|
I am planning on making a half-elf magus when my druid levels out of the lower tier. He is of course going to be heavily melee using a bastard sword and touch/defensive spells.
My initial thoughts are for the combat casting followed by the extra arcane points feats. It has been a personal debate for getting those 2 extra points versus two Arcanas when possible as early as possible.
The first Arcana I was planning on getting was the Arcane Accuracy arcana. Is this a wise choice? I want to be able to get a hit in regularly and combining it with the +1 magic weapon use of the Arcane pool to end up with +5 to hit.
Although I really like the idea of the pool strike as an Arcana as well, but it does not seem as useful as a big boost to hit, and it would covering the territory of touch spells I could just prepare.
OR... what about the ray as touch attack arcana? How useful is that and what spells should be combined with this.
As you may already tell I have not played a magus, but am becoming mired in the theory of it all. Thanks for any input.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
|
I think you're trying to decide between two reasonable options: melee attack bonus, vs damage.
Many magi use true strike on a regular basis, giving themselves a fantastic attack bonus, and reducing the threat of opponents with concealment. Of course, then they're not hitting with their spells, but then, you wanted to emphasize the melee aspect of the class.
Why do you consideris this a PFS question, as opposed to an Advice question?
|
My son has a 9th level magus for PFS, and he does just fine with Pool Strike, Scorching Ray, Shocking Grasp, and the additional enchantment on his weapon. Sure, he doesn't hit everytime, but he hits often enough. He originally had Arcane Accuracy, and never used it once, so retrained it.
I have a (non-PFS) lower level magus who almost exclusively uses defensive spells - Vanish, Shield and Blur, with one Burning Hands in reserve. Makes her more tanky.
Take a look at the 2 Magus guides floating around on here. Their pretty well put together. I tend to be against pool strike. Its stronger to spellstrike with shocking grasp and use pearls of power or spell recall to get the spell back. Arcane accuracy is a solid choice, but is more useful when you have more than one attack. Are you interested in any archetypes, or are you going plain Magus?
- Bastard sword does not worth it. A scimitar is a better choice becasue of the higher crit range. If you have a shortcut to ewp, a katana is the best choice. That being saied, going elf is the best choice, but half-elf could be worth it and is a good choice too.
- Arcane Accuracy is a great arcana and should be your first, unless you are a Hexcrafter magus.
- Pool strike is bad, as is Close Range.
Quoting all of this for emphasis. Bastard Swords are not worth it, even if you get the proficiency for free. Which you aren't, even as a Half-Elf: You could have +2 to your Will save instead. The Scimitar is just the the best weapon for a Magus, even if you're not using Dervish Dance. A Katana does one (1) more damage than a Scimitar, which is not worth spending a feat or a racial on.
Pool Strike is a poor Arcana because that one arcane pool point could be used to Spell Recall yourself a Shocking Grasp.
|
A few thoughts on weapon selection. You will frequently hear people say that scimitar is better than bastard sword because of the crit range. That depends on a number of things and doesn't take some others into account:
What the scimitar being better depends on:
1. Being a dex magus and taking the dervish dance feat to add your dexterity to damage with the scimitar. You can't do that with a bastard sword. On the other hand, if you are a strength focused magus, you don't care about dervish dance.
2. Average damage from your weapon. Eventually, you will deal enough damage for a scimitar to do more average damage per hit than a bastard sword... in a home game that goes to level 20. In PFS where you cap out at level 11, not so much and certainly not for most of your character's career. For about half of your PFS career (until you get expanded critical range through your Magus arcana), an ordinary longsword will be better than a scimitar in terms of average damage
.05 x chance to confirm x damage > 2 x chance to hit + .1 x 4 x chance to confirm.
When you get Improved Critical or a Keen scimitar the numbers change and it's
.1 x chance to confirm x damage > 2 x chance to hit + .2 x 4 x chance to confirm.
