Magus Arcana & Spell Blending

[Phosphorus]

I am running a vanilla magus who is currently level 8.

I am wondering if taking Spell Blending is worth it at level 9, and if so can anyone suggest some good 2nd to 3rd level spells for Spell Blending.

I haven't been able to find a thread that deals with Spell Blending specifically so if people want to suggest good wizard spells from other levels that would be good as well.

Amongst the second level wizard spells, Ghoul Touch seems to stand out as a spell that would be useful for a magus, and so does See Invisibility.

Or would another arcana be more valuable? I have Wand Wielder and Familiar at present.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[d@ncingNumfar]

Resist Energy is another nice choice. It's getting early and I'm exhausted right now, but I'll see if I can find a few other fun options in the morning.

[Wyrven]

what i have planned myself for my Magus :

Spell Blending
Lvl 9 : Resist Energy, Ghoul Touch
Lvl 18 : Telepathic Bond, Magic Jar
Lvl 19 : Sending, Summon Monster V

Greater Spell Acces (Lvl 19)
Lvl 0 : Touch of Fatigue, Mending
Lvl 1 : Protection from Evil, Endure Elements
Lvl 2 : See Invisible, False Life
Lvl 3 : Protection From Energy, Heroism
Lvl 4 : Summon Monster IV, Dimensional Anchor
Lvl 5 : Feeblemind, Dominate
Lvl 6 : Antimagic Field, Contingency

[Drothmal]

Touch of Idiocy is another good option, mostly if you use a high crit weapon and have picked up the empowered magic arcana

1d6 x 1.5 x 2 = possibility of making enemy spellcaster not have enough of main stat to cast most powerful spells

[Lastoth]

I have an elf magus so I get more arcana to throw around due to the favored class ability. I took one level of extra skill point so the arcanas fall on a new spell level as follows:

Level 7: Heroism
Level 9: Bestow Insight/See Invisibility
Level 13: Calcific Touch/Enervation

I'm going to craft a Cracked Orange Prism to snag Touch of Fatigue and another for Disrupt Undead so I don't need to waste arcana on those, they're very good for spell blending.

I keep a list of useful blending spells by level aside from what I chose:

1)
Mage Armor (if you have a monk in your group he might want it)
2)
Bestow Insight
Resist energy
Ghoul Touch
Touch of Idocy
See Invisibility
3)
False Life
protection from energy
Heroism

Beyond that I took the later arcana for 5, and at that point you're almost to the level where you get a bunch of them for free. Permanency and contingency are huge.

[Matt2VK]

You also need to balance the Arcana: Spell Blending with a number of other good Arcana. Such as -

Accurate Strike
Empowered Magic
Hasted Assault

Those are three Arcana I like. Might be others that work better for you.

[Phosphorus]

Thanks for the feedback so far.

The Cracked Orange Prism seems a great way to acquire a new cantrip.

See Invisible would be helpful, especially on gaining Greater Spell Recall and the ability to cast it spontaneously. Resist Energy would also be useful.

I had thought of Touch of Idiocy but wondered if Ghoul Touch would be more effective against a magic user as Fort is usually their worst save. Also, would it be more effective to just use Shocking Grasp on an enemy spell caster?

Calcific Touch seems great as a fourth level spell.

Is there any good spells that have no spell resistance?

[Lastoth]

Matt2VK wrote:

You also need to balance the Arcana: Spell Blending with a number of other good Arcana. Such as -

Accurate Strike
Empowered Magic
Hasted Assault

Those are three Arcana I like. Might be others that work better for you.

I think the best arcana is probably Arcane Accuracy, but I wanted to address those others:

Accurate Strike is nice, but three levels later it's losing out to Ghost Blade because you could resolve vs touch AC for the whole combat once you hit level 12 and can afford the +4 cost on the enchantment (speaking of brilliant energy of course) plus it gives you ghost touch in the meantime, which is awesome. If your campaign goes past 12 Ghost Blade>Accurate strike, due to the duration.

Empower Magic is relatively weak in my opinion. There are a slew of arcana that would be awesome if they weren't 1/day, this is in that group (along with critical strike).

Hasted Assault is less than ideal IMO. By the time you get it you're only 2 levels from getting improved spell recall and that means for one more arcane pool you could just recall a full-on haste. Still, if you're the only real melee in the party it's probably worth a pickup. It's more of a group dependent decision.

[Matt2VK]

Lastoth wrote:

Matt2VK wrote:

You also need to balance the Arcana: Spell Blending with a number of other good Arcana. Such as -

Accurate Strike
Empowered Magic
Hasted Assault

Those are three Arcana I like. Might be others that work better for you.

I think the best arcana is probably Arcane Accuracy, but I wanted to address those others:

Accurate Strike is nice, but three levels later it's losing out to Ghost Blade because you could resolve vs touch AC for the whole combat once you hit level 12 and can afford the +4 cost on the enchantment (speaking of brilliant energy of course) plus it gives you ghost touch in the meantime, which is awesome. If your campaign goes past 12 Ghost Blade>Accurate strike, due to the duration.

Empower Magic is relatively weak in my opinion. There are a slew of arcana that would be awesome if they weren't 1/day, this is in that group (along with critical strike).

Hasted Assault is less than ideal IMO. By the time you get it you're only 2 levels from getting improved spell recall and that means for one more arcane pool you could just recall a full-on haste. Still, if you're the only real melee in the party it's probably worth a pickup. It's more of a group dependent decision.

Thanks for that feedback. Didn't know that stuff. That's what I get for playing mostly low level.

[Drothmal]

I find myself empowered arcana very useful, but I can see how YMMV. My DM likes to throw at least one boss/mini-boss fight per day, so I've had a lot of use out of it

I've never liked arcane accuracy myself, but that's mostly because I made a bladebound magus, so by level 6 I'd rather use the arcana to recover spells than to increase the to hit.

Agree on the hasted assault