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Magus: Built as a BBEG with all really high stats (+3 mod on most)
Magus 6 (500xp)
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I+3, AC20(T15F17)
+8 Heavy Pick (+1 Keen) 1d4+3 (19-20/x4) + 1d6 Acid
+8 Melee Touch
30HP F6 R4 W7
S16,D14,C14,I18,W14,C8
+1 Chain Shirt, +1 Keen Heavy Pick, ROP1, +1 Club, Handy Haversack
Handy Haversack: 300' Rope, 6x Adamantine Manacles, 1500gp, 5x CMW Potions (CL3)
Feats: Combat Casting, Spell Focus Evo, Weapon Focus Heavy Pick, Dodge, Weapon Focus Touch Attack
Features: Spellstrike, Spell Combat (-4 To-Hit, -2 Conc), Spell Shield, Arcane Weapon (Corrosive), Empower Magic
Spells Per Day: 5/4(2)/3(1)
Prepared: 0- Acid Splash, Ray of Frost, Prestidigitation, Daze
1- Shocking Grasp (x2), Grease (x2), Magic Missile, True Strike
2- Elemental Touch (x2), Invisibility, Blur
Build Notes:
Building a bad guy gives me a lot of room on stats and equipment, basically tailor made to fit what i needed. I went with the heavy pick simply for x4 modifier and i knew the party didn't have the proficiencies to use it after-the-fact. Magus Arcana are a bit slim picken's at levels 3 and 5. Arcane weapon is the bread and butter at this level.
Party:
They are about 70% of AVG wealth for level 3's. This is considered and epic encounter (CR5, 2xCR1/2 and 2xCR1). All PC's have an extra +4 hp at level 1.
Battle Prep:
The Magus and his thugs (2x War2, 2x Rog2) are a local gang and ambush the party. There are four side alleys off of the 15' wide road, with the party starting in the middle of all the alleys. Two party members make their perception checks to notice the ambush and act in the surprise round. When the party is near dead, the thugs will attempt to use nonlethal damage in order to rob the party.
Combat:
Combat lasted 8 rounds including surprise round.
S - Magus casts blur and calls lackeys, who surround the party
1 - Magus moves up, attacking with the pick; Lackeys and party exchange blows.
2 - Magus uses spell combat to cast Elemental Touch (APG) and attack (This only is a single attack since elemental touch has no attack associated with the initial casting). He makes greater than a 20 on his concentration check, easily passing (Note his d20+6+4+4-2 is +12 vs a DC of 19 for the second level spell, passing on 7 or above), hitting the monk for around 1/2 of his hp. The thugs begin to work wonders on the party, with the rogues flanking, getting a few good sneak attacks. The party reduces one of the war2's to 1hp, injuring others.
3 - Magus uses TWF to both attack with his pick and his touch attack, missing with both. The thugs have 2 party members reduced below 50% hp. The party's rogue lands a crit on the magus (with Sneak Attack) but it is negated by blur's miss chance.
4 - Magus uses spell combat to cast True Strike first then attack with the pick. He fails his concentration check, and subsequently misses the pick attack. They thugs continue to pick away at party hp. The party kills the 1hp thug by a lucky crit.
5 - Magus continues TWF with his elemental touch and pick, landing the melee touch, but failing the pick. The thugs reduce a third party member to less than 50% hp. The party fails to do anything productive, but nails the magus with a magic missile.
6 - Magus once again TWF, hitting one party member with each attack. One of the thugs dies due to a crit on an AoO on a failed acrobatics check. The other thugs do little else. The party dispatches two more thugs, leaving the magus and a thug. A crit from the rogue gets by blur and drops the magus to 40%hp.
7 - Magus is looking dire, hitting with a pick attack, but missing his elemental touch (last round of it). Last surviving thug crits the rogue to -6hp. The monk scores a hit past blur, the cleric crits the thug, and a magic missile from one of the sor's finishes the magus.
Impressions:
Spell Combat is not bad at this level. I can see how it would be problematic lower than lvl 4 or without combat casting. At level 6 and with the feat, however, i still had a 35% chance to fail at a key feature of the class. Arcane weapon stands out as perhaps the best class feature sub level 10. None of the magus arcana seem worth while at this level (except maybe concentrate). The class played solid, though I could have probably turned the encounter into a TPK had the magus used spell combat to cast a few shocking grasps first and attack with the pick secondary. If there are more spells like Elemental Touch in the Ultimate Magic, Two-Weapon-Fighting may be a good feat for the magus to pick up when he's not wanting to use up immediate resources. Also, spell combat with true strike then attack is fun, but I'm sure the spell casting could be used better.