If you assume that chance to hit and chance to confirm are equal, it breaks down to:
X = damage, Y = chance to hit
.05 YX > 2Y+.4Y
Since Y is constant, you can divide down to:
.05X > 2.4
That works out to:
X > 48
With Improved Critical, X > 24.
48 points of damage per hit is doable by level 20, but some maguses won't ever get there without spells (see #3 below).
24 points of damage per hit is much more manageable but it's still on the high end for a PFS character's career unless you are using spells.
In comparison to a longsword, the numbers are 24 damage with a normal weapon and 12 damage with expanded crit range.
3. Your have an increased chance to crit with your spellstrike spells which will bring you a lot closer to the damage point where the extra critical range of the scimitar is better than the extra damage of the bastard sword... but only on the attacks that deliver high damage spellstrikes. That won't be every attack--it will probably be 1/2 to 1/3 of your attacks.
When you consider this, characters who focus on high damage spellstrikes probably get better average damage with a scimitar than a bastard sword starting around level 7 or 8.
3.5 Note that "characters who focus on high damage spellstrikes" can probably be translated as "characters who use intensified shocking grasp once per round." If you use chill touch or frostbite to deal more consistent damage and/or inflict status effects over multiple attacks or if you use frigid touch to limit enemy actions or shied or mirror image to limit the damage coming in, you probably aren't better off with a scimitar until you are out of the levels that PFS plays at.
4. Critical Strike Arcana. This lets you quicken a spell for free when you get a crit. You need to be 12th level to select this Arcana so you can safely ignore it for PFS.
Now, as to what the champions of the scimitar are not considering:
A. Average damage can be misleading. A character who has a -2000 attack bonus but does 1,000,000 damage per attack has an average damage per attack of 50,000 due to dealing a ton of damage when he rolls a 20. That average damage is far greater than most normal pathfinder characters can deal but in most circumstances, smart players would choose even a first level character who deals 1d8+3 per hit over that character. Because in any given round of any given battle, the most likely or a reasonably likely result is far more important than the average result, especially if the average is the result of a large spike of damage at the extreme range of probabilities. It doesn't matter what your theoretical average damage is if in practice you miss the orc you are fighting 13 times in a row (and you have to roll 13 attacks before your odds of rolling at least one 20 are greater than 50%). The orc will probably not miss you 13 times in a row and if you can only take 3 or 4 hits, the character with the ridiculously high average damage per attack will probably still lose the fight.
B. The kind of magus who gets lots of mileage out of criticals is a character who gets his extra damage from unlikely events. Criticals are rather unlikely. Now champions of the scimitar will argue that when you have 30% chance to threaten a critical (which is what happens when you get a keen weapon or Improved Critical), criticals really aren't that unlikely. That is true, but it's true regardless of whether you are using a scimitar, longsword, or bastard sword. They threaten a critical on 20% of their attacks after all. The advantage of the scimitar is the 5% or 10% (with crit range expansion) chance to have a critical threat that would not have been a critical with another weapon. That is an unlikely event even with Improved Critical. All of the scimitar's extra damage comes when you roll a 15 or a 16, but not a 17, 18, 19, or 20 because those would have been crits anyway. You have to make six attacks before you are better than 50% likely to have obtained a critical that you would not have obtained with a longsword or bastard sword.
If you depend on criticals to pull your average damage up, you are trading being really awesome occasionally and more mediocre most of the time rather than being really awesome slightly less occasionally and slightly better the rest of the time.
Based on that, I think that a longsword is probably a better choice than a scimitar for a low level PFS strength magus on the whole. (Nothing prevents you from starting with a longsword and switching to a scimitar when you take Weapon Focus). If your magus plans to use spells for defense as much or more than offense (which is probably a wise choice for a strength magus whose base damage is often stronger than a Dex magus but whose AC is usually lower). A bastard sword seems like a pretty solid, if not spectacular return on the feat investment too--again, especially at low levels. (What else would you spend the feat on? Dodge, Toughness, and Arcane Strike seem like the main contenders).
