Capn Cupcake's page

To preface: I know some people don't, and they're entitled to their opinion. This thread is not to say they're wrong for feeling the way they do or anything of the sort. I just also want to share my own personal feelings on the subject and provide positive feedback for a feature I like.

I actually really like this feature a lot. It changes combat in a way that hasn't been done in 2e yet. It allows me to essentially occupy 2 spaces at once, each occupation bringing different values. I've got a meaty bruiser up front and a squishy caster in the back, and my positioning on both makes for a strong departure in traditional tactics. If an enemy crits my eidolon, the healer doesn't have mess up their own positioning to heal them. They can take a safer position in the back with me and heal me from there. That's *so* cool. Likewise, I can send my Eidolon up to beat some face while I shift to another part of the battlefield and provide buff support. Regardless of fluff, regardless of canon, regardless of previous lore, this is a mechanic that I really want to explore and work with. I'm a tactical person by nature and this is a whole paradigm that I've never gotten to work with before, and the possibilities are deeply interesting to me.

I do think the Summoner needs work. Act together needs a change. A couple days ago Mark suggested making it between 1-3 actions to allow you to still use spells with it, and I think that's a great, elegant way to free up actions and allow some more turn by turn versatility without actually giving it any more raw power or abilities.

I also think the Eidolons themselves could use just a hair of customization, but that can be as simple as "pick from this list of keywords. Apply 1 keyword to each of your Eidolons weapons" So now my 1d4 Bludgeon Trip tail feels different from your 1d4 Slash Disarm crab claw. It's a very small, very easy change that makes the weapons feel much more tangible instead of feeling like carbon copies of each other.

I know this is probably a big ask, and I don't see it coming to fruition, but I think it would be a genuinely good idea, at least in the extreme case of the Magus.

I think it would be a good idea to give us a couple of potential fixes straight from the devs to try out and report back on. To at least give us a baseline to try out, see how they feel, and report back on. It's become mostly clear that Striking Spell isn't working at intended, and is only usable in extreme corner cases that require a fair bit of min-maxing and possible item abuse.

So rather than letting us test this version further, but instead of doing an entirely separate playtest, I believe a stickied thread of some alternate ideas to try from the devs would be a good middle ground. It allows us alternatives to test against a baseline (The Magus as is).

Striking Spell has to be better than attacking twice. At least in some regard or fashion. Things like applying True Strike to the spell attack or giving your weapon's item bonus to the spell don't fundamentally fix all the issues associated with it. In either case it's still mathematically superior to just attack twice with an agile weapon either due to action economy, damage on cantrips, or both. Applying the weapon's item bonus to the spell's attack rolls doesn't fix it's accuracy, it just brings it up to par with Wizards *which are already inaccurate with spell attacks*. Wizards get around this by casting true strike and then swinging so it's a pretty logical conclusion to come to as well, but with a Magus's extremely limited 4 spell slots (6 with a feat) you don't have the resources to expend on True Strike in that manner and you certainly don't want to be true striking a cantrip anyway.

I'm all for brainstorming some potential ideas to fix Striking Spell but, fundamentally, whatever the fix is it has to be better than just swinging twice so the Magus is motivated to actually utilize its core mechanic.

To get the discussion started, I posted this yesterday but the thread got buried so I'm reposting it. Here's my current idea on fixing Striking Spell.

Striking Spell: It now only applies to spells with attack rolls but the strike automatically applies the spell a la Eldritch Archer. This removes the weird crit reliance it has in its current iteration and actually gives the class some oomph for spending all three actions towards a single benefit. It also leads me nicely into my next fix which is

Rend Magical Defenses: Whenever you successfully Strike an enemy, they take a -2 Status penalty to the next spell you cast before the end of your next turn. Basically Magical Flatfooted. This brings saving spells in line with other casters without exceeding them (it might at a few levels but they're outliers) and creates a very nice through line from Striking Spell, and what's even better is either side can be ignored or focused on as you please. You can focus strictly on attack spells via Striking Spell, focus squarely on AoE and debuff spells with Rend Magical Defenses, or combine the two with something that looks like Cast Striking Spell > Strike *next turn* Cast Saving Throw spell.

So it's pretty well known by now how atrocious the odds of landing a Striking Spell actually is, and it doesn't save any action economy to boot. I personally am fine without getting an action economy boost but the accuracy is a real hard math problem and I've seen a few different ideas. Below is the one I'm currently proposing:

Striking Spell: It now only applies to spells with attack rolls but the strike automatically applies the spell a la Eldritch Archer. This removes the weird crit reliance it has in its current iteration and actually gives the class some oomph for spending all three actions towards a single benefit. It also leads me nicely into my next fix which is

Rend Magical Defenses: Whenever you successfully Strike an enemy, they take a -2 Status penalty to the next spell you cast before the end of your next turn. This creates a very nice through line from Striking Spell, and what's even better is either side can be ignored or focused on as you please. You can focus strictly on attack spells via Striking Spell, focus squarely on AoE and debuff spells with Rend Magical Defenses, or combine the two with something that looks like Cast Striking Spell > Strike *next turn* Cast Saving Throw spell.

