Magus / Eldritch Knight


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I have a 7th level Magus that just hit 8th level and I was wondering if I should take a level of eldritch knight at 8th or just do straight magus. Any suggestions?


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You would gain:

1. Full BAB
2. Stack EK levels with fighter levels (of which you have none) to get weapon specialization and critical focus and such. You something like this at level 10 magus anyway.

You loose:

1. A level of casting
2. Good will save progression turns into bad will save progression
3. No increases to all the things that make a magus work, like:
1. Magus arcana
2. Improved spell combat
3. Medium/heavy armor without spell failure
4. Increases to spell pool/knowledge pool, etc.

So no, I wouldn't take EK :)

But if you think it is awesome, go for it!


As mentioned, you really get nothing out of EK. EK is mostly an artifact nowadays since the Magus kinda replaces it. It can be beneficial to gish builds that don't rely on class features/abilities such as the standard wizard/fighter but if you're a Magus then it kinda just loses all meaning.


Eldritch Knight is an obsolete prestige class. It was made to give Wizards an alternative to going tier 9 casting but gaining slightly higher physical attack. I works even worse with other classes.

Magus really has replaced it entirely.

Other Prestige classes have similar problems. They were made years ago, some back in D&D 3rd edition(maybe older) and dont stack well now that people have more classes that can do the same thing in Pathfinder.


Yes, even back in Core, the prestige classes were already suffering from the pathfinder core classes having more class features than their 3.x counterparts, while the classic prestige classes didn't receive any such upgrades. And over time, Pathfinder has released many classes and archetypes that replace the original purpose of most of those prestige classes anyway.

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Echoing the above posts, with EK you'd gain a few points more to hit in exchange for losing all your class features and getting all your spells a level later. Overall the tradeoff isn't very good and I'd stick to a straight Magus instead.


There are Eldritch Knight builds that can earn level 9 spells before Character Level 20 (which Magi obviously cannot accomplish). Otherwise, the Magus fulfills the Gish role admirably.

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