Kalaam's page

I mean, the level 15 Arcana feat is called Unified Theory for a reason lol
Being so knowledgeable about the inner workings of magic as a whole you can identity any spells or magical effects regardless of their origin. Arcane, Divine, Occult or Primal.

Arcane really is the "write magic formula and hack reality with it" tradition.

I really hope to see interresting magic lore bits.
I've come up with my own explanations and theories through characters before on how magic works, from the point of view of arcane casters, and it's always such a fun exercise.

Yeah that's Bizarre Magic, an Occultism feat for when you cast spells, increase the DC to recognize them by 5.

A reaction to casting a spell would also work nicely with Capture Magic being a reaction. If you can very quickly capture ennemy magic as a quick opportunity why does it take "longer" to do it with yours ? I guess because you're first focused on casting the spell itself

I mean melee magus can use a Great Pick so why wouldn't ranged magus not get the arquebus

Yeah exactly, you kind of have to look for stuff outside the class. And it feels too necessary to feel good.

Spirit warrior typically is great because it gives you a very solid option for "off turns" or turns where you don't have 2 actions to spare on spellstrike, plus a lot of other fun feats that support the fantasy. (Blade Beam, buffing your next strike, even a special immobilizing strike)

That's one option as well.

That's why you try to control your luck instead. And have more than one way to recharge spellstrike.
In that example, say Inexorable Iron with recharge on trip, Arcane Cascade lets you do it with a 2 handed weapon.

You have expanded your spellstrike.

1: You attempt to trip now, at -10 not a super good idea. Obviously.
2: You spend 1 action to recharge, that's it, nothing else.
3: You move away, wasting opponent actions to attack you. or use Shield.
4: Spend a focus point on force fang or another conflux spell.

Your turn comes again. Say you haven't recharged.

1: Trip. On a success you recharge and the enemy is prone, you could then spellstrike at effectively -3 but setting up your party on a prone target.
2: Recharge flat then spellstrike. Higher accuracy, but if you miss you've wasted your turn completely.
3:Use other magus actions from your feats, hypothetically.

The point I'm trying to make is that spellstriking isn't ALWAYS the right thing to do.
If your player wants to mindlessly spam it to do big numbers, that's one way to play it.
But the class should have more options, even if in a white room DPR scenario they are all "inferior" to spellstrike.

But well, when you actually play you realize that a lot of other options would be appreciated. A strike that give a penalty to saves to set up the full caster of the group for example, or other ways to be useful even when out of slots.

Like come on, i feel some are arguing "well it won't ever be as potent as spellstrike so why bother have anything else". Do you guys hate your steaks being juicy or what.
Or are you afraid it'd come at the cost of nerfing spellstrike ? How would that happen ? The only possible nerfs would be :
A- Remove focus spellstrikes
B- Can only use magus spell slots on it, no scrolls, wands, staves, dedications.

And while A might happen (and be compensated for in a lot of possible ways) B won't happen.

exequiel759 wrote:

Startlit span is so popular because its the magus that can spellstrike every turn. That's it.

Only if you use a bow... You cannot do so with a crossbow or firearm...

Feats that allow to recharge spellstrike with any other action would be beneficial.

I'd take "Getting a Critical Hit" as a way to recharge a spellstrike.

Starlit Span also happen to be the subclass I hear people getting tired of playing and shelving the character the most often, 'cause it's too repetitive.

Also yeah "Critical Conflux" as a 10th level feat or something where, once per 10 minute, you can recharge Spellstrike on a critical hit from weapon or spell attack. That'd be dope.

But overall, no Magus shouldn't spellstrike all the time. They need more things to do other than that. Spellstrike is their big selling point but the magus is a gish, a spellblade, they should have more than one way of fulfilling that fantasy.
Barbarian don't JUST have rage, they have several abilities that fulfill the "big super powered fighter" fantasy, be it grabbing rocks to throw at people, slamming grappled target on the ground, tossing allies around etc.
Fighters are more than just "+2 to attack". They have tons of ways to be a weapon master in their feat selection. You could just Vicious Swing all the time or attack 3 times in a turn, but that'd be boring.

