"All right." She scribbles down these restrictions. "Solidly useful, if it detects beings we'd want to know about. We should test that one after we test Detect Magic and Mending. So the next category is first-circle spells, right? How many of those do you get per day, again?"

"Four freely chosen, one domain spell - I usually put Divine Favor in the domain slot but my other option is Protection from Evil, which is not at all as comprehensive as it sounds but might be useful in this context anyway."

"What manner of evil does it protect from?"

"It makes it harder for evil creatures to hit you, and improves your saves against effects they produce. If I cast it on someone who is mentally affected by the control of an evil creature, they get to retry their save with that support and some extra specialized specifically for enchantments, but that only suppresses the effect, doesn't throw it off entirely. Protection from Evil does completely immunize the subject from new enchantments by evil creatures, though. It also makes it more difficult for a summoned evil creature - one projected into place from another plane - to make physical contact, unless you attack them first or they make their save or have spell resistance. My Protection from Evil would last about five minutes."

"And what does Divine Favour do?"

"It's a combat buff, only works on the caster, makes me hit more accurately and harder."

"I could definitely see either of those coming in handy depending what we run into. Okay, so what non-domain first circle spells are there for you to choose from?"

"Both of those are also available as nondomain spells. Most of my domain spells are, actually, except Qualm at second circle. And there's also - Ant Haul for carrying heavy loads, Abundant Ammunition for replenishing arrows or bolts or what have you. Endure Elements. Bless and Bane, but best practice is to use only Bless because Bane has a save. Comprehend Languages. Weapons Against Evil, if there's something which shrugs off a lot of the impact from normal weapons. Unbreakable Heart, improves saves against a subtype of mind-affecting magic. Bless Water but you have your own holy water situation? Neither Celestial nor Infernal Healing are likely to make sense here... Command does what it sounds like. Touch of Blindness. Sure Casting for getting through spell resistance. At every positive circle there's a Summon Monster, they go up in how many and how powerful the summonses are. ...Skim lets you read faster, that's not one I've used much... Cultural Adaptation exists but I do not see it coming up. Every positive circle has a Cure Wounds and an Inflict Wounds, first circle is Light. Deathwatch. Shield of Faith. Sanctuary. Detect Chaos, Evil, Good, Law, Charm, Undead, or the Faithful. Protection from Chaos, Evil, Good, Law. Diagnose Disease. Read Weather. Refine Improvised Weapon. Remove Fear, Remove Sickness. Doom is like Bane but single target. Entropic Shield, Forbid Action... Sanctify Corpse prevents a corpse from becoming an undead, might be useful. Ray of Sickening. Obscuring Mist. Spiked Armor. Hide from Undead. Ironbeard. Liberating Command. Magic Weapon."

Note note note note note. "Yeah, we have reasonably easy access to holy water and if I remember right you mentioned that yours is resource-intensive to create... what do Bless and Bane actually do? And, let me see..." She scans over her notes for blank spots. "Deathwatch, Shield of Faith, Sanctuary, Ironbeard, Liberating Command?"

"Bless is a combat buff. It stacks with Divine Favor and with third-circle Prayer, it makes you hit more accurately and improves saves against fear magic. Bane is a combat debuff but again you generally want to bolster your side and not have only a chance of weakening the opponent, unless something weird is going on that you would not likely know about first thing in the morning. Deathwatch lets you know how dead things are in its area - good for emergency Stabilize and healing triage, noticing if somebody's secretly undead, keeping track of allies' condition in a situation where you can't rely on them answering questions or being clearly visible. I haven't used it very much in recent years, it scales duration with power but if you know which hour you want it active in you probably also know which ten minutes so it was suitable for delegation. Shield of Faith makes you harder to hit. Sanctuary makes attacking you at all require a Will save, but it ends if you attack anyone and it doesn't work on area effects like fireballs. Ironbeard turns my beard into cold iron, I don't know if it works for people who don't have a beard, cold iron cuts through demon skin better than anything but holy weapons. Liberating Command makes it easier to slip out of a wrestling match or being tied up or something."

"Deathwatch seems like another generically useful spell for patrolling against vampires. Bless seems even more generically useful than that. I'd probably want to spend a while pondering the list before I could come up with recommendations for an experimental lineup; in the meantime, next category?"

