Zeus Juice's page

Consider the Skirnir archetype for the Magus.

It gives you a bonded shield with no ASF and let's you spellstrike with it at first level. Also gives you some other neat shield related abilities. The archetype also lowers the number of spells you can cast and delays spell combat, so it's not all sun and roses, but it looks like it will let you play what you want without having the homebrew.

Thanks for the advice.

I had an idea for a sort of class Id like to play as sometime. The core idea behind it is that id like a swordmage but for a shield. The shield would be of reasonable size, and the class would likely be proficient in combat with the shield along with heavy armors. The problem I realize with the class is that it would be near impossible to cast any somatic spells due to the spell failure chance all of the armor would give the class. Should the Mage use the shield as an implement? (And if so could any old shield be used by a swordmage or only certain ones?) should the Mage have a reduction to spell failure or complete negation of spell failure? (How would that balance?) I think the idea would be neat, considering all of the applications of a shield for a Mage (buffs for defence, mana or Lifesteal for damage dealt to the Mage, on hit effects such as poison, stun, etc. buffs to magic DR) but would it fall under wizard archetype? Should I just make a hybrid class, and would shieldmage work through a hybrid class? How would I make the class work?