So my dm saw the magus class, and he shares my love of the concept of the magus. After some lengthy discussion, and perusing these forums, he allowed me to take the class and tweak it to my liking provided that he did not think it was too overpowered. That being said, he also tends to have a pension for the ridiculous, and thus his judgment of what's overpowered is often skewed. So I thought I would post the magus class as permitted by my dm for Jason to take a look at, as well as the rest of the community, and give some feedback. It is quite lengthy as it's pretty much a class write up. I included some of the ideas from these forums that interested me the most and attempted to implement them. Due to the length, I'm posting it as a google doc. I apologize in advance for the appearance of the table in advance.
I kept the spells exactly the same, and implemented the flurry of blows like idea for spell combat, as well as the arcane pool idea. The magus arcana ability has been re-arranged and reworked to incorporate the Arcane Pool. Quite a few of the other abilities have been tweaked as well. Again, looking for some feedback, especially from Jason. Obviously I'm not asking this to be the next playtest of the magus or anything, I'm just hoping that while looking at this you might see something you like.
Thanks,
Kib
After some lengthy discussion, and trolling through these forums,
I'm not sure this means what you think it does :-p
After some lengthy discussion, and trolling through these forums,I'm not sure this means what you think it does :-p
Hmm, touche.
One issue I see here is that you never playtested it before you changed it. The whole point of it is to test it AS IS, then give feedback on the results.
I did playtest it before I changed it. I commented on that in another thread. I found it to be extremely underpowered at level 6. At level 10 it was a lot better, but was still lackluster compared to my party mates. Tried a one off level 15 adventure last night with the magus, and it was a significant improvement, but again, my party mates outshone me by far. It was fun though. I enjoy the flavor of the class quite a bit.
After reading through this proposed remake, a friend of mine suggested that I explain the logic behind some of my choices. I thought I’d do that in a post rather than in the google doc so it isn’t any longer than it already is. Here it goes:
Arcane Armor: I don’t like the idea of an armored magus; the concept of an “arcane paladin” doesn’t really sit well. It comes off as too restrictive for a class that is supposed to equally bend the freeform arts of spellcasting and one handed melee combat. So instead, I took the monk approach, and gave them intelligence to ac. They do not get it to CMD, or any other additional ac bonuses based on their level like the monk does.
Spellstrike: The concept of spellstrike is a great one, and a personal favorite. However, the implementation was lacking. So I made it similar to the duskblade’s arcane channel ability and put some restrictions that were not in the original. For example, it is a full round action until you hit 8th level. At 8th level, you can do it as a standard action for one attack, or a full round action for however many attacks you can make, but you still expend spellslots for each attack. And since this is a prepared caster, you have to think about your spells in advance, and it’s very possible that you might only have one touch spell prepared. Additionally, it is a ¾ BAB class, and it pretty much requires one weapon and one free hand so you can’t dual wield to abuse it.
Combat Casting: It was a feat tax. Not including it, to me, is like having a monk that doesn’t get improved unarmed strike for free.
Spell Combat: Cool concept, but virtually useless until improved spell combat. I shifted the level, along with the levels of all of the improved versions, to adjust to the changes I made to magus arcana. I also used the flurry of blows idea posted in the forums.
Arcane Pool & Magus Arcana: The arcane pool idea was brilliant. It reminded me of the monk’s ki pool, which I have always liked. However, the nature of the arcana, along with a need to make something a little bit more unique than ki, warranted a much bigger pool. It might be a bit too big; I was playing with the base amount for a while. I settled on that number because in the original, even if you burned your highest spell slot to give yourself a fairly large bonus, you still had your lower spell slots to give yourself lower bonuses. I wanted to do it in such a way that you could burn a large number of points on a large bonus, and you wouldn’t be able to do that again until you replenished, but you would still have enough excess points to do the smaller bonuses. I reworked the arcana to reflect this change. Arcanas that were once per day were designed so that you would have to spend such a large amount of points to do them, and you wouldn’t be able to do them again due to lack of resources. I also put limits on the amount you could spend on certain arcana to match the way the spellslot sacrificing worked. For example, with arcane accuracy, a 10th level magus could sacrifice his only 4th level spell to gain a +4 attack bonus, and then he was out of his spell. He still had his lower level ones though. Well now, a 10th level magus can spend 12 points (over 50% of his point pool) to give himself that +4 to attack. He will still have points left over to do the lesser bonuses with, but will not have the points to do a big bonus again. I added a bunch of arcana as well in order to create greater versatility. No two magi would be the same. You may also select a bonus feat in place of an arcana. They happen at every even level to mimic discoveries or rogue talents.
