Another Mr White's page

First, a disclaimer. I searched to see if this had come up before so don't flame me if it has. (I prefer necro over retread.)

As the subject title says, what's your favorite weapon to use with a Magus? Yes, I seen the scimitar brought up many a time for the obvious reason of the crit range. But in my experience, you still run up against the little problem of being an arcane caster in melee. Okay, you probably have a better AC and can take a penalty to your attack rolls to boost the check for casting defensively, but your gaining a chance for the spell to be successfully cast for a chance for the spell to fail to connect.

For me, things get fun with whips and the scorpion tail. I've never been one to chase the die-type (my halfling fighters often just roll over DR) and here we have a one-handed reach weapon. Spell combat at range? Yes, please and thank you, kindly. Yes, this is either a 3rd level or higher option or you are grabbing something like ancestral weapon with a half-elf, but (again, in my experience) I have found it to be well worth it. Particularly if you progress down the whip mastery feat line.

But does anyone else have a favored weapon for the magus that isn't a scimitar? (or staff for the Staff Magi, natch.)

I must be missing something in our Skulls and Shackles game, because with the pilot's sailing skill modifier being added to AC, how is a siege engine ever expected to hit on anything other than a nat 20?

Example: The base AC of a sailing ship is 2, but you add the pilot's Profession (Sailor) skill modifier to that. At 5th level, this has our ship at an AC of 20 already, and that's only going to increase every level. The siege weapons, being reliant on hirelings to aim and fire them, aren't going to improve at all and if you're not taking range penalties, you're about to be grappled/boarded.

I must be missing something in our Skulls and Shackles game, because with the pilot's sailing skill modifier being added to AC, how is a siege engine ever expected to hit on anything other than a nat 20?

I'll keep this simple. I have a party who include a kobold in their number. Their idea is to buy him Fake Footprint Shoes (Ultimate Equipment pg. 56) that are designed to lay down kobold tracks. As said kobold has no ranks in survival (and a wisdom pentalty), the resultant DC to identify the tracks as fake is going to be easy for even a novice tracker.

The exact wording of that mechanic is thus.
"When walking with these shoes, you may make a Survival check; the check result is the Survival DC for anyone trying to determine whether the tracks are what they appear to be."

Now I'm personally leaning towards letting it work, because I like it when my players use a little ingenuity, but is that all that that specific check will do? Because it also seems that 5gp is a small price to pay in order to ensure that no tracker can ever be sure what you are when they are tracking you.