I'm agree with Timebomb. In some way, magi must focus both on spellcasting and combat, so they cannot excell in both (i.e. no 9th level spells, no full BAB, midway HD, forced to mad at least with str/dex and int, keeping an eye to Con).
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if you want to get full bab and cast spells...frankly the simplest way is to go into eldritch knight.
Wizard 8/Fighter 2/Eldritch Knight 10 (it will give you 9th level spells, you could eventually buy all the spells and fill them up in your blessed book(s), you'll end with a Bab of +16, so 4 attacks. You could go for Wizard 9 if you want to get the discovery but you will lose bab, it will go down to 15, so 3 attacks per rounds.
Hmmmm. I see your point. But this should be more general: why a bard or a summoner couldn't do the same? Your questio should be applied on any non full caster PC that is part of a race with a real large life spawn: why not dwarf inquisitors? This question really open up to an entire world of explanations.
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The point is level 20 (mythic 10) is the physical cap according to rules. Not time cap, physical cap. And that's more obvious when consider you can have a 20 years old human wizard level 20 side by side with a 500 elf ranger 8.
You can train to be the fastest man alive, but after a certain point you won't get any better even if you train for 500 years… and, if you train for something else and don't continue to maintain your skill, you loose focus and that's akin to retraining levels. If you join the army you won't have as much time to dedicate to studies, since you need time for training, and you will loose focus, most complex notions won't be as immediate as they were before. So once you hit 20 you physically can't get any better no matter what.
The point of the magus is he effectively divides training and studies equally, that's why he gets 3/4 BAB and diminished spellcasting. Once he stops doing that he will either focus on training(fighter) or on his stusies (wizard) and he will get (or retrain) levels accordingly.
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Where are you pulling that out of Kiraes? Ah, Here it is.
I was about to mention if you use the Epic rules, three "Improved Spellcasting" feats would get a 9th level slot, and 29th level would give a total +20 attack bonus (although only 3 iterative attacks).
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Well, there where a few options in 3.5; there was a bard PrC that got level 9 spellcasting (called the "sublime chord"). Very limited level 9 spellcasting, but the PrC made sense for those bards that had no need for BaB. Less useful for a magus though. There where also those silly 1 to 9 casting in 10 levels for a few PrCs that was kinda too much.
However, post level 20, it's anyone's game. There's a good reason why paizo hasnt made any "official" epic rules. The game isnt the most functional at high levels (from what I've heard, I've yet to play there), so going past that would be more than they want to bother with. You're asking a question that the game isnt made to handle really. So the answer is:
1) Not necessarily within the expectations of paizo
2) Yes within the expectations of certain (but not all) epic rulesets
The answer is vague, yes, but there isnt a single, clear answer.
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Hmmmm. I see your point. But this should be more general: why a bard or a summoner couldn't do the same? Your question should be applied on any non full caster PC that is part of a race with a real large life spawn: why not dwarf inquisitors? This question really open up to an entire world of explanations.
This has always been an issue, since the days of Chainmail. Given that humans have roughly the same lifespan as mayflies, elves -- and other long-lived races -- should be better than them at everything. (And in Tolkien, this is basically true -- if you notice, the White Council had no human members at all.)
In classic mythology, elves were immortal, but also fundamentally uncreative. This explanation was roughly copied into D&D as "elves could learn everything there is to learn, but don't want to or don't have the knack." The whole example of "joining the army just to learn how to fight" reflects a very human variety of thinking.
There's a great story about how someone (a human) stumbled across a bunch of elves singing a song that went "Monday,.... Tuesday,.... <long pause>" and the human started singing along with them "Monday,... Tuesday,... Wednesday," and the elves were astonished at his creativity and lauded him and rewarded him to the skies. So, classically, this is why you never see level 400 elven magi. If they've never seen it done by someone else, they can't figure out how to do it themselves.
This, of course, is deeply unsatisfying from a game perspective. In game, the easiest way for a 20th level magus to master 9th level wizard spells is probably to add levels of wizard, possibly using the retraining rules to swap out levels of magus for wizard or vice versa to keep things in balance.
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Honestly, for an epic-level game, I would probably let someone stack levels of magus & eldritch knight. So a magus 20/eldritch knight 10 (considering 6/9 casting) would gain access to 9th level spells by level 28. But, the wizard would be creating universes by that point (level... 14 spells?).
