Scottbert's page

Usually, spells cast from slots gained from a specific class are referred to by the language 'class spells', as in:

"A bard can cast bard spells while wearing light armor and using a shield without incurring the normal arcane spell failure chance."

"[A magus] can cast magus spells while wearing light armor without incurring the normal arcane spell failure chance."

And yet, in the wording of Spell Combat:

"...he can make all of his attacks with his melee weapon at a –2 penalty and can also cast any spell from the magus spell list..."

This is clearly different wording, which seems to potentially signify different intent: That a multiclass magus who can cast spells on the magus spell list through another class, might be able to do so with spell combat.

Yes, there is the broad study arcana. But once again, the strange wording appears: "The magus can use his spellstrike and spell combat abilities while casting or using spells from the spell list of that class." Even with this interpretation of Spell Combat, Broad Study provides an advantage -- there are spells not on the magus spell list that might be handy to use with that ability, after all.

This interpretation provides for another class of gish between the magus and the eldritch knight -- a magus 1/wizard 5/eldritch knight or similar build would have pros and cons compared to the other two. Yes it gets spell combat, but it never gets the improved version, or arcana to allow using it with wands or other spells. Arcane armor training beyond light is impractical to learn as it lacks medium and heavy armor proficiency, and it lags a feat and 1 BAB behind the eldritch knight who takes a fighter level instead.

So, interpreting the language of spell combat this way is at least sensible, and while I am suspicious enough of it to make a post here, I don't find it blatantly obvious. 3.5's duskblade was able to channel spells from other classes, after all. My question is, what are the rules as intended here? Has a designer ever clarified?

So far I have found JamesTheBard's 1.0.8 sheet, and Zumii's 2.5.2 sheet, but I am wondering, are there any others? (I found reference to at least two others, hosted on mysteriously defunct sites, on these boards). Especially any that are actually maintained?

Note that I am specifically looking for autocalc sheets which are also printable (they don't have to be PDF). I usually have a laptop at the table but would prefer to have the option of playing without one, hence my desire for printable sheets rather than simply tracking the stats on my computer. Not that the above sheets are bad, but I would like to see if there are any other options that I might like better, especially any landscape format sheets there might be. Sheets with room for handwritten annotations are a plus.

A friend of mine looking to play a Magus in an upcoming game noticed that combining Spellstrike and Spell Combat gets you an extra weapon attack. I didn't notice the potential for this because I started playing a Magus during the beta test, when there was language specifically prohibiting this:

Beta:

Spellstrike (Su):

At 2nd level, whenever a magus casts a spell with a range of “touch” from the magus spell list, he can deliver the spell through any weapon he is wielding as part of a melee attack. If successful, this melee attack deals its normal damage as well as the effects of the spell. Instead of the free melee touch attack normally allowed to deliver the spell, a magus can make one free melee attack with his weapon as part of casting this spell. If used with spell combat, this does not grant an additional attack.

Spellstrike (Su):

At 2nd level, whenever a magus casts a spell with a range of “touch” from the magus spell list, he can deliver the spell through any weapon he is wielding as part of a melee attack. Instead of the free melee touch attack normally allowed to deliver the spell, a magus can make one free melee attack with his weapon (at his highest base attack bonus) as part of casting this spell. If successful, this melee attack deals its normal damage as well as the effects of the spell. If the magus makes this attack in concert with spell combat, this melee attack takes all the penalties accrued by spell combat melee attacks. This attack uses the weapon’s critical range (20, 19–20, or 18–20 and modified by the keen weapon property or similar effects), but the spell effect only deals ×2 damage on a successful critical hit, while the weapon damage uses its own critical modifier.

Worse, if you can spellstrike Arcane Mark, this gets you unlimited attempts at extra attacks from level 1! (And if you can't, all you need is the ranged-to-melee arcana and cantrips can give you unlimited attempts later).

The removal of the specific language from the beta seems deliberate, but is this really the intent? Am I missing wording somewhere that prohibits this?

Have you ever seen a shotgun being fired? They don't work that way!

