Dueling enhancement

[hustonj]

Howdy!

Short form: Is the Dueling enhancement from the Pathfinder Society Field Guide legal and available for PFS play?

Long form:

The Pathfinder Society Field Guide is listed as a legal resource, and nothing that I've seen specifically excludes the Dueling enhancement from that legality.

The Ultimate Equipment includes a completely different take on an enhancement called Dueling. Different benefits and different cost.

Traditionally, large shared campaigns have mandated that when you have a name duplicated like that, you must use the newest legal published version of the ability. I previously had a Venture Captain remind me of that when he said that he thought that meant I could no longer take the PSFG version of the enhancement.

Looking through the Year of the Demon Organized Play Guide on Page 27, under Playtests and Errata, I found the following statement:

Quote:

If a feat or trait changes or is removed from the Additional Resources list: You have two options. First, you may either switch the old feat for an updated feat of the same name in another legal source (if available), ignoring any prerequisites of the new feat you do not meet. Alternatively, you may replace the feat entirely with another feat for which you meet all the prerequisites.

While that doesn't seem directly applicable, it does seem to indicate that PFS considers that multiple things of the same type with the same name can be legal at the same time.

Thus, I return to an old question: Is the Dueling enhancement from the Pathfinder Society Field Guide legal and available for PFS play?

[Sniggevert]

Yes. It is still legal under the additional resources, so therefore it is legal.

Paizo occasionally doubles up things like this,and it can get confusing...see Dawnflower Dervish. Sometimes they do update something, and you have to go with the newer version is what you go by, but it should be clear by the AR.

[Belafon]

If you want to get more confused, the first version of the dueling property appeared in the Advanced Player Guide. A completely different dueling property appeared in the Pathfinder Society Field Guide a year later in 2011. In 2012 Ultimate Equipment reprinted only the dueling property from the APG. Two months apart came the bard archetypes Dervish Dancer from UM and Dawnflower Dervish from ISM. Technically they have slightly different names so they don't cause quite as much consternation (but the mechanics are very similar).

If two mechanics happen to share a name but serve different purposes, they are usually both allowed. Take a look at the Additional Resources document. If something is being replaced by an updated mechanic in a different book, the document will state so. For example:

Pathfinder Player Companion: Osirion, Land of Pharaohs wrote:

. . . Serpent Lash, which has been replaced by the version in Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Rival Guide. You must convert to the current version of Serpent Lash or replace this feat. The versions of Thanatopic Spell and Threnodic Spell in this source are no longer legal. You must convert to the current versions in Ultimate Magic or replace these feats. . .

Neither dueling property has such a note.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety/about/additionalResources