The Evangelist prestige class's 2nd level ability, Aligned Class, is:
At 2nd level, the evangelist must choose a class she belonged to before adding the prestige class to be her aligned class. She gains all the class features for this class, essentially adding every evangelist level beyond 1st to her aligned class to determine what class features she gains. She still retains the Hit Dice, base attack bonus, saving throw bonuses, and skill ranks of the prestige class, but gains all other class features of her aligned class as well as those of the evangelist prestige class.
My question is how that interacts with class abilities like domains that include text like Protection Domain's Aura of Protection:
At 8th level, you can [stuff] for a number of rounds per day equal to your cleric level. You and your allies within this aura gain [energy resistance and a deflection bonus to AC]. The deflection bonus increases by +1 for every four cleric levels you possess beyond 8th. At 14th level, the resistance [increases].
Domains are gained at 1st level, which is where my uncertainty comes from.
Take a cleric 1/evangelist 8 with the protection domain. Can that character benefit from aura of protection? If so, can they do the [stuff] for 1 round per day (since they've only got 1 actual cleric level) or 8 rounds per day (1 cleric level plus 7 "virtual" cleric levels from evangelist)?
Best Answer
At 8th level, one class feature a protection cleric gains is the aura of protection you quote. At 9th level, a class feature they gain is that they can use their aura of protection for another round. How class features are organized laid out—part of one ability vs. its own ability—is not relevant.
Yes, it would have been nice for Paizo to explicitly state that evangelist stacks with your chosen class’s level for determining the power of one’s class feature, but no, it isn’t necessary for them to have said that.