The idea has come up before, but to my knowledge, it hasn't been executed yet.
What I have in mind: Focused Magi
I took a different approach with each of them and some are more straightforward than others. I'm especially worried about cases in which spell combat needed to be modified, which seems essential to the magus class. Spell combat requires a special full-round action, which makes it difficult or impossible to combine with certain other options. For that reason, the astral marauder (conjuration) is still missing (I haven't figured out yet how to make spell combat work for a magus who teleports around the battlefield).
What do you think?
A couple things on the phantasmagorist:
- why would anyone use its fourth level ability? It's affecting fewer targets with no innate boost to its effectiveness, and it costs points to boot.
- you do not have a name for its 13th level ability
Other than that, looks good. Really liking the Black Knight.
To mess with people's heads, of course! What else happened to the raving madman who thinks the town is being attacked by a dragon?
You can also use it to exclude allies from the effect of pattern spells or from other area effects created by shadow spells.
I really like the premise of this where the magus gets school-focused archetypes that each alter spell combat or spellstrike to fit the theme of the arcane school. I especially think the counterspell combat is genius.
However, there's some issues I see. Many of the magus arcana should have level prerequisites. For example, the black knight's necrotic aura gives the magus access to a 2nd level spell a level before he normally can, cast as a swift action without expending a spell prepared, costs 1 arcane pool point (a better trade than spell recall), has a really good secondary effect, and fails the bag of rats test. This arcana is too strong as a 3rd level ability.
As much as I love counterspell combat, I really don't like the countermage as a whole. The biggest issue is that you got rid of spell recall. This is a magus dedicated to counterspelling, and yet you removed the ability that makes the magus awesome at counterspelling (the ability to recall uses of dispel magic). I'd honestly get rid of spell consumption, have spell absorption replace knowledge pool at 7th level, and change the language of the Dispelling Critical so that you can use spell recall to instantly prepare dispel magic for it. I'd also consider maybe allowing dispel magic to be treated as a touch spell.
Great suggestions! I agree and made the necessary changes.
Good to have some free focused magi stuff. ;)