Then yeah raise a shield shouldn't be one, Shove could be instead.
Having off turn options that can recharge spellstrike while you set up your next turn, or assist allies (trip, shove, disarm, hide, feint) is one among other tools.

Right now I'm playing with Spirit Warrior on my laughing shadow magus and it's honestly so good to be able to keep spellstrike for when I need it and not my only way to deal worthwhile damage.

You don't have to spellstrike every single turn though.

And yeah that's the issue either there would be repeat or some stuff that are MAPless, but tbh we already have Starlit Span so is it really that much of an issue ? Make it work once per ennemy anyway.

What would those be outside of raise a shield ? Any other relevant action would likely require a check (feint, disarm, trip, hide, recall knowledge, jump...)

But I aggree having the option to use combat actions to recharge spellstrike, with a chance to fail but no ressource cost, would be nice.
When you need certainty and extra action compression: use conflux spells.
When you want to have a specific benefit and save ressources on a calculated gamble, roll the skill check.

Guys there is a thread for discussing that balance change, move it there please.

It's okay to have a different opinion guys. Everyone made their piece, stop running in circle before this thread gets closed down

I'm a bit sorry it devolved into magus this much, i originally just wanted to share my hoped changes when i commented ^^'

Regarding other stuff, I do hope Runesmith gets some pretty niche but flavorful runes. The ones from the playtest were pretty limited (understandably so) but functional. I'm hoping for a bit of weird stuff that just feels awesome when you get a chance to use them in the right scenario

Let's not forget Magus has ways to get more spells to either save their natural slots for spellstrike or get more use of them.
The two biggests being Standby Spell and Rings of Wizardry, along with staves, wands and scrolls for spells that don't benefit from heightening.

However the consummables do take actions the Magus several lacks, and the other options are nice but don't add that much.

While it'd be nice to get some extra slots (still advocating for Striking Spells slots, 2 extra slots that can only be used for spellstrike. Start with 1, get a 2nd one when losing first rank slot) the big thing needed is more tools to play WITH the action economy through more ways to recharge and more things to do outside of spellstrike.

Both would be ideal, but one of the two is essential.
If we have more ways to play with action economy and recharge, this makes off turns more dynamic and overall the play is smoother and mechanically satisfying.

If we get more things to do outside of spellstrike it reinforce the class fantasy and makes turns where we don't have the option to recharge or spellstrike still feel useful. Also makes being a pure magus more unique as some of those might require arcane cascade or just being too high level to be taken through multiclass. For example playing my current magus with Spirit Warrior feels pretty nice getting the flexibility of overwhelming combination in the numerous rounds where i can't spellstrike.

Both would open up more ways to play the class, leaning toward diffferent parts of the kit. I think it'd be balanced especially if focus spellstriking is explicitely removed.

Yeah, let's just hope and show what we want with the best reasoning we can. More than just "i want a focus spell to spellstrike with all the time" 'cause honestly i think it's more likely to just bring a nerf hammer and nothing else

This is getting out of topic and in circles.

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

I am scared of Magus Remastered getting a Spell-Strike Nerf by limiting it's Focus Spells to be able to be used in Spell-Strike...It just seems on brand at this point. So why would I ever want to do this then, if you remove Focus Spells Magus Investigator Dedication will become the normal and now you remove Magus Psychic for Magus anything with Domains (Fire Ray is good and so are other spells....) but like if they kill Focus Spells, Magus Investigator Dedication will be the normal for Devise a Stratagem so you can make SURE your Spell-Strike hits.

Or the class is remastered in a way to make off turns more appealing and dissuade the manic rush to spell strike each and every turn (which focus spell spellstrikes is a consequence of). I won't shed a tear if focus spell spellstrikes are nixed in support of more varied class design.

Like, for real, people are waaayyy too fixated on that.

