| cavernshark |
What I want from the magus levels:
1) reach. It's gotten lost that I was planning to go aberrant for the 5 ft reach. Half my fault because of waffling between it and Arcane. Reach is important because...
2) I want to be viable at whirlwinding. To me, viable means hitting as many targets as possible. That means reach. With enlarge (still a net gain in damage, even though its a loss in accuracy) and long arm and aberrant bloodline that's a 20ft radius, 25 if I include lunge. The AC loss isn't terribly important because in theory I'll be out of range to eat full attacks. Range also helps deal damage via combat reflexes and AOO.
3) when not whirlwinding that's when the normal magus stuff comes in - being able to buff at the same time as single target attacking is great. Then once I've done buffing I go into whirlwind mode (assuming enough targets are present). Or if only single targets I go "traditional" magus of stacking on damage with vampiric embrace and shocking grasp.
4) AC/defense isn't that important because in theory i'll be hitting from a range that will keep me safer than the front liners. I'll also have the mobility feats and dexterity to re-position as needed.
I guess reading this list just doesn't scream Magus to me. Certainly, Enlarge Person and Long Arm are necessary, but that can come from a lot of arcane lists. Enlarge Person is also a full round action to cast, so you're either going to use it to prebuff usually or use a wand to do it - in either case you're not using spell combat. Using spells like Shocking Grasp as filler seems like a bit of a waste given that you're going to be using a lot of those first level slots to buff and aren't investing feats to make them count.
I think what's confusing to me is going high dex to damage and also going full reach. Almost all the tools for reach (Enlarge Person reducing your dex, reach weapons that aren't finesseable) just feel counter to your other half you're building.
Your main feat chain (Whirlwind Attack) only requires 13 Dex and 13 Int (13 Cha if you have a single level in Swashbuckler). 14 Dex and Combat Reflexes still gives you 3 AOOs in a round.
You could get all that easily going full Aberrant Bloodrager with a few levels in swashbuckler to avoid the Int requirement in favor of Charisma and to get Charmed Life. Even with slightly lower spell progression, you could use wands to buff yourself up before combat, or even better let a party member do it. You could also do the cross-blooded archetype to do an Aberrant/Arcane rage, taking the Arcane 8th level power for haste and the Aberrant 4th level power for the additional reach you like. Charmed life helps offset the reduced will-save you'd experience.
| kestral287 |
kestral287 wrote:Kensai can't finesse a katana, so he'd have to switch weapons. Beyond that it works like a charm though.Why couldn't a Kensai finesse a katana? All they'd have to do is cough up the gold for Effortless Lace to make it work. Admittedly it would be more practical to just use the standard wakizashi/rapier/scimitar method, but it's still possible.
The OP mentioned a desire for Society legality. The Lace is not PFS Legal.