Kensai owns the initiative game, as well as being able to posses a 15-20/x3 (perfect strike) weapon.
They both have advantages.
I feel like the Magus focus on Heightened Shocking Grasps with Magical Lineage definitely downplay the loss of spells since you can use the Arcane Pool to get the spell back for only one or two points.
And people love "BWA-HAHA, I crit my 10d6 Shocking Grasp on a 15, now I do 20D6 + 3D6 for my scimitar, I destroy the Orc 5 times over."
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The myrmidarch is better at combat because it eschews a bunch of the casting stuff for better weaponry and armour, the kensai says screw armour and picks up a bastard sword and attacks everything that moves within his reach. It depends on how you play it. If you play a myrmidarch right, you can be able to shoot out magic missile arrows and then switch to melee weapon for more impact up front. If you play kensai right, you have a bajillion AaO, and can buff your AC by fighting defensively and combat expertise and some other stuff, and can just force things to move past you where you smash them with a bastard sword. The class is as effective as the person playing it.
not when you crit on a 15-20
indeed
katana for strength based scimitar or rapier for agility based
Bastard sword is a really poor choice for Magus. 15-20 crit range all day every day. Besides that, with the addition of the spell Snowball Myrmidarch went from my list of "would never even consider" to "well, maybe." You don't have the awesome crit range of a standard Magus and losing Spell Recall always hurts, but archery is strong and now you have a good standard touch spell to use with it besides having to metamagic Shocking Grasp.
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2d6, the crit for a scimitar averages to about 2 more damage then average of 1d10. Also, keen bastard swords crit on a 17-20 and do 2d10 on a crit. Keen scimitars crit more often (don't always hit on those rolls though, depending on house ruling) but do less damage. 17 usually hits anyway and does more damage when you crit with a bastard sword
Weapon damage isn't as important for Magus. It's about having a 30% instead of a 20% chance to double your Shocking Grasp or stagger an enemy for one minute with no save from your Frigid Touch.
bastard swords hurt more than finessing a scimitar. Thats why a bastard sword.
No they don't. Scimitar's crit with 15+ (with imp crit or keen), and having extra chances to crit a empowered intensified maximized shocking grasp is way better than rolling 1d10 instead 1d6
Fair enough.
More than that passive damage bonuses like strength, magic, and what not also get doubled and obviously the more times you crit the mroe often this damage applies. Scimitar's are by far a superior weapon to bastard swords. The only weapon that comes close in the one handed category are Falcata's.
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More than that passive damage bonuses like strength, magic, and what not also get doubled and obviously the more times you crit the mroe often this damage applies. Scimitar's are by far a superior weapon to bastard swords. The only weapon that comes close in the one handed category are Falcata's.
Katana
More than that passive damage bonuses like strength, magic, and what not also get doubled and obviously the more times you crit the mroe often this damage applies. Scimitar's are by far a superior weapon to bastard swords. The only weapon that comes close in the one handed category are Falcata's.Katana
Meh, true. But if you're going to spend a feat for a weapon anyway might as well grab the one that has 19-20/x3 crit. :)
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Meh, true. But if you're going to spend a feat for a weapon anyway might as well grab the one that has 19-20/x3 crit. :)More than that passive damage bonuses like strength, magic, and what not also get doubled and obviously the more times you crit the mroe often this damage applies. Scimitar's are by far a superior weapon to bastard swords. The only weapon that comes close in the one handed category are Falcata's.Katana
Good Point. Though if you go for a 17-20 max threat range, go for 1d10 damage, which means when you don't crit, you do more damage then 1d8. Still falcata is one of the best weapons in the game. Also if you spend a feat on a weapon, instead of needing dervish dance, go with Wakizashi, which is basically a light weapon version of a scimitar. Can't gain bonus for 2-hand wielding, but Kensai can finesse (if you finesse) with only one feat.
Can't do DD feat, but can get agility!
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He could use wakizashi instead because that requires only weapons finesse.
Also, Myrmidarch allows better "switch hitters" and seems like a good choice for Arcane Archer. Still, kensai can hit anything in reach if it moves because of all the AaO's it gets, has great initiative, gets tons of other cool stuff. I know one person who hates every magus archetype except kensai because It is easier to kill things in melee then with myrmidarch. The max weapon damage is pretty nice too.
Alrighty so let's talk comparisons here.
First, I want to start off by saying that vanilla MAgus's and HExcrafters are by far the strongest magus's possibe. Period.
So what about these guys?
Let's start with the Kensai:
No armor and only one weapon type kind of hurts the kensai and one weapon. Frankly? You need lots and lots of dex over strength to survive which is why the scimitar is usually the weapon of choice. Get Weapon Finnesse, get Dervish Dance. All other weapons are suboptimal since you miss out on the armor and with diminished spellcasting you can't really afford to be casting mage armor on yourself in these early levels.
On the bright side you get weapon focus as a bonus feat so you do get to hit more often with said weapon.
Perfect strike is essentially meaningless since most of your damage comes from spells or flat bonuses not your weapon roll. The crit function however is beautiful as your weapon of choice can do soooo much more damage now on a crit.
Fighter training: Yay I can take weapon specialization. Okay.
Iajutsu is one of the reasons to take this class. Doubling up on stats to initiative combined with even more initiative with items and possible familiar makes the magus a fast magus. Being able to make AoO's while flatfooted can help sometimes but not always.
Critical PErfection is frankly where thigns go from okay to great for the magus. You open yourself up to all sorts of fun critical feats.
Superior reflexes basically gives you combat reflexes based on int. Not always great but soemthign worht having.
IAjutsu focus is cool but too situatioanl for me.
