I love the idea of the magus, and when I saw the skirnir archetype, it made me really excited. I made a skirnir, and played him to level 3, and it was not quite as good as I expected. I read a bit more in-depth after that, and the tradeoffs you get for the innate shield abilities and feats makes it almost not worth playing the skirnir. But I still really like the thought of a shield-bashing magus.
It seems as though the thought behind the skirnir is that you fight with a weapon and a shield AND get the magus powers, and that's why the tradeoffs are so severe (one less spell per level, spell combat at level 8). But what if you just want to use the shield as your weapon and have an empty off-hand? That's how I played my skirnir, and I think if you're playing that way, you shouldn't get nerfed the way the skirnir does.
So my question is: would it be better to roll a straight magus and sink the feats into shield proficiencies, or roll a skirnir and bear with the reduced spell count and no spell combat until level 8?
Edited for clarity.
Bear with the Skirnir. You make for a very decent frontliner and skill monkey.
The problem with it, in my opinion, is that it requires so much Dex and Int to work, leaving absolutely no room for STR. You can't Weapon Finesse either... but wait! You totally can if you go Inspired Duelist Swashbuckler! Rapier and shield Magus ftw! That 1 level dip should give you a ton of tricks to work with. You can decide whether you want to keep Magusin' or go for Weapon Mastery later.
Bear with the Skirnir. You make for a very decent frontliner and skill monkey.
The problem with it, in my opinion, is that it requires so much Dex and Int to work, leaving absolutely no room for STR. You can't Weapon Finesse either... but wait! You totally can if you go Inspired Duelist Swashbuckler! Rapier and shield Magus ftw! That 1 level dip should give you a ton of tricks to work with. You can decide whether you want to keep Magusin' or go for Weapon Mastery later.
That's an intriguing thought, but I was thinking more of a "Captain Amagica" type character where the shield is both weapon and armor, and the other hand is mostly free for casting. (I don't have the Advanced Class Guide book, and swashbuckler isn't on the PRD yet, so I can't look up either the class or the archetype right now.)
That build is where the skirnir archetype tends to fall apart for me - I'm using the shield as the weapon, but the archetype seems to be meant for sword-and-board use, which is why most of the nice magus abilities are delayed, nerfed or missing.
My feeling is, for the build I want to make, I lose too much going skirnir, and (for this build at least) I'm not looking to multiclass unless it goes with the build idea.
EDIT: Whoop, spoke too soon! Swashbuckler is on the PRD under Hybrid Classes. Taking a look now.
EDIT 2: Ehh, Inspired Blade means you're stuck with rapier. That, plus two pools to manage, is kinda off-putting for me. I appreciate the suggestion though.
if you want to make captain america... just roll a shield champion (brawler archetype)
he isn't a spell caster.
BUT
he throws his shields
He ricochets his shield (both to enemies and to walls and etc)
he uses his shield to make RANDED MANEUVERS (p.e. throwing at the legs to trip them, at the eyes to blind them, knocking them around, disarming them and etc)
He pulls combat stunts on the spot (martial flexibility)
He does awesome damage with his shield (he basically twf's with just a single shield and has increased base damage on it)
He has awesome blow later on, puching oppoents around and knocking them down.
He can even try to do a damage absorb with his shield!in the end, he may have 0 spellcasting, but he IS Captain america
Captain Amagica =/= Captain America. ;) But I see your point, and that looks like an awesome non-arcane build! I'll have to look at doing something like that!
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Then don't finesse. Finding shield proficiency is a little bit tricky to come by, but a 1 level dip in a martial class would be fine. It sets back your Magus abilities by a level, but otherwise works quite well, granting you higher HP, better BAB, and possibly some nifty abilities (the Freebooter ranger level 1 ability comes to mind). You get everything 1 level late, but you get plenty to make up for it, I think.
Little-known fact about finessing shield-wielders:You take your shield's ACP as a penalty to attack rolls when finessing.
Not if you are a Swashbuckler. Swashbuckler Finesse says that you gain the BENEFITS of Weapon Finesse when wielding the appropriate weapons. Says nothing about the penalties.
Bear with the Skirnir. You make for a very decent frontliner and skill monkey.
The problem with it, in my opinion, is that it requires so much Dex and Int to work, leaving absolutely no room for STR. You can't Weapon Finesse either... but wait! You totally can if you go Inspired Duelist Swashbuckler! Rapier and shield Magus ftw! That 1 level dip should give you a ton of tricks to work with. You can decide whether you want to keep Magusin' or go for Weapon Mastery later.
That's an intriguing thought, but I was thinking more of a "Captain Amagica" type character where the shield is both weapon and armor, and the other hand is mostly free for casting. (I don't have the Advanced Class Guide book, and swashbuckler isn't on the PRD yet, so I can't look up either the class or the archetype right now.)
That build is where the skirnir archetype tends to fall apart for me - I'm using the shield as the weapon, but the archetype seems to be meant for sword-and-board use, which is why most of the nice magus abilities are delayed, nerfed or missing.
My feeling is, for the build I want to make, I lose too much going skirnir, and (for this build at least) I'm not looking to multiclass unless it goes with the build idea.
EDIT: Whoop, spoke too soon! Swashbuckler is on the PRD under Hybrid Classes. Taking a look now.
EDIT 2: Ehh, Inspired Blade means you're stuck with rapier. That, plus two pools to manage, is kinda off-putting for me. I appreciate the suggestion though.
look further into the magus in ACG, you can take arcana that will allow the double for the panache of a swashbuckler, so only one pool to manage, and you can take amateur swashbuckler as well, and slashing grace (so not stuck with rapier)
Also for fun with skinir, use a whip and take whip mastery feat chain.
At lower levels, if something gets too close to you, you can shield bash them, if something is farther away, decent, use whip to deliver touch spells.
By 8th level you are spell combating all over the place and threatening a large radius, all the while over coming a weakness of the magus (casting while threatened)
Skinir with the whip and a little bit of swash buckler stuff is feat intensive, but sooo worth it.
Just as with the Myrmidarch, most people misunderstand the concept of the Skirnir. It breaks the normal paradigm of "high crit range weapon + shocking grasp" and has a much stronger emphasis on buff or disabling spells.
That's actually what I did with my skirnir; it's how our party managed to survive a couple of Kingmaker encounters we stumbled into that were above our CR. Cast Frostbite and touch the troll's foot while prone, and it debuffed him just enough to be taken down.
You're also intended to use only the shield up until you get Shielded Spell Combat, in which case you can pick up a supplementary weapon and use the shield hand itself as your casting hand. For instance, instead of the normal pattern of Spell Combat>Shocking Grasp>Attack w/ Scimitar, you might cast Touch of Idiocy and deliver it with a Heavy Shield wielded in two hands. So, whereas a standard Magus is much more of a Hammer in the Forge model and can go for either Arm or Anvil as his minor role, a Skirnir is an Anvil or Arm primarily (based on how he builds) and the other as his minor role.
That's an interesting perspective, and was kind of how I was taking the skirnir I was playing: a buff/debuff caster who just happened to have a throwing shield. The "Captain America" build was just something I was toying with, but using the shield only, with no other weapons, is the way I want to play it.
Could you clarify on the Hammer in the Forge/Arm/Anvil statements? I'm not quite sure what you're referring to.