Exemplar The Deft Epithet action costs

[StilleStadhouder]

The Examplar Root Epithet The Deft has the following text:

Speed, subtlety, and precision. Your feet rush as fast as a gale, but your fingers touch as lightly as a breeze. You are trained in Thievery. After you Spark Transcendence, you can attempt to Steal or Palm an Object. When you Spark Transcendence, you can Interact as a free action to reload or draw a weapon ikon, either directly before or directly after your transcendence action. The weapon ikon must be a ranged weapon with the reload trait or a one-handed melee weapon with the thrown trait.

Regarding drawing a weapon the text is clear, but the part about stealing or palming an object puzzles me: you can already take the Steal or Palm an Object actions in combat normally, so why is this bit of text here?
Surely they cannot mean that Exemplars with The Deft can only do those actions after transcending, compared to all other characters being able to do them at any point.
Ordinarily I would assume that these actions are also intended to be free, but every other action in this and other Epithets are explicitly mentioned to be free actions, whereas this one is not.

Personally, the most simple way of interpreting this to me is to assume they forgot to print as a free action for the Steal and Palm an Object part, as any other alternative seems like an even bigger headache.

What is the way you rule/interpret this at your table?

[NorrKnekten]

Steal or Palm an Object is a Subordinate action that becomes part of the Spark Transcendence action.

The Free Action Reload/Draw says it is a free action as you can take it either before or after the actual Spark Transcendence action (so either before Spark itself, or after the Steal/palm) but Reload/Draw is not a Subordinate Action

[Xenocrat]

StilleStadhouder wrote:

you can already take the Steal or Palm an Object actions in combat normally, so why is this bit of text here?

You can take the Steal action in combat, I guess, but the action is limited to negligible bulk and automatically fails if the creature who has it is on guard or in combat. So you can only take fairly trivial things from innocent bystanders not participating in the combat. Maybe they meant for this to change and neglected to mention it, ask your GM.

But even if you waive the combatant clause, the number of negligble bulk things on an NPC monster that you'd care to take during a combat are...not high. Maybe there's some feats that grant noncombat or utility transcends where this could somehow be useful - steal and trigger flight as the same action?

[Finoan]

Regardless of what objects you can or can't Steal or Palm and from who, the result of The Deft Epithet is action compression. You are getting the entire benefits of Spark Transcendence, plus a Steal or Palm action, plus an Interact action to reload or draw an Ikon item. All for the cost of one action (and technically a free action, but I am not sure those need to be counted).

[NorrKnekten]

Oh you can steal from people in combat, But it requires the pickpocket feat and master in thievery.

Its certainly more action compression compared to the other Root Epitehts that only do one of two.

Brave: Stride (once per enemy)
Cunning: Diversion or Feint
Mournful: Dazzle one enemy (once per enemy)
Proud: Give an enemy penalties against creatures other than yourself.
Radiant: Minor heal

Deft: Steal/Palm + Draw/Reload.

Outside of Steal/Palm being rather inconsequential on its own.
Being able to reload and pick up a neglible bulk item does mean that you can technically pick up magical ammo of a corpse and then instantly load it into your weapon.

Creatures might also be wearing bombs,potions, scrolls and wands on a belt, or might have a keychain for plot-reasons, I certainly wouldnt stop someone from using steal to snatch any of those from an unconcious target.