Even if focus spellstrike is nixed, spellstrike is still a very powerful ability, by itself it's fine, it's the rest of the kit that needs buff to feel better and especially to feel like you're playing a magus and not a ranger with a wizard archetype when you don't have spellstrike ready. Unique actions, feats etc that support the magical fighter fantasy are what's needed

It feels like an oversight for Flurry of Claw not to do anything.

Doesn't it do double on a hit ? isn't that kind of the basic rule ? It'd be weird for it not to have an effect on a critical hit

I mean sure but that's kind off irrelevant to the discussion here.

I for one am vindicated, and I actually like that IW is now Force damage, even at the cost a 1 average damage per dice. Though I would have hope for psychic itself to be buffed 'cause it deserved it.

So well who knows what awaits magus, now people will just scream to pick champion and cleric, or sorcerer.

I preferred to stay away from designing a unique skill action but that might be a solution yeah. I've yet to add some edits (busy start of the week lol)

exequiel759 wrote:

How does the damage compare between spell attacks and save spells of the same rank? I'm talking how they compare ignoring the accuracy problems that have been mentioned before in this thread. If their damage is comparable or equal, I don't really see why the magus couldn't use their attack result to determine the effects of the save as well. Ofc this would probably need to limit spellstriking to save spells that deal damage, otherwise magus becomes the synesthesia king.

Yeah that's the real risk: spells of a particular save can now hit creatures that are normally strong against that save and you can do it with buffs like Off Guard, Sure Strike, and Fortissimo Courageous Anthem. That would be a huge buff to Magus unless you want to do damage, since if you can land a strong debilitating spell this reliably and effectively cripple an enemy, that's better than dama

In general, spell attacks don't have hugely better damage numbers. Gouging Claw and Telekinetic Projectile are d6 on the cantrip end. Moonlight Ray and Holy Light hit quite hard against their specific target types and not so much against anything else. In part because there just aren't that many of them anymore (and Disintegrate is very hard to get to actually land its full damage).

Hence restricting it to Basic Saving throws spells, which is stuff like Fireball, Thunderstrike etc. Something like Slow or Synesthesia aren't Basic Saves.

I meant you can do relatively big changes to the magus without upsetting the hybrid studies that's been released. I didn't need to touch them much in my changes. At worst it can be 2 lines of errata.

As for save spells I aggree Smite is probably the best for Basic Saves, and a penalty based on your strike result for other saves.
-1 on hit. -2 on crit (becomes -3 when you get master in weapons, or greater weapon specialization) or something like that would be pretty good.

Let's hope there's deeper stuff

Spellstrike compresses the accuracy into a single roll with higher accuracy overall, and delay the full action cost to future rounds.

I mean that's basically making every spell 1 action with flourish on the magus only.
And Spellstrike only does that kind of insane damage with spell slots, not cantrips but that's another discussion.

I think that having Spell Combat as an alternative way to use Spellstrike (basically decoupling the spell and strike and deferring the 3rd action to a later recharge) is the simplest way to do it without risking unbalance.

That's true, the more recents ones actually do that already.
They could all give you the benefits of a skill feat while in Arcane Cascade like Aloof giving you cat fall as base and Quick Jump while in arcane cascade.

I'll work on that and update later

I'm thinking of adding a level 4 or 6 feats that allows it with battle medicine if you have it.

There's a few Dex actions like Dirty Trick but again, gated behind a skill feat. Maybe Laughing Shadow could give it to you for free though ? It does have the attack trait after all.

That would kind of be too good within the way pf2e works.

Even in 1e using spell combat took away your ability to move that turn. But that's something everyone can do now (attack and cast a spell)

I know that what I am hoping for in the remaster of Magus is:

1. Support for an Enhancer style, where the spells cast as part of a Spellstrike require neither a saving throw nor attack roll. Allow someone to cast Resist Energy or Haste as part of a Spellstrike,
2. Spontaneous caster for Magus.
3. Ability to choose the tradition (so you could have one using primal, divine, or occult spells).

I also hope the Arcane Stance is better worded. The current errata wording is clumsy.

