Runelord school prohibition question


Rules Discussion


If Abjuration is restricted such that: "Finally, you lose the ability to prepare or cast any spell from your school’s prohibited schools (pages 238–239). You remove all spells of those schools from your spell list, meaning you can’t even activate scrolls or wands of such spells."

Does this prohibit taking an abjuration tattoo from the human ancestry feats? Such as shield? It says the spells are removed from your spell list, and you can't activate scrolls or wands of that school, but it doesn't talk about tattoos, or say, the Pink Aeon stone that allows you to cast shield.

Thoughts?

Liberty's Edge

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It's an absolute prohibition IMO, otherwise, it would have to be far more specific about what "your list" means, and that wasn't done so the blanket term generally means you don't get to cast them regardless of how you gained it, full-stop.


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That's a pretty bold statement. "Your list" may not be a key word, but it's used in a few different places within the book in natural language talking about the spell list from your tradition and other spells that you gain in a similar fashion, like a cleric's spells from their deity, and it's directly correlated to wands and scrolls which also mention "your list", so if this needs further clarification than so do wands, scrolls, staves, and so on as a whole. This has been gone over in another thread before, and unfortunately you're not going to get any agreement on this forum, as is already clear from the first two responses.

All that being said, I would still say it's unclear whether this is allowed or not. It depends on whether the first sentence is meant to be a description of the following sentence, or if it can be read on it's own as part of the rules. Since if all that was there was "Finally, you lose the ability to prepare or cast any spell from your school’s prohibited schools (pages 238–239)" then it would actually be pretty clear that it's not allowed due to Arcane Tattoos saying that you can "cast" the chosen cantrip, and you can no longer cast those spells. Bing bang boom, problem solved. But, if that's just flavor text, and the next sentence is the rules text, then it wouldn't be disallowed, as it would essentially just remove your wizard's natural ability to cast such spells via their spellcasting feature and any spellcasting features they gain that add spells to your list, such as a dedication.


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Personally, I wouldn't allow it, but I can see an argument for it being different.


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I agree on the ambiguity. My take on it:

The sentence "you lose the ability to prepare or cast any spell from your school’s prohibited schools" refers to your ability to cast spells naturally. So spell slots, innate spells (including the tattoo), focus spells, and other such 'you' are casting the spell scenarios.

The sentence "You remove all spells of those schools from your spell list" prevents you from activating wands or scrolls without something like Trick Magic Item that lets you cast them without the spell being on your spell list.

That leaves just the Aeon stone (I think you meant Dusty Rose Prism, which casts Shield) from the list of questions in initial post. For that one, it also says that you are casting the spell as an innate spell. So I wouldn't allow that one either.

On the other hand, the Azure Briolette (which casts Chill Touch) doesn't require innate spellcasting. It instead just requires an interact activation. If it was Chill Touch that has been removed from your caster's spell list and casting ability, I would let you use the Azure Briolette.

Same with other items that cast Shield using some type of item activation. I would let you activate the item and have the item cast Shield.

As for multiclass dedications, I think there is a stated order or hierarchy between effects that prevent something and effects that allow something. I thought that preventing something took priority. So taking a dedication and having that dedication add spells to your spell list wouldn't override the restriction that is removing those spells from your spell list.


Also, the middle (or end) of a block of mechanical rules text is not the place for flavor text. People arguing that the first sentence of a feat is just flavor and description rather than mechanical rules is sometimes believable. But paragraph six of the rules text block is stretching things.


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The reference to Your Spell List normally references a particular classes's tradition plus any extra spells that get added via various feats or choices that might place a spell not normally in your tradition in your spell list anyway.

The prohibition is a Class prohibition, so it certainly could be interpreted as affecting the Class spellcasting abilities. However, it is important to note it says you CAN'T activate those spells, it doesn't say you'd have to resort to tricking it to activate, which is a non-spellcaster's resort for casting spells not on their list. This leads me to suspect it is more than simply removing the normal allowance to cast the spell, that the normal class ability grants.

