Your interpretation is correct for Aspect of the Beast. This is a unique property of Aspect of the Beast and does not apply to any other styles or feats.
Aren't you quoting the official that it works the way you think it works?
I meant your quote answered your own question.
If that is correct, is the same true for the other Combat Style feats, provided you are past the level at which you could be awarded it as a CS feat?In other words, if I choose TWF combat style with a 10 DEX, can I then pick up TWF with my 3rd level feat, even if I don't choose it at 2nd level?
No, Aspect of the Beast is an exception, it does not extrapolate ty other Ranger style feats.
As a matter of fact, I do have something official that says Aspect of the Beast works this way but TWF does not. It's called "Aspect of the Beast has text saying it works this way, but TWF does not have such text." This is the same official source that informs me that Power Attack grants a bonus to damage but Combat Expertise does not.
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I'm still not seeing why she needs official dev commentary to prove something directly in front of your face.
Aspect of the Beast has that special text.
The other Ranger combat Feats do not.
That does not mean that Aspect of the Beast's special text is supposed to apply to all of the Ranger's combat Feats.
That's like saying that if someone tells you "Yes, you may do that", that means that EVERYBODY can do that thing you asked permission for.
Which is silly.
Sorry to hear you don't consider the rulebook an official source. Good luck with your game.
I'm still not seeing why she needs official dev commentary to prove something directly in front of your face.
I've seen people request official dev commentary on official dev commentary to confirm that the original official dev commentary actually meant what it said. I wouldn't be surprised if it sometimes went a layer deeper than that, too.
I don't know whether it's decades of poorly-written rules, or if it's just rules-lawyers willfully misreading plain text or what, but something about this game makes people doubt their ability to read and demand endless clarifications about even the simplest rules. At some point, you need to accept that, whether the text comes from the rulebook or an FAQ or a meta-circlejerk-FAQ-about-the-FAQ, you're going to need to somehow use your ability to read English to take some English text and use it in your game. You don't need to ask for an FAQ ruling on every page of the rulebook. Someday, you're going to need to take the leap of faith and trust in your own literacy.
AoB explicitly allowing this doesn't explicitly disallow it with the other feats. It implicitly disallows it.
Find me the page of the rulebook that says rogues don't get full-cleric spellcasting. Sure, it's implicitly disallowed by only listing full-cleric spellcasting under the cleric class and not under the rogue class, but it's not explicitly disallowed. We need an FAQ ruling to confirm that rogues don't get to cast Miracle. Also we need an FAQ ruling to help interpret that FAQ ruling.
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She does have something official.
THE RULEBOOK. It's about as official as it gets.
This is just another iteration of that idiotic "it doesn't SAY you can't act when you're dead" nonsense at this point.
You don't trust the rulebook? Fine.
That doesn't mean there's an issue with it in any way, shape, or form.
Your "reasoning" that 3.5 MAY have had some rule that doesn't even make any sense ("if you can take these Feats as Combat Feats you automatically have them as prerequisites". Wat.), has no bearing on the fact that Pathfinder (which is NOT 3.5, though it bears many similarities) has no such rule.
This is as helpful as it's gonna get.
No dev commentary will be forthcoming, because there's nothing here that needs dev commentary. The rule's as clear as day.
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a voice from the heavens above sounding oddly like charles heston says:
"At 2nd level, a ranger must select one of two combat styles to pursue: archery or two-weapon combat. The ranger's expertise manifests in the form of bonus feats at 2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th, and 18th level. He can choose feats from his selected combat style, even if he does not have the normal prerequisites.
If the ranger selects archery, he can choose from the following list whenever he gains a combat style feat....."
and there you have it straight from the PRD and Core Rulebook.
I have played many a ranger, it is my favorite class for what its worth which is not much in this case, it is pretty well understood that the ranger only gets his exception to the rules happiness on the bonus combat feats. Unless the text says otherwise in this case.
The ranger still gets awesomeness like having STR based TWF, the sword and board ranger gets some awesome stuff six plus levels before fighters do, the archery gets pinpoint or something like that which is really awesome if your GM actually enforces cover and concealment, etc.
Its just not easy to have STR based TWF who shield bashes people too. Rangers specialize and fighters get to dance with two or more attractive combat options, thems the breaks.
Okay, so setting aside the antagonism that's started to dominate this thread for a moment to try and give an actual explanation. Some of this is going to seem obvious, but you clearly want a very specific answer, so I'm not making any assumptions. Bear with me.
Feats often have prerequisites, which means you must possess the feats or features noted. There are special situations that allow you to ignore them - for instance, the Ranger combat style bonus feats. The text under that ability ("He can choose feats from his selected combat style, even if he does not have the normal prerequisites" can be taken to mean that you are allowed to take those feats with your normal feats, but only if used out of context. It is intended to be an exception to the ordinary rules for the purposes of these bonus feats only, which seems clear if you take the entirety of the paragraph into consideration. Aspect of the Beast, in fact, seems to make this more clear by noting a further exception for itself only, allowing you to take it outside of your bonus feats.
There are several rules, throughout Core and later books, that can best be extrapolated through their exceptions. In this case, I think that the exception noted under Aspect of the Beast makes the original ruling that much more clear. The reason that the extra sentence along the lines of "Only these bonus feats may ignore the ordinary prerequisites" was never added to the Core text because it was unnecessary in context. The rule was mentioning an exception to the norm, and therefore didn't need to waste paper and ink explaining any further.
