I have a player who's a 14th level bladebound magus. However, none of the magus abilities beyond that level appeal to her. She isn't a fan of any of the 6th level magus spells and none of the magus arcana appeal to her. She's not sure where to go from here.
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Level 15 she gets access to Bane Blade, or to the "Reflection" Magus Arcana.
Level 16 she gets access to Counterstrike, which means that if she wants to, she can make a rather fearsome Mage Killer build (Lingering Pain is also a great arcana for this purpose, plus Magus has access to Disruptive and Spellbreaker as arcana).
6th level spells aren't all that great for a spellstriking Magus, sure, but they allow for the use of Metamagic'd lower level spells, which a Magus is more prone to using. Quickened Bladed Dash is always a nice opener, and it leaves your Spell Combat spell open for say, another Bladed Dash away from the opponent. Not many people can engage, full attack (with 5 attacks at that level not including haste) and still disengage afterwards, safe from a full attack as long the opponent lacks some similar Pounce ability.
Then at level 17 you get the final increment to Arcane Pool, and at level 18 you get a free feat and a free arcana (Reflection Arcana is surprisingly powerful, since it can work on things like Greater Dispel Magic, among other nice defenses, cuz let's face it, a Magus's saves aren't exactly the highest).
Level 19 you can finally get some awesome spells you've been missing out on, and at Level 20 you get the Magus capstone, which is a little underrated in my opinion, since it gives you the opinion to be a better caster or a better fighter. At the very least, it's equivalent to either Spell Penetration, or Weapon Focus + Greater Weapon Focus, and on top of such gives you the ability to ignore concentration checks, which can be useful in epic level games where you have nightmare GMs like I currently do. It's not bad, and scales into epic fairly well, so I like it.
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I have a player who's a 14th level bladebound magus. However, none of the magus abilities beyond that level appeal to her. She isn't a fan of any of the 6th level magus spells and none of the magus arcana appeal to her. She's not sure where to go from here.
If the abilities don't appeal, I assume it's not because "these aren't good", but instead "I don't want to do those things".
The challenge is that after 14 levels, it is a little bit late to dip out significantly and change the way your character plays.
Perhaps she should dip into Fighter and pick up some combat maneuver benefits? Those can significantly change the way a character interacts with the game. Reposition, Bull Rush, Dirty Trick, whatever it is, you can play with a different toy for a while. (Dimensional movement feats and Bull Rush is pretty hilarious. Then again, I just find Bull Rush to be entertaining in general.)
Without having a good idea how the character is built it's not easy to offer new pathways to take it. Just spend some time seeing what the player finds interesting now and see how you can fit that in.
Without having a good idea how the character is built it's not easy to offer new pathways to take it. Just spend some time seeing what the player finds interesting now and see how you can fit that in.
She's a Dex-based character with Deadly Agility wielding a katana (houseruled as a finesse weapon). I think the only metamagic she has is Intensify Spell.
15th level would be an excellent time to pick up quicken spell then. 2 spells/round is a definite improvement over 1 spell/round.
Or spell focus (illusion); the veiled illusionist PrC might appeal if she's sneaky.
If deadly agility is on the table, one of the classes from Path of War wight be good. They multiclass pretty well. Warder is the obvious one for a magus with some intelligence.
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If casting isn't the problem, she's just not feeling the Magus selections, you could look into an Evoker. Admixture is a great blaster benefit as it allows you to adapt your memorized spells more simply. A greensting scorpion would give her a nice boost in Initiative on top of her Dex and the +1DC is good. Taking a Mage's Tattoo for Evocation would make up for the lost CL in Magus.
Dimensional Agility as a chain will change the feel of combat significantly. It might be more to her liking to "bamf" around like Nightcrawler.
If casting spells is what's getting boring, then I still suggest levels of Fighter or something similar. BAB gets a nice boost, the bonus feats can be used to learn Improved(Maneuver)s and she can break out of the spell combat rotation as she likes. Agile Maneuvers should help keep her CMB high enough to tackle moderate foes and crowd control minions. Dirty Trick alone has a lot of mileage in it. Pick the appropriate debuff for the opponent and the circumstance.
Eldritch Guardian is a nice blend, since you can get that familiar (make it improved if you like so it can use wands, too!) and vastly up your action economy. Unfortunately you lose the two bonus feats at 1st and 2nd. (Meaning you'd have to spend the Level 15 feat for Improved and lose out on the Level 16 feat, but in exchange your familiar can use your combat feats (like Dirty Trick, if you hadn't just spent the feats on a cool familiar...)
In the end, just let her see what sparks that old lovin' feelin'. Identify what feels stale and look for ways to avoid or modify it with a little caliente.
Bladebound Magus cant get familiars so the dips into classes for the familiar doesnt help at all.
You don't need to use those 6th level slots for 6th level spells. Just metamagic the crap out of 3rd - 5th level spells instead.
Alternatively, simply going straight fighter might be useful - get a ton more feats to get some of those upper BAB feat tree stuff that Magi don't usually get to see.