It's 1 point no matter the bonus. And it's not OP. It can't push a weapon beyond +5 and/or +10 total so the magus is still capped at the same place as everyone else, they just reach it a bit faster.
It's also points spent that can be used for other magus tricks.
No, increasing the enhancement bonus of his/her weapon only ever costs the magus one arcane point (unless they're using certain magus arcana like Bane Blade). As they reach higher levels, the amount of enhancement bonus they grant their weapon increases, but the cost stays the same. If this sounds OP, consider that many martial classes have some method of boosting their ability to hit and increase their damage- barbarians have Rage, fighters get their Weapon Training, bards use Inspire Courage. Paladins can even get a very similar ability via their Divine Bond. Magi have their own unique way to buff their accuracy/damage (which is especially important for a 3/4s BAB martial, as compared to a full BAB one), but it comes with its own advantages and drawbacks compared to the methods other classes have.
If they had to spend arcane points on a one-to-one basis for the enhancement bonus, their "1/2 magus level + INT mod" pool of points would be empty in a flash at higher levels because that cost is going to scale faster than the pool itself will. If you have to spend 4 or 5 arcane points to get your sword nicely magic'd up in a fight, even at high levels that's going to be taking away a pretty large chunk of your arcane pool (especially considering the buff only lasts one minute, which is almost always enough for one fight but probably never enough for something like a dungeon).
As others have said, it is 1 point regardless of bonus granted. Something that I had originally missed is that at fifth level you can add the bonus to a magical weapon above the pool amount. At that level, spending a point on a +1 weapon can give you a +3 weapon. For some reason I had originally assumed you couldn't bring the weapon above the pool bonus.
Think of it as a selfish Bard's Song. It gives the 3/4 BAB Magus a bonus that puts them on par with a full BAB class, but has a limited number of uses and only affects their own weapons.
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Remember it's a limited resource which a magus may want to use for other things, which prevents it from getting too OP. Now I like using pool points for a +5 keen dwarven waraxe, but I also recognize that it stops me from using spell recall, arcane accuracy, or accurate strike as often. On the other hand, axe crits :)
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that's awesome!
im claiming its "OP" because the player will use an Arcane Trickster, so he stops at level 4 anyhow... that and spell recall are his only options. and he is Int based so he will get plenty of points.
Then all he ever gets is a probably 5/day ability to get +1 attack/damage for a minute. Presuming he takes nothing else to use his arcane pool points. He never gets more than the +1 because it's based only on magus level.
In my opinion, there is no such thing as "plenty of points" in the pool. It also isn't going to mix that well with Arcane Trickster since that class will hurt his hit points to the point that he will not want to go into melee. Many of the Magus abilities are limited to melee.
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that's awesome!
im claiming its "OP" because the player will use an Arcane Trickster, so he stops at level 4 anyhow... that and spell recall are his only options. and he is Int based so he will get plenty of points.
Assuming, for the point of this post, that his Int is 20 to start, and he takes the +1 Int every 4th level, and gets an Int headband, that still, at 4th level, only 7 or 8 points.
At 20th level, assuming 10 levels of AT, and 10 levels of Magus, he gets to an Int of 25, +6 headband, +5 Wish/Tome, so 36 Int, so +8, for a total of 13 pool points.Spell Recall costs one point per level of the spell, so one or two 5th or 6th level spells recalled guts his pool, right there.
Using it on his weapon, as he is only 10th level Magus, gives a +3 bonus.
Not terribly OP.
Magus into Arcane Trickster? I don't think you'll have to worry about "overpowered".
Keen your rapier and it has a 30% critical chance, shock it and use spellstrike and 30% of the time you'll threaten 2x damage on the weapon, shock, and spell damage.
Actually the Shock (and Flaming/Frost/Corosive/etc) weapon ability damage isn't multiplied on a critical hit. However adding these properties can be helpful for overcoming regeneration (flaming weapon vs troll) or against enemies with vulnerability (frost vs red dragon) or against enemies who's DR is high but their energy resistance is low (enemy has DR50/-, but you can still do 2d6 energy damage at level 5).
(PS. It's worth checking the date on some of these old posts. The last post in this thread was about 18 months ago, which means they've probably already resolved their questions. If you have a new question that relates to this thread then reviving it can be a great idea, but if not expect someone to jump down your throat about "thread necromancy")