Note about Elemental Touch
The way my group interpreted this spell is that you can cast other spells during its duration, and that it has not charge to be held. Justification is that its a range: personal instead of range: touch, much similar to Burning Gaze or Shield. Also, because of this range, we determined that it was unusable through Spellstrike (even though the spell provides you with a touch attack). I can see potential craziness with two-weapon-fighting, spell combat and spellstrike giving a +6/+1 BAB magus a free cast of a touch, a melee with the weapon + touch effects, then a slap with elemental touch. This is at -8,-12 to-hit though (ruling that touch attacks are light, reduced with TWF feats).
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One of the things to note, and I am not sure if you did this, is that the touch attack (if you make one) during spell combat still gets it's free touch attack for casting the spell. Additionally, the touch attack does not get the -4 as the wording says that only weapon melee attacks made get -4. Finally, any touch spells that do not connect on the touch can still connect (assuming you hold charge) on attack with spellstrike.
this also allows you to cast a touch spell 1 turn, and if you cast it but miss with both the touch and attack, you can use spell combat next turn to hit first with an attack, and discharge the touch, then cast another spell, and if that spell is a touch then you can make a touch attack immediately as per the rules of touch attack spells.
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One of the things to note, and I am not sure if you did this, is that the touch attack (if you make one) during spell combat still gets it's free touch attack for casting the spell. Additionally, the touch attack does not get the -4 as the wording says that only weapon melee attacks made get -4. Finally, any touch spells that do not connect on the touch can still connect (assuming you hold charge) on attack with spellstrike.
this also allows you to cast a touch spell 1 turn, and if you cast it but miss with both the touch and attack, you can use spell combat next turn to hit first with an attack, and discharge the touch, then cast another spell, and if that spell is a touch then you can make a touch attack immediately as per the rules of touch attack spells.
Yeah, that's how he would have attacked had I used something like shocking grasp. Elemental Touch, however, is a buff spell as opposed to an attack spell, so I figured the extra weapon it provides would have to be used as a TWF rather than the touch attack half of Spell Combat (Much like Magic Weapon or Shillelagh, both of which imbue a weapon with power, this weapon just happens to be your melee touch hand).
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Yeah, that's how he would have attacked had I used something like shocking grasp. Elemental Touch, however, is a buff spell as opposed to an attack spell, so I figured the extra weapon it provides would have to be used as a TWF rather than the touch attack half of Spell Combat (Much like Magic Weapon or Shillelagh, both of which imbue a weapon with power, this weapon just happens to be your melee touch hand).One of the things to note, and I am not sure if you did this, is that the touch attack (if you make one) during spell combat still gets it's free touch attack for casting the spell. Additionally, the touch attack does not get the -4 as the wording says that only weapon melee attacks made get -4. Finally, any touch spells that do not connect on the touch can still connect (assuming you hold charge) on attack with spellstrike.
this also allows you to cast a touch spell 1 turn, and if you cast it but miss with both the touch and attack, you can use spell combat next turn to hit first with an attack, and discharge the touch, then cast another spell, and if that spell is a touch then you can make a touch attack immediately as per the rules of touch attack spells.
Any particular reason why you had him use that spell vs shocking grasp. It seems that he wasn't built to use the touch attack as a TWF instead of as part of a cast, which has none of the minus's.
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The fight was a bit above challenging (though it was the only encounter that day, so nova was OK for the players), and I didn't want to go down with a bunch of 5d6 shocks on the hapless player stuck in the back of the pincer (plus, this was a get players up to wealth by level fight rather than a dead PC fight). Also, seeing as this was going to be a relatively short combat he would be wasting charges of his Shocking Grasp when we went to spell combat his True Strike. I also really like the secondary effects that Elemental Touch provides over direct damage.
Frankly, though, this was my first actual experience with the class, and a bit of the new unfamiliarity plagued me. If he had TWF feat, he would have been a much bigger threat using the tactics I employed, which honestly are better suited to a build that emphasizes TWF instead of a vanilla build like this one.