Arcane Strike runs into the Swift Action bottleneck. If I'm absolutely stuck for a feat I'd take Toughness or Extra Arcane Pool.
|
|
Thanks for the input. I didn't realize the bastard sword would be such a sticking point. I'm going with the Ancestral arms racial trait to allow proficiency in it. I was seeing if the pool strike had something I wasn't seeing. The choice of damage type is tempting, but I would rather get a hit in and rely on my spells since the Arcane Pool is so flexible in that it will enhance to hit and damage and recall spells.
I also typically avoid any builds that rely on crits. I'd rather be doing steady damage rather than mega damage every so often.
Stuff
Comparing a scimitar's damage to a bastard sword's and then recommending the long sword is rather disingenuous.
Scimitar w/ 0 bonus damage has an average DPA of 2.0106578947
18-20x2 3.5 per hit 3.5 extra on crit 15% crit threat chance
Expected DPA vs. die roll required to hit
20 0.18375
19 0.385
18 0.60375
17 0.805
16 1.00625
15 1.2075
14 1.40875
13 1.61
12 1.81125
11 2.0125
10 2.21375
09 2.415
08 2.61625
07 2.8175
06 3.01875
05 3.22
04 3.42125
03 3.6225
02 3.82375
av 2.0106578947
Longsword w/ 0 bonus damage has an average DPA of 2.5851315789
19-20x2 4.5 per hit 4.5 extra on crit 10% crit threat chance
Expected DPA vs. die roll required to hit
20 0.23625
19 0.495
18 0.7425
17 0.99
16 1.2375
15 1.485
14 1.7325
13 1.98
12 2.2275
11 2.475
10 2.7225
09 2.97
08 3.2175
07 3.465
06 3.7125
05 3.96
04 4.2075
03 4.455
02 4.7025
av 2.4744078947
The longsword does 22.98% more expected damage than the scimitar (28.57% more if you can hit only on a 19 or 20). That difference shrinks as we increase the static damage added, regardless of source. Magic weapon, Str bonus, feats, etc. all reduce the difference between the weapons. Extra damage from spellstrike is also effectively adding to the base weapon damage. At a total of +19 damage (from all sources, including the spell you're spellstriking with), the scimitar will average .1% more damage than than the longsword (unless you need a 19 or 20 to hit, in which case the longsword will always be slightly better). For a Magus casting Shocking Grasp, that's probably going to happen somewhere in the neighbourhood of level five. With Frostbite, it'll be later, but also more consistent.
If we switch to keen weapons (or assume the Magus takes Improved Critical), the tipping point drops to 9 points of extra damage to make the scimitar the higher damage weapon. (Again, for difficult to hit targets, the keen longsword holds out against a keen scimitar, if a 16 is required to hit, the scimitar doesn't pass the longsword until +21; if a 17 or higher is required, the scimitar will never pass the longsword. For an enemy that difficult to hit though, the difference is negligible.)
Even without the advantages of critical hitting with a spellstrike spell, I think it's safe to say that the majority of PFS Magi will get to +9 damage by the time they can either take Improved Critical or afford a Keen weapon. Once that benefit is considered, the idea of using a longsword instead of scimitar for a measly one die increase in weapon damage at the cost of reduced chance to crit with spellstrike is ridiculous.
For any character that expects to be eventually have high static damage increases, there is a point where increased crit ranges will outweigh increased weapon damage. For a character like a Magus who has the opportunity to critically hit a 10d6 Shocking Grasp for an extra 10d6 of damage, that point comes very early in their career.
(Incidentally, +13 static damage is the point where Improved Critical / Keen will add more damage to a scimitar attack than Weapon Specialization would.)
Thanks for the input. I didn't realize the bastard sword would be such a sticking point. I'm going with the Ancestral arms racial trait to allow proficiency in it. I was seeing if the pool strike had something I wasn't seeing. The choice of damage type is tempting, but I would rather get a hit in and rely on my spells since the Arcane Pool is so flexible in that it will enhance to hit and damage and recall spells.