A question I have is, would it prevent someone who takes a non-arcane sorcerer dedication, from being unable to choose an abjuration spell? Does it actually have the ability to remove the ability to cast spells provided via a different class path, from a different tradition? I am fairly certain it should block someone with a druid or primal sorcerer multiclass from casting Pass Without Trace, even though Abjuration in nature, it is not available to a wizard, so wouldn't be a spell the wizard 'loses' the ability to cast. This seems reasonable enough for me to let them use their druid or sorcerer slots to cast that spell.

The question of allowing them to cast a Protect Companion (SoM) which is a 4 tradition abjuration cantrip, is a harder decision I'm not positive about. There is reasonable enough argument that the spell is something the Wizard could have cast, so the spell is something affected by the Prohibition. It is absolutely clear they would be unable to cast the spell from one of their wizard slots. I am uncertain if it being a viable Arcane spell means it triggers the removing it from their personal spell list, which might affect more than JUST their primary class, meaning it might affect the Primal spell casting they get by other means. I'm probably going to lean a bit towards the permissive side, that if they take another class granting another tradition, those spell slots probably wouldn't be limited. Honestly however, if you stick with the same tradition (arcane sorcerer) I'm going to lean towards the less permissive side. (they don't have to invest in an extra skill and work to advance the other tradition's DC and spell attack proficiencies, for instance)

Ok, next on to the Tattoo... it is specifically a Thassalonian thing, so it seems like something that could easily come up if it is viable. Note, however, it grants an ability to cast an Innate spell. If you have innate spells, and take a spell casting class, you normally get to use that classes tradition for the casting of the spell. This to me means that Innate spells tend to Attach themselves to your primary casting, if you gain it. This means, to me that a Runelord that is prohibited from Abjuration would find that they would be unable to cast a shield cantrip, as their innate cantrip they gained will have attached to their Runelord casting, and while the feat added it to the spell list(even though it was already there), I'd agree that the class feature removed it after the fact. Other spell items requiring activations that allow you to cast the spell, such as spell hearts, I would assume would fall under the prohibition form using wands, staffs, with the exception of potions and oils which seem to imply you aren't casting the spell, they aren't spells, they are just magical effects.

Looking at Spellhearts, I'm less positive, since they came out in the same book, you might think they might mention them. However, I believe items that grant casting of cantrips to non-casters, treat them as innate spells which again, seem to adopt your primary spellcasting (and the spellhearts ability to user your spell DC or attack DC for its spells seems to corroborate this).

Runelords get quite a bit for their archetype feat, on the order of natural progression of getting the equivalence of feats that would cost several feats total for that one feat expenditure. That means to me that the prohibited school is intended to be a significant impact on their choices, and the mention of wands and scrolls being unable to be activated seems to confirm this to me.


breithauptclan wrote:
Also, the middle (or end) of a block of mechanical rules text is not the place for flavor text. People arguing that the first sentence of a feat is just flavor and description rather than mechanical rules is sometimes believable. But paragraph six of the rules text block is stretching things.

Fair enough. Though, I didn't really mean "flavor text"... even though that's what I said. I just couldn't think of a better way to put it at the time.

Perhaps a better word would be descriptive text. Like, the first sentence could be describing what's happening to your character in the game world / through natural language (you lose the ability to cast spells) and then the next sentence is a rules clarification as to how that works, because without said rules text it would be more restrictive than they want. I'm not saying that this is the case, but rather that it's another interpretation that I think makes sense as well.
It's also worth noting that it may be several paragraphs into the specialization, but it's also the 1st sentence of the paragraph. It's not uncommon for the first sentence or two of a given concept to be a general description followed by more concrete rules text. I see no reason why this couldn't be the case here just because the paragraph in question happens to be lower down in a larger section. I don't even read it that way personally, but it's a valid interpretation if you ask me.


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In general I subscribe to the line of thought that class features are generally intended to focus around your class. A Kistune Greedlord can't learn or prepare enchantment spells, but could still cast Daze from their first level ancestry feat.


The way I read runelord is "your list" is just your wizard spells; it would have mentioned multiclassing if it reached across all forms of casting, and spell lists between classes are very explicitly seperate mechanically.

As far as human spell tattoo feats, they are innate spells, and innate spells aren't technically on any class's spell list, so RAW, nothing stops you from taking it, though it's a reasonable houserule to say for flavor reasons, you can't runelord themed feats to pick up spells from your prohibited schools

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