Arcane Weapon: Arcane weapon was shifted to the level it is at because of the change to magus arcana. In order to adjust for that, I made the progression for arcane weapon the same as the progression for divine bond. I may also have added ghost touch because it seemed appropriate. The magus had less to choose from than the bard or the paladin. Of course, there may very well be enchants in ultimate magus that I’m not privy which may be included in the ability in the future.
Fighter Training: Fighter training was shifted because of magus arcana as well. It doesn’t really make a difference what level the magus gains this ability since it is ½ of your magus level and scales appropriately.
Weapon Call: Now this one is more of a personal flavor thing. I would think the magus would learn how to do this much earlier than 19th. Aside from the fact that you could do it as a free action, and teleport to it as a free action, it seemed kind of lack luster for a 19th level ability compared to stuff like gate, an extra smite, dr/-, etherealness or a bonus 8th or 9th level spell. So I moved it to 13th level and made the call itself a swift action. I removed the teleportation portion, but kept the scrying and lowered the penalty because it seemed appropriate for 13th level.
Counterstrike: This was moved to fit the magus arcana.
Arcane Wind: So I had to come up with a new 19th level ability, and I liked the model that was used for the monk and summoner. Take a 9th level spell and put some heavy restrictions on it. I’m not sure this was the thought process used when creating the abilities of course, but it made sense at the time. So I took winds of vengeance from the apg and nerfed the duration and some of its effects. Originally I had something else called spell study which essentially allowed the magus to choose, but it was too good to not be a capstone. Instead, we have Arcane Wind. This might be a little much as well, I’m not really sure. I haven’t had a chance to playtest at this high of a level.
True Magus: Hmm… The original magus capstone… It made spell combat not take any penalties anymore, which was pretty good, but I wouldn’t say capstone worthy. Especially not when rogues can force a fort save against death with every sneak attack. It also allows you to add +2 to caster level checks when using the ability (A spell penetration feat, hardly capstone worthy either imo) or +2 to the dc of spells with it. That is 1 dc higher than spell focus, and applies to all schools, but only when using spell combat. Again, great ability, but I’m not quite sure it’s capstone worthy. And with the addition of some of the new arcana, it seemed really lackluster. Instead, there is the monstrosity that is listed now for true magus. I would have to play around with it to determine just how good it is, but it seemed like a great idea at the time. Flashes of magical inspiration or moments of clarity are always fun.
Comments, questions and clarifications:
Spellstrike: It mentions that Spellstrike doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity. Do you mean that the spellcasting that is used as part of this ability doesn't provoke or that delivering the touch spell with a weapon attack doesn't provoke? The former is useful, but ought to be written as "The touch spell or spells cast during Spellstrike do not provoke attacks of opportunity." If the latter, the addition is useless as melee attacks with melee weapons don't provoke.
Spell Combat: If you are going to change the Magus' BAB when using this ability and apply various penalties to his attack, you really ought to include a chart similar to the one the monk has.
Also, just a formatting issue, but this ability ought to be listed after the Magus Arcana and before Arcane Weapon so that all abilities are presented in the order that they are gained.
Arcane Pool: As it is currently worded, a Magus can nova all his points, rest for 8 hours and then nova again. Rather than stating that it takes 8 hours of rest to renew the pool, simply state that the pool is renewed when the Magus prepares his spells. Also, I think that this ability should simply be a part of the Magus Arcana ability. Simply add this paragraph to the Magus Arcana paragraph.
Magus Arcana: Make sure that you truly intend to use the modifier and not the bonus for these abilities. A modifier can be negative (due to ability damage/drain) and will penalize a magus with the arcana. A bonus can never be negative. Also, since every Arcane Point cost seems to be a multiple of three, you might consider just dividing the pool/costs by three. This does increase the power of the Int bonus to the Arcane Pool, so you might also consider only adding half the magus's Int bonus.
-Arcane Affinity: Better wording on this arcana would be: "A magus with this arcana may sacrifice a prepared spell slot as a free action to increase his available Arcane Points. He gains three arcane points for every level of the spell sacrificed. If sacrificing a spell would provide a magus with more Arcane Points than his Arcane Pool allows, the excess is lost."
-Arcane Power: Does this arcana let the magus add his Int modifier to each die rolled or just to the total damage? You would want to clarify that. Also, you ought to mention that this arcana has no effect on spells that deal no damage. It might sound silly, but some people might read that casting Black Tentacles (which deals no damage) now gains the magus' Int modifier to damage.
