So there is a player in a game that I am also playing in, playing an Arcane Trickster Rogue with the Witch Multiclass Archetype. He wants to learn some new Cantrips for his familiar.
I felt like this was something the game would be unlikely to let you do easily because it straight up takes a feat to get more cantrips usually (albeit a low level one). However on page 238 of the CRB it does list Cantrips as learnable just like normal spells.
So my teammate went to a store and bought himself a Scroll of a Cantrip and went about learning it.
And again I feel like this is really not allowed by the rules. I don't think that Cantrip level scrolls exist and feel like even if you CAN learn Cantrips this way, it could only be from another spellcaster.
I don't really want to be an insufferable rules lawyer, especially about something that improves the overall power of our party, but also our GM is really new to PF2 and I don't want to let him get steamrolled over by a player who assumes they can do something that they cannot.
What exactly are the rulings here? Can you just learn a Cantrip and add it to your spell list, from what sources is this possible, and if you can do it what are the repercussions therein?
I see no way outside of feats to get more cantrips known, and that makes sense to me. Cantrips grow with you and having a defined set of them in your arsenal fits when they all have different uses and impact.
That said, the new Cantrip Deck in SoM can give players easy access to "scroll-like" cantrips, without being scrolls (and thus you can't learn the spells from them).
Just give him or let him buy an apprentice Wizard spellbook so the player can copy the cantrips from there.
Witches and wizards can learn more than their initial allotment of cantrips... but they still can't prepare more than the standard amount without something like Cantrip Expansion which explicitly allows that.
Yeah, that.
With Witch archetype, you only get one cantrip slot to prepare a cantrip in. You automatically learn two cantrips. You can also learn more cantrips using the Learn a Spell process.
As for the details of the mechanics of learning a cantrip spell, that is a bit trickier. You can't create a scroll with a cantrip, focus spell, or ritual on it. But a Witch can create a pseudo-scroll printed on rice paper to feed to their familiar. I don't see anything that says cantrips are forbidden from being on these rice paper scrolls.
I could also see buying a cantrip formula just like you would buy an item formula that would teach you how to craft an item. You couldn't cast the cantrip from this formula-scroll, but you could learn the spell from it.
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From the Scroll Rules:
"A scroll can be Crafted to contain nearly any spell, so the types of scrolls available are limited only by the number of spells in the game. The exceptions are cantrips, focus spells, and rituals, none of which can be put on scrolls."
You can still use the Learn a Spell activity to learn a cantrip from a local spellcaster. Witches don't HAVE to use scrolls to teach their familiar a spell, it's just useful if you find a scroll to learn it instead of wasting it.