What would it mean for a spell to be unique. While it is intuitive that the knowledge for a rare or uncommon spell is simply hard to come by, how would that manifest uniqueness. Would it require only a single person to know it, or that there was only a single scroll. If you learn it, meaning that 2 people know it, does it cease to be unique.
Thanks for any thoughts.
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Depends on the story, right?
Odds are it'd start as unique due to only being available to the caster who made it/divined it/evolved into having it.
Then, as you note, it'd spread (if GM & story allow for it) until it's rare/uncommon/common (depending on it's usefulness too, I suppose).
To keep a spell unique, a GM could tie it to a story-specific aspect.
-Only this artifact spellbook can hold this knowledge.
-Only this BBEG's blood can tap into this sorcery.
-Only someone who's gone through this unique ritual (that's conveniently lost to time) can pray for this divine spell.
And so forth, as needed.
Reminds me of the Rise of the Runelords when the PCs were uncovering secrets lost for millennia. The DCs for knowledge checks were extraordinary! This was some rare lore, so other through in-game discovery there wasn't much players could do to know or research.
Yet with the end of that story arc, the DCs dropped a ton as that knowledge became disseminated across the northern neighbors worried about Runelords. PFS scenarios & future Runelord adventures made rolls much easier to know about that cabal of casters.
In fact, some rare spells were in that AP too, unavailable to the mainstream until years later.