I would like to see shotguns portrayed more realistically in _some_ game, maybe Pathfinder isn't the place for it, but what _is_ the appeal of shotguns firing in 90 degree cones? At least you didn't make it an easy reflex save to avoid the blast -- that would make them useless, rather than just weird. Anyway, just an issue that bugs me, in this game and others.

A few times in places discussing the Magus I have seen people claim that when casting a touch spell you can cast the spell, use your move action to move adjacent to a target, then make the touch attack, to avoid having to cast defensively.

I can't find where in the rules it says this.

The closest I can see is having your familiar deliver the spell (Since it has its own actions, it can move away from you and then make its own touch attack) or, as a magus, beginning spell combat while 10' away, casting the spell into your weapon with spellstrike, and then 5' stepping up to your target and making your weapon attacks. Of course you can also cast one round, hold the charge, and then move into position and attack on subsequent rounds, but this sounds more like a strategy to use when you desperately cannot afford to fail that concentration check rather than something to use regularly.

Is this people getting mixed up, a common houserule, or what?

One thing I was delighted to see in the PRD/Bestiary is actual guidelines for custom monsters -- the lack of this in 3.5 always irked me, and the (relatively) simple process for creating basic monster statistics is one of the things I like about 4e.

(I'm referring to this: Monster Creation )

That said, this still involves a lot of checking tables and such. Has anyone made a digital tool where you can plunk in type, CR, and role, and get some baseline statistics to tweak? It seems like such an obvious thing to me, but the 'monster builder' tools I can find just add templates and levels to existing monsters which, while useful, isn't helpful if I'm making a unique monster.

While I have yet to get a chance to play a Magus, I HAVE played something similar before, which might give some insight into how to 'fix' the Magus if it's as bad as posters seem to be indicating.

First off, I _love_ the idea of mixing magic and melee. Buffing and running into a fight is okay, I guess, channeling spells is great, being able to fight _and_ cast spells at the same time is _awesome_.

Back in the 3.5 days, I had an idea for a character and, at first, no idea how to implement them: Wizards are often carrying around quarterstaves, but they aren't good with them. I wanted to make a wizard who could kick butt with his quarterstaff while throwing spells in the middle of melee. (I am sad that the Magus can't do his thing with a staff)

For me, a lot of the fun of optimization is making what sounds like a really sub-par (in D&D's mechanics anyway) character idea and making it work. Eventually, I found what looked like a good combo:
1. the Havoc Mage prestige class, whose _thing_ is, like the Magus, attacking and casting in the same round -- Instead of penalties, it was limited to one attack and one spell per round, though.
2. Combat Expertise - trade attack bonus for AC? My spells don't _need_ good attack bonus, I can block attacks with my staff while casting!
3. Staff Fighting - +2 to AC when fighting defensively (and, any sane DM would hopefully rule, when using combat expertise)! With this, I at last have a _reason_ for a mage to use a staff!

I played this character through many dungeons, from 4th-9th level, before the campaign petered out. Once he got Battlecasting, the last piece of his combo, he was awesome. Not only could he attack and cast, he could benefit from it, making himself harder to hit -- and with his investment in staff fighting (TWF was a prereq), he wasn't too shabby at plain old physical combat when trying to conserve his spells (Which was good, because DMs in this campaign weren't shy about throwing a lot of encounters per day at us). He could even combat expertise at full and play tank!

Maybe such a character is overpowered, and I recognize that you can't make the Magus use the same mechanic as the Havoc Mage, but I hope there's an idea in this concept somewhere that's helpful to the Magus concept.

Certain effects give a character temporary hit points.
When a character gains temporary hit points, note his
current hit point total. When the temporary hit points
go away, the character’s hit points drop to his current
hit point total. If the character’s hit points are below his
current hit point total at that time, all the temporary hit
points have already been lost and the character’s hit point
total does not drop further.

The third sentence in particular strikes me as confusing. How can the character's hit points be below his hit point total? That's like saying when x is less then x... but by definition, x=x, always. Did I just roll a 1 on my literature check, or is this paragraph a kind of unclear way of saying 'damage taken is first subtracted from temporary hit points before normal hit points are affected'?