All,
I want to make a Magus whose main weapon is a Staff, just for flavor. However, I also envision him in Full Plate due to years of playing Elder Scrolls games. So I was wondering, would I be totally gimping myself if I burned two feats (weapon focus quarterstaff at 5th, quarterstaff master at 7th)?
I would probably take weapon focus on a Magus anyway, so it seems "all" I am giving up to meet my concept is taking Quarterstaff Master, waiting until 7th level to be able to actually use the staff (heh) and giving up having a decent weapon in terms of base damage and crit range.
But thats not so much is it? :) I just want to be a staff-using Magus with Full Plate and no Arcane spell failure. Is that so wrong? :)
I really hate that the staff master has to deal with light armor. The AC bonus is fine, but visually there is already a concept for "guy not in plate mail who casts spells and uses a staff". Its called a Wizard. :)
I would have preferred that the Archetype just give Quarterstaff Master and still allow the staff recharge power, at the cost of all other martial weapons, and then call it done. Oh well. :)
Advice? :)
Thanks!
LazarX,
Right, but my visual flavor is then Wizard or Monk or Wizard/Monk. That is precisely what I dont want. I want a Magus in Full Plate who happens to use a Staff.
I just wonder how gimped it will be. I dont mind "decent but nowhere at the top". I just want to avoid "gimped" or "weak". If the general feeling id that it is doomed entirely, I will just give up, and save the Staff Magus archetype for some day when I feel the desire for the monk/wiz thing.
I do appreciate the response tho. Thanks!
Well, I have to wait until level 13 for heavy armor. As for spell combat, I would use some other weapon prior to level 7. At 5 & 7 I would take WF quarterstaff & quarterstaff master. Then I can use spell combat with the quarterstaff. Prior to level 7, I could use a club.
An idea:
Take the Magical Knack trait for Still Spell with no modifier to spell level. Then, take Staff Magus for 6 levels, multiclass into a level of fighter and take Quarterstaff Mastery. This plays a little later into the game than you probably want, but gets you your quarterstaff theme early while still letting you get nifty tricks.
Wouldn't adherence to the higher base damage and larger crit range philosophy rule out not only the Staff Magus archetype, but also most normal fantasy weapons or Magus builds?
And wouldn't adherence to such a philosophy make most choices other than a high crit dervish dancer pointless as well?
That is one thing I wish Pathfinder had done. I wish they had made the crit ranges more attractive on "normal" fantasy weapons like clubs, maces, axes, longswords, etc, because I do grow a bit weary at all the falchion kukri crazy builds you see people using.
But anyway, if I made a simple Mace Magus with no special archetype, I would be just as gimped, ultimately, right?
Wouldn't adherence to the higher base damage and larger crit range philosophy rule out not only the Staff Magus archetype, but also most normal fantasy weapons or Magus builds?
And wouldn't adherence to such a philosophy make most choices other than a high crit dervish dancer pointless as well?
That is one thing I wish Pathfinder had done. I wish they had made the crit ranges more attractive on "normal" fantasy weapons like clubs, maces, axes, longswords, etc, because I do grow a bit weary at all the falchion kukri crazy builds you see people using.
But anyway, if I made a simple Mace Magus with no special archetype, I would be just as gimped, ultimately, right?
Part of the problem is that Pathfinder is at it's core a modification of D&D 3.5 rules, so some things has to stick around and revamping the weapons tables seems to have not really been brought up by either Paizo or the fans during the playtest (I wasn't around then, so this is conjecture based on what I have read around the place.)
By gimped, you mean normal. Some people seems to have set the Dervish Magus from the high mark to the normal mark you must compete with.
*Edit* Also, it's not like the class has competition for action economy breakage or sudden damage output at low levels.
I think you will be fine. I'm planning a magus for an upcoming campaign, so I've done a LOT of digging/research/number crunching on the magus for the last 2 months.
The Dervish Dancer is a powerful build, but I believe Tristram is right, the DD has been set as the "standard" when it is a min/maxed power build. A strength based magus can still power attack and do plenty of damage. You get an extra attack per round with spell combat that can still dish out an intensified shocking grasp. By level 15 in one round you can Spell perfection an intensified empowered shocking grasp for 15d6, quicken an intensified shocking grasp for 10d6 more both with spellstrike attacks, plus 3 normal attacks. OK, so you only do 5 attacks and 25d6 spell damage (for a whopping cost of 2 first level spells if you take magical lineage and a spell perfection feat chain). Dervish fanatics will have us believe not doubling that on a 15+ is just underpowered.....honestly I think you will be fine.
If I may make a recommendation, I do martial arts and fight with a short staff in a similar way to a full staff. Basically, it is a rod but wielded as a staff. I would say if you want the flavor, wield a rod with club stats, as a one sided staff. And then upgrade to the "long" staff when you get the feats you need. Or maybe just stay with the short one and wield a magic rod and don't worry about the feats.
Just my 2 cps.
-AK
AK,
Thanks for the response, I appreciate it. The good thing about the rod approach is that I dont have to decide until level 5 or so whether to stick with the rod or pursue the quarterstaff.
Cheers!
That is one thing I wish Pathfinder had done. I wish they had made the crit ranges more attractive on "normal" fantasy weapons like clubs, maces, axes, longswords, etc, because I do grow a bit weary at all the falchion kukri crazy builds you see people using.That has it's own problems. After all we're talking about crit ranges of 20, 19-20, and 18-20. And ranges that are balanced by multipliers in some cases. If you make them all the same then the weapons are all essentially foam rubber bats with different names, i.e, they lose any substantive differences.
After receiving a Tienese weapon boon, my magus who's evenly split in Dex and Str has gone with a katana which will eventually reveal itself as a Black Blade.
Those crit ranges and multipliers are pretty solidly balanced... until you get to things that ignore one or the other. Spellstrike and critical feats are big on that; they emphasize scoring a crit at all over scoring a big crit, so they benefit a lot from the large crit range weapons. I think we'd do better if these things used the weapon critical multiplier in general (for Spellstrike it's obvious how this would work; nothing particularly obvious in how it would go with critical feats; longer duration? higher save DC?) And it might well make Spellstrike too powerful.