-Arcane Shield: I feel that this ability ought to be "until the beginning of his next turn" rather than the end so that, if a magus wants to continually boost his AC, he would need to do so each round rather than every other.
-Arcane Strike: I feel that you ought to clarify this arcana by adding the phrase "rather than a swift action" to the end.
-Bonus Feat: It ought to read "A magus may select a bonus feat. These bonus feats must be selected from those listed as combat, item creation, or metamagic feats. He must meet the prerequisites for these
feats as normal. A magus may select this magus arcana more than once."
-Broad Study: Since your magus doesn't have armor proficiency, you don't need the line about ASF from armor.
-Concentrate: You need to state what sort of action the reroll takes. I would suggest a free action.
-Critical Strike: The wording might be clarified to read: "Whenever a magus with this arcana confirms a critical hit with a melee weapon, he may choose to forfeit the extra damage from the critical and spend 12 points from his arcane pool to cast and deliver a spell with a range of touch as a free action. Even if a magus confirms more than one critical hit in a round, the magus may only use this arcana to cast one spell. The magus must be at least 12th level to select this arcana."
-Dispelling Strike: Another wording clarification. "A magus with this arcana can spend points from his arcane pool as a swift action. Doing so imbues his weapon with a dispelling aura which functions as a targeted Dispel Magic using the magus' class level as the caster level. For every three points the magus spends, he may dispel one spell level. The magus cannot dispel a spell of a level higher than he can cast. Once the strike is made, the aura dissipates even if the dispel attempt is unsuccessful. The magus must be at least 8th level to select this Arcana."
-Empowered Magic (and the other metamagic arcana): This ability allows one "free" use of the metamagic per day and then additional uses cost X arcane points, right?
-Evasive Celerity: Part of this ability mentions being hasted when I'm pretty sure you mean displaced. Also, wording clarification: "A magus with this arcana may spend three points from his arcane pool as a swift action to displace himself. This functions as displacement, but with a duration of one round. For every three additional points the magus spends, he may increase the number of rounds he is displaced by one. The magus must be at least 8th level to select this arcana." I removed the duration limit since that's sort of what the Arcane Pool is designed to do.
-Expanded Arcana: For clarity, I would add this sentence after the first sentence: "This spell is now considered a magus spell for all magus abilities."
-Hasted Assault: I would remove this sentence: "The magus may never spend a number of arcane points greater than 3 x the level of spell he can cast." for the same reason I removed it from Evasive Celerity.
-Metamagic Mastery: You absolutely have to add this line otherwise this arcana could be brokenly powerful. Metamagic reducers are considered one of the most broken aspects of late 3.5. "A metamagic cost cannot be reduced lower than the original level of the spell." I'd also add that this reduction applies to the total metamagic cost, and not the individual metamagic costs of each metamagic.
-Reflection: Change the fourth sentence ("The magus may never spend...") to read "The magus cannot reflect a spell that has a higher level than the highest level spell he can cast." It's a bit simpler.
-Touch Spell Mastery: Gah! Abuse potential! First, I'd wait until I saw the Ultimate Magic spell lists before opening up complete access to any touch spell. The second portion is powerful enough, but it needs to be limited. I'd suggest something like this: "When a magus selects this magus arcana, he chooses a single touch spell that he can cast. He can now spontaneously convert a prepared spell of an equal level or higher into this selected touch spell. A magus may select this magus arcana more than once, selecting a different touch spell each time."
Arcane Weapon: So the arcane weapon allows the magus to spontaneously cast any spell in his spellbook once per day?
Fighter Training: This ability is useless at level 7. There are no feats that require Fighter 3. The lowest fighter prerequisite is Fighter 4, so this ought to be given at level 8 (suggesting that the magus take the Bonus Feat arcana) or at level 9 when a normal feat is granted.
Weapon Call: I'd make it a free action. The magus abilities are all competing for the magus' swift action. As a free action, this is basically a teleporting version of Quick Draw.
Arcane Wind: Rather than referencing Winds of Vengeance and then changing pretty much everything, just write out the ability in full. Maybe something like this?
"As a standard action, a magus may grant himself a fly speed of 60 feet with perfect maneuverability. Neither his armor nor his load affects this fly speed. The winds shield him from any other wind effects, and form a shell of breathable air around him, allowing him to fly and breathe underwater or in outer space.
Ranged weapons (including giant-thrown boulders, siege weapon projectiles, and other massive ranged weapons) passing through the winds are have a 75% chance of being deflected and dealing no damage. Gases and most gaseous breath weapons cannot pass though the winds.
