What is the best spell for a 1st level Magus (Eldritch Scion) to have to deal with the Undead?


Advice

Silver Crusade

What is the best spell for a 1st level Magus (Eldritch Scion) to have to deal with the Undead?

My character is a Suli. I have already picked Disrupt Undead.

Thