to make a grapple check as a swift action whenever you maintain as a move action with Greater Grapple (which you can also use to 'maintain the grapple').

Body Bludgeon lets you make an attack at your full BAB with a pinned creature every time you succeed on maintaining the grapple which means that if you have someone pinned already you could swing them around at your full BAB (possibly applying power attack bonus) as a two-handed weapon 3 times per round, dealing equal damage to the target and the 'weapon'.

Mix in the Hurling (lesser, base, and greater) rage powers to throw objects while raging and you've got a barkeep's worst nightmare.

Unfortunately I can't find something at the moment that lets you treat your character as one size category larger when grappling. I think there was something either racial or otherwise, but I'm not sure if I'm thinking of 3.5 or pathfinder.

The idea of "as long as ____ is safe, I can't be defeated" is a pretty common trope in fantasy fiction throughout history. Whether you're talking about a lich, or old noseless in Harry Potter (totally a lich), or step back a hundred years to this guy, or even reference ancient myths and biblical legends it's not an uncommon concept.

As far as spells that would have this effect, other than actually becoming a lich...? That'll take a bit of thought, and probably not find you something exact to what you want.

The only things that come to mind other than contingency spells are clones and projections that let a slain character jump back into a back-up body when they are killed. Alchemist has a number of methods for death prevention using back-up bodies.

Why as high as the creature? When I go to the pool I get in at the shallow end (about waist height) and I can swim just fine in that. With breast stroke I'd be fine in water even shallower.

For most creature's it's detrimental to be swimming compared to walking.

If the water is deeper than the creature is tall you should assume that the creature needs to be swimming if it wants to stay on top of the water.

If the water is less than that, assume the creature has the option of one or the other (having a swim speed is advantageous in such a situation, because walking through difficult terrain will likely be slower though it would be faster than swimming without a swim speed).

Waist height really seems like around the minimum amount of water needed for a humanoid creature to swim properly (meaning about half the creature's height) but this rule can't really be applied to non humanoid creatures or humanoids with natural swim speeds either.

"Does it make sense?" and "Make an argument for it." are phrases that could apply to this situation.

RAW it doesn't really specify. A good rule of thumb though is that the water should be at least as deep as the creature's height. I would say "space" because it's a 30 foot creature you'd think 30 feet of water would be needed but considering a halfling is only about 3 feet high and take up a 5 foot space even PC races don't make sense if you go by that rule.

Really it's up to the GM to make the decision on this. I've had GMs that responded to things with "I know, it's stupid, but technically I can do that."

I'm thinking that they wanted it to work on golems, but whoever wrote the spell out forgot about the magic immunity. It wouldn't be the first time that failure to proofread made an otherwise workable concept into something that simply does not function.

The spell also calls out animated objects, retrievers, and shield guardians which do not have immunity to magic or spell resistance. That part is obviously working as intended.

As for golems? They are immune to it RAW because it allows spell resistance, so it just does not work as (obviously) intended unless an errata is released.

Golems do have special exceptions to their spell immunity based on the type of golem but seeing as this spell does not explicitly call that out (whether an oversight or not) as written it would not affect any type of golem that has the magic immunity trait.

Since Golems cannot voluntarily lower their magic immunity like creatures can do with spell resistance it wouldn't even be possible to use that as a workaround. Without some way to negate the magic immunity, this spell simply does not work on golems.

Isn't there anywhere something that say that more hands = more off-hands while TWFing ?

Specifically? Not as far as I can find.

I took a bit more time to dig into it and need to correct my earlier statement. The example involving the Marilith is definitely correct, but it's a bad policy to just blindly allow things because a monster can do it because some monster stat blocks don't completely make sense.

The reasoning behind why this is allowed takes a bit of a trip through multiple feats and rules, so let's start with the only place that the rules for off-hand fighting are actually mentioned as far as I can find: the Two Weapon Fighting feat.

TECHNICALLY all this feat does is reduce the penalties when fighting with a weapon in your off-hand, so under the "normal" section of the feat description it details the baseline rules for fighting with a second weapon (even though these for some reason aren't mentioned in the combat rules or under full-attack where it only mentions the possibility of fighting with a weapon in your off-hand).

TWF says that "If you wield a second weapon in your off hand, you can get one extra attack per round with that weapon."

Now let's transition from there to the Multiweapon Fighting feat. This feat breaks things down in the same way, with the only benefit of the feat being that it reduces the penalties for fighting with weapons in multiple hands and under the "normal" section it does specify that you have penalties to attacks with "all of its off hands". It also says that this feat replaces (read as: counts as) two weapon fighting for creatures with more than two arms.

Technically a Kasatha could take it, because they have more than two arms.

Now keep in mind that you only get the ONE off-hand attack with each arm... unless you take Improved Two Weapon Fighting and Greater Two Weapon Fighting.

Though these feats technically require the Two Weapon Fighting feat as a prerequisite, the Multiweapon Fighting feat replaces that for creatures with more than two arms, which means you should be able to use it as the prerequisite for taking these feats which would grant you a second and third attack with each of your off-hands (specifically, the wording in ITWF says "In addition to the standard single extra attack you get with an off-hand weapon, you get a second attack with it" which can be assumed to apply outward to every off-hand that you have).

So a Kasatha with +11 BAB, Multiweapon Fighting, Improved Two Weapon Fighting, and Greater Two Weapon Fighting would get 12 attacks.

Now then, back to the Marilith.

A Marilith has 6 arms and the Multiweapon Mastery monster trait, but no feats in the two-weapon fighting line. Hence, with its +16 BAB it gets 4 attacks with its main hand and 1 attack each with its 5 off-hands and does not take TWF penalties to any of these attacks (including the penalties for not using a light weapon in the off-hand) because of Multiweapon Mastery.

Now then, let's go back to monk and talk about why they cannot strike an infinite number of times (which has nothing to do with the number of hands that they have, by the way).

The level 1 monk ability "Unarmed Strike" uses this phrasing when referring to what type of attacks a monk can make: "There is no such thing as an off-hand attack for a monk striking unarmed." This means that a monk can never use an unarmed strike as an off-hand attack, which means that even if they take the TWF feat line they can't make off-hand attacks with unarmed strikes because monk (specifically monk) unarmed strikes cannot be made as off-hand attacks.

Okay, so, now to Flurry of Blows. This is a special full-attack action that the monk takes and has special rules that apply to it. We all know what type of attacks that a monk can make when using Flurry so we won't get into that, but because this is a special type of full-attack rather than a normal full-attack you can't apply the TWF rules normally to this type of action either. So a monk that takes that TWF feats cannot use them while flurrying to gain extra attacks, even if they are using a weapon to make the off-hand attacks.

A monk does always have the option of taking the TWF feat line and making main hand attacks with unarmed strikes and off-hand attacks with a light or one-handed weapon, but they would not be allowed to do this while using Flurry which means that they do not gain the benefits of the improved BAB or the "free" TWF feats included in the Flurry class feature so I would not really recommend doing this unless you are playing a monk archetype that replaces Flurry.

Now then, other fun things you can do with a Kasatha:

- Weild a 2-handed weapon, carry a tower shield, and still have a free hand for Deflect Arrows.

- Use a Longbow with a heavy shield, while holding a wand, and still be considered to have a free hand for casting.

- Use a 1-handed weapon and shield, and still have 2 free hands so that you don't take penalties on grapple checks.

A monk can consider any part of their body an unarmed strike.

A human monk has 2 hands, 2 feet, 2 elbows, 2 knees, a head, and a penis like a mighty oak tree. He still only gets to make his iterative attacks plus one off-hand attack (if not using flurry or TWF rules) at a penalty, or his iterative attacks plus TWF feats bonus attacks, or his flurry worth of attacks.

Multi-Weapon fighting is really the only thing that lets you take advantage of having more than one off-hand if you aren't using natural attacks.

That's the way that I would consider it as well, since it makes the most sense to do it that way. RAW it works like that, though the area of "temporarily gain class abilities" has always been a pretty fuzzy area that is far and away from what RAI would be.

Of course after a certain point it won't matter much because every shaman would be using Arcane Enlightenment to cast Wish or something like that, amirite?

If you're a barbarian you have the option of using the rage power Body Bludgeon (requires 10 levels in barbarian) to treat a pinned creature as a two-handed improvised weapon (it doesn't state that it can't be a ranged weapon) as long as the creature is smaller than the barbarian's size.

The Wandering Hex shaman ability allows a character to temporarily gain a hex from the list of a spirit other than the one that the shaman selected at 1st level. Because this is only a temporary hex, it means that it can be switched every day to a different hex (or more often, with the Flexible Hex feat).

The Spirit Talker feat allows a character to temporarily gain a hex from the list of one of the shaman spirits every day. Because this is only a temporary hex, it means that it can be switched every day to a different hex.

The Minor Spirit archetype ability from Unsworn Shaman allows a character to choose which hexes are available to her on a day to day basis.

The thing in question is whether or not these temporary hexes can be used to pick up different variants of the same hex or whether the choices are locked in once it is selected for the first time.

Could a character that takes the Spirit Talker feat to gain a hex with variable effects that must be chosen when the feat is taken change these choices every time the feat is selected (meaning, every day when spending 10 minutes to activate the Spirit Talker feat)?

For example, a shaman with 14 charisma takes the Spirit Talker feat and uses it to temporarily gain the Lore spirit hex Arcane Enlightenment. This allows the shaman to select 2 spells from the sorcerer/wizard list and add it to their list of shaman spells. The next day they opt to temporarily gain this same hex, but they want to choose a different 2 spells than the ones that they had chosen the day before.

Is this legit?

Or does this fall under the umbrella of this rule in that if you temporarily gain an ability with a limited number of uses per day you are still bound to that limit regardless of how many times you can temporarily gain that ability; thereby meaning that once you've selected this variant of the hex you are bound by it eternally?

Although that interpretation doesn't mesh well with the Brawler's Martial Flexibility class feature, which would let you choose Weapon Focus (Longsword) with one use and Weapon Focus (Kukri) with another.

As much as I love the idea and theme of this class and archetype, the Unsworn Shaman archetype is definitely an example of one of the worst proofread archetypes that was released in the ACG. It has a number of inconsistencies and oversights that need to be addressed, and as such I need to ask the following questions:

1. Minor Spirit : This ability replaces the abilities Spirit and Hex. Because the Unsworn Shaman no longer has the Hex class ability they no longer qualify for feats, prestige classes, etc that require the Hex class ability. Such feats include Extra Hex (which this archetype badly needs due to only naturally receiving 6 hexes at max level rather than 10 from base shaman) and Spirit Talker.

I can't even come up with a convincing argument for it one way or another. On one hand, it's understandable that this archetype gains less overall hexes than the base class because flexibility = power; however not being able to take Extra Hex as a tradeoff means that Unsworn Shaman only ever will have 6 hexes, while other Shaman archetypes could have up to 19. Conversely, the theme of the archetype is to have no permanently chosen hexes and being able to swap them out every day - and because Minor Spirit functions differently than Hex and the feat Extra Hex gives another permanently chosen hex, it wouldn't make much a lot of sense for this thematically to give a permanently chosen hex rather than another daily application of Minor Spirit.

The Spirit Talker feat, which allows a character to choose a shaman spirit and gain a hex from it, also has the Hex class feature as a prerequisite. This means that a Shaman could have hexes from up to 3 different spirits at the same time, but the Unsworn Shaman could not if they do not count as having the Hex feature. The defining aspect of the archetype, flexibility, now falls behind that of the base class.

Now, the FAQ already covers archetypes that replace class abilities with similar abilities of a different name here, but it's up for debate as to whether this ability would count or not because of how differently it is applied. Let's boil this question down into one sentence:

Does the Minor Spirit class ability count as the Hex class ability for the purpose of taking Feats, Prestige Classes, etc. that have Hex as a prerequisite?

2. Extra Hex (feat): Specifically, the way that this feat functions is to give the user one extra hex off of their list of hexes that they would normally choose from. The Minor Spirit ability allows an Unsworn Shaman to choose a witch hex (but not major or grand hex) or choose off of the list of hexes granted by their wandering spirits. Because the Unsworn Shaman ability that works like Hex does not work exactly the same way as Hex, it begs this question:

If an Unsworn Shaman is allowed to take the Extra Hex feat (not by gaining the Hex feature from another class) does the Unsworn Shaman gain an extra use of their Minor Spirit ability that allows them to choose an additional temporary hex per day, or does the Unsworn Shaman gain a permanent hex of their choice from the hexes available to choose from?

Note: Because the hexes granted by wandering spirits may change on a day-to-day basis, a permanent hex granted in this way would become inactive if the wandering spirit was ever exchanged for another spirit because the Unsworn Shaman would no longer meet the prerequisites of having that ability.

3. Minor Spirit (again) : The hexes that an Unsworn Shaman are allowed to choose from under the Minor Spirit ability consist of witch hexes (but not major or grand hexes), or a hex available through a wandering spirit. This strikes me as an oversight or a typo due to the fact that with the way this ability is worded there is no way for an Unsworn Shaman to be able to choose a hex off of the list of shaman hexes (which includes the hex named "witch hex" that lets a shaman choose a hex from the list of witch hexes).

I understand that the list of witch hexes is larger and therefore offers a more robust number of choices, and that because the hex "witch hex" doesn't say that it can be chosen twice (nor does any hex, as far as I can tell) you can only take it once so that technically Unsworn Shaman could choose more abilities from the witch list than a normal shaman... however, this still seems like a mis-labeling to me.

Should the text in the Minor Spirit ability that reads "granting her access to a witch hex of her choosing" be corrected to read "granting her access to a shaman hex of her choosing"?

4. Wandering Spirit : The modified version of the Wandering Spirit ability that is gained by the Unsworn Shaman replaces both the Wandering Spirit ability and the Wandering Hex ability. This is understandable, because the Wandering Hex aspect of the ability is rolled into the effects of Minor Spirit (though this also contributes to the loss of overall hexes gained compared to a normal Shaman). This creates a problem though, because the Unsworn Shaman no longer has access to the Wandering Hex ability.

The Flexible Hex feat which is generally pretty awesome allows a character to change their wandering hexes once per day. Because the Unsworn Shaman does not have the wandering hex class ability they do not meet the prerequisites for this feat... even though the feat meshes perfectly with the intended theme of the Unsworn Shaman.

Does the Minor Spirit archetype ability count for the Wandering Hex prerequisite of the Flexible Hex feat?

5. Manifestation : The level 20 ability of Shaman grants them a tremendously potent ability based upon the Spirit that they chose at level 1. The Unsworn Shaman archetype does not gain the Spirit ability, however... yet they do not have anything that replaces Manifestation. Therefore, RAW the Unsworn Shaman still gains the Manifestation ability at level 20 but because they do not gain the Spirit ability it doesn't do anything.

How does the level 20 Shaman ability Manifestation interact with the Unsworn Shaman archetype?

I believe that is everything that I have to ask specifically about the Unsworn Shaman archetype. I'll make other postings for questions about general Shaman abilities.