Playing a Nagaji Cleric of Nalinivati need some clarity on the fangs vs jaws debate

[DoodleDegen]

I'm playing a titan nagaji cleric warpriest of nalinivati in an upcoming kingmaker game. I was planning on using jaws as a favored weapon, but I'm a little confused on the subject as now I'm reading up on how jaws and fangs are different things but all deities with unarmed favored weapons are grouped together on Archives of Nethys and would just like some clarity regarding this subject. I mean since Nalinivati is the creator deity of the Nagaji I thought jaws would make sense, but they specifically use a fang attack. Can somebody explain?

[Finoan]

The best explanation is that the content creation of these ancestries, deities, and unarmed attacks is done by multiple different people. So they don't always use the same specific terms for them.

It is going to be up to your GM if a 'jaws' attack is mechanically equivalent to a 'fangs' attack. Just like the GM will have to determine if a nails attack is mechanically equivalent to having a required claw attack.

[Agonarchy]

Part of it is that "fangs" implies a bite that pierces deeply without much surface damage while "jaws" implies more crushing and tearing. Fangs are good for delivering venom bit with weaker damage while jaws are for rending flesh or crushing bone. Some features will call out multiple kinds of mouth-based attack. It would be handy if there was a sidebar that made it very clear how tightly they expected these to be adhered to.

[Agonarchy]

That said, for a naga deity I would assume "jaws" is a catch-all for "mouth".

[NoxiousMiasma]

It would also be slightly silly for the primary goddess of Nagaji to have an unarmed attack using the mouth that didn't count the Nagaji ancestry's default (mouth-based) native unarmed attack.

[Red Griffyn]

Definitely a reasonable GM should allow them to be the same... but I can't help but picture the difference:

Baby snake with very little force behind their bite, but very sharp fangs that focus their force over a very small area to deliver peircing damage/poison.

Vs.

Aged Toothless Gnoll or Crocodile that is 'crushing' and enemy with their uber powerful gumming jaws strength (bludgeoning).

I think there is a 'difference' but honestly you have to really pedantic to make the distinction (and take it to the extremes since most animals with jaws also have teeth of some kind, even if it isn't needle level sharpness like on some snakes). You also have to be really risk adverse to stop someone from doing this as I don't think a jaw/fang meta option even exists. The only case I could think of to investigate would be of an alchemist (probably just and alchemist dual class) that is using bestial mutagens + viperous elixir. But it doesn't sound like that is what you're doing anyways; and unless you're an alchemist with the L5 powerful alchemy feature, and your GM lets it work since it isn't clear, the DCs on that poisons will remain static and fall behind).