Yeah on that first one I hope they basically reimplement Spell Combat as an optional way to spend your spellstrike charge, that's what I did in my homebrew

Eldritch scion would be a perfect way to do the 2 and 3 in one go

Kalaam wrote:

exequiel759 wrote:

I might say I'm not the biggest fan of your implementation of magus maneuvers. I get that the idea is that they are all MAP actions to avoid magus maneuver + spellstrike every round (which I don't really think would be as bad people think it is, but anyways), but the fact that all of them are Athletics actions is pretty much forcing the magus to both become trained in Athletics and max out Athletics ASAP too.

Also, starlit span not having one is IMO bad. I get the rationale (its explained right there) but I feel its wrong for just one subclass to not have a magus maneuver with all the others have one. If it was a class archetype I get it since those break the rules, but starlit span isn't.

I personaly would either steal the swashbuckler's homebrew and make it so each hybrid study makes you trained in one skill and allows for one of their actions to recharge your spellstrike (like laughing shadow making you trained in Deception and allowing you to recharge with a feint).

I went back and forth on which maneuvers to choose. Some feat (or feat templates) I've added are meant to help achieving those maneuvers more efficiently or easily (as would certain archetype feats). Crosscurrent Counter for example gives you such an opportunity, etc.

I just ended up tired to write all the possible feats, as it was starting to go beyond the original scope.
This is also why certain feats let you use Spell Attack instead of athletics.

I had used a few acrobatic maneuvers as well, but then got told stuff like Tumble Through was just too good because it's a MAPless action you could do every turn (provided you have enough enemies, now that I think back on it, maybe should put it back the way it was, it is once per enemy after all)

For your example, I was tempted to put feint on laughing shadow. And decided to go with disarm since it also kind of fitted with the whole one handed thing, but maybe I should swap it to feint.

As for Starlit Span, yeah, I just

...

At first I had given 2 actions for each subclass to give more identity yeah.

I might say I'm not the biggest fan of your implementation of magus maneuvers. I get that the idea is that they are all MAP actions to avoid magus maneuver + spellstrike every round (which I don't really think would be as bad people think it is, but anyways), but the fact that all of them are Athletics actions is pretty much forcing the magus to both become trained in Athletics and max out Athletics ASAP too.

Also, starlit span not having one is IMO bad. I get the rationale (its explained right there) but I feel its wrong for just one subclass to not have a magus maneuver with all the others have one. If it was a class archetype I get it since those break the rules, but starlit span isn't.

I personaly would either steal the swashbuckler's homebrew and make it so each hybrid study makes you trained in one skill and allows for one of their actions to recharge your spellstrike (like laughing shadow making you trained in Deception and allowing you to recharge with a feint).

I went back and forth on which maneuvers to choose. Some feat (or feat templates) I've added are meant to help achieving those maneuvers more efficiently or easily (as would certain archetype feats). Crosscurrent Counter for example gives you such an opportunity, etc.

I had used a few acrobatic maneuvers as well, but then got told stuff like Tumble Through was just too good because it's a MAPless action you could do every turn (provided you have enough enemies, now that I think back on it, maybe should put it back the way it was, it is once per enemy after all)

For your example, I was tempted to put feint on laughing shadow. And decided to go with disarm since it also kind of fitted with the whole one handed thing, but maybe I should swap it to feint.

As for Starlit Span, yeah, I just drew a blank. Hiding feels a bit out context, Search is too situational, maybe Recall Knowledge ?

I'm glad you enjoyed it ! Hopefully actual play will give some interresting insight :)

Thanks !

That kind of thing really is the linchpin I hope we see in the actual remaster. Just this would do so much to make the class flow better and feel more complete and less "one trick pony"

I already added tweaks based on feedbacks lol (like moving Tumble Through as possible recharge maneuvers to a later level feat 'cause it being a mapless action is kind of too good) But anyway, enjoy !

