Nosomatic Chirurgeon's Pestilential Touch - Arcane or Divine?

[weckar]

A silly question perhaps, but are the Inflict spells cast through the Nosomatic Chirurgeon's Pestilential Touch arcane or divine in nature?
I mostly ask for ASF, but also because I find it interesting to use the ability for other PrC qualification purposes.
And while I am at it - what happens to the ability should your alignment turn Good, later?

[ExLibrisMortis]

Hmmm... I think that the writer intended to make Pestilential Touch a supernatural ability, powered by the use of spell slots or SLAs, but itself not subject to ASF or any of that (which would make it quite good, ignoring SR and all). Otherwise, you could give up a high-level SLA to meet the casting requirement for certain PrCs... not that there are many ways to make use of that, I suppose, but it would still be weird.

As written, I'd say the spell is cast as a cleric spell. It's on the cleric list, not the sorcerer/wizard list, and analogous to spell version rules, I think (in a purely non-RAW way) you pick casting methods by checking spell lists in order (see MM 315 for the spell version rules for special abilities).


If you turn good, you no longer qualify for the PrC. Depending on your ruling on CA/CW prerequisite rules, you might lose Pestilential Touch, or you might not. The ability does not otherwise care about your alignment.

[weckar]

So, it could qualify you, by that thought, for things requiring the ability to cast X level divine spells, but not X level arcane spells?

[ExLibrisMortis]

So, it could qualify you, by that thought, for things requiring the ability to cast X level divine spells, but not X level arcane spells?
Well, the reasoning I provided is by analogy, meaning it's not RAW. If I were going to do the whole houseruling thing, I'd just make the whole thing (Su) and be done with it.

But, yes.

[weckar]

Hmm.

So the ability does not make it clear by itself what it is supposed to be (it clearly says it allows you to cast the spell, but it is also a (su) ability).
Analogy can only ever get us so far.

I don't supposed Baker ever said anything on the matter? He was the responsible party for this book, right?