Flurry in full-plate .... aka: fix this broken archetype

[Mergy]

That would be fine and far less ambiguous, but I say again that I don't think flurrying in armour is overpowered.

[Khrysaor]

The more I think about this the more ridiculous the OP argument was anyway... 'As soon as level 2 you're flurrying in full plate.' You can't afford full plate until between levels 2-3. Or according to the creation rules, with no item being more than 50% of your total wealth, would be between 3-4. You don't have proficiency with monk weapons except the quaterstaff that falls into light weapon proficiency. You don't get to flurry with anything except your fists and quarterstaff until you get 6 levels of monk. So the earliest you're flurrying in full plate is level 3-4 with your weak fists or a quarterstaff, or else you wait until 7 for your actual weapons.

You're also only going to be getting 3 attacks during that level 7 flurry at +5/+5/+0. A magus at level 8 can spell combat/spellstrike at +4/+4/-1. Level 9 for the magus and you're just as good as the monk6/fighter1 which makes sense since magus is a 3/4 BAB and when flurrying the monk would be a full BAB.

If you don't take the monk to 8 you will never get the second off hand attack and it's doubtful you'd take this 15 since this was supposed to be a dip in the original argument. So at monk6/fighter14 you can flurry with a million weapons. Unfortunately you really only use a few since you will specialize with other feats into certain weapons. This means that at level 20 you will flurry at +18/+18/+13/+8/+3.

Equally, a magus could've went Magus5/Fighter15 or just Magus2/Fighter18. I chose Magus5 so at least spellstriking your shocking grasp will be the full 5d6. This means at level 20 you can spellcombat/spellstrike for +16/+16/+11/+6/+1. Not much of a difference in BAB considering this is a 3/4 BAB caster mixed with full BAB melee vs the other that is a 3/4 BAB melee mixed with a full BAB melee. You'd expect 2 melee classes mixed would have a higher BAB.

To the next argument that the magus can't do this in full plate without arcane spell failure. That's correct. But he can use celestial mail no problem and use his 2nd level spells for things like mirror image or blur or even invisibility as your escape plan. Seems to be a defensive combo. And yes celestial armor is expensive, but elven chain would do fine until you get there.

Just my thoughts anyway. I'm usually wrong. ;P

[Ashiel]

Khrysaor wrote:

Equally, a magus could've went Magus5/Fighter15 or just Magus2/Fighter18. I chose Magus5 so at least spellstriking your shocking grasp will be the full 5d6. This means at level 20 you can spellcombat/spellstrike for +16/+16/+11/+6/+1. Not much of a difference in BAB considering this is a 3/4 BAB caster mixed with full BAB melee vs the other that is a 3/4 BAB melee mixed with a full BAB melee. You'd expect 2 melee classes mixed would have a higher BAB.

To the next argument that the magus can't do this in full plate without arcane spell failure. That's correct. But he can use celestial mail no problem and use his 2nd level...

It's worth noting that once you've dipped magus 4, you can take Craft Wondrous item and make yourself an Ioun Stone that grants +1 to caster level, which makes your shocking grasp +5d6, while letting you grab 16 levels in something like Fighter or Ranger (honestly ranger is sexy as a magus pairing), and continue putting ranks into Spellcraft means you can make all your Wondrous Items yourself.

Also, reverse engineering the cost of the ioun stone that grants a caster level bonus, the estimated value of a higher caster level bonus is as follows.

15,000 gp * bonus * bonus
CL +1 = 15,000 gp
CL +2 = 60,000 gp
CL +3 = 135,000 gp
CL +4 = 240,000 gp
CL +5 = 375,000 gp

Double cost to determine price of ioun stone.