Hello!
Blade Lash, from the Advanced Class Guide, works as follows:
Your weapon elongates and becomes whip-like. As part of casting this spell, you can use this weapon to attempt a trip combat maneuver against one creature within 20 feet, and you gain a +10 bonus on your roll, after which the weapon returns to its previous form.
Since the spell has a range of "touch," it would seem to qualify for the magus's spellstrike ability.
Can a magus make a melee attack against Target A using spellstrike, then redirect the trip attempt against Target B 20 feet away?\
Or should the trip attempt only be directed against Target A, since that's the target you've just hit?
Or should Blade Lash not function as a spellstrike spell at all, since the range of "touch" technically means you're touching your weapon, and not a target?
I would say it doesn't work with Spellstrike, since it has a target line of "your melee weapon"
Maybe, but as written the Magus's spellstrike ability includes any spell "with a range of 'touch' from the magus spell list."
Not trying to be pedantic. I've always had trouble distinguishing which spells are fair game for this ability.
I mean I guess you can use Spellstrike to touch a melee weapon to grant it the benefits of Blade Lash, but that's all that's going to happen. Otherwise, the spell doesn't work with other targets and would simply be discharged.
So...it works, but not in the way you want.
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I'm not entirely sure what you want to do. There's nothing about blade lash to deliver through your weapon with Spellstrike. The spell itself already uses your weapon for the trip attempt. There is no touch attack, unless you're trying to target a weapon with your weapon, which doesn't make sense. It works fine with Spell Combat, if that's what you mean. At 1st level Magus could do something like these options:
Declare Spell Combat
Cast Blade Lash
Trip target A at effectively +8 (+10 -2 for Spell Combat) at 20 foot range.
Attack target B at -2 from Spell Combat
End Round
or
Declare Spell Combat
Attack target A at -2
Cast Blade Lash
Trip Target B at +8 at 20 foot range.
End Round
What you don't get to do is:
Declare Spell Combat
Cast Blade Lash
Deliver the (nonexistent) touch attack against target A from Blade Lash at -2
Trip target B with Blade Lash at +8.
Take your normal attack at -2
End Round
Thanks for laying all that out, Thune. It's very clear.
I wasn't thinking of Spell Combat, though. What I'd imagined would look something like this:
Declare Spellstrike
Make free melee attack at full BAB against Target A while casting Blade Lash
Use Blade Lash to trip Target B at +10
End Round
If a GM accepted that action (based on the fact that Blade Lash has a range of touch, and should therefore be Spellstrikeable), then a player could incorporate that sequence of actions INTO a Spell Combat attack, thereby getting to cast another spell in the bargain.
But...as I'm explaining it all, I can imagine how I'd respond as a GM if a player tried that out on me. I don't think I'd buy it.
The 'free touch attack' from a touch spell that spellstrike lets you do as a melee attack instead (with weapon damage) still has to be a valid target for the spell to function.
So you could theoretically cast bladelash, use your spellstrike with it to hit someone for normal weapon damage, the spell itself would discharge harmlessly (since the target you touched isn't your weapon) and thus you wouldn't get any trip attack. I can't see why you would want to do this, but you could.
I would say it doesn't work with Spellstrike, since it has a target line of "your melee weapon"
Blade Lash does not use Spellstrike, nor does it need to.
The spell itself explicitly modifies the weapon and grants an attack with the weapon.