It's an adaptable, flexible model that allows for versatility and for the Magus to overcome it's slower proficiency, but only as long as the Magus is willing to work for it.

Edit: PS. Paizo I did apply for that designer position and would love to hear back from you ;D

Table is not mine though I did help some with the math.

The Magus's hit chance is absolutely atrocious. Due to the lack of potency runes on spell attacks, the delayed casting proficiency, and the lower starting Int compared to other classes the Magus's spell attack accuracy is honestly nothing short of atrocious. Your odds of hitting with a spell strike are less than 1/3 at any level. Needing to hit with a strike first, and then hit with another, less accurate attack makes this borderline unplayable.

From level 10 up you are quite literally more accurate, and more damaging, with less actions spent attacking twice than spell striking with a cantrip. The class doesn't function as written right now.

https://imgur.com/UJ43h8G

Basically exactly that. I'd like to come up with a hybrid Monk/Magus class. I think what I want out of it is a hair too involved to be an archtype for either class, but I'd like to make it work somehow. I've got a few ideas floating around in my head, I'm just unsure how to quite bring it all together in a nice, neat package for now.

The idea came from the first session of Pathfinder. I ran it this past Sunday, and there was a Monk NPC who had elemental fist instead of stunning fist, so when he punched someone with lightning the players all thought (understandably) that he could use magic. And of course, that got me thinking, what if he COULD use magic?

So here's the ideas that I have in no particular order. Some are kind of redundant, and I don't want to do all of them. Anyway, here goes:

-Spell combat, but only during a flurry.
-Flurry spell combat, but with an intermixed ranged touch spell at a far off enemy.
-ki points spent to cast spells. (Something like, Every 3rd level pick a spell from your spell list. You may sacrifice a number of ki points equal to 1 + the spell's level to cast this spell.)
-The above only with metamagic feats instead.
-A series of personal auras that grant minor benefits, and can be switched between with a swift action. I was thinking of setting them in tiers ala Witch hexes and make acquisition of them similar.
-Each Aura having a 'burst' ability that does a cool thing, but renders it inert for the rest of the day. Like for instance an aura granting +2 to acrobatics being able to be burst for a +10 to for one round, and then it being gone for the rest of the day.

And that's pretty much what I have thusfar. I feel like there's an interesting, fun class in there *somewhere*, but I can't quite seem to pull it together just yet. I'm very open to suggestions, thoughts, etc. Feedback is appreciated!

Greetings! First I'd like to thank the 2 who helped me in my last thread about th e Inquisitor. He's very happy with the build even though we haven't had our first session yet, which brings me to this thread.

I'm having my first session this Sunday which is starting at a festival celebrating the year anniversary of the war ending. The setting is very magicpunk, with the country the characters are from being on the losing side of the war. It was a backwater country that didn't have a lot of the modern conveniences of the other nations (like the one who just took over). So I'm wanting ways for the festival to really sell the setting and also be a lot of fun. Thus far the only thing I've come up with is the cup game being a simple spot check to find it which isn't great on its own. It's also going to have the first fight which will be a large wind elemental powered combat mech from the war having been repurposed as a cleaning mech but goes haywire and reverts back to its old protocol and attacking people with mops and sprays and such. Anyway yeah. Just looking to brainstorm about cool stuff to put in this fair. Gadgets for sale, interesting parade ideas, etc. I appreciate it!

Ahoy! As it says I'm going to be DMING a game and one of my players wants to use a double sword as an Inquisitor. From what I've read this isn't terribly good, but I want to work with him as much as possible to make it a reality. I'm not opposed to making some houserules and have already done so for 2 other players. The party is the Inquisitor, a Hunter, a Skald, and a Witch. The Skald's inspired rage has been tweaked to only inflict the penalties to him because losing spellcasting would suck in a party of spellcasters. I'm thinking of allowing the Inquisitor to drop their domain and get weapon prof and TWF in its place. Think that would shore up the build's weaknesses okay?

Gotta make this quick. On break at work. I'm playing a Magus in a 3 person party wit a Druid and a Bloodrager. Hex crafter Bladebound. The Bloodrager learned about the Eldritch Scion and it fits her character better but has the same fluff. Will there be too much similar between us and will one greatly overshadow the other? She's planning on doing control stuff Ala color spray and such.

Howdy all! I've never played PF before, but I've played 3.5, and I built a character for PF once for a campaign that sadly fizzled and died before the first session. Anyway, my girlfriend has her eyes set on playing a Bloodrager. The theme of the character being Arabian princess with fey blood running through her veins that allows her to tap into latent powers. My question is, how feasible would it be to build a dex based Bloodrager, if at all possible? Two Weapon Fighting, weapon finesse, etc. Would she be so gimped that I need to convince her to go two-weapon smash? It just doesn't fit her character's image all that much.

Help is appreciated! And we're starting at level 3 for those of you wondering.

Edit: I just spoke to her, ideally she'd be a TWF Bloodrager however feasible that would be.