I also typically avoid any builds that rely on crits. I'd rather be doing steady damage rather than mega damage every so often.
I wouldn't worry about the weapon choice. Spending a feat (or replacing a racial ability in this case) is a suboptimal use of resources, but hardly gamebreaking. Despite all the math I spouted off above, the biggest thing that I've taken away from the analyzing the math of varying weapons is that the weapons don't really matter much. The difference between the weapon that fits someone's character concept and the mathematically optimal weapon starts small, and gets smaller as the character levels.
|
|
Didn't mean to be disingenous (and I did include results for the longsword in my math spoiler). However, since scimitar to bastard sword isn't really a fair comparison (the proper one would be scimitar + a feat or racial ability vs a bastard sword), I wanted to include an apples to apples comparison.
I find it interesting that there appears to a significant difference between the results of the math that we used in the comparisons, so I would be interested to find out why that is. I don't think I missed anything in the basic formula though I did forget to increase the bastard sword/longsword damage bonus over the shared crit range from 4/2 to 8/4 with expanded crit range.
One other thing that I think bears mentioning is that, while scimitar is the weapon of choice if you want to get your damage from spellstrike crits and keen whatever you have is obviously the way to go if crits are what you want, a magus who is not married to critical hit maximization has other options, so keen scimitar vs keen longsword or bastard sword may not be the best comparison. Keen scimitar vs. flaming/shocking/frost longsword (or bastard sword) may be the better comparison.
Working with my formula and adding another 3.5 (energy per hit) into the normal hit advantage for the longsword/bastard sword and adding an extra 15% critical range into the scimitar (assuming that all crit threats are actually hits and that the chance to hit and chance to confirm a crit are identical):
Keen Scimitar Vs. Energy Bastard Sword
X = damage, Y = chance to hit
.2 YX > (2+3.5)Y+.4Y
.2X > 5.5+.4
X > 29.5
Keen Scimitar vs energy longsword
X = damage, Y = chance to hit
.2 YX > (1+3.5)Y+.4Y
.2 X > 4.5+.4
X > 24.5
Running the comparison that way seems to make it appear that, at least before level 11, it is only the shocking grasp magus who will get more average damage out of the scimitar. I could be wrong but I don't think most magi will hit 24.5 or 28.5 average crit-multipliable damage per hit unless they are spellstriking a shocking grasp. At level 11, it appears to be a push between the longsword and scimitar (unless using shocking grasp) and the bastard sword would still grant an advantage over either.
A normal attack without Shocking Grasp.
I'm sure it is possible to do more, but 1d6+17 is where Walter's guide pegs an 11th level strength magus with a scimitar and adding a 1d6 frostbite or chill touch to that pushes the crit multipliable damage up to 24 which is just below the point that the keen scimitar should do as much average damage as a longsword..
Intensified Shocking Grasp
Now if you have made intensified shocking grasp your bread and butter, It seems likely that you get more average damage out of the keen scimitar but it doesn't hurt to do the math. He probably has three attacks when hasted and four when hasted and using spell combat. He only has one when moving. If we assume one 10d6 intensified shocking grasp per full attack, one intensified shocking grasp per move+attack, and being limited to a move+standard action every third round or so, that nets 9 total attacks including three intensified shocking grasps every three rounds. If we were to divide those up over the attacks that is +11.67 damage per attack, so the shocking grasp magus doing 32.17 average damage per attack is well past the point where the scimitar results in more average damage than even a bastard sword. On the other hand, if the magus uses one round out of those three to cast haste, mirror image, shield, force hook charge or another non-intensified shocking grasp spell, then the keen scimitar (28.28 crit multpliable damage per attack), while still dealing more average damage than the energy longsword, should do slightly less average damage than an energy bastard sword.
So the ultimate conclusion that I reach is similar to yours with the following addendums:
1. A strength magi can have similar average damage wielding a longsword or a scimitar in the PFS level range.
2. An intensified shocking grasp focused strength magus will do slightly better with a scimitar in the upper end of the PFS level range.