Still, I do have a character (not real, but a background power in a game) that basically is that. A high level magi that studied wizardry, has his own little demiplane & such. A small army of constructs. A neutral intermediary of sorts between the demon lords, empyreal lords & other powers of the planes.
Edit: As for the uncreative elf thing, I guess that's unsatisfying, but it's the only way to explain why they dont utterly dominate. Makes more sense for dwarves (isolated in mines, highly dangerous enviroment), but it's a weirdness factor. I think this will become the baseline for elves.
Another possibility is that they simply dont care; they're hedonists, sampling what exists rather than trying to create something new.
The "dragon age" explenation is also interesting; IE, the contact between elves & humans "sped-up" the aging of elves.
There's a great story about how someone (a human) stumbled across a bunch of elves singing a song that went "Monday,.... Tuesday,.... <long pause>" and the human started singing along with them "Monday,... Tuesday,... Wednesday," and the elves were astonished at his creativity and lauded him and rewarded him to the skies.
Lol. Funny story :)
But what about the dwarves? They have a long life span, too. What kind of motivation you would give?
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@Liam Warner: The simplest answer is "theoretically yes, but it depends entirely on your assumptions". What you are seeing from those saying the magus learns differently than wizards is an assumption that how the magus learns and casts their magics means they are fundamentally incapable of reaching 9th level spells. If you change that assumption such that learning and casting arcane spells isn't different between arcane caster classes, then your suggestion would be correct that over a long enough span of time a magus could potentially achieve 9th level spellcasting.
So what it boils down to is that it would work exactly as the person setting the scenario would want it to work.
That said, the justification for saying that a magus learns differently would be that that is the most reasonable explanation for why within Pathfinder rules a magus is not capable of achieving higher level spellcasting than they can, no matter how long lived the magus is.
Take physics as an example. Someone steeped in newtonian physics, taught only such theories their entire professional career, will not be able to successfully solve physics problems describing sub-atomic relationships. They will simply lack the proper formulae. Now a particle physicist will likely have sufficient newtonian theory knowledge to solve problems at the gross physical level but will also know formulae for the sub-atomic problems as well. Can the newtonian physicist learn the new principles and start tackling the higher order problems? Of course, but then they are really going outside their first specialty.
And that would basically be like the magus multi-classing into wizard, though the 20 level cap in PF terms suggests a hard limit on such learning that probably wouldn't exist in real life terms.
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There's a great story about how someone (a human) stumbled across a bunch of elves singing a song that went "Monday,.... Tuesday,.... <long pause>" and the human started singing along with them "Monday,... Tuesday,... Wednesday," and the elves were astonished at his creativity and lauded him and rewarded him to the skies.
Lol. Funny story :)
But what about the dwarves? They have a long life span, too. What kind of motivation you would give?
Folklorists generally consider dwarfs (note correct spelling) to be a subtype of elves. (As indeed were gnomes.) Both the racial difference and the spelling with a v originated with Tolkien, to whom we owe so much. Add this to the list.
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There are a couple of real world reasons this will not happen. First of all you can only learn what you do not already know. Your example of the high level caster joining the army to learn to fight is not taking into account he already fights better than most of the trainers much less the recruits. At 20th level even a Wizard has a BAB of+10. This means you are going to be better at fighting then the person training you. There is nothing he can teach you that will improve your BAB. Sure he can teach you how to use weapons, or to wear armor but improving you your actual BAB is not going to happen. In order to learn to fight any better you need to train under someone with a lot more skill. When you do that you are going to be unlearning a lot and this is what retraining your levels fall under.
The second reason this is the fact that the more you know the harder it is to learn. Take a blank piece of paper and draw a dot on it. The Dot represents what you know; the blank space represents what you do not know. The border between the two is what you can learn. As you learn your dot becomes a circle and what you know expands. Early on doubling what you know is pretty easy and does not take long. You soon reach a point where expanding the circle takes more energy each time. This is why it is more difficult to learn as you get older.
Also consider that even long lived races are finite creatures we have a limit of how much information we can retain. Traditionally most long lived races are seen as less imaginative and creative then the shorter lived races. Humans supposedly being the most creative, while dwarf and elven are seen as the most tradition bound.
The last reason is that it is not just learning two different skills, it is blending them. For example a fighter may be taught to adopt certain stances when fighting to gain advantages. Those same stances may make spell casting impossible or at least more difficult. So the person using both skills actually has more to learn because he needs to account not only for the martial and magical skills, but combining them in a way that allows them both to function.
