Questions about Ioun Stones

[Selvaxri]

Greetings all, in my entire PFS career, none of my characters have bothered with Ioun Stones, so i have no experience dealing with them. I ask these now, as i have a character that may use an Ioun Stone to strengthen his abilities.

Baseline- I have a Grippli Cavalier that uses Distracting Cloak and Improved Feint Partner as his go-to tactics. So i need his Bluff to be as high as possible for greater success.

That said- he also has the Clever Wordplay trait, tying his Bluff modifier to his Intelligence [+1] instead of his charisma [-2].
In this case, would i need a Pink & Green cracked sphere [+1 to Cha Skill] or a Scarlet & Blue [+1 to Int Skill]?
[If i could, i'd retrain that trait into Cunning Liar as my Wis is a +2.

He already used a Cape of Bravado, so i don't think the Competence bonus stacks with the Mulberry or Magenta Ioun Stones' bonus.

Next- How many Ioun Stones can i have active at a time?
Namely, a generic Wayfinder compared to a Torc of Innocuous Gems

[Meirril]

Bluff is still a Charisma Based skill, so the Pink and Green cracked sphere. Mainly because the item targets the skill, not your bonus.

Since your bonus is based on Int things that pump your int-based checks would work. Which also means items like Circlet of Persuasion wouldn't work because your Bluff isn't a Charisma-based check.

You are only allowed one of each typed bonus unless something specifically says that type stacks. Competence is one of the many 'chose the best bonus' types that does not stack with itself.

Technically there is no upper limit to the number of ioun stones you can use at once. You can only gain the resonance effect from a single wayfinder (which generally means 1 stone, but I believe there are some exceptional wayfinders that allow more). Some ioun stones require you use an action to gain their benefit (like the spell absorbing one). Generally speaking you can only gain the benefit of each type of stone once, but there are a number of exceptions where you can stack identical ioun stones to get a larger effect. See individual stone descriptions to find the exceptions. The effects of normal, cracked and flawed stones of the same type may work together, you need to apply normal stacking rules unless the stone gives an exception in its own description.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

No, Bluff is an Int-based skill for them now, so an Int-skill ioun stone would help and a circlet of persuasion wouldn't.

FAQ wrote:

Alternate Ability Score-Based Checks: If I change the key ability score of a skill (or other check), for example, if I change Knowledge from Intelligence to Charisma, is it no-longer an Intelligence-based check? Is it now a Charisma-based check?

Generally yes—at the time of rolling a check, if you substitute the ability score, the check is now based on the new ability score. In the example, at the time of rolling, Knowledge would now be a Charisma-based skill and not an Intelligence-based skill for you, which would affect things like feats, spells, or items that grant bonuses on checks based on their key ability score (like circlet of persuasion). However, if you are adding a second ability modifier to a check, this is not the case. For instance, when adding both Wisdom and Dexterity on initiative checks, initiative is still a Dexterity check, not a Wisdom check. Also, this changes the check only at the time of rolling, so this does not change static class features or options made during character building such as your class’s class skills. Classes that receive “all Intelligence-based skills” as class skills, for instance, are the victim of sloppy writing, and furthermore sometimes effects might muddy the water by only changing the ability dependency sometimes and not others, which is why you check the new dependency only for a specific given roll.