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Working on a list of classes to develop for a Kaidan martial arts type supplement, and aside from the obvious monk variants, I'm looking to include a few archetypes for concepts such as Unarmed Magus.
I'm thinking someone recruited into a monastery discovered to have an arcane talent and given martial arts training that incorporate spell power of the magus class.
First of all I'd pull access to armor, including light armor. Since that's a big nerf of the standard magus, I'm thinking of replacing it with Monk AC Bonus. Then 7th level Medium Armor is replaced with Evasion, and 13th level Heavy Armor is replaced with Improved Evasion.
At some point, probably first level, I would need some class ability that confers a +1 enhancement bonus to your striking hand. An unarmed magus must choose one of his hands to serve as his striking hand for the purposes of casting spells with the other hand.
I would need to come up with a least a half dozen Magus Arcana that conferred special bonuses especially suited to an unarmed magus, perhaps a smite-type arcana that grants special damage against certain targets, etc.
Are my AC replacement choices too powerful? What would be a better way to confer an enhancement bonus to unarmed strikes?
GP
Remove light armor and martial weapon proficiencies, replace with improved unarmed strike and monk's AC bonus.
Simply allow arcane pool to work on unarmed strikes instead of weapons.
Replace spellstrike with weapon focus unarmed strike.
At 5th level replace the bonus feat with unarmed strike damage as a monk 4 levels lower, also the magus counts as a monk 4 levels lower for the purpose of feats.
At 7th, allow bonus feat to be picked, from a list of monk bonus feats and style feats (UC). replaces medium armor
At 10th fighter training, feats with fighter levels as a prerequiste only apply while using unarmed strike.
At 11th, bonus feat from monk/style list. replaces bonus feat
At 13th bonus feat from monk/style list. replaces heavy armor
Make the 'monk AC bonus' key off Intelligence, rather than Wisdom. You don't want to make a magus even more MAD than a monk.
Possibly grant an ability to spend arcane pool points to generate an extra attack, like with Ki?
Good food for thought.
And yeah, key AC bonus to Intelligence rather than Wisdom.
I'm looking at both optional ways of spending arcane pool points as well as specific magus arcana granting special combat bonuses like Ki.
I will study some more, thanks for the thoughts.
GP
Good food for thought.
And yeah, key AC bonus to Intelligence rather than Wisdom.
I'm looking at both optional ways of spending arcane pool points as well as specific magus arcana granting special combat bonuses like Ki.
I will study some more, thanks for the thoughts.
GP
Key intelligence seems a much better option than an armored magus to me, especially since mage armor and shield spells are in easy supply, ac can easily be too high to hit with just a few spells. With the magus having an easy time getting his buffs up in combat to make him unhittable at low levels, as well as making an interesting dip class for wizards, witches and intelligence based sorcerers dramatically boosting AC.
At low level light armor is near inconsequential if the player can have mage armor up, only being awkward in the first 2 levels or so, keeping in mind that magus has an easy time buffing in combat even if taken by surprise.
How about this :
1st lvl give improved unarmed strike, like the monk, and adds intelligence modifier as a dodge bonus to AC equal to the magus' class level, this bonus can not exceed the magus' class level. This bonus increase by +1 at 4th level and every 4 levels after. Replacing martial weapons, light armor proficiency, fighter training, medium and heavy armor proficiency.
2nd level a monk bonus feat, you qualify as a monk of your magus level for feat requirements. This replaces spellstrike.
(Spellstrike is useless for unarmed attacks)
The Ac bonus is slightly inferior to a monk's since the magus can lose it in cases dex does not apply, but with mage armor it can keep up fine with a normal magus and get a better AC pretty easily at higher level as well as improving his CMD.
Do we really need wizards dipping a single level into this archetype to get intelligence to armour class?
Probably best to restrict it to level restricted armour class such as for the duelist.Or maybe draw it's casting power from wisdom.
Maybe a divine based version of the magus? Might be interesting though possibly not what you are after here.
Well, I'm not trying to create a class to dip into, so I need to think more on this - though your restrictions idea is interesting.
Regarding a divine magus, the Tengukensei archetype from RiP's In the Company of Tengu is the magus class for the tengu avian yokai of the Kaidan setting. Though they are similar to typical magus, they lose medium and heavy armor in place with various dodge bonuses, however at 17th or 18th level - whenever a magus normally gains his bonus spells for each level, the tengukensei gains access to divine spells only for these bonus spells (while his normal spell access is from the Magus's normal spell list.)
Need to think on this more...
GP