Rank 2 — Divine, Occult
2 Actions — RARE, Concentrate, Holy, Manipulate
Area 30-foot emanation
Duration sustained for up to 1 minute
You perform a dance that seeks to pass on the knowledge and wisdom of a naga. Your allies in the area are filled with sacred energy, making their spells and attacks holy. Creatures or effects that would be unholy don't gain this benefit.
When you cast or Sustain this spell, you can choose an ally in the area that's Grabbed, Immobilized, or Restrained. They can immediately use a reaction to Escape; they can use your Occultism or Religion modifier for the check instead of their unarmed attack, Acrobatics, or Athletics modifier if that would be better.
Is it intentional that this spell doesn't make your own spells & attacks holy, since you don't count as your own ally?
At first this looked like a way to finally get some (at least temporary) holy/sanctification going on non-Cleric divine casters, but no... .
It seems weird to me that you can cast this holy spell to infuse everyone, except yourself. Maybe rephrase it to "Creatures of your choice in the area..." for the first part and leave only the second part of the spell for allies?
It's true you don't typically count as your own ally (from what I remember, I can't find the actually wording).
And so, you would correctly interpret that the caster wouldn't benefit from the spell.
I think there may have been a side bar on the statement though, that encouraged the GM to look at situations where it might make sense for the originator of a thing to also count as their own ally. And this would be one of those scenarios where I think it'd be fine.
But I can't find the rule, so I could be remembering incorrectly.
Seems like a good candidate for a slight modification to the spell description then, change second sentence to read as "You and your allies..."
Of course, the spell does actually work fine and it's just a question of do you need to be excluded from the effect of this spell.
Possibly a scenario where the writer of the spell might have been familiar with the PF1 ruling where you did count as your own ally (which lead to shenanigans, which is why they wrote this rule that you don't) and didn't think to word it differently. Of course, they might have meant for the caster not to benefit either.
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It is not unusual for holy spells to be self-sacrificing or strictly altruistic not including the self-target in its own effects similar to how holy champions reactions works.
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I also would not change this spell, and not only for the reasons that Errenor and Yuri brought up.
What the Demiplane entry does not tell you is the context of this rare spell. It is from Rival Academies and is a spell created by one of the participants, Veasna, She represents the Divine Conservatory of Magic from Nagajor and is a naga herself. It's very reasonable to assume that she is already Sanctified Holy, so a spell that she designed would not need to make her Holy.
The only for PCs to get it is for her to teach it to them.
IMO, when you are looking at a Rare anything from a Lore book, you need to see the non-mechanical aspects of it, in the actual book, to fully understand intent.