Actually, I think Elves of Golarion turn the lazy elf on its head. It clearly describes them as a people who seek mastery over breadth. As written in that book, their racial block is very, very shallow. They should actually supersede the drow matriarch in terms of RP put into the base race and should get unique racial abilities depending on the class chosen in addition to the favored class choices. That is, if the mechanics were written to match fluff.
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So basically no there is no reason they can't be a 20th level everything which is what I was looking at.
There's no reason you can't have them progress past 20th level, to be the equivalent to 20th level of other classes in various abilities. How many levels depends on what you want to 'master'.
If you're looking for rules where someone masters many aspects as they level, you're looking for the Gestalt rules, which in many ways are similar to the 1st edition rules for multi-classing, which elves used a lot.
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So basically no there is no reason they can't be a 20th level everything which is what I was looking at.
There's also no reason that a human can't be a 20th level whatever. Some RPG systems have a time-in-rank mechanic, where you can only gain one level every so often, or it takes you so many weeks to gain a level, or.... that implicitly restrict how many levels you can gain in a twenty-year adventuring career. D&D3 and by extension Pathfinder have no such mechanic. I can in theory gain a level overnight.
... which, in turn, means that I can gain 20 levels in a month, even taking weekends off, and instead of just working as a lifeguard over summer vacation, I would be able to gain twenty levels as a wizard, as a druid, and as a magus. (And wouldn't I have a great essay to write when I got back to English Composition class -- "What I did on my summer vacation," by Pun-Pun.)
It's simply a question of opportunity and interest. Generally speaking, humans are considered to lack opportunity, elves are considered to lack interest. Golarion gnomes are generally considered to have both opportunity and interest (especially with the canonical "live brightly or die of the Bleaching") but the flip side of this, of course, is that gnomes generally wouldn't make it to 20th level before doing something a more.... level-headed.... race would frown upon.
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So basically no there is no reason they can't be a 20th level everything which is what I was looking at. As I said at the start this is not for a game its just a theoretical what if. I agree the BAB wont increase till but the wizard would be learning to wear armour, special tactis (feats) etc. So the 20th level magus who kept learning could eventually get there.
Also yes this could apply to any class/es. The rules don't cover forgetting skills due to age and a 3000 year lifespan race is going to have different ways of remembering than a 30 year one simply because they've evolved to have memories spanning centuries.
Incidently in my campaigns elves don't rule the world because lifespan is tied to birth rate i.e the longer lived the race the lower the birth rate. So while the average elf is more skilled than the average human and the best of them ARE better at everything they also have a much smaller population each elf lost is a tragedy to them all that knowledge, experience gone add in that they don't have the same drive to change and well you get off onto another topic again.
I was just wondering if there is a phsyical limit and it seems there isn't just a GM imposed one due to mechanics breaking down which isn't an issue since again this wasn't ever meant to be part of a game.
There is a physical limit. The flavor of the world matches the game mechanics, so no, they can't have more than 20 levels total if you're using the Pathfinder rules. And if you're not using the Pathfinder rules, then there's really no point in having this topic under "Pathfinder RPG general discussion."
If any race, regardless of age, concentrates all of their skills and experience into being a better magus, then they will never have 9th level spells, no matter how long they live. That's just a limiting factor built into the world.
Which is probably a good thing, because elves don't need another thing to be smug about.
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No by Epic rules you'll never gain more iterative attacks than you have per your BAB at 20th level. And that is both RAW and RAI as much as Epic rules can be since they are more optional than most 'optional' rules are. You gain an Epic Attack Bonus which adds to your BAB and the total is pretty much used for all purposes except determining whether you gain further iterative attacks.
Similarly, the character’s base attack bonus does not increase after character level reaches 20th. However, the character does receive a cumulative +1 epic bonus on all attacks at every odd-numbered level beyond 20th, as shown on Table: Epic Save and Epic Attack Bonuses. Any time a feat, prestige class, or other rule refers to your base attack bonus (except for gaining additional attacks), use the sum of your base attack bonus and epic attack bonus.