"My deathwatch is one of the ones that'll last almost an hour and works in a cone. Bless is a fifty-foot burst, five minutes.

"Second circle spells - Admonishing Ray deals nonlethal damage, good if we need to arrest people we don't want to kill but won't work on undead. Aid is like Bless plus a handful of Virtues, exactly how many will vary. All the Protections have communal versions where I can divide the duration between people at this circle. There's also a Protection from Outsiders. Also Angelic Aspect, which I've never tried but know to exist, gets the caster Protection from Evil for its duration on top of a couple of energy resistances and... I have forgotten what else but am pretty sure I'm forgetting something. Share Language is at this circle and will be necessary till I've learned the local language, which will take weeks even with Comprehend Languages to lean on. Zone of Truth creates an area where lying is impossible but allows a save, the best practice is to work out with someone what they want to assert before you cast it and then they would have to bet in advance on being able to pass it, Abadarans get a better version at first circle but I'm not one. Air Step is what it sounds like, Align Weapon I think I've mentioned and it can cooperate with Abundant Ammunition. Undetectable Alignment, what it sounds like so probably not useful here. Tears to Wine turns any nonmagical liquid into a wine that makes you - slightly the opposite of drunk, just better at the same things drinking normal wine makes you worse at? Mentally, it doesn't make you more agile. Hmm... oh, there's a communal Ant Haul, and a communal Endure Elements. Augury is -

"- actually, Augury is just about the closest thing that remains to prophecy on Golarion but it's not very good, so I should circle back to my plan to look through the Acts and try to find the names of some actual prophecy spells within my capacity - Augury gets a weal or woe or both or neither result about the near term consequences of some action. It needs incense and some kind of appropriate fortune-telling medium.

"Burst of Radiance blinds everyone in a burst but only harms Evil creatures, albeit not by much. All the enhancements are at this circle, but clerics don't get the Cunning one, just Eagle's Splendor, Cat's Grace, Bull's Strength, Bear's Endurance, and Owl's Wisdom. Suppress Charms and Compulsions is what it sounds like. Status monitors the condition of allies. Spiritual Weapon can make a weapon - in this case a sword - which attacks independently. Spear of Purity is a combat spell. Calm Emotions is what it sounds like, so are Darkness, so is Delay Poison and Delay Disease and Delay Pain. Sound Burst is what it sounds like, sometimes stuns targets... Snow Shape is what it sounds like. Silence. Shatter is for destroying objects. There's a Greater Detect Magic. Enchantment Sight. Gentle Repose preserves a corpse - this matters for the time window within which resurrection spells can work. Grace lets you get through a crowd without them being able to opportunistically strike you. Hold Person paralyzes someone. - anything that has 'person' in the name means a normal sort of person and not for instance an undead. Lay of the Land lets you spend a while knowing your way around an area. Make Whole is a greater Mending. Resist Energy works on whatever type, I can pick between fire or acid or whatever at the moment of casting. Remove Paralysis is what it sounds like. Lesser Restoration fixes - the kind of damage that a cure won't touch, though not all of it, most of the examples I can think of are magical effects you wouldn't know by name...

"I'm probably forgetting things."

She notes it all down. "And how many of these do you get per day? And is there the same situation with a single specialized domain slot?"

"Yes, one domain slot for each positive circle, I usually put Qualm in this one but my other option is Align Weapon, law only because it's from a Law domain. Qualm is not a cleric spell otherwise so I can't get more than one. - after we're through with spells I'll need to go over domain powers. I get three I can assign freely."

Nod nod note note. "What advantages does Make Whole have over Mending, and Greater Detect Magic over Detect Magic?"

"With Make Whole the weight limit is replaced with a more generous volume limit and it can work on magic items, though only if they're minor relative to what I could make if I knew how to make magic items, or construct creatures. There is also at fourth circle a Greater Make Whole, which has again a weight limit but a larger one than Mending, and works better still on magic items. Greater Detect Magic is better at longer-gone lingering magic auras, gives me a slim chance at identifying the last spell cast by a creature I concentrate on - I don't know how this will work with foreign magic - and if I'm familiar with a caster's style, I can identify auras by who left them, which again I don't know how it'll work with foreign magic."

"We can test some of those things at some point. All right. So the next circle is third? How many spell slots, which spells available in the domain slot, and what spells do you know of?"

