deathstroke50's page

I outlined some of my thoughts here

It doesn't solve all of the low-level weaknesses, and takes a bit of a spell-oriented focus for Spellstrike, but I think the two important ones are d10 hit dice for better melee survivability, and getting Arcane Weapon earlier, for better hit chances.

In fact, perhaps grant it at 1st level, and then give +1 every 4/5 levels (max +6/+5)... This would help offset the low BAB, give them versatility (in magic weapon bonuses), and introduce their bond the same level they get their spellcasting.

Lessened spell combat penalties plus non-mandatory concentration checks would help a lot, as would not restricting melee weapon choices for their abilities.

Lots of people making interesting suggestions, and seeing a lot of complaints about Magus low-level and it's capstone, along with combat survivability, gave me a few ideas.

Increase Hit Dice to d10
I know that part of PF was to associate HD with BAB, but sometimes it's more important to make a class fun to play than to stick to a guideline.

Move Arcane Weapon to 2nd level
This gives the class better melee at low levels to make up for mid BAB.

Change spellstrike
Obviously the ability seems to confuse people and has a lot of complaints centered around the 'two rounds' function.

Change spell combat
Lots of good suggestions on this one, the best of which involved removing the mandatory cast defensively.

Better capstone
Not a lot of comments on this, but I've seen a few people agree that it's sub-par.

Concentration
A few people have mentioned that when the Magus is actually in melee, his concentration will suffer because of the new pathfinder rules. The biggest draw I noticed was that a grappled magus, at level 10, would be completely unable to cast spells.

Spell list
Some people wanting more touch spells on this for Spellstrike. I agree that there should be more of the PF base touch spells, since there are quite a few nice ones, even if Ultimate Magic will include more.

Spell slots
The magus' abilities are powered by his spells/spell slots. Because he has so many ways to use them, and should be - since his focus is on spell casting and combat - I would suggest either more spell slots, or, more preferably, changing abilities dependent on spell slots to limited use. They'll operate the same, but won't consume the same resource. There have been suggestions for a ki pool equivalent, but with spells, melee, and arcana pool, I suspect the magus would become a bloated mish-mash - classes work best by doing one thing very well, often with a secondary ability. Some classes (Alchemist, Summoner, and Magus) will take two equally important abilities and let the player mix them. Three abilities can turn into a confusing mess very quickly

A few other odds and ends thoughts I had:

• Move fighter training to 8th level (gives 9th access to WS)
  
• Give magus arcana at 3rd and every odd level afterwards (Will help people vary their magi)
  
• And a few other arcana, but people had plenty of suggestions in other threads

Arcana suggestions: Migrate armor proficiencies and casting to arcana, allow not needing a free hand for somatic if wielding a weapon ("Somatic blade"), limited Int to attack rolls, ability to use spellstrike with ranged weapons.
Some of these may already exist, some of them wouldn't work without the altered spellstrike.

Edit: Forgot the spell list point. Added the point for spell slots.

Interesting design shift.

A lot of it could be simplified by giving a Magus the disadvantage that all non-ray spells have a range of 0 ft. and ray spells have a range of touch. There will be corner cases this wouldn't cover, but it would work pretty well.

Other abilities:
Somatic Blades: May perform somatic components with their weapon. Or perhaps must if we're going with 'mandatory', which would encourage more arcane blade/bond abilities.

As part of the 'disadvantage' the Magus could choose to be immune to the effects of their spells. Gives some great imagery of the Magus rushing a group of orcs, the roar of flame as the fireball explodes around him, and then finishing off the remainders with his blade.

But staves currently can currently be recharged at no cost. Even without the sorcerer's special ability, a caster would still be getting several free wishes.

Using your example, one could buy or create three of your "Staff of the Gods" for 823440 gp and, over a period of time, grant a +5 Inherent bonus to all ability scores of everyone as well at no additional cost.

To me, this is again, more of an issue with the staff (and an issue with making your own magic items completely "by the rule") rather than the sorcerer even if the capstone should be reworded.

This is true, but that 823,440 GP is almost all of their starting gold. I'd be okay with it because the character would have almost nothing else for gear. And while +5 to all stats for the group is nice, not being able to do anything else (yes, they do have 6 wishes, but the recharge time will be killer - I can handle an under-equipped PC) will keep them in line.

Also, is the gp cost for the Staff of the Gods correct? According to the SRD, Epic magic items are those whose base cost is 200 000gp or more, which would make this staff an Epic Staff (and cost 1 million gp more), wouldn't it?

Actually, it isn't an epic item because the 'greater than 200k' effect is only for the base cost, and doesn't come into play for material components (which is the bulk of the cost of this item)

Quick and dirty fix: You must use at least as many spell levels as the level of the spell to avoid spending a charge. That way a ninth level spell takes a minimum of 9 spell levels (and a very expensive staff) to use chargeless. The example wish staff would use 45 spell levels (5 charges * 9th level spell) to fire off a wish for free.

Interesting. I was thinking of a similar fix to help keep this ability in line with the other 20th level abilities.

It also helps to actually read the limitations on the base item itself. Staves can only hold 10 charges. Recharging a charge takes a spell slot equal to the highest level spell in it, and can be done once per day.

It's not an issue of charges on the staff. The Sorcerer ability lets you expend spell levels in place of using charges. Effectively giving you 90 extra charges to be spread across items.

I think that this might be more of the issue of putting wish on a charged item. It is a powerful spell, and if you put it on a item to be cast a lot, there are going to be significant effects in your game.

Normally this isn't a huge problem with wish, it can be used to make powerful/broken items (the Staff of the Gods is actually a fairly good example), but they're usually highly limited because each charge consumes material components. Wish 2/day, with a recharge of 5 days, is pretty powerful, but manageable at 20th level. The problem comes with the replacement charges that Arcane Apotheosis gives you.

I'm starting a 20th level PF game, and was talking with another player who wanted to be able to be a Dragon. Obviously just casting the 8th level spell would be enough for combats, but I realized that you could put the spell into a Staff (called "Staff of the Dragon", cost 96,000 GP, one ability: Form of the Dragon III for 1 charge). That way she could burn 3rd level spells (or 3 levels of spell slots) and cast Form of the Dragon III, using her very high Charisma score for the save DCs.

It was then that I realized that you could break the game by making a Staff with Wish in it. "Staff of the Gods", cost 274,480 GP, one ability: Wish for 5 charges. Since staves don't require material components, this lets her burn off 15 levels of spells for a free Wish. Without bonus spells this would give her Wish 18 times per day. Plenty to give everyone +5 Inherent bonuses to all their ability scores (normally 825,000 GP), along with the general 'niceness' of being able to cast wish without cost. This could potentially be applied to other costly spells, such as True Resurrection (using Use Magic Device), somewhat breaking the game.

Is there something I missed? Do 20th level sorcerers really have the ability to break all game balance?

When I looked at the new rules for SoD spells, my first reaction was "aww, now it'll be harder to kill the PCs in one shot" quickly followed by "Wait a second... Why is this a good spell?"
Quite a few of the new SoDs do 10 dmg/level with a Fort save for no or less damage. If I were playing a cleric I would probably just prep Harm instead of them. Admittedly it has a damage cap and can't deal the final blow, but a Will half is a lot better than Fort negates. Less targets are resiliant to it - Fighters have poor Wills, while casters still have issues soaking the half damage. I would suggest upping the dmg/level on the new SoDs to make them more attractive than Harm.

As for the 'they add range' portion - upping a 6th level spell to 7th would let you Ray the target, and most clerics won't miss a ranged touch attack.