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I'm new and this is my very first campaign. My character is a PF1e cleric following Ptah. I chose the Travel domain and Ash subdomain during character creation. Ptah is associated with the Artifice, Earth, Fire, Knowledge, and Travel domains. We just leveled up to 3, and are picking our second feats.

I read several cleric guides and they all highly suggested taking the War Blessing feat. Some of them even suggested that the feat isn't limited to just my own deity's domains, but to any domain, which seemed like a stretch to me. However, none of them said that the feat would be limited to only the the two domains a cleric choose at creation.

War Blessing

Your fervent call to your deity imbues you with a temporary blessing.

Prerequisite(s): Mystery or domain class feature.

Benefit: Choose two warpriest blessings when you take this feat. Each of these blessings must be tied to a domain granted by your deity or to one of the two domains that represent your spiritual inclination and abilities. Twice per day, you can call upon the minor blessing from one or the other of your chosen blessings. This ability otherwise acts like the warpriest blessings class feature. Your effective warpriest level is the highest level that you have in the class that has the mystery or domain class feature.

However, my GM temporarily ruled that, even though I met the prerequisite (have the domain class feature), I could only use it to take the warpriest Travel blessing, which is essentially just a copy of the cleric Travel domain power, so redundant. And even though the feat says to take two blessings, he says I can't because Ash is asubdomain and not an actual domain, so I can't even take the Fire blessing.

This interpretation seems extremely restrictive, to the point that this feat is completely useless to the whole cleric class. Why would I take this feat just to get two blessings I already already possess as domain powers? I believe that the feat means I can take two domain powers from any domain associated with my deity, not just my single domain. He said if I can find a ruling or SRD entry that supports that specifically, he'll allow it.

Edit to add: He allowed it! Thanks everyone!

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    \$\begingroup\$ RE: "Otherwise, I wasted a feat on a useless power and better luck next time." The GM said that? Really? \$\endgroup\$
    – Hey I Can Chan
    Commented Jan 18 at 0:15
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    \$\begingroup\$ Most reasonable DMs will let a player re-spec a level-up choice if it doesn't work the way they thought it would. Even more obviously a good idea in a case like this where they haven't already used it for anything important and it's presumably soon after level-up. If you haven't already, I'd suggest directly asking the DM if you can pick a different feat instead (if you want to). It's no fun to feel like you're under-powered every time you play this character for the rest of the campaign because of one-misunderstanding, especially that in-world your character probably wouldn't have had. \$\endgroup\$
    – Peter Cordes
    Commented Jan 18 at 23:13

2 Answers 2

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War Blessing states (emphasis mine):

Benefit: Choose two warpriest blessings when you take this feat. Each of these blessings must be tied to a domain granted by your deity or to one of the two domains that represent your spiritual inclination and abilities. Twice per day, you can call upon the minor blessing from one or the other of your chosen blessings. This ability otherwise acts like the warpriest blessings class feature. Your effective warpriest level is the highest level that you have in the class that has the mystery or domain class feature.

Now this appears to give us some leeway when selecting what blessing we can take, our options are to select a blessing from a domain that's granted by our deity (this is a little vague, could mean one in their portfolio, or one of theirs that you've selected), or one of the two domains that matches our spiritual abilities?! That part is a little wacky until look at Cleric Domains, and then we can see (again, emphasis mine):

A cleric chooses two domains from among those belonging to her deity. A cleric can select an alignment domain (Chaos, Evil, Good, or Law) only if her alignment matches that domain. If a cleric is not devoted to a particular deity, she still selects two domains to represent her spiritual inclinations and abilities (subject to GM approval).

So, the feat is most definitely restricted to domains within your Deity's portfolio (or that you've selected if you worship a concept and not a deity), and maybe restricted to the ones from your deity that you've selected.

However, not all is lost, if we look under the domain rules and peek at the rules for Subdomains we can also see (emphasis still mine):

Each subdomain replaces a granted power and a number of spells in the domain's granted spell list. A cleric who chooses a subdomain must have access to both the domain and its subdomain from her deity. If a cleric selects a subdomain, she cannot select its associated domain as her other domain choice (in effect, the subdomain replaces its associated domain). Subdomains are treated as equivalent to their associated domain for any effect or prerequisite based on domains. If a subdomain has two associated domains, the cleric can only select the subdomain for one of her domains. Subdomains can be selected by Druids (except the metal subdomain) and inquisitors (if their deity allows it).

This means that even if it's restricted to domains that you've taken, the Ash Subdomain should count as the Fire domain for War Blessing, allowing you to select the Fire Blessing.

On a whim, I was going through my copy of the CRB, and it appears that both AON and D20PFSRD copy paste the text for the domain ability from Cleric into the header for the Domains section (which is fine for the most part actually, except right now). So here's the actual full header for the section (emphasis mine):

Clerics may select any two of the domains granted by their deity. Clerics without a deity may select any two domains (choice are subject to GM approval).

Now if we look at that first sentence, we can see that there's a distinction between the domains that you select, and the domains that your deity grants.

This means that War Blessing should grant you the ability to choose a blessing from any domain within your deity's portfolio.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ You, my friend, are awesome. Thank you! \$\endgroup\$
    – Neko Hime
    Commented Jan 18 at 20:52
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Let's break it down.

Choose two warpriest blessings when you take this feat. Each of these blessings must be tied to a domain granted by your deity or to one of the two domains that represent your spiritual inclination and abilities.

Choose (not gain) two warpriest blessings. They can be selected from a domain granted by your deity (which are Artifice, Earth, Fire, Knowledge, and Travel) or domains you already have (there are cases where these are not the same, particularly if you gain the Feat through a Mystery). Note that it does not say "a domain you have" nor "a domain granted to you by your deity".

Twice per day, you can call upon the minor blessing from one or the other of your chosen blessings. This ability otherwise acts like the warpriest blessings class feature. Your effective warpriest level is the highest level that you have in the class that has the mystery or domain class feature.

Twice per day, you can use either (minor) blessing. You count as having "blessings" and use your Cleric level (in this case) as your effective level if needed.

TL;DR

You're correct, and your GM was probably misreading "one of the two domains that represent your spiritual inclination and abilities" as a clarification, not a second option compared to the Domains your deity has. Whoever was online saying you could pick any domain was also incorrect.

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