In addition, when a creature hits the magus with a melee attack, he can shape the winds so they lash out at that creature as an immediate action. The creature must make a Fortitude saving throw or take 5d8 points of bludgeoning damage. On a successful save, the damage is halved.
The magus may use this ability for a number of rounds per day equal to his magus level plus his Intelligence bonus (if any). These rounds do not need to be consecutive."
True Magus: I would change the final sentence to read: "After three rounds, the magus’ arcane pool is reduced to 0 points. These points points may be restored as normal."
Also, you need to add the Spells and Spellbook sections to the class. I'd just copy-paste these from the magus playtest as written.
Seems fine to me, but the arcane pool needs a little twiching, for consistency with siliar abilities (bombs, rage, defensive stance).
Also, still lacking a relaible source of damage, something like:
Magus Strike(su): the magus adds an number of d6 to his damage rolls when weilding a single one-handed or ligth weapon in one hand equal to the highest level of spells he can cast.
Humbly,
Yawar
I would politely counter that the magus doesn't need another damage boosting ability. He already has one in being able to use his touch spells with his melee attacks. With this alternative, he uses his class level as his BAB when using Spell Combat, so he can fairly reliably add several d6s of elemental damage (Shocking Grasp and likely others) to his attacks, or he can choose to use a buff spell or control spell instead. He has more with certain magus arcana listed in this class alternative (Arcane Accuracy, Arcane Might and Arcane Power). The magus isn't a raw damage character, but rather a blend between the damage of a martial class and the control/buff/debuff capabilities of a wizard (which includes damage, since death is a pretty major debuff).
I would politely counter that the magus doesn't need another damage boosting ability. He already has one in being able to use his touch spells with his melee attacks. With this alternative, he uses his class level as his BAB when using Spell Combat, so he can fairly reliably add several d6s of elemental damage (Shocking Grasp and likely others) to his attacks, or he can choose to use a buff spell or control spell instead. He has more with certain magus arcana listed in this class alternative (Arcane Accuracy, Arcane Might and Arcane Power). The magus isn't a raw damage character, but rather a blend between the damage of a martial class and the control/buff/debuff capabilities of a wizard (which includes damage, since death is a pretty major debuff).
I will have to agree. And a response to your commentary will be posted when I get out of class. Thanks for taking a look.
Spellstrike: It is the former rather than the latter, and I will change that.
Spell Combat: I suppose so.
Arcane Pool & Magus Arcana: "When the magus prepares his spells" would be a better idea, thanks. I can combine the two as well. I thought about dividing the costs by 3, but then I would have to swap it to 1/2 magus level like you said. I considered this, but it makes the scaling awkward since you're cutting the cost by 1/3, but dividing the level contribution by 1/2. I'd like to keep it the way it is.
I agree with and appreciate all of the wording clarifications to the arcana. As far as arcane power goes, it is to the total, not to each damage die rolled. The displacement and haste limits are 100% intentional. As far as the touch spell mastery goes, it's not every touch spell. Just sorcerer/wizard ones. It would expand it to include touch of fatigue, chill touch, touch of gracelessness, ghoul touch, touch of idiocy, vampiric touch and calcific touch as far as offensive options. These spells would be added to the spell list in the appropriate place obviously. As in calcific touch would remain a 4th level spell for the magus. I will agree that it will probably be unnecessary when ultimate magic actually comes out, but for now, it seems appropriate. As far as the empowered and other metamagic arcanas, yes, that is how they work.
Arcane Weapon: Yes.
Fighter training: I tried to keep the class feature at every level feel going, so I just moved it arbitrarily.
Weapon call: That was the point; I wanted to keep it competing for the swift actions of the arcana. I don't mind changing it to a free action, I was just afraid of ways it could be abused.
Arcane Wind: That's perfect.
I didn't copy the spells and what not over because I assumed anyone reading this would have read the playtest already, and I didn't add or remove anything.
Personally, I prefer a Magus with armor as opposed to the "Monk style" proposed here.
Here is what I'd like to see:
can start with medium armor through Arcana, gain heavy as another Arcana later.
uses an energy attack die progression instead of spellstrike, something like Kortz has suggested.
sacrifice those dice to get effects like daze, fatigue, etc, so they can emulate a lot of touch spells without using them.
pick up Spell Combat at 6th level with -2 penalties on attacks and Concentration, pick up greater (no penalties) at 12th
All arcana that offer 1/day scale so they offer up to 3/day later.