The last two are basically end cap things. Generally you already ahve ridiculous initiative. But, weapon mastery let's you Crit x3 on your KAtana-Scimitar every time you roll 15 or above and add crit feats to it. It should be noted that maguses get a couple of arcana based on critical hits.
Let's compare this to the myrmidarch:
Ranged spellstrike is pretty cool and the reason most people pick this up or think it's cool. Unfortunately it does not work with spellcombat and thus is usually dismissed.
Weapon training. So you got a +3 to attack and damage (with a potential +5) in exchange for three arcana?
Nope. Bad. Sorry arcana are really really good. And given I only get 6 and you stole half of them? Screw that.
Armor training is objectively good based purely on the fact that by the time we get these the concentration checks to cast defensively get easier without this ability. So there is that.
Yay Dr 5/-. Granted the capstone on MAgus wasn't great but neither beats out weapon mastery.
So yeah, KEnsai synergizes much better and directs us towards agile, high crit builds. It's a magus pushed far into the Dex/Int side of things.
Myrmidarch has a collection of abilities that pushes us closer to fighter and don't synergize well at all. WEapon training pushes us out of some of the best options out there for maguses. Yeah no thanks.
Kensai wins for being interesting and working us towards a build we know will be effective.
Myrmidarch teases us by trying to be an archer, but then blindsides us by telling me not to take another arcana except once every 6 levels, puts us in more armor, and tells us to like it.
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I feel like the Magus focus on Heightened Shocking Grasps with Magical Lineage definitely downplay the loss of spells since you can use the Arcane Pool to get the spell back for only one or two points.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but the Kensai gets fewer spells and loses Spell Recall and Improved Spell Recall, so he's not spending points from his Arcane Pool to get spells back...
Maguses = Magi sorry that drove me nuts! Otherwise, Kensei is one of my preferred Magus set ups.
You don't have the awesome crit range of a standard Magus and losing Spell Recall always hurts, but archery is strongWhy?
The myrmidarch can also use a scimitar and have a 15-20 crit range.
Yes but Myrmidarch's primary ability Ranged Spell Strike. If melee is your focus you might as well just go base Magus. I guess you could just take the archetype for some of the Fightery stuff but meh.
I also wasn't meaning to say why I thought Myrmidarch is better than Kensai so much as I was saying why I think Myrmidarch could possibly be worth using.
Elven (likely choice for magus? I think so.) gets 3 magus arcana via favored class. 1 feat also gives 1 arcana. So its a feat for +1 to hit and +1 dam with additional +2/+2 through 15 k gp item. Why is 1 feat for +1/+1 a bad deal?
Because Arcana are generally better than feats and because Elves just give me more arcana.
And you may want to spend those feats on getting things like Intensified spell, spell penetration, combat casting, or any number of good things.
TO take it further you can't honestly think that +1/+1 to one weapon is better than a familiar? Or better than hasted assault (swift action to give you haste for a short number of rounds) or devoted weapon (2-12 extra damage to evil targets and bypasses -/good damage reduction) or spell blending (oh hello there Heroism I didn't have you on my list before oh sure bring along your friend Call the Void) or critical strike (I make things asplode!)
Maguses get a lot from three arcana. And you'd replace it for +3 attack and damage one one weapon?
Why is everyone saying Kensai can't wear armor?? Yes, they aren't proficient in armor, but the only penalty is based on ACP, so stick with light armor with 0 ACP (darkleaf studded armor works, IMO). You gain a full primary stat to AC, with minimal impact on anything else. If you don't like a 5% SF chance, they play it safe with leather, and you are still 2 AC up than none, and it's a lot cheaper to upgrade armor than bracers.
It seems i underestimated the advantage kensai has from dumping st. Myrm cannot do that.
Final stats (without any boosts) for my 2 examples btw:
kensai 7, 20, 14, 18, 12, 7
myrm 19, 16, 10, 16, 12, 7Thats advantage kensai.
IMO, you NEVER want a 7 Str on any character, and especially on a primarily melee combatant. Your CMB/CMD suffers greatly (or you burn a feat to use dex for CMB), and your carrying capacity is crap (might not affect some groups, but it honestly should have impact in this case).
Arcanas may be good, but they don't beat flat +5 hit/damage, especially when
1)you can still get them with feats (3 feats for +5 hit/damage is better than the whole fighter only chain that is +1/+4)
2) you still get 3 and are enaugh to cover the fundamental (bane at 15, accuracy at 3, whatever at 9)
And don't forget that on top of the +5 on you primary weapon, you also get +4 on your secondary, so you can have +5 for melee and +4 for ranged.
Only thing going for the kensai are initative and the critical. Bottom line kensai are more focused, myrmidarch are way more flexible.
And if they want myrm can dump str too.
Thanks for mentioning CALL THE VOID Tark. A spell actually worth getting spell blending for.
He could use wakizashi instead because that requires only weapons finesse.
Also, Myrmidarch allows better "switch hitters" and seems like a good choice for Arcane Archer. Still, kensai can hit anything in reach if it moves because of all the AaO's it gets, has great initiative, gets tons of other cool stuff. I know one person who hates every magus archetype except kensai because It is easier to kill things in melee then with myrmidarch. The max weapon damage is pretty nice too.
Dervish Dancer gives you your Dex to damage as well as Attack IIRC, so you can dump STR and get more damage by stacking Dex.
And I totally forgot Kensei lost Spell Recall, I've only played a Vanilla STR Magus.
And Holy Crap, Call the Void sounds awesome for a Hexcrafter.
Arcanas may be good, but they don't beat flat +5 hit/damage, especially when
1)you can still get them with feats (3 feats for +5 hit/damage is better than the whole fighter only chain that is +1/+4)
Except as I already said and I'll keep saying arcana are better than feats. Every good one you get makes you better and likely to do much more damage.