Thunder and Fang feat lets you use an earth breaker one handed... its a leap, but, could you have a shoanti magus that uses his earthbreaker one handed and still cast spells/spellstrike/spell combat?

would you need to make the klar your bonded item so that you could cast spells while wielding it?

I guess its a question of : once you have Thunder and Fang, and you've learned to wield the earthbreaker as a one handed weapon. Can you expand that beyond only pairing it with a klar, or could you do other things: like get a large earth breaker to wield two-handed, or use it one handed with a shield or casting spells.

By a strict reading... "You can use an earth breaker as though it were a one-handed weapon." does not help with "while wielding a light or one-handed melee weapon in the other hand."

The Klar could not be used, because Spell Combat specifically requires the other hand empty.

I personally would allow the earth breaker one-handed with Spell Combat... because it's a high feat tax to access it. I'd counsel against it, because you're really spending 3 otherwise useless feats to get a larger weapon die. (Weapon focus (earth breaker) is still useful, but the rest are pretty much worthless to the magus.)

Its a lark, looking into the rules before I make a thunder and fang fighter or ranger. Deciding if it would be fun to add Magus to the mix later. Spell combat would probably be out for most GMs, but Spell strike would work... then again he wouldn't need Thunder and Fang to use spellstrike with an Earthbreaker =/ ahh k. Lark dropped.

It's kind of a shame. Thunder and Fang looks like so much fun, but there's only so much you can do with it.

yeah, i statted up a straight fighter with it. the problems start arising with having/wanting to take Greater Weapon Focus, and specialization, in both weapons, TWF tree ( so requires a big dexterity ), and when you're TWF and Power Attacking, the Earthbreaker is a one handed weapon. so you don't get the nice -1/+3 per increment of power attack.

Its nice. its pretty. but it costs a LOT of feats. Style wise, its a nice fun investment though.

Yeah, I built Tarov here around the feat, but it still doesn't come online until ~level 4, and that's with taking a level of Fighter to speed up the process.

A Magus using a big Earthbreaker in one hand would probably be cool, but the smaller crit range would probably not be all that good.

human fighter: wf (earthbreaker), twf, power attack, 2nd. wf. klar, 3rd thunder and fang. can build to it quickly. though power attack is so handy at all levels with a big two handed weapon to overcome DR so i usually go for it early rather than wait till 3rd level for power attack =/

Yeah, that's pretty much the thing. Especially since you start not being able to use them together, you're going to want to use that big ol' 2H Earthbreaker with Power Attack to start, so you can be doing 2d6+9 at first level. Might be overkill, but honestly, the Earthbreaker SCREAMS overkill, anyway!

You're probably right in that a Fighter is better for putting Thunder and Fang together, but for the Ranger, who gets TWF without Dex requirements, spells and an animal companion, plus amazing fluff for a Shoanti, I couldn't help myself. :)

oh i love it for ranger, much better as a shoanti. with fighter i got bogged down with two greater weapon focus, two weapon specialization. =P and had to keep str and dex about even.
ranger is much nicer for the free twf in light armor w/o dex requirement. If i could i'd go back and re-make my shoanti paladin with thunder and fang for rise of the runelords. ahh well. =)

There is a Magus archetype out of UC called Skirnir that focuses on using a shield rather than a weapon for Spell Combat. You'd have to wait until level 8 to cast spells with your shield hand and I don't know that you can full round attack with both your earthbreaker and a spell-infused shield bash, but maybe this gets you closer to what you want...

Thunder and Fang: You can use an earth breaker as though it were a one-handed weapon.

It isn't a 1-h weapon, but it counts as such for all intents and purposes. So that would jive with Spell Combat, though you still don't get the benefit of the Klar.

don't have time to look to deeply into it but my gut tells me there has to be a way to make this work with Skirnir Magus.

First thing that came up to me is that, it is rather heavy gear. You might have problems with carrying it unless you go Strength rute.

First thing that came up to me is that, it is rather heavy gear. You might have problems with carrying it unless you go Strength rute.

Thunder and Fang has a 15 Str requirement. You're going the Str route if you take it. ;)

Even if the concept of dancing around with a giant frickin' hammer in one hand is kinda hilarious.

Kazaan- you are correct.
Stome- you are correct, however- Skirnir don't get Spell Combat until much later (lvl 8, IIRC) but once they get it, they can Spell Combat with a shield in hand (but lose the AC bonus unless it's a buckler).
RtrnofdMax- Skirnir can Spellstrike with weapons just like a regular magus, but they can do it starting at lvl 1 and are able to do it with a shield bash, as well (which a regular magus could do, too, as far as I can tell, but I don't want to look it up to confirm)

I looked before but couldn't find anything truly definitive about whether or not a klar could be quick-draw-ified, which would solve a lot of problems for a T&F user.

I looked before but couldn't find anything truly definitive about whether or not a klar could be quick-draw-ified, which would solve a lot of problems for a T&F user.

You mean a Quickdraw Klar, like a Quickdraw Shield?

That'd be awesome, but you'd likely have to beg and plead with your DM for that. It doesn't really sound like that's how they're intended to be used in Shoanti society, after all.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Shoanti don't typically use Quickdraw shields, even for their super-cool klars. I could see an adventurer, who wanders to a more "civilized" country, having his klar modified (or even having a new one made) to have the Quickdraw property so he could use his earthbreaker as a two-handed weapon when he needed to do more damage per hit (like he could in 3.5, when he used earthbreaker/klar as a DOUBLE weapon!).

That does in fact sound amazing, and honestly, I had totally considered making a Dwarf Ranger who uses Thunder and Fang, and it sounds like the kind of thing they'd do.

That would require some fluff modifications, though!

hmmh, maybe a glove of storing for the klar at higher levels