|
Alright. I get the concept, and to be honest, I REALLY like it. The archetype is really awesome, and I can't WAIT to make my own Kensai.
However, a thought occurred to me. Without armor (except the new 0% Arcane Spell Failure armor), the Kensai really needs a high Dexterity score to be effective. Now, Canny Defense helps to shore up that bonus to be pretty respectable, but then we run into another problem... this basically means that the Kensai, like most other magus builds, will probably end up using (gasp!) a scimitar. Yes, I COULD use an Agile weapon and it'd work fine, but a kensai being better with a scimitar than, say, a wakizashi... katana... or any of the other cool new weapons available to us (My first thought was actually to use a Tonfa. Yeah, I'm weird like that.) just seems... a little off.
Is it time to start seriously considering a feat that lets you apply your Dexterity Modifier to attack/damage with any weapon (weapon finesse prerequisite) as a part of the core rules?
Have your party wizard cast mage armor on you in order to survive first level, then wear a masterwork studded leather and eat up the small arcane failure, then go for mithril chainsirt for only 10% arcane spell failure.
That should get you to survive a few levels in order to afford agile weapons.
Or you could do the easy thing and go for a scimitar and dervish dance.
|
Canny Defense readily compensates for the lack of armour (it only needs to grant the kensai 4 extra AC before it's as good as any light armour he'll ever get - any extra armour AC from enchantments can be matched by the kensai with Bracers of Armour for the same cost)... the main problem is the whole 'maximum of one point per level' clause that Class Feature gets.
Of cause, all Magus characters tend to be AC-light for front-line melee types, but they also tend to start using non-AC defenses (like blur and mirror image) as soon as they can. That leaves their first few levels as their most vulnerable times... and doubly-so for the kensai as his Canny Defense bonus slowly crawls up towards the dizzing heights of chain shirt levels of protection!
Unfortunately, the simple answer does come down to 'get a friend to cast Mage Armour on you'. It's a pity the Magus doesn't get Mage Armour on his spell list, considering there are non-armour-wearing archetypes of the class, and it really seems thematically appropriate. Spamming a Wand of Mage Armour would be the easiest 'fix' in that case (although the Magus can go the Use Magic Device route and still do that anyway).
The 'scimitars are always better' thing is weird, of course, and all comes down the the scimitar-only limit on the dervish dance Feat. When the Feat was a region-specific thing, it made a lot more sense for that limit to be included. Now that it seems to have exploded into the 'free for all' category of Feats, yeah, I think there's a soid argument that the regional / cultural limits on the thing need to be lifted. I guess the intent has always for the Feat to be limited to a certain region / culture, but getting the genie back into the bottle at this stage isn't really going to work, IMHO.
I have been thinking about a Kensai build as well.
My first thought is to take level 1 as monk. This way my Kensai is adding his Dex, Int, and Wis bonuses to AC.
I also like the idea of a monk that decided to pick up a katana and master it. I just really wish weapon finesse worked for the Katana because I really really dont like scimitars.