3. A frostbite focused strength magus will probably do slightly better with a longsword across the entire PFS level range.
4. A bastard sword will yield some damage advantage for a frostbite (or other spell) focused strength magus across the entire PFS level range. (vis a vis a scimitar or longsword). Whether or not it is enough of an advantage to be worth a first or third level feat is an open question. It may or may not be suboptimal as ZanThrax describes it, but it is not counterproductive.
5. A bastard sword will no longer yield an average damage advantage (vis a vis a scimitar) for a shocking grasp focused strength magus at the top of the PFS level range.
6. Never-the-less the damage advantage for the scimitar all comes on big crits so if you prefer steady damage to sudden damage bursts (when you crit on a shocking grasp attack for 24d6+34 or similar craziness), you might still be better off pursuing a different strategy with a longsword or a bastard sword.
7. If you run out of more useful enhancements to the non-scimitar and have to add keen, or if Improved Critical is the best choice for a feat regardless of your weapon, then the scimitar will pull ahead much more quickly in average damage. If you use a non-scimitar, always try to find a better enhancement than Keen or a better feat than Improved Critical.
Running the comparison that way seems to make it appear that, at least before level 11, it is onlythe shocking grasppretty much every magus who will get more average damage out of the scimitar.
There, fixed that for you.
Edit: Just to clarify, this is pointing out that nearly every magus is a shocking grasp magus.
Arcane Accuracy Arcana - while nice, it does require a swift action and it does start going through your Arcane Points. Most Magus grab the Feat: Arcane Strike which ups their weapon damage and also takes a swift action.
Most Magi I've encountered are too tight on feats as it is. Then they'd rather use the Swift Action and an Arcana to get the boost to accuracy (after all, they have 3/4 BAB and a -2 penalty for Spell Combat) than use the Swift Action and a Feat for the piddling damage from Arcane Strike.
Running the comparison that way seems to make it appear that, at least before level 11, it is onlythe shocking grasppretty much every magus who will get more average damage out of the scimitar.There, fixed that for you.
Edit: Just to clarify, this is pointing out that nearly every magus is a shocking grasp magus.
It is talked about so much online, that many people are not willing to run one.
Of the 6 magi at our local PFS, only 1 uses the shocking grasp crit fishing type of play style. He is also the only 1 with a scimitar.
|
Just to piggy back on this as I am looking at making a PFS Magus in the nearish future; is there a reason to use a Bastard Sword over a Falcata? I know scimitars are generally regarded as best due to Dervish Dance, but I'm looking at doing a more STR focused build and was curious about going with the Falcata.
Enlarge person spell. Is there any other good reason to use a bastard sword? That d10 is not worth an extra feat but 2d8 at lower levels is a completetly different story.
Just to piggy back on this as I am looking at making a PFS Magus in the nearish future; is there a reason to use a Bastard Sword over a Falcata? I know scimitars are generally regarded as best due to Dervish Dance, but I'm looking at doing a more STR focused build and was curious about going with the Falcata.
Even outside of Dervish Dancer builds the extra crit range is why the scimitar gets so much attention. Touch spell damage is multiplied by 2 on a critical hit, regardless of the weapons critical multiplier. If you are set on using that feat or racial trait on a weapon, I would go with a katana. Mathematically it will be better than the bastard sword or falcata for a strength Magus. I still don't think its worth the feat or racial trait though.
A very martial oriented Magus is the Myrmarch... you will suffer the first 5 levels... the second you hit 6, buy a gloves of dueling and shine for the rest of your life...
the sudden +3 increase to hit and damage will greatly help a LOT of builds.
At level 5, if you gone for the shocking grasp build, you can take both heightened spell and prefered spell(shocking grasp) with your lv5 feat and bonus feat... that would GREATLY reduce the handcap of not having spell recall... you will be a very fighter like character with some spells to enhance yourself.. basicly a better fighter :P