2+ armed magi...


Rules Questions


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Say that you are playing a character that has gotten three or four arms, either from the vestigal arm alchemist discovery, or you've created spell that does it. How would this modify the magus's abilities? Spell combat is assumed you only have two arms, as you can only do it with light or one-handed weapons. But with more arms, you could wield a two-handed weapon with spell combat. It would also modify it as spell combat acts like two-weapon fighting, but multi-weapon fighting replaces twf, so could you use spell combat as mwf, like if you had a scimitar, two kukri and the open hand for the spell?


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First of all, the vestigial arm discovery wouldn't really have anything to do with multiweapon fighting, since you cannot get extra attacks from those arms (a lot of threads and an eventual, very wordy FAQ about that). But back toy our general point.

Anyway, no matter how you argue 'how it should work', spell combat does explicitly say you can't use 2 handed weapons.

Spell combat wrote:
At 1st level, a magus learns to cast spells and wield his weapons at the same time. This functions much like two-weapon fighting, but the off-hand weapon is a spell that is being cast. To use this ability, the magus must have one hand free (even if the spell being cast does not have somatic components), while wielding a light or one-handed melee weapon in the other hand. As a full-round action, he can make all of his attacks with his melee weapon at a –2 penalty and can also cast any spell from the magus spell list with a casting time of 1 standard action (any attack roll made as part of this spell also takes this penalty). If he casts this spell defensively, he can decide to take an additional penalty on his attack rolls, up to his Intelligence bonus, and add the same amount as a circumstance bonus on his concentration check. If the check fails, the spell is wasted, but the attacks still take the penalty. A magus can choose to cast the spell first or make the weapon attacks first, but if he has more than one attack, he cannot cast the spell between weapon attacks.

While the rule was written under the assumption of 2 arms, it still says it quite clearly. For it to say otherwise would require an extensive rewrite for a scenario that includes fringe options and includes methods that the developers did not want in the first place.

You could still use 2 of your hands to 2 hand a 1 handed weapon though. Nothing really stops that, as far as I can see (I would not push the issue though; the devs will most likely shut any grey areas like this down, since again, they don't like it. You try dealing with people trying to twist the rules on this forum, and see whether you end up cheery)

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