So, I was looking at the magic item Icon of Aspects and I was curious about certain applications of it.
1. What happens if you swap out a domain power for the 4th level animal domain power? (assuming its one normally accessible via your deity) Does the animal companion poof in out of nowhere?
2. More importantly, what happens if you keep on swapping out a power for the 4th level animal domain power? Does the animal companion just go away and then immediately come back? Is it reasonable for you to maintain the swap or is this simply outside the limits of the magic item?
3. If the cleric has picked an inquisition as one of their domains could they use the icon with said inquisition?
4. Alternatively, can the Icon be used on a normal domain to swap out for an inquisition? (assuming that the inquisition in question lists the deity you've chosen)
By RAW I wouldn't think 3 & 4 work, but in reading over inquisitions they seem to be intended to be interchangeable with domains and so now I'm not sure.
1. The same thing that happens when a character gains an animal companion as the result of leveling up. Whether that manifests in-game as a *poof* or some other means of inserting the animal companion into the narrative is a matter of table variation.
2. This seems a little too philosophical to worry about from a rules perspective. Either way, after preparing spells again, you'll have an animal companion.
3. No. Inquisitions are not domains. They can be taken in place of domains, but that's not the same thing.
4. See 3.
1) This depends on your GM, the rules on where ACs appear from are vague, the rules on replacing an AC kinda points to one not being immediately available. So, unless it's a core part of your character, where I would assume you've been developing it as part of the unspoken background that many characters require, you'd likely have to perform the ritual for replacing an animal companion in my campaigns - subject to anything you can point to (be it campaign events/background/rules) to persuade me otherwise.
2) IF you have persuaded me that you have a suitable beastie following you, then MAYBE it could be repeatedly infused with the power of an AC and reduced to normal animal otherwise - at least until it got annoyed at your fickleness/being used and abused and wandered off. Again though, largely up to your GM.
3) no, you have to have a domain power it can replace.
4) no, it only grants access to domain powers. .
Domain powers are a subset of your full domain, and while inquisitions are interchangeable (to an extent) with domains, they can;t be interchangeable with a part of a domain. The Icon causes you to retain part of your domain abilities, so you you don't ever have the full domain to swap out.
Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. I was hoping I could use it to delay gaining the benefits of the chivalry inquisition.