Zura grants a subdomain for War, but does not grant War domain


Rules Questions


Zura (a CE deity) grants the domains Chaos, Death, Evil and Madness. Zura also has Blood listed as a subdomain, even though Blood is a subdomain of War.

So, is Zura supposed to offer War domain (instead of, say, Madness?) or is the Blood subdomain a mistake? If I were to make a PFS cleric of Zura would I not be able to select Blood subdomain? Will this ever be FAQ'd and errata'd? (Probably not.)

Silver Crusade Contributor

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It's legit - she grants Blood, but not War. What this means is that you can take the War domain with the modifications from the Blood subdomain. You cannot, however, take the unmodified War domain.


What book is Zura even from and is that legal in PFS is the first question I would ask.

Aside from that, if it clearly list those as subdomains then those are the subdomains even if Zura does not have the corresponding regular domain. It might be an error, but it wouldn't matter unless it gets changed officially as you wouldn't be able to select the War Domain, if that's what you're after.

If you're after the Blood subdomain, then you're fine.

But I would first make sure that content is PFS legal.


Where do you get that it is legit from, the rule as I know it is:

"A cleric who chooses a subdomain must have access to both the domain and its subdomain from her deity."

Which would imply it is a mistake. Are there other examples of mismatched subdomains on deities and has this sort of thing ever been actually addressed?


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When it is thematically appropriate deities, demigods, demon lords, etc., have sub domains they don't have domains for. It's not often, but it does happen, especially with demon lords, those kooky planar rebels. :-)

Silver Crusade Contributor

This is the most recent discussion on the matter - you'll notice that Zura isn't the only one like this.

Both are from Lords of Chaos, but their info appears in the Appendix of Inner Sea Gods, mismatched subdomains and all. Since all demon lords from that book's appendix are legal for PFS, this is a PFS-legal option.


Claxon wrote:

What book is Zura even from and is that legal in PFS is the first question I would ask.

(...)

But I would first make sure that content is PFS legal.

Archives of Nethys, for one, lists the source as Inner Sea Gods, and this helpful thread notes her as a legal deity.

EDIT: I must admit, I did not know this was a common thing for deities (especially for Demon Lords, it seems). I guess it's intentional then - but what do the rules say? How does this whole thing work?


Kostchitchie (I think that's how it's spelled), a Demon Lord, grants the subdomain of ice despite not granting the water domain, and this has been mentioned as explicitly what was intended in the Bestiary 4.

So there's some precedent here.

Silver Crusade Contributor

Thank you, Ventnor! I'd forgotten about that. ^_^

Bestiary 4 wrote:
He grants access to the domains of Chaos, Evil, Strength, and War, and access to the subdomains of Demon, Ferocity, Ice, and Tactics (although the Ice subdomain is normally not available without the Water domain, an exception is made in this case because of the demon lord’s close association with cold).

Presumably, since they spring from the same source and were both authored by James Jacobs, Zura is subject to the same reasoning.

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