You are right, the sentences are not completely explicit, but do seem incredibly clear in context, particularly given the AoB exception. This does kinda come off like an excessive attempt at rules lawyering and really shouldn't require this detailed of an answer, but there it is, as clear as I can make it.
3.0 defined something which was called a "virtual feat."
I know you have your answer and that's great and all, but, Pathfinder doesn't have virtual feats. The Ranger Combat Style doesn't give you a virtual feat, it gives you a real actual feat that functions in every way like a feat with the sole exception being that you get to ignore it's prerequisites.
I'm a bit confused about why you think a 3.0 or 3.5 source is relevant - you are asking about the Pathfinder game.
How are virtual feats at all relevant?
Additionally, even if those rules from another game were relevant or official, it wouldn't actually answer your questions.
Even if Ranger feats were "virtual" and "acquiring a virtual feat does not give a character access to its prerequisites", that wouldn't help you work out if a TWF-Ranger can choose TWF as his/her 3rd level feat!
But regular feats do not give you access to the prereqss. For example, say you have a +2 STR belt, going from 11 to 13. Now you take Power attack with your new 13 STR. If you ever take off the belt, you now cant use Power Attack, nor take any other feat that requires 13 STR.
So the idea of virtual feats it totally irrelevant. This adds to the fact that they are not even a thing in Pathfinder, so the concept seems super irrelevant.
Just because it uses the same framework doesn't mean it works exactly the same and you shouldn't assume that because something was so in one, it is so in the other.
You can build two houses with the same framework and yet have them be completely different on the inside.
I'm not trying to be rude or veil anything. What you are saying just makes absolutely no sense to me so I'm trying to discuss the matter with you.
Let me try again:
There was confusion about whether Rangers are treated as having prerequisites for their style feats or not.
You suggested that such feats were virtual. Virtual feats don't have you treated as having the prerequisites, so your confusion was resolved.
However, that seems unnecessary to me. We could just suppose that the feats are regular feats, which also don't have you treated as having the prerequisites. This should resolve the confusion in a similar manner.
The unnecessary-ness of thinking about virtual feats is exacerbated by the fact that virtual feats are not even a thing in this game, and that Ranger style feats are in fact just regular feats.
(Normally a Ranger could not take them, and could not use them even if they had those feats, however the Combat Style Feat Exceptional Ability overcomes these facts.)
Furthermore, you complained about a lack of official-ness when people answered you, yet you are happy to talk about virtual feats from a different game, even though no such thing as virtual feats appears in Pathfinder!
Core may not have explicitly stated this because 3.5 never had to address this. Combat Styles come from 3.5 but as I was reminded when I looked this up, each path has only one combat style option. You got one feat in 3.5 so there was no combat style feat you could pick up later.
Alright, then. If you're looking for alternate/older edition sources I guess that virtual feat bit answers your question, so that works for your game. For reference, though, most folks (as you've noticed in the rest of the thread) won't acknowledge such sources as valid for Pathfinder rules, and with good reason, I think. So many things have been altered, whether significantly or subtly, for Pathfinder that using what used to be true as a reference point is often a very bad idea. I can't even count how many times I've had somebody mention outdated grapple rules, or old Cleave, or Decipher Script, or any number of things that just don't exist any more, and end up seriously confusing either their character build or their game. There are some loopholes or generalities either left over from the old system, or opened up by the changes, but Paizo has done a very good job of closing them up wherever possible, and in this case I still think the intent remains pretty clear.
Since a combat style gives you the feat, among other things, I was essentially attempting to verify that you aren't considered to have the prereqs for other feats.
I think you've answered this for yourself at this point, but the thread's bounced around so much I'm a tad confused, so here I go. So far as I know, you are not considered to have the other prereqs for regular feat purposes. You do, of course, have the feat itself. An example: if you acquired TWF, say, without the proper Dex, then you still aren't considered to have the Dex for Improved TWF or Double Slice, but if you later raised your Dexterity, then you could pick up those feats using regular feat slots.
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For a PF example, the Dawnflower Dervish bard archetype gives you Dervish Dance as a bonus feat at 1st level.
Dervish Dance is a feat that has prerquisites: Weapon Finesse and Perform(dance) 2 ranks.
The Dawnflower Dervish, despite having the Dervish Dance feat, does not actually have Weapon Finesse, cannot use her Dex bonus instead of her Str bonus on attack rolls with any 'finesseable' weapon except a scimitar (which isn't even a finesseable weapon!), does not have 2 ranks in Perform(dance), cannot buy 2 ranks in any skill before she hits 2nd level, and cannot take any feat that has Weapon Finesse as a prerequisite, because she doesn't actually have, nor does she count as actually having, Weapon Finesse.
I played 3.0 and 3.5. The whole 'virtual feat' language was dropped because it didn't actually serve a useful function. the 'virtual feat' language was irrelevant; you actually got a real feat!
This wasn't the only irrelevant rule which fell away. Remember 'Refocus'? It was a special action in 3.0 which allowed a creature to change its initiative score in combat from that which it rolled to what it would have been had it rolled a 20, thus moving it up in the initiative order. At the cost of its entire turn.
Then someone pointed out that a creature could just 'Delay' and get a similar effect without losing its turn, because rounds became 'personal' rather than 'objective' in 3rd ed.
The upshot is that, even though the pointless 'virtual feat' terminology has rightfully been lost to the forces of evolution, ranger bonus feats may be acquired without the usual prerequisites but acquiring them does not give you those prerequisites, except when it specifically says it does! So far, the only exception is Aspect of the Beast.