Extra Mercy and the Holy Guide

[Derek Vande Brake]

Can a paladin with the Holy Guide archetype use the Extra Mercy feat to gain extra favored terrains?

PRD wrote:

Favored Terrain (Ex): At 3rd level, a holy guide chooses a favored terrain from the ranger favored terrains table. This ability otherwise functions as the ranger class feature of the same name. This ability replaces the mercy gained at 3rd level. Every time a holy guide would be able to select another mercy, he can instead select another favored terrain and increase his bonuses for one existing favored terrain, just as a ranger can.

PRD wrote:

Extra Mercy

Your lay on hands ability adds an additional mercy.

Prerequisites: Lay on hands class feature, mercy class feature.

Benefit: Select one additional mercy for which you qualify. When you use lay on hands to heal damage to one target, it also receives the additional effects of this mercy.

Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time you take this feat, select a new mercy.

Emphasis Mine

[Falkyron]

For me the key words are 'holy guide would be able to', as the phrase implies that it's talking about mercies available from the class progression.
This is important because I don't think the developers really want to set a precedent where you can use an 'Extra X' feat to sub in for a class ability an archetype replaces.

If I had to be particularly pedantic, I'd also note that Extra Mercy doesn't give you a mercy known, but rather is a separate effect which makes your Lay On Hands apply a new mercy's effect through a feat.

Your idea also hinges on the validity of the word 'select' as being of particular importance as well, with a 5 year gap between the release of the feat and the release of the archetype I think? That doesn't seem very concrete to me.

Maybe I'm just being overly-cautious as I'm aware of certain prestige class / multiclass combinations which use Favored Terrain to brutally destroy campaigns, and so I know that giving easy access to Favored Terrain bumps for a paladin would be another path to that?

[blahpers]

A holy guide never gains the mercy class feature, so they don't qualify for Extra Mercy anyway.

[Dallium]

blahpers wrote:

A holy guide never gains the mercy class feature, so they don't qualify for Extra Mercy anyway.

^This

[Lelomenia]

blahpers wrote:

A holy guide never gains the mercy class feature, so they don't qualify for Extra Mercy anyway.

my reading is that they can get Mercy at 9th level if they don’t take a second terrain at that point. Also that the feat thing would work, if and when they have the Mercy class feature, but I can certainly see how someone would disagree.

[Dallium]

On closer inspection, it sure seems like Lelomenia is onto something. Holy Guide doesn't explicitly do anything post level 6 other than giving you the option of taking a terrain instead of a mercy. Holy Guide even specifically says "This ability replaces the mercy gained at 3rd level" whereas, for example, Chaos Knight's Blessing of the Maelstrom reads "This replaces mercy," which implies that a Holy Guide may still chose mercies, whereas a Chaos Knight cannot.

Knight of Coins has an even better example in Blessing of Prosperity:

Blessing of Prosperity wrote:

At 3rd level and every 6 levels thereafter, the paladin can select a blessing (see Blessings below)...

A knight of coins who takes the Extra Mercy feat can gain an extra blessing of prosperity instead of an extra mercy....

This replaces the mercies gained at 3rd, 9th, and 15th levels.

Bolding added. So on one hand we have an archetype of Paladin that replaces some (but not all) of a Paladin's mercy picks, lists out a specific interaction with the Extra Mercy feat, and thereby implicitly states that said archetype qualifies for said feat, and thus is considered to have the Mercy class feature. On the other hand, we have an archetype of Paladin that explicitly replaces the entire Mercy class feature, who presumably therefore does not qualify for Extra Mercy (and BoM doesn't progress the same way Mercy does, so there's no obvious way to apply the feat).

I think the answer is yes, definitively so by level 9.

Further Discussion on Authorial Intent/Error:

So it would be overstating BoP's explicit interaction with EM to hold it up as demonstrative proof that a KoC qualifies for EM in a vacuum. However, I'm unaware of any official method for a non-Paladin to get Mercy. Even in such a method exists, it seems... unlikely that the authorial team included the interaction just in case a KoC somehow regained Mercy through creative multi-classing. The simplest explanation is that the team believed they wrote BoP in such a way that didn't preclude a KoC from taking EM. It's possible they're wrong, as the rules aren't obligated to work or do anything (Release Prone Shooter, Overrun as part of a charge, Mounted Combat Feats in general, etc.) but the intent seems pretty clear that KoC was intended to be able to take EM. And if a KoC can take it, there's no reason a HG can't. The interaction is even simpler than in BoP's case. I guess the existence of BoP's EM rider could be compared to FT's lack, but BoP NEEDED an explicit rider. Without it, there's no interaction. FT is more concise, as it triggers "whenever" the Paladin gains a new Mercy, regardless of source.

[Cevah]

Dallium wrote:

Further Discussion on Authorial Intent/Error:

However, I'm unaware of any official method for a non-Paladin to get Mercy.

The 3pp oracle curse Merciful has:

At 5th level, you gain a mercy, as the paladin ability.
At 10th level, you gain a second mercy, and can exchange your first mercy for a different one.
At 15th level, you gain a third mercy, and can exchange one of your existing mercies for a different one.

/cevah

[Dallium]

Cevah wrote:

Dallium wrote:

Further Discussion on Authorial Intent/Error:

However, I'm unaware of any official method for a non-Paladin to get Mercy.

The 3pp oracle curse Merciful has:

At 5th level, you gain a mercy, as the paladin ability.
At 10th level, you gain a second mercy, and can exchange your first mercy for a different one.
At 15th level, you gain a third mercy, and can exchange one of your existing mercies for a different one.

/cevah

Right, but 3PP isn't official. It's a method that is available to players, sure, but we can't assume the devs know about them when they develop new content.