That is very fair, and it is absolutely not my intent.
The whole project was just a design experiment and a study of sorts. I won't pretend to be a better designer than the ones actually working on the book. But if I can have ideas that are interresting to share, I'm happy to :D

Hope everyone will follow your advice and stay rude and give fair reads to each other's ideas and opinions. (some sure aren't on the subreddit's post I made >.>)

Well a tad late but had to finish writing it up properly. So if talking about what we hope to see, I more or less made a whole document about what I hope the magus rework will be like. I posted it in homebrew sections, and I'm not sure if I should link the doc or the post. So i'll start by the post itself in order for discussions about it to not pollute THIS discussion.

Here it is.

If I should delete this message, I will.

Puns aside, welcome !

Given that the remaster of the Magus got confirmed and given a date within the Impossible Magics book (which I am now doubly excited for given Runesmith is there to begin with) I figured it was time for me to actually finish putting together my own "remaster" attempt on the magus.

Right here you'll find the link to the document itself - Magus Remagusterized

Now some rundown of the intent behind the changes, along with the reasonning and a few of the features:

• Initial intent is to make a fully functional and strong class that doesn't feel a need to grab multiclass abilities to circumvent the limitations it is designed with (yes, I am looking at Imaginary Weapon and other focus spells like Fire Ray being pilfered to use with Spellstrike. I'll explain my reasons in detail later)

• Give more uses to Arcane Cascade, making it much more worthwhile to enter by unlocking more useful actions that can be part of your rotations and gameplans. Be it techniques inspired by other martials or ones more unique to the Magus.

• Tweaking certain feats and subclasses, mainly Inexorable Iron by altering certain existing features of the class.

• An experimental change for Spellstrike to have better synergy with save spells.

• SPELL COMBAT IS BACK

• Probably plenty of typos and formatting errors

Based on feedback and new ideas I'll probably add in some more feats and such, which will update automatically when I do.

I hope you enjoy the read !

Rename Summoner as Invoker then ahah

Suddenly, Square Enix legal team is what is being summoned

Kalaam wrote:

Now to see if our predictions will be as accurate, or completely off the mark !

We're all gonna look real silly when the remastered magus turns out to have gone back to its etymological roots and is a divine caster now.

Magus is now a Rare tagged class because it automatically make you divine right royalty.

Now to see if our predictions will be as accurate, or completely off the mark !

Kalaam wrote:

Arcane Cascade would feel better if the class had more attack options capitalizing on it, as it is right now you have spellstrike, normal strikes, and the ones including in your subclass' conflux spell. Otherwise you've got to look at archetypes.

Getting more feats like Cascading Ray etc that are unique attacks making use of Arcane Cascade would be great. Say "Cascading Splash" just a 2 action (or 1 action flourish whatever) strike that deals weapon dice*cascade bonus of elemental splash damage that you're immune to.

A spellstrike-less magus is certainly something I would like to see myself, but I wouldn't get my hopes up because PF2e usually designs classes around their gimmick and its not like they are going to give the class a second gimmick in the case someone doesn't want to spellstrike.

Like AestheticDialectic said, if spellstrike was replaced with a feature similar to 1e's spell combat, allowing you to cast any spell + a Strike would be enough for a "spellstrike-less" magus that self-buffs and jumps in the fray, but I feel that's too drastic of a change and I feel Paizo doesn't want to shake up the class that much, specially when it mostly works as is and only needs polishing. I could see feats tackling that playstyle though, but likely high level ones.

I don't think it'd be too difficult really. here's an idea:

Spell Combat, probably as feat upgrade or replacement of Expansive Spellstrike.
You expand your spellstrike charge and with 2 actions you make a strike and cast a spell in any order, both are decoupled from each other and the spell is cast normally, just weaved along the strike in the motions to cast. So you could cast your fireball on the group of mooks over there while hitting the boss, or you could cast blur as you fight. or that heal spell you got from an archetype on your wizard behind you.
If your action is disrupted, you lose both the spell and attack. If your critically miss the strike you fail the spell (even if the spell was technically cast first maybe, that part can be debated)

Still need to recharge of course, but just like that you got Spell Combat in 2e using the existing gimmick and without needing to deeply redesign the class.

