So, I'm currently in a game as a Magus. The GM wants us to go up to level 25, but we cant go past level 20 in any single class.
A few weeks ago I came to the board to see if they had ideas so as to increase spellcasting power. With what I've already got, that couldn't work, so I'm looking for other options, and martial seems to be the only choice. So, here's my build, and I'm looking for martial tips.
What I've got:
Magus 1 Weapon finesse, Intensify spell
Magus 2
Magus 3 Dervish Dance, Magus Arcana: Arcane Accuracy
Magus 4 +1 Dex
Magus 5 Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Wondrous Items
Magus 6 Magus Arcana: Spell shield
Magus 7 Craft Construct (Free feat from DM: One-handed Firearm proficiency)
What I think I'll do
Magus 8 +1 Dex
Magus 9 Lunge, Magus Arcana: Ghost Blade
Magus 10
Magus 11 Improved Critical, Dimensional agility
Eldritch Knight OR Fighter 12 Dimensional Assault
Magus 13 Dimensional Dervish, Magus Arcana: Spellblending
Magus 14
Magus 15 Dimensional Savant
Magus 16 Magus Arcana: Quicken Spell, +1 Dex
Monk (Martial Artist) 17 Dodge, Crane Style
Magus 18
Magus 19 Crane Wing, Crane Riposte
Magus 20 Magus Arcana (?)
Magus 21 ?
Magus 22
? 23 ?
? 24
? 25 ?
I'm looking for way to fill out those unclassed levels and make it more effective (those 3 crafting feats do take a lot of space). I can see a few options:
-Full fighter. I use fighter on my 12th level, martial artist on 17th, and fighter on the 3 last levels. I'm not sure what archetypes would do best. Trench fighter could be good, since I got 1-handed firearm proficiency from the DM (he's pretty flexible, and it was a reward for completing a side-quest). Anything with armor training could be cool, so as to make "Celestial armor" more interesting.
-Eldritch Knight on 12th, martial artist on 17th, eldritch knight 3 levels. Not ideal (less feats), but it does up my CL. Doesnt increase my amount of spells/spell level cast though. (as far as I can tell the DM isnt doing epic-level advancement)
-A mixed bag: EK on 12th, Martial artist on 17th, fighter on 23-24, and something else? This is really meant to be a mixed bag, to maximize powers gained. I'm looking for ideas in any case.
So, does anyone have good ideas? I'm still looking for useful feats/magus arcana/classes for those last few levels. Since increasing spellcasting powers seems impossible, I'm looking for ideas pertaining to martial advancement mainly. Any ideas?
bump
A single level of Eldritch Knight doesn't really gain you anything, in fact as a magus there isn't really any reason to take any levels of eldritch knight. Magus advances your spell casting and has 3/4 bab and advances all your other important magus abilities too.
While 3 levels in martial artist would allow you to pick up some semi-useful stuff, its still not very good.
Over all, your best bet is really to just take 20 levels in magus and 5 in fighter. You'll keep uping your BAB and you'll get access to weapon training and be able to grab gloves of dueling. Fighter feats will synergize well. Depending on the Magus bield and what kind of armor you can wear without arcane spell failure chance you may look into an archetype that trades out some armor proficency for more something useful.
As a magus you want to make sure you're hitting as often as possible and well protected during combat. The fighter levels are probably the best for that.
Well, I am a bog-standard magus, so I'll get all the armor proficiencies soon.
Still, wont I lose out on feats if I go 5 levels of fighter? Martial artist (at least 1 level of it) gives me bonus feats AND improved unarmed strike for free, so I can qualify for crane style, which would add a lot to my defense. And as you can see, I'm fairly dex-oriented, so I'll still be sticking to light-ish armor (celestial armor will probably be my later armor).
Fighters get a feat at every level. I forgot how epic level feat progression works, but normally a 1st level fighter would get two (1 for 1st level and one bonus feat). Then another bonus feat at level two. Then a regular feat at 3rd level, and then bonus feat 4, regular feat 5th so fourth and so on.
Sure a level of martial artist gives you improved unarmed strike for free and a bonus feat for crane style, but you loose good BAB progression and if starting at 25th level you lose weapon training one from being a 5th level fighter (which then will couple will the gloves that provide armor training bonus). I think the bonus of being able to pickup +1 to hit from fighter BAB and +2 from the gloves bonus to weapon training is more useful than a single extra feat by comparison.
Besides, crane style itself only add a +1 dodge bonus when fighting defensively. At high levels I would count on enemies finding a way to full attack you constantly, and the general ability to negate a single attack per round isn't bad when you get Crane Wing, but it also wont be that great either. And crane reposte wont be that good since your damage comes from attack with spells, it is unlikely you will have a spell in hand when you make an AoO because you should have already expended it.
Also remember fighter levels give armor training. That increases the max dex of an armor. And it will stack with mithral. 4th level fighter with mithral breastplate has a max dex bonus of 6. Celestial plate would give you +7 max dex at level four and provides 12 AC (+3 full plate).
Is the level of monk worth it to slow down access to armor training and weapon training? I just don't think so personally.
I'd suggest a straight magus 20, fighter 5. Or if you're bothered of 5th level of fighter because you think you don't go above 25th level, just take 1 level of barbarian with urban rage variant. That's it.
