Spiritualist - Phantom Blade

[Evan Riggs]

Question - in the below ability description. How many times in 1 round can the ability be activated.

Ectoplasmic Pool (Ex): At 5th level, the phantom blade gains a reservoir of excess ethereal energy and ectoplasm that she can draw upon to improve her phantom weapon. This pool has a number of ectoplasmic points equal to half her spiritualist level + her Wisdom modifier. The pool refreshes once per day when the spiritualist refreshes her daily spells.

The phantom blade can spend a number of ectoplasmic points to enhance or modify her phantom weapon. As a free action, she can spend 1 point to manifest or harbor her weapon. The spiritualist can also spend 2 ectoplasmic points as a free action to allow attacks made with her phantom weapon to resolve against touch AC for 1 round.

***THIS PORTION IN SPECIFIC***
As a swift action, she can spend 2 ectoplasmic points to grant the weapon one of the following weapon special abilities for 1 minute: corrosiveUE, defending, flaming, frost, keen, mercifulUE, shock, or throwing. At 11th level, she can spend 3 ectoplasmic points to grant the weapon one of the following weapon special abilities for 1 minute: corrosive burstUE, disruption, flaming burst, holy, icy burst, shocking burst, or unholy. At 15th level, she can spend 5 ectoplasmic points to grant the weapon one of the following weapon special abilities for 1 minute: brilliant energy, dancing, or speed. A phantom blade can spend an appropriate number of points to grant the weapon multiple abilities as one action. A phantom weapon cannot have a modified bonus higher than +10.

the above section is a bit misleading. Could a venture captain or James Jacobs please be more clear.

[Minigiant]

You get one swift action a round so once

[Firebug]

However, based on the "A phantom blade can spend an appropriate number of points to grant the weapon multiple abilities as one action." line, effectively, as many times as you want. You just take 1 swift action to do so(and have to pick everything during that swift action), but can grant your weapon all of the powers you have points for... and doesn't make it higher than +10.

[baggageboy]

If you are unsure this is very similar to the magus arcane pool that the phantom blade is based on. I love the phantom blade archetype, but it was a lot of changes to fit into a semi short word count which meant several points were left kinda vague. My suggestion in general bus if you have a question compare it to the blade blade magus and see if that clears things up.

[Evan Riggs]

Baggageboy - the issue is that even the magus doesnt compare to that.

yes the archetype was based on it,

Minigiant as Firebug pointed out yes you can spend mutiple per round

so my players, after i made this post decided amongst themselves to dial it back as

as you unlock highher levels of it you can spend points in multiples yes but no more than 1 choice per category i.e.
1 time for the lvl 5's the 11's and the 15's.

another interpretation was the multiple aspect was limited to not until 15th lvl since it states it after that level.

see this is the issue in that it isnt clear.

if im a magus i can spend 1 point of my arcane pool and say 15th lvl get several mods worth of abilities.

but thats not what RAW has listed. so i am simply wanting a lil better clarification to avoid player arguments or a disrupted session

[blahpers]

Minigiant and Firebug have it right, and it's clear from the text. You can activate it once (using a swift action), but that single activation can add multiple abilities.

[Agodeshalf]

I could see how you could read it that you can spend 2 points to gain one and only one of (corrosive, defending, flaming, frost, keen, merciful, shock, or throwing) and 3 points to gain one of (11th level list), and 5 points for one of the (15th level list).

The other way to read it that you could for instance make it keen, flaming and defending for a total of 6 points as a swift action.

The fact that it states "one of" makes me think that it is limited to single choice per bracket.

[baggageboy]

This is one reason I pointed the OP to look at the magus for reference. Questions like this have been asked for the magus and answered. When the phantom blade is ambiguous or confusing it's best to default to think of it as a magus. Which in this case means that you can add as many properties as your level and poop points allow for up to +10 (or level limit)

[blahpers]

Agodeshalf wrote:

I could see how you could read it that you can spend 2 points to gain one and only one of (corrosive, defending, flaming, frost, keen, merciful, shock, or throwing) and 3 points to gain one of (11th level list), and 5 points for one of the (15th level list).

The other way to read it that you could for instance make it keen, flaming and defending for a total of 6 points as a swift action.

The fact that it states "one of" makes me think that it is limited to single choice per bracket.

The "one of" means that spending 2 points only gives you one ability; otherwise, you might be able to spend 2 points and get all of the 2-point abilities. This does not limit the ability to spend more points to gain more abilities.