Two questions regarding the Quintessentialist

[ContumaciousBlanket]

I've been looking over the Quintessentialist (from Distant Realms) archetype for the spiritualist and I have two questions

1. Does the exemplar get the ability score increases and Dex/Cha bonus or are the exemplar's stats strictly the spiritualist's base stats? Every post I've seen just assumes it one way or the other with little regarding an explanation.

2. How exactly does the casting work with the exemplar? The archetype says that the phantom "shares spells known and spell slots", and it says that the exemplar "can cast" the spells. Does the phantom use it's own casting stat for DCs? What happens if you swap the headband to the phantom, do I lose the extra spell slots?

Thanks for any feedback.

[Melkiador]

Quote:

An exemplar uses the quintessentialist’s ability scores when fully manifested rather than those of a standard phantom, but otherwise advances as a phantom.

Ugh! There's no way to be sure. The text really could have been tighter. I wonder if it actually was tighter before the editor got ahold of it.

You'll just have to talk it over with your GM. I suspect you are intended to just use the exemplar's stats for casting without making modifications, but the text is open ended to be read either way.