I've got to think about it. Any good archetypes that get rid of the "bravery" fighter ability for something good (without sacrificing armor training)? Nothing is standing out at the moment. I guess I will have to sacrifice the extra feat, but I personally saw crane style as more important than armor training.
|
Didn't notice you were taking Dervish dance! I would do something that makes the most out of light/medium armor, because you are likely wearing Celestial Armor or something similar. Urban Barbarian works, as does Duelist, which you should be able to qualify for easily. Its just to feats beyond normal, and they are things which help you anyway.
I was thinking about duelist (which would synergise well with celestial armor), but it would basically force me to abandon the crane-style feats (I really want to take advantage of the dimensional feats).
What epic rules are you using?
As far as I know, none beyond homebrew. The only thing that's been defined is that you cant have more that 20 levels in a single class.
Crane Style isn't going to be that great at higher levels.
With epic level characters I would expect you will encounter creatures that have a way of full attacking you often, and forcing a creature not to hit on 1 of 5 or more attacks just isn't that big of a deal. It's just not as strong as you think it is at high levels because of the once per round limitation. It also doesn't help against spells or ranged attacks. I don't have suggestions for what are better feats, but all I'm saying is you shouldn't be overly worried about having Crane Style.
If you use somthing like the 3.0 epic rules then the advice is gonna be totalt different than if you just keep going after 20, just with another class ofcause. In case you are in a 3.0 epic clone(this is the version i used that one time i ever needed epic rules) take a class with plenty of class features or spells that the magus dosent get.
If you just keep going you may want to go figther or possibly paladin(for the smite) to not fall behind on the bab.
I think 19 levels og magus combined with 1 og spellslinger and 5 gunslinger sounds like fun. Talk to your gm about getting to use spellcombat with a gun in the left hand and the spellslinger stuff with a sword in the rigth.
But this advice may be totally bull depending on the epic rules you guys end up using.
Yeah, I'm really unclear on what epic rules there are. Per se, I'd much rather find ways to expand my magical abilities alongside my combat ones, but it seems like a waste since I cant gain any new spells. I'll have to wait until we get there to make a more informed decision.
The spellslinger+gunslinger thing could be very cool, but it's not really what I would see for the character. The DM gave me the one-handed firearms proficiency out of the blue so I have NO idea what to do with it.
I guess the reason I was so set on the crane wing thing is that I've been working on a sort of martial artist+intellectual vibe that I've been getting for the character. Thanks for the help everyone. For the moment, I'll assume nothing simple progression (IE, no special epic rules).
I'm starting to think I should have taken kensai to begin with. Or even full wizard could have done the trick.
I just noticed your GM gave you free gun proficiency. You should go with the Myrmidarch magus archetype. Now you attack against touch AC, and you can use your spells with your ranged attacks.
Too late to choose myrmidarch unfortunately.
Eh, then i would just ignore gun proficiency. It wont help a normal magus at all.
I'd seriously just go fighter magus to maximize the bonus you'll get from weapon training and armor training.
You should have taken the hexcrafter, imo. But anyway you didn't, so don't bother. Go straight with magus 20/ fighter 5, or take fighter 4/ barbarian 1 with urban rage.
its kind of cheesy but you can actually combine unarmed strikes with dervish dance if you took 2wf feats (and they'd actually use dex for damage, but thats all RAW, definitely not RAI). if you want to do that take 1 level of monk and 4 fighter (for the feats you need).
otherwise- duelist is a good/natural fit for a dervish dancer, and urban barb can give a nice boost to dex; horizon walker has full BAB and gets some cool powers (including a dimension door SLA if you really wanna use the dimensional dervish stuff).
I was thinking about horizon walker (in part for the expanded ability to cast dimension door) but since I only have a +2 on wis, it's of limited use. Maybe with a headband for +X on int and wis.
Duelist would fit well (especially if I give up on crane style) but I'm just not sure about the usefullness of some of the powers, especially if I only take 5 levels or so.
with Horizon Walker, +2 Wis will give you 5 extra DDs per day... even if you use all of your 4th level spells for DD that would still almost double your daily uses.
for Duelist, canny defense will be an extra +5 AC (which is pretty great) and precise strike is +5 damage on every attack (a huge boost for a dervish dancer); parry and riposte are in many ways not as good as crane wing and crane riposte (obviously) but remember that they don't cost any feats (leaving those free to spend on other things) and they don't require you to fight defensively all the time.
either one would be a good option. i mean, your going to 25th level and don't have the option to up your spellcasting- anything that gets you +5 BAB and 5d10+ hp will be good. and (if I recall your original OP correctly), remember you could still stop at magus 10 and then go wiz 5/EK 10 to end up with more spells than a standard magus, including 7th level spells, and get spell critical to score some free quickened spells ;)
Sorry I just skipped everything, but after taking 20 levels in magus, I think 5 levels in fighter gets you the most
Well, thanks for chiming in nate, I know you had made some good reccomaendations last time to increase magical power (or at least I thnik it was you... that limit on avatar images can become confusing).
Duelist looks like it could be the most interesting at the moment (despite the limited feats) so I'll plan for that.
|
I'd say 3 or 4 levels of fighter and one or two master of many styles monk. You don't lose any bonus feats by taking master of many styles, as you get a bonus feat at 1 and 2 (that can be used for style feats), and you can use two styles at the same time (which replaces the flurry that you can't use anyway, since you're wearing armor).
Unbreakable might be worth a look for the fighter archetype, it trades bravery for a bonus to will saves vs. mind-affecting effects. The downside (or possibly another upside) is it trades your first level feat for endurance+diehard. It also leaves armor training 1 alone.