I Known You Can CAST Imbue With Spell Ability, But Can You USE Imbue With Spell Ability? (Patreon)

A GM call for Pathfinder First Edition.

The spell imbue with spell ability includes the following line of text.

"Only cleric spells from the schools of abjuration, divination, and conjuration (healing) can be transferred."

The game has no specific rule that defines what "cleric spells" are. In the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, only clerics had this spell on their spell list, so the meaning was clear in context.

Then came the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Player's Guide, and the oracle class. the oracle class doesn't have its own spell list. Instead, the class says "An oracle casts divine spells drawn from the cleric spell lists." So, if an oracle casts cure light wounds, is that a "cleric spell?" It's not a cleric casting it, but it is a class that specifically gets the cleric spell list. (The warpriest comes along later in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Class Guide, with exactly the same problem and variables.)

There is no absolute RAW (Rules As Written) answer here. If I ran into this question as a GM, I'd say that, at least for purposes of imbue with spell ability, oracle and warpriest spells are cleric spells.

Then there's the shaman.

Also introduced in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Class Guide, the shaman is a hybrid class mixing the druid and witch. The shaman has their own specific class spell list, and it includes imbue with spell ability.

Now, at least two interpretations seem to be supported by the RAW text on how this works.

The LEAST reasonable one is that although the shaman can cast imbue with spell ability, none of the shaman's spells are considered cleric spells, so they can't actually imbue any spells with it. It's clearly dumb for a class to get a spell on its spell list it cannot cast, but the shaman is not a cleric, and the shaman spell list is not the cleric spell list. In truth, most likely whoever wrote the shaman spell list and added imbue with spell ability almost certainly didn't remember the spell's restriction that only certain cleric spells could be imbued with it, but given the shaman does get the spell on their spell list I'd never go with this interpretation of RAW, despite admitting it's one way to read the rules.

The second RAW reading is that the shaman can use imbue with spell ability to imbue any spells that meet the prerequisites and are on both the cleric and shaman class spell lists. This is the idea that cure light wounds cast by a shaman acts as a cleric spell, because it is also on the cleric spell list. This isn't how I'd handle the question as a GM, but if I was playing a shaman and that was the ruling the GM made, I'd accept it and move on.

I personally think the best answer is to go with an exegesis that seeks to understand the Rules As Intended (RAI). Since I don't believe whoever put imbue with spell ability on the shaman spell list was giving any thought to the spells mention of only working on certain subsets of cleric spells, I'd just replace "cleric" with "shaman" when deciding how the spell worked. So, for shamans, the sentence would read "Only shaman spells from the schools of abjuration, divination, and conjuration (healing) can be transferred."

Now it helps that I've taken a look and that ruling doesn't seem to break anything. And I'd likely tell any affected player "That's my ruling unless there turns out to be some massively weird or overpowered side effect I'm not seeing, so before using imbue with spell ability to do something with a shaman spell that seems out-of-scope, run it past me."

And, of course, I'd make a TINY tweak to the spell's description to avoid these issues if I ever ended up doing a Remastered Pathfinder First Edition Core Rulebook...