The book comes out in like eight months! Consider this a teaser trailer, same as that Marvel spot that was just Chris Evans holding a baby.

"Seltyiel will Return"

"And this time he WILL get his hot demon twink"

Arcane Cascade would feel better if the class had more attack options capitalizing on it, as it is right now you have spellstrike, normal strikes, and the ones including in your subclass' conflux spell. Otherwise you've got to look at archetypes.

Getting more feats like Cascading Ray etc that are unique attacks making use of Arcane Cascade would be great. Say "Cascading Splash" just a 2 action (or 1 action flourish whatever) strike that deals weapon dice*cascade bonus of elemental splash damage that you're immune to.

I also hope we do get a bunch of new attack spells that have interresting effects that are more than straight damage. Threefold Limb and Sticky Fire are 2 that I really like for that reason. And focus ones like Fire Ray or Winter Bolt are exactly what i'd like to see as proper spells.

Also wonder what the whole "spells that'll leave your soul scarred from using them" deal is. I kind of hope it's actually busted spells that inflict you with a difficult to remove Doomed condition, the kind that needs a specific ritual or loads of downtime to get rid of but in exchange it IS actually quite busted. The kind of spells that normally have the incapacitation trait...but will not have it.

This is pretty much what I'm working on and suggesting. Taking a page out of swashbuckler/gunslinger books (pun intended) and refining stuff started by Magus Analysis to recharge with skill actions related to your subclass, with feats to pick a few more.

The other stuff I really hope is to see more gish abilities in feats, similarly to other martials special weapon strikes and all, let the magus have a few of its own either inspired by other martials with a magical flavor and/or a few things unique to its blend of weapons and magic, probably tie it to arcane cascade.

For example:

Riving Strike. 2 action flourish.
In arcane cascade, make a strike, on a hit the target suffers a -1 status penalty to its next saving throw against a spell effect, or until the end of your next turn. (-2 on a crit)

A special way to synergize with the spellcasters on your team, or setup your next turn casting a spell or a spellstrike with a saving throw (double dip by making a saving throw spellstrike inflict a circumstance penalty to the save maybe ?)

Or other stuff inspired by Cascading Ray, it's a very flavorful and nice feat and more Cascading attacks would be super cool to see !

This is fair.

Now for other stuff I hope to see in that book:

Runes for attack spells for spellcasters, come on i'm sure this can be balanced especially now that you can't spam Sure Strike !

Eldritch Scion as a class archetype for Magus would be super cool to see come back.

Kalaam wrote:

The current design issue is that the class is designed around having few spell slots and squeezing as much value out of them as possible.

You have a couple of them locked to low level utility spells (Studious Slots) and 4 you are meant to juggle between ammo for Spellstrike or other high rank options (buffs, control, aoe etc).

Most Spellstrike related feats are focused on getting extra value out of your spell slots specifically even calling out that cantrips AND focus spells don't work with those feats.
It can be stuff like resistance piercing, splash damage, adding an extra action (leap, feint), reach, dispelling magical effects, or applying a 1 round buff to yourself.

The quality of those feats can be discussed and a lot would benefit from being reworked or buffed, which I hope the remaster does.

I think the issue here is that while this is certainly the intended design, this is also a design a lot of players have outright rejected. Beyond the Magus, a lot of players complain about the limited nature of spell slots even on full casters that have lots of them, and many players simply do not want to spend a limited per-day resource to maximize the damage on their signature activity, especially when that activity can miss and do nothing much more often than a save spell. We can talk about how the original design can work on paper, how Spellstriking with slot or even focus spells is overkill in many cases, how the loop could be improved (and your proposals would improve the Magus's gameplay significantly), and so on, but the fact remains that a lot of players prefer to Spellstrike for close to maximum damage without having to spend a limited resource, and are even willing to commit a substantial part of their build towards that. I agree that a single Spellstrike focus spell by itself would be fairly one-note, but compared to current imaginary weapon overuse, I don't think it would be that much of a reduction, if any at all depending on the implementation.

The frustration a lot of people feel about spell slot limitation is a good point.