Boons from Scenarios giving things from rulebooks and ownership of such books

[Errenor]

So, we know that:
"Ownership of Adventures or Adventure Path volumes is not required to use Character Options printed on Chronicle Sheets in the Pathfinder Society campaign, as long as option rules are referenced from the official Pathfinder Resource Document (prd)."
Does this or something else allow not having rulebooks, when options from them are printed on Chronicle Sheets?
For example, Deathtouched Explorer and Book of the Dead:

boon text:

Achievement Point Reward
This Chronicle Sheet Grants Access to the Following:
PFS (2ed) Scenario #3-98:
Deathtouched Explorer

Deathtouched Explorer: You and your fellow Pathfinders managed to chart a path to a grand city whose ruins had been lost for almost a millennium: Raseri Kanton. Along the way, you contended with both restless dead and numerous agents of the Aspis Consortium. While the Aspis agents have been driven off, more rampaging corpses and restless spirits are sure to lurk in the ruins. The Pathfinder Society now seeks agents with a specialized connection to the boundary between life and death. All of your characters gain access to the following Rare backgrounds from Pathfinder Book of the Dead: Scion of Slayers, Tomb Born, and Willing Host.

[Blake's Tiger]

Rulebooks are not Adventures or Adventure Path volumes.

To the best of my understanding:

This allows players to access Adventure- or AP-specific content that is published only in those materials after having played it for credit without having to buy an Adventure or AP volume that they would otherwise have no use for.

[Online Guide Team Lead - JTT]

Errenor wrote:

So, we know that:

"Ownership of Adventures or Adventure Path volumes is not required to use Character Options printed on Chronicle Sheets in the Pathfinder Society campaign, as long as option rules are referenced from the official Pathfinder Resource Document (prd)."
Does this or something else allow not having rulebooks, when options from them are printed on Chronicle Sheets?
For example, Deathtouched Explorer and Book of the Dead:
** spoiler omitted **

No. That language was very intentionally written. It applies only to the contents of adventures. Not rulebooks.

There are a small number of options published in adventures that are themselves inside a rulebook. (I believe there is one in Book of the Dead.) Options from those adventures, granted by the chronicles from those adventures, do not require the rulebook.

[Errenor]

Thank you, Jared, Blake's Tiger. I was thinking the same actually, but there was a disagreement.

[Errenor]

Online Guide Team Lead - JTT wrote:

No. That language was very intentionally written. It applies only to the contents of adventures. Not rulebooks.

Though I do have to say that Additional Resources: Character Options are not written very clearly and aren't very easy to understand. I think there should be a sentence which explicitly says that to use an option you need both 'access' and 'Resource Ownership'. That 'access' is a term inside rules system which only deals with rarity, Availability and level restrictions sometimes. And resource ownership is another deal.

Because I have trouble explaining all this. And not to a novice at all. I have almost nothing to quote and sentences like this: "Access: Players can access uncommon or rare options via access points built into the campaign. If you satisfy the access condition specified in that option, then that option is freely available to you, and you can purchase it or take it at character level up/creation" don't help (that's from the organized play guide). The sentence reads as if you need only access and if you have it, you need nothing else.

Also, boons from specials, which are only useful when you have that one book, are a little sad. But that's another matter.

[Online Guide Team Lead - JTT]

Errenor wrote:

Online Guide Team Lead - JTT wrote:

No. That language was very intentionally written. It applies only to the contents of adventures. Not rulebooks.

Though I do have to say that Additional Resources: Character Options are not written very clearly and aren't very easy to understand. I think there should be a sentence which explicitly says that to use an option you need both 'access' and 'Resource Ownership'. That 'access' is a term inside rules system which only deals with rarity, Availability and level restrictions sometimes. And resource ownership is another deal.

Because I have trouble explaining all this. And not to a novice at all. I have almost nothing to quote and sentences like this: "Access: Players can access uncommon or rare options via access points built into the campaign. If you satisfy the access condition specified in that option, then that option is freely available to you, and you can purchase it or take it at character level up/creation" don't help (that's from the organized play guide). The sentence reads as if you need only access and if you have it, you need nothing else.

Also, boons from specials, which are only useful when you have that one book, are a little sad. But that's another matter.

The section in the guide is just a quick summary of the rules. And ends with a link to the full rules on using options from other books. Since you need to go to that link to see if an option from another book is even legal, we don't duplicate the full rules in the guide.

Quote:

Character Options: All of the ancestries, backgrounds, and classes from the Core Rulebook are available to you when creating a character. You might need to spend Achievement Points to access some ancestries and options from other books before you can use them in organized play. More information on approved resources can be found in the Character Options Document

Rarity: Some options within the game have a rarity trait of uncommon, rare, or unique. Options without a rarity trait are considered common. Rarity is described on page 13 of the Core Rulebook.

Access: Players can access uncommon or rare options via access points built into the campaign. If you satisfy the access condition specified in that option, then that option is freely available to you, and you can purchase it or take it at character level up/creation, but it does not become common. Pathfinder Society characters are enrolled members of the Pathfinder Society organization in the world of Golarion, so they gain access to all options requiring membership in the Pathfinder Society.

The Pathfinder Society Character Options Page contains further details on how to access uncommon and rare character options.

If you follow that link, you get the full rules on access and ownership, including the following.

Quote:

Using Options: Resource Ownership

Using Options From Other Sources
To use an option from any source other than those discussed above in Pathfinder Society play, you must bring any one of the following to your game table:

A physical copy of the book you wish to use
A name-watermarked PDF copy of the book
Name-watermarked printouts of all relevant pages you wish to use from the PDF
Access to the rules you wish to use in the form of either electronic access to the Pathfinder Reference Document (paizo.com/prd) or a photocopy of the relevant pages, along with proof of purchase, such as a receipt from a game store or a screenshot of your My Downloads page on paizo.com.
The following do not satisfy this requirement:

A photocopy of a physical book with no proof of purchase
Printouts from electronic character builders such as Hero Lab
Content reproduced in other sources under the Open Gaming License (such as an online reference document or a homemade omnibus)
In addition to the copy of the rules themselves, you must be able to provide a digital or physical copy of the below Additional Resources page for that source to show that the options you have selected for your character are legal for play.