"One freely chosen, one domain, I usually go with Prayer which is a combat buff and debuff in a burst - my other option is Magic Circle Against Evil, which is sort of like area effect longer-duration Protection from Evil but requires powdered silver. It also has applications for calling creatures for other planes but not in a way I'm very familiar with and I would not care to risk any calling that I thought required a Magic Circle. The only calling spell I can cast at third circle is Planar Inquiry. This would get me a low-powered outsider to talk to, probably a lantern archon or an arbiter inevitable, and they want payment - perhaps in services, perhaps in interdimensionally negotiable goods compact enough for them to carry," he gestures a basketball sized sphere, "for showing up at all, let alone anything they'd do while here. I have some reason to think that calling archons might be expensive for Heaven and would prefer to go with inevitables, Lawful Neutral outsiders, instead for that reason even though I expect them to be more expensive - Abadar is the main god of the Lawful Neutral plane, His domain is trade, and I expect if we give one enough diamonds or something to be worth its while that will in the long run be commensurable with whatever resources I might invisibly call upon. Giving information to the material plane is also expensive and I should not call any entity that I am not willing to pay for their silence informing me that my questions were too dear for the diamonds it could carry. I think summonses don't have these problems but they're thirty seconds each.

"Other third circle spells include Create Food, which you saw; Accept Affliction would let me relocate some kinds of problem from a subject to myself, perhaps after loading up on buffs to let me more easily manage it; there's a communal Align Weapon and a communal Delay Poison; I think I can't cast Animate Dead because it's probably Evil but if you really wanted a skeleton horse or something I can try preparing it and find out for sure; Aura Sight is like alignment detection but for everyone I look at for a while. ...Vision of Hell exists and does what it sounds like. Symbol of Healing is probably not useful under these conditions. There's a Greater Stunning Barrier - did I mention regular Stunning Barrier -

"There's Stone Shape, what it sounds like. Bestow Curse. Blindness/Deafness, and Remove Blindness/Deafness. Channel Vigor is a buff with a few options I can decide between at time of casting. Continual Flame makes a permanent torch with some powdered ruby. Daylight might be very good against vampires. Dispel Magic also works as a counterspell but the conventional wisdom is that it's not worth countering spells most of the time, not sure if that holds here... Greater Hide from Undead. Invisibility Purge. Locate Object. Nap Stack lets people within its area sleep four times faster, but you can't benefit from it more than once a week and it requires a ridiculously fancy miniature pillow. Obscure Object protects something from scrying. Protection from Energy, or communal Resist Energy. Remove Disease. Remove Curse. I... think there is a communal Share Language but it might be at fourth, I'm not sure. Speak with Dead I've mentioned."

Note note note. "You did not mention regular Stunning Barrier, what circle? I can imagine situations that would benefit enormously from a Nap Stack and I'm so glad I'm not in one. Please tell me more about Daylight."

"Stunning Barrier is first circle, makes you harder to hit, may stun something that tries anyway. Nap Stack is most commonly used for making magic rings that make you need only two hours of sleep a night - the standard enchantment also lets you do without food indefinitely."

"Now that would be profoundly useful to my semi-nocturnal lifestyle. Any chance of you learning how to make magic rings?" She squeezes Stunning Barrier into the first-circle spells list.

"I'd need to be fourth circle, I'd need to have some way to identify and acquire spellsilver - the kinds of metal that can hold magic - and I'd need to figure out how completely untrained. So, uh, this would be difficult, but if it turns out that I'm fourth circle next month and spellsilver grows on trees here I could - poke the problem and see if any progress occurs."

She scribbles a note in the margins about these restrictions. "Understood. So, Daylight - what exactly does it do?"

"It's a lot like Greater Light - cast on an object, mine will be almost an hour, it's quite bright. It bothers things like orcs that are normally sensitive to light but it doesn't actually - I would not expect it to destroy a vampire, but it might inconvenience one. I did not spend much of my career dealing with undead and the assumptions might not generalize anyway.

"I think it's worth trying it to find out how local vampires respond. Could be anywhere from 'mildly annoyed' to 'in flames', and much of the middle-to-upper extent of that range would be useful to have an hour's worth of every night. So that's all the categories of spells you currently have available, but I recall you mentioned something about domain powers?"