That's D&D 3.5, not Pathfinder. The Pathfinder guidelines on Epic leveling are:
Scaling Powers: Hit dice, base attack bonuses, and saving throws continue to increase at the same rate beyond 20th level, as appropriate for the class in question. Note that no character can have more than 4 attacks based on its base attack bonus. Note also that, before long, the difference between good saving throws and poor saving throws becomes awkwardly large...
The iterative attacks cap is clearly set at 4 for everyone, not at however many you have at level 20.
I was just watching the hobbit 2 and one of the characters mentions the fact elve's live a very long time and it got me thinking. Magus's according to the book travel the land seeking out arcane knowledge and martial skills so could one of them master the greatest arts of wizardry? Obviously this is not a rules question or even something that could occur in a campaign but asking from an outside the game perspective is there any reason why a magus if they lived long enough and put the effort in couldn't eventually get a full BAB and the abilty to cast 9th level wizard spells (as defined by being arcane spells not on their spell list)?
No. Their commitment to their craft(spells and fighting) is what holds them back.
RAW regarding spellcasters beyond 20th level:
A spellcaster's caster level continues to increase by one for each level beyond 20th level. Every odd-numbered level, a spellcaster gains access to a new level of spell one above his previous maximum level, gaining one spell slot in that new level. These spell slots can be used to prepare or cast spells adjusted by metamagic feats or any known spell of lower levels. Every even-numbered level, a spellcaster gains additional spell slots equal to the highest level spell he can currently cast. He can split these new slots any way he wants among the slots he currently has access to.A Magus at 25th level would have a 9th level spell slot. Unfortunately, his Greater Spell Access ability does not state that he has the ability to learn new Wizard/Sorcerer spells beyond the 14 that he receives from it. Sorry, you cannot cast Interplanetary Teleport to travel to Mars, full attack the king of an alien planet while he is giving a speech to his people, and then return to Golarion in time for tea.
What is the source for this? Do you have a link?
It looks like the 3.5 epic rule which does not apply in pathfinder since pathfinder does not go above level 20.
Yes, but:
...if you use the Epic rules...
That means the 3.0/3.5 Epic rules - Pathfinder does not refer to their post-20th level rules as Epic (yet).
That's all. Both are legit, but that's where I was coming from.
Edit: Wraith, he linked it in his last post, and I did in mine above. It's buried in the Gamemastering chapter, as an option/default.
Easiest way is to play a Gestalt Magus/Wizard and get the Broad Study Arcana. Now you are a Magus wit 9th lvl spell potential.
Uhm… should i point out that "advancing beyond 20th level" rules are vague and basically say "you can do this or this" and are not (more or less) precise like others in the manual because they basically say "past 20th level is hard to make mechanics work but you can do whatever you want", so considering them actual rules and not warnings and houserules is a bit much?
But i admit i made i made a mistake, i'll rephrase my last comment:
In Golarion, the basic assumption when talking about a pc class in a context, npc with class level don't go over level 20 (even the mythic ones) so level 20 is a physical cap.. [paste here my last post].
In your homegames, knowing pros and cons, do whatever you like.
Well if magus can advance their casting up to 9th level spells, then why wouldn't wizards advance beyond 9th level? I think I understand your question and I feel the first response was best suited to what you are asking. The magus doesn't go beyond 6th for the same reasons wizards don't go beyond 9th. It is just the way their magic is structured.
Yes.
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I was just watching the hobbit 2 and one of the characters mentions the fact elve's live a very long time and it got me thinking. Magus's according to the book travel the land seeking out arcane knowledge and martial skills so could one of them master the greatest arts of wizardry? Obviously this is not a rules question or even something that could occur in a campaign but asking from an outside the game perspective is there any reason why a magus if they lived long enough and put the effort in couldn't eventually get a full BAB and the abilty to cast 9th level wizard spells (as defined by being arcane spells not on their spell list)?
Experience Points: To gain a level beyond 20th, a character must double the experience points needed to achieve the previous level. Thus, assuming the medium XP progression, a 20th-level character needs 2,100,000 XP to become 21st level, since he needed 1,050,000 XP to reach 20th level from 19th. He'd then need 4,200,000 XP to reach 22nd level, 8,400,000 XP to reach 23rd, and so on.
