I had a thought for what the capstone ability of the Magus could be that would make me more likely to want to go all the way in the class, and came up with this:
Reflecting the likeness between Spell Combat and Two-Weapon Fighting, how about making the capstone ability similar to Improved Two-Weapon Fighting? That is, when using Spell Combat at 20th level, you can cast 2 spells instead of the normal 1.
I'm not sure how balanced it would be, though (it would probably need some penalties), but it would certainly be something that would be an "awe factor" when talking about the Magus class.
If the magus maintains its relatively few spells per day, casting 2 spells at once, in addition to a full attack, would be great! No penalties are needed because
1. It's the capstone
2. The penalty is the rapid resource depletion from using this ability.
Magi get what? 24 or 30 spells a day at 20th level? Well, if you use 2 spells a round, for 4 rounds of combat, 4 times per day, that's, what? 32 spells? At least the magus won't be having to worry about having to keep track of too many spells...
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I had a thought for what the capstone ability of the Magus could be that would make me more likely to want to go all the way in the class, and came up with this:
Reflecting the likeness between Spell Combat and Two-Weapon Fighting, how about making the capstone ability similar to Improved Two-Weapon Fighting? That is, when using Spell Combat at 20th level, you can cast 2 spells instead of the normal 1.
I'm not sure how balanced it would be, though (it would probably need some penalties), but it would certainly be something that would be an "awe factor" when talking about the Magus class.
I had the same idea when commenting on the magus HERE.
However with SmiloDan's concern about using too many spells in a day mine utilizes the existing spells energy and effectively gives you a chance of recasting the spell on the same or even a second target (although with a much higher DC). It does require a little tweeking of the existing spell combat rules however.
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However with SmiloDan's concern about using too many spells in a day mine utilizes the existing spells energy and effectively gives you a chance of recasting the spell on the same or even a second target (although with a much higher DC). It does require a little tweeking of the existing spell combat rules however.
Isn't that the Duskblade 'cool toy,' to 'maintain' an instantaneous spell so that it affects everyone you hit with a full attack, allowing you to potentially shocking grasp or vampiric touch someone three to five times during a full attack with a single spell?
The ability to maintain multiple charges of touch spells, such as a shocking grasp *and* a vampiric touch at the same time, could be neat. Perhaps the levels of the spells held at once can't exceed the level of the highest level spell you can cast, so that to hold both a shocking grasp and a vampiric touch, you'd need to be able to cast 4th level spells.
The Warrior of White Fire PrC, from the Scarred Lands setting, had the ability to cast a spell as part of a full attack action, using their highest BAB attack to cast the standard action spell, and then being able to use their remaining iterative attacks in melee. That is a vaguely cool ability, although probably not capstone-worthy, and it's pretty much trumped by Improved Spell Combat.
An "Improved Spell Combat" ability might be a good mid-to-high level ability, maybe 15th or 16th level, when the Magus gets 3+ iterative attacks.
I think using up a bunch of spells at once is actually a nice balancing factor for the capstone ability of casting 2+ spells a round as a full round action (+1 as a swift action!).