Revise the spell list to include more buffs and touch attacks, and reduce level on some spells similar to Summoner.
I'm sure there are other features that could be changed as well, and I do like your more frequent Arcana.
Like: more frequent Arcana, bonus feats, the Arcane Strike fix, the Concentrate fix
Dislike: the arcana pool. I think I might be in the minority here, but I don't like an extra set of resources to manage. I'm also not a big fan of how many things they have to burn spells to do. I'd probably just make a lot of them scale automatically with level and have Int/day uses, or X+Int/day if needed.
Personally, I prefer a Magus with armor as opposed to the "Monk style" proposed here.
I don't know that I would call it "Monk Style" necessarily haha, but alright. Not quite what I was going for. That's fair; it's difficult to please everyone flavor wise. I personally do not like the idea of an arcane knight as I've stated before. Whenever I get the "hankerin'" to play a class in full plate that casts, I pull up my paladin. I realize that divine and arcane aren't the same thing, but I think that it's been done, and this would be a cooler idea. As far as the arcana go, the way that they were originally designed kind of requires some resource to be spent on them. Better an "arcane pool" than the precious spells you're supposed to be casting, imho. Thanks for the feedback.
Why not make the Int bonus to AC while unarmored, a Magus Arcana? That way, not everyone is going to take it, but it is still available for those that want it... granted it forces you to spend one of your Arcana on it, but it's there...
Or maybe make it a feat with both fighter and caster levels as prerequisites (so only Magi and Eldritch knights can really get it)? *shrug* Just a thought.
Why not make the Int bonus to AC while unarmored, a Magus Arcana? That way, not everyone is going to take it, but it is still available for those that want it... granted it forces you to spend one of your Arcana on it, but it's there...
That is exactly the problem. You would be forced to spend an arcana on it. So for those who did not take it, would they get armor proficiency? I'm not sure I like that idea.
Made some updates to the remake based on comments in this thread and comments from some friends. Let me know if it needs anything else. Planning on doing some heavy playtesting over the weekend.
Why not make the Int bonus to AC while unarmored, a Magus Arcana? That way, not everyone is going to take it, but it is still available for those that want it... granted it forces you to spend one of your Arcana on it, but it's there...That is exactly the problem. You would be forced to spend an arcana on it. So for those who did not take it, would they get armor proficiency? I'm not sure I like that idea.
Much of the trend of players here is to give lots and lots of arcanas, including some of the current granted stuff as arcanas. If such solution is adopted, the number of arcanas the magus gains ought to increase. For example, he could get auto light and medium armor, and arcanas to add int to ac in light armor, heavy armor and so on.
Why not make the Int bonus to AC while unarmored, a Magus Arcana? That way, not everyone is going to take it, but it is still available for those that want it... granted it forces you to spend one of your Arcana on it, but it's there...That is exactly the problem. You would be forced to spend an arcana on it. So for those who did not take it, would they get armor proficiency? I'm not sure I like that idea.Much of the trend of players here is to give lots and lots of arcanas, including some of the current granted stuff as arcanas. If such solution is adopted, the number of arcanas the magus gains ought to increase. For example, he could get auto light and medium armor, and arcanas to add int to ac in light armor, heavy armor and so on.
I did that already though. Added a lot more arcana that is. I suppose I could add the armor proficiency ones as well for those who want armor.
That being said, he also tends to have a pension for the ridiculous...I think you mean penchant rather than pension.
/pedant
This is truth. I was not trying to say that he had a scheduled payment made by the government to him for the ridiculous. That doesn't make any sense. I think pension also means an inexpensive hostel or boarding house or something. I'd have to check on that one. I was tired. Sue me.
This is truth. I was not trying to say that he had a scheduled payment made by the government to him for the ridiculous. That doesn't make any sense. I think pension also means an inexpensive hostel or boarding house or something. I'd have to check on that one. I was tired. Sue me.That being said, he also tends to have a pension for the ridiculous...I think you mean penchant rather than pension.
/pedant
Both do exist as the same word in portuguese at least. With the added twist that if you have kids you pay one of those to whoever keeps them after a divorce.
Kibeth, your respectful tone and constructive input are commendable.
Kibeth, your respectful tone and constructive input are commendable.
Hey, thanks a lot. Also, side note, I added armor proficiencies in the arcana to try and appease those who like the armored mage concept. I know it's lame that you have to spend arcana on it, but hey, it's better than not having it.
I guess people just aren't that interested. Thanks to those who took the time to check it out and comment.