Scaling Powers: Hit dice, base attack bonuses, and saving throws continue to increase at the same rate beyond 20th level, as appropriate for the class in question. Note that no character can have more than 4 attacks based on its base attack bonus. Note also that, before long, the difference between good saving throws and poor saving throws becomes awkwardly large—the further you get from 20th level, the more noticeable this difference grows, and for high-level characters, bolstering their poor saving throws should become increasingly important. Class abilities that have a set, increasing rate, such as a barbarian's damage reduction, a fighter's bonus feats and weapon training, a paladin's smite evil, or a rogue's sneak attack continue to progress at the appropriate rate.
Spells: A spellcaster's caster level continues to increase by one for each level beyond 20th level. Every odd-numbered level, a spellcaster gains access to a new level of spell one above his previous maximum level, gaining one spell slot in that new level. These spell slots can be used to prepare or cast spells adjusted by metamagic feats or any known spell of lower levels. Every even-numbered level, a spellcaster gains additional spell slots equal to the highest level spell he can currently cast. He can split these new slots any way he wants among the slots he currently has access to.
For example, a 21st-level wizard gains a single 10th-level spell slot, in which he can prepare any spell of level 1st through 9th, or in which he can prepare a metamagic spell that results in an effective spell level of 10 (such as extended summon monster IX, or quickened disintegrate). At 22nd level he gains 10 spell-levels' worth of new spell slots, and can gain 10 1st-level spells per day, two 5th-level spells per day, one 7th-level and one 3rd-level spell per day, or one more 10th-level spell per day. At 23rd level, he gains a single 11th-level spell slot, and so on.
So yes, a Magus could master 9th level spells. It would require them to be very high in level, and those spells are not on the magus' spell list by default, so you would likely need to research each spell you wanted to add individually. Alternatively, they could just use all the extra spell slots to cast metamagic'd versions of their normal magus spells.
EDIT: Actually, I recant. The magus wouldn't have to be that high above 20th level. Only 5th level. According to these rules, regardless of what class you are, you get access to new spell levels every odd level. That means a 25th level wizard casts 12th level spells, a 25th level magus/bard/inquisitor casts 9th level spells, and a 25th level paladin/ranger casts 7th level spells.
EDIT II: Though I would personally just allow it to continue scaling at their normal pace in all honesty, though that would be a house rule. Mostly because the potency of higher level spell slots drops off at post-20th levels and is mostly useful for more casting and/or for metamagic, rather than strictly more powerful casting; whereas the other classes continue to advance things in more concrete ways (BAB, HD, Power Attack, etc).
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Yes a magus can cast 9th level spells.... All he has to do is multiclass as a wizard.
... or as a cleric. Let's not be too limiting here.
There is a way that this long lived Elf Magus could learn 9th level Spells. He could use the Retraining rules as stated in Ultimate Campaign to replace his Magus levels with levels of Wizard. It would be time consuming and expensive as hell! But he's got centuries anyway, right?
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That's a bit of intentional misreading.
Those higher spell levels that epic wizards get above ninth level aren't for tenth, eleventh, level spells, they're for metamagicked versions of standard spells.
The magus would not be able to use those spell levels for 7th, 8th, or 9th level spells, only for metamagicked versions of 6th level spells or below.
Please read my posts before you respond to them.
The way I see it, the game doesn't accurately represent losing abilities/knowledge due to disuse (other than perhaps negative levels?), so to me, the reason a magus can't have full BAB and spellcasting is because he does not have the sufficient time in the day to maintain his martial training AND spell knowledge. Even Eldritch Knight has to sacrifice the spellcaster's ordinary class features and a whole level of spellcasting.
You just can't maintain your knowledge of all these things at once. Even if elves live for centuries, they are allotted the same time during the day as every other class, and not even they can maintain their training and arcane knowledge at the same time without sacrificing one or both.
Now if you had a demiplane with a special time trait where you retired after every adventuring day, it may work... until the higher levels. I imagine that by the time you stop reviewing arcane theory and how spells work, you're not up to snuff with most of your martial training, and by the time you finish refreshing your muscle memory, you've forgotten part of the arcane theory.
Completely unrelated by lore but at the same time extremely pertinent, in the Dota universe the explainatin for people to only be able to use a limited amount of spells is that they can't manage to remember more than that. Even the greates magi of all tend to use spells and then forgetting them on purpose to make space for new ones.
And it actually makes sense in a certain way. If you consider memory as a finite resource, like how much space you have in your PC, you realize that there is a limit to how much you can know at the same time, no matter how much you actually learn. After your memory is full, to learn something else you must "make space" by forgetting something else.