Unchained Rogue Ki Powers

[Blondeshell]

Apologies first if I'm coming at this years late. I've been comparing the differences between the talents for Rogues and Unchained Rogues that were listed in the Core Guide, Advanced Players Guide, Ultimate Combat, and Pathfinder Unchained. While Pathfinder Unchained did explicitly call out talents from the other three books that were modified or usable as is, there were several that were not covered in either case. The one at issue here is Ki Pool, which allowed core Rogues access to several Ninja Tricks.

The problem I've noticed is that both Hero Lab Online and Hero Lab Classic list several Ninja Tricks that require ki points that can be selected for Unchained Rogues from the Ultimate Combat book, but the Ki Pool talent is not available to actually let you use them. The ki-based powers listed are as follows:

Acrobatic Master
Darkvision
Feather Fall
Forgotten Trick
Ki Charge
Shadow Clone
Smoke Bombs
Sudden Disguise
Vanishing Trick
Ventriloquism

There are also some ki-based Master Ninja Tricks from Ultimate Combat that require Ninja level 10 but can be selected by an Unchained Rogue:

Ghost Step
Invisible Step
See the Unseen
Shadow Split
Unbound Steps

Is there some trick I haven't found to allow Unchained Rogues access to a ki pool in order to use these Ninja tricks? Is there some mix-up that caused these powers to be listed as available for Unchained Rogues? Is there something else going on that I've missed?

I'd appreciate any feedback I can get about this. Thanks.

[mototom]

RAW it seems you can take them but can't use them unless you have another way to get a ki pool, so HeroLab is displaying them correctly. This is stated under Ninja Trick:

"Benefit: A rogue with this talent can choose a trick from the ninja trick list. The rogue can choose but cannot use talents that require ki points, unless she has a ki pool."

[Blondeshell]

Thanks for the feedback. I saw that note, but it didn't make sense that you'd be able to choose abilities without actually being able to use them.

Upon further experimenting, it seems the only way for an Unchained Rogue to access the Ki Pool is by multi-classing at least 3 levels as an Unchained Monk. The Ninja, regular Monk, and regular Rogue are unavailable as alternate classes once Unchained Rogue is chosen, and I believe those are the only classes that have access to the Ki Pool in any fashion.

[Maidhc O Casain]

NOTE: I use HL Classic, not HLO. However, since HLO is supposed to be just a porting of HL Classic into the HLO system, the following may well be accurate.

EDIT: Upon further reading, it appears Paizo did not include Ki Pool (and thus any of the Ki talents) for the Unchained Rogue. So, by RAW Unchained Rogues don't have access to them. Their inclusion in the UC Rogue talent list in HL should probably be reported as a bug. My guess is that if they fix it at all it will only be fixed in HLO.

• The Rogue Talent "Ki Pool" grants a rogue a small Ki Pool.
• In HLC, this talent appears to be available to Rogues, but not to Unchained Rogues.
• This is likely a bug, and should be reported as such both for the HLC and HLO systems - they can sort through the RAW and determine if it's working as intended or if it's a bug.

[Blondeshell]

Sorry this is a bit of a necropost, but I wanted to follow up with the response I got from my bug report. That way, the next person who has this question can get help, too.

This, unfortunately, is simply an error by Paizo as the RAW they published for Ninja Tricks involving Ki is missing a component that they, in fact, seem to have failed to notice themselves. We left things as they were as we tend to always try to follow the rules as closely as possible, especially for things like this that seem like pretty obvious oversights but the problem here boils down to the fact that the Unchained Rogue seems to have been INTENDED to have access to the Rogue Talent Ki Pool but it was never added to the compatible list nor fixed via Errata. You can tell that later on down the road they did indeed intend to allow it and even added a specific new Unchained Rogue Talent that sources the non-existent Ki Pool(UC) Rogue Talent named Unlock Ki which has prerequisites that simply can never be met at all given that it calls out specifically a feature that does not exist. The text for the evidentiary Rogue Talent is as follows:

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Unlock Ki (Su) (Magic Tactics Toolbox pg. 27): A rogue with this advanced talent increases the number of points in the ki pool that she gains from the ki poolUC rogue talent to be equal to 1/2 her rogue level + her highest mental ability score modifier (Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma). In addition, she can spend 2 points from her ki pool as a swift action to gain the skill unlocks (Pathfinder Unchained 82) for one skill of her choice as appropriate for her number of ranks in that skill. This benefit lasts for 1 minute. The rogue must have a ki pool before selecting this advanced talent.
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In short, it is a blunder by the publisher and as we are contracted to recreate their system as they made it we try to do our best NOT to make calls of our own as we don't really have the right to adjudicate/interpret their intent and have made it a policy to just generally try to leave things as written and interpreted as literally as possible so avoid any kind of conflict or presumption that we are responsible for broken or untidy options/rules as we aren't the arbiters of those things and really aren't suited nor have the right to make those calls in the first place, we feel.

As it was never fixed with Errata we never ended up revisiting it ourselves and we just left it as-is which is where things stand today. Generally speaking, that component of the Unchained Rogue Class, and specifically the Unlock Ki Unchained Rogue Talent, is just broken as printed and the only way to really use the other Ki requiring Ninja Tricks is to access a Ki Pool in another way, that all said, this is a general explanation for why it is shown to why it is and how it was left in that state.

I hope the context here helps explain things a bit, sorry for the confusion here, we did our best to leave it open as we had a rock-hard place situation and tried our best to navigate and make the best call possible without limiting player options so interpretation and at least adjustments can me made individually. Thanks!