Building my first magus, a kensai, and I think the guide I'm looking at is a bit outdated, so I figured I'd ask about this here just to be safe.
I really do like the flavor of the "Opportune Parry and Riposte (Ex)" part of flamboyant arcana, letting me use a arcane pool point to try and parry an opponent's attack and allowing a counterattack if successful... if the magus has a panache point.
My confusion stems from that while flamboyant arcana seems to indicate that arcane pool points work as passive panache points for this, a different arcana, arcane deed (which has flamboyant arcana as a prereq), doesn't allow pool points to work as passive panache points.
Does flamboyant arcana simply work differently and allow pool points to work as panache for the passive part of opportune parry & riposte or is the counterattack not possible?
Flamboyant Arcana still works, but they nerfed everything else so deep into the ground that you would need a dwarven mining team to find it.
Run it by your GM. A lot of GM's I've talked to have reversed the ruling and killed the nerf, allowing Precise Strike and Evasion to become the *freaking awesome* choices that they were always meant to be.
Kinda late to this party, but remember that the Amatuer Swashbuckler feat does exist, and would allow you to have a point of panache available.