Rules question for Paizo


Rules Questions


been talking to my Dungeon Master about the bladebound magus and the magus, it says that at

at 5th level, these bonuses can be used to add any of the following weapon properties: dancing, flaming, flaming burst, frost, icy burst, keen, shock, shocking burst, speed, or vorpal.

Adding these properties consumes an amount of bonus equal to the property’s base price modifier. These properties are added to any the weapon already has, but duplicates do not stack. If the weapon is not magical, at least a +1 enhancement bonus must be added before any other properties can be added. These bonuses and properties are decided when the arcane pool point is spent and cannot be changed until the next time the magus uses this ability. These bonuses do not function if the weapon is wielded by anyone other than the magus.

A magus can only enhance one weapon in this way at one time. If he uses this ability again, the first use immediately ends.

So I was looking for clarification, I am now a lv 9 magus and have been going under the assumption that as long as I spend points from from magus pool and sword pool for equal cost of these abilities, I could use them but my dungeon master and group are saying I can use abilities like dancing and vorpal to lv 15 or higher level, this doesn't make sense to me, because it says I access too all of the weapon properties at lv 5. could you clear the ruling up for us.

Thank you
Look forward to your response.


"Adding these properties consumes an amount of bonus equal to the property’s base price modifier."

vorpal Price +5 bonus

So at lv9 you're adding a +3 to your sword by spending 1 point as a swift action.
You can't activate it twice or spend more points to add more bonus.
Since you're only adding +3 you don't have enough to convert to the +5 bonus that vorpal needs.


This is the important line:

Quote:
Adding these properties consumes an amount of bonus equal to the property’s base price modifier.

So at fifth level you gain two enhancement bonus points when you use this ability. That isn't enough for vorpal since it costs 5. At level 9 you get 3 points to spend. That still isn't enough for vorpal. Your friends are correct. You would have to wait until level 17 to use vorpal.


You are ignoring some of the text of the rule:

OGC wrote:
At 1st level, a magus can expend 1 point from his arcane pool as a swift action to grant any weapon he is holding a +1 enhancement bonus for 1 minute. For every four levels beyond 1st, the weapon gains another +1 enhancement bonus, to a maximum of +5 at 17th level. These bonuses can be added to the weapon, stacking with existing weapon enhancement to a maximum of +5.

Thus, at level 5, you can only add properties that are equivalent to a +2 bonus (e.g., flaming + frost, shocking burst, etc.). At level 9, you can add only +3 in bonuses. Dancing (equivalent to +4) and vorpal (equivalent to +5) require a higher level.

EDIT: Ninja'd. The comments above explain the rest of the story.


You can only select abilities that have a special ability equivalent bonus that is equal to or less than your Arcane Pool's enhancement bonus limit.

At level 5 you have a +2 bonus limit. You can only select abilities that are +1 or +2.

At level 9 that limit increases to +3 (Speed is now available).

At level 13 that limit increases to +4 (Dancing is now available).

At level 17 that limit increases to +5 (Vorpal is now available).

So, no you cannot select Dancing or Vorpal at level 5.


Kevin Eastman wrote:
So I was looking for clarification, I am now a lv 9 magus and have been going under the assumption that as long as I spend points from from magus pool and sword pool for equal cost of these abilities, I could use them ...

Re-reading the quoted part of your post, I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding here. You don't pay AP points equal to the cost of the property you're trying to add to the weapon. (IOW, it doesn't cost two pool points to add flaming burst). Instead, you always pay one pool point to enhance your weapon, but that enhancement gets more powerful as your level increases.

At level nine, you always get +3 (or equivalent) enhancement to the weapon for one arcane pool point. So you can make it +3, or +2 flaming, or +1 flaming burst, etc. You can't add dancing or vorpal (yet) because they both cost more than a +3 enhancement.

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