Can a Sorcerer with the Elemental bloodline have spells gain the Air, Earth, or Water descriptors?

[Covert Operator]

So it’s pretty clear that when a sorcerer casts a spell that deals damage, and then uses the Bloodline Arcana on the spell, then it gains the Acid, Cold, Electric, or Fire descriptors.
But if the original spell had the Water Descriptor in addition to the Cold descriptor, would the new spell have the Earth descriptor in addition to Acid, or the Air descriptor in addition to Electric?

(FYI there is no ‘natural’ equivalent of the Fire descriptor)

Elemental Bloodline

[Covert Operator]

I’m trying to use the Chisel of Excavation with cloud spells, flight spells, and Create Water.

[SuperJedi224]

It would not. By RAW, the modified spell would have the [acid] and [water] descriptors.

[Mysterious Stranger]

No. The arcana does what is says it does nothing more nothing less.

[Covert Operator]

What if it had the water descriptor and not the Cold descriptor? There are a couple spells like that which deal bludgeoning damage.

[Mysterious Stranger]

If the spell deals only bludgeoning damage you cannot change the energy type. And therefore it is not a legitimate target for your arcana. If it deals both cold and bludgeoning damage it probably has the cold descriptor in addition to any others. The only spells you can affect with the arcana are those that deal energy damage, bludgeoning is not an energy damage. If the spell includes bludgeoning damage as well as cold damage you can only change the portion that does cold damage.

[Covert Operator]

You’re correct there, though when you say “only does what it says it does,” that’s non sequitur from the text.

Quotes from the bloodline:

At first level, you must select one of the four elements: air, earth, fire, or water.
This does not say, electric, acid, fire, or cold.

This also changes the spell's type to match the type of your bloodline.
The question I’m asking, which may have been badly explained, is: are the air, earth, or water descriptors included in the ‘type of your Bloodline’ For the purpose of this arcana?

[Mysterious Stranger]

The chart further down the bloodline defines the energy type. Air = Electricity, Earth = Acid, Fire = Fire, Water = Cold. This is very clear about what the word type means. Nowhere else in the description of the bloodline is the word type defined.

Bloodline Arcana: Whenever you cast a spell that deals energy damage, you can change the type of damage to match the type of your bloodline. This also changes the spell's type to match the type of your bloodline.

Air, Earth and Water are not energy types. And while fire is listed as both the element and the energy type this is more of using the same word to describe two different things. Notice that they specify type, not element.

[avr]

So you're casting something like snowball, changing the damage to acid, and asking whether it gains the earth descriptor? No, why would it? Few acid spells have the earth descriptor and turning snowball Into acid blob doesn't seem like it'd be an exception. [acid, water] seems perfect in this example at least.

[blahpers]

Quote:

Bloodline Arcana: Whenever you cast a spell that deals energy damage, you can change the type of damage to match the type of your bloodline. This also changes the spell’s type to match the type of your bloodline.

The mapping from "type of your bloodline" to "type of damage" is defined in the table.

So, the damage dealt changes to the damage type associated with your bloodline's element, but the spell's type changes to that of your bloodline's element itself. For example, when an sorcerer with the elemental (earth) bloodline casts snowball, they can choose for it to do acid damage. If they do, the spell's type changes to [earth]. It no longer has the [water] descriptor, and it does not gain the [acid] descriptor. This is not intuitive (and, frankly, weird), so expect table variation.

Edit: They probably intended to say "energy type" instead, given the language used in the bloodline bonus spells' clarifier. I run it this way myself--the above snowball would gain the [acid] descriptor, not the [earth] descriptor.

Edit the second: This boils down to a failure on the rules team. Spells don't actually have "types" or "subtypes"; those are terms used to describe creatures. Spells have "descriptors". The rules team (and/or their editor(s)) was not particularly careful when writing this section. : /

[Covert Operator]

Yeah, I agreed with you when I made this thread, but the table that comes after the first Bloodline power does say “Element” for air/earth/acid/water and “Energy Type” for acid/electric/ice/fire.
It’s more likely that “type of the spell” refers to the Energy Type than the Element.

[blahpers]

Probably, but it's all guesswork when the language literally doesn't make sense. But hey, not Paizo's problem anymore.