The Magus's best stuff is at level 1 and level 2. No other class feature comes close to Spell Combat and Spellstrike.
Yay, found it again. It was on page 8 of this thread :P
http://www.mediafire.com/download/5bwd0n24ncx1r02/WaltersGuidetotheMagus.pd f
*BEEP BOOP*
LINKIFICATION COMPLETE
The Magus's best stuff is at level 1 and level 2. No other class feature comes close to Spell Combat and Spellstrike.
Spell Recall and Improved Spell Recall come pretty close, as does True Magus.
Not to mention some of the arcanas are really good.
I will admit Spell Combat is one of the best designed mechanics in the game.
Casting another spell, such as dimension door, immediately ends any active touch spell.
shoot missed that, too bad! maybe I will see they will house rule this one, as in my opinion the Magus needs some love, he seems to be great in concept, but in my play experience he is more of a glass cannon that miss fires a lot! then again I am not very good at the min/max thing, and others at my table are. then again if he dies I can always go Wizard, cleric or Druid as you don't seem to have to min/max for those classes to be able to keep up.I don't know if it has been brought up before but what about the "Close Range" arcana coupled with the spell "snow ball" instead of the typical shocking grasp? the advantage is Snow Ball has no spell resistance unlike shocking grasp. it can be really annoying critting on a shocking grasp only to have them make their SR save and negate all the spell damage. plus it is a little more versatile as there are times you don't want to spell strike and be right next to the Big Bad Boss Guy. will this work? is it worth the Arcana investment?Close range only works with 'ray' spells. Snowball is not a ray spell.
A "pure" caster still takes some effort to "min/max", it just doesn't take as much effort. You need to know your rules, gear and make good spell selections. Choosing the wrong spells makes you relatively useless.
They are also relatively boring to play from level 1 on, as at low levels your spell selection/slots are very limited. More than a few times people in our group flat out refuse to play a caster from 1st because we don't do the 15 minute work day and having 2-3 spells is painful.
while I might agree on wizard and sorcerer, the cleric and Druid are the same BAB progression get to wear better armor and are full casters. in addition the Cleric is every parties "must protect" as he is the source of healing and the Druid by 4th level has a beast companion and animal shape making him the equal of most Melee characters plus a FULL CASTER! The great part about the wizard is if at first you don't get the spells right then you can try, try again. I think I can "tough it out" for 3-4 levels
In PFRPG not all clerics are heal bots (look up "bad touch cleric"). Not all druids go animal companion, they are still limited to non metal armor (so not all that great of an increase normally) and wildshaping means you are MAD if you want to be in melee and effective. You aren't going to be equal to most melee unless you suck at casting.
Sure you can tough it out for 3-4 levels (while your party carries your useless butt), but some peoole actually like to participate more than " sorry guys I have no more spells/need to save spells for the next encounter " and take pot shots with a horrible BAB and crossbow.
If you want to go nuts entangling people I would start out with a level of witch with the Winter Witch archetype and snag frozen caress. Go hexcrafter from then on and Rime up all your Shocking Grasps.
Might not be that useful depending on how likely it is that anybody even survives being hit by a shocking grasp.
So, now that the errata nerf has made precise strike and evasive (among others : nearly all deeds are now useless for the magus) useless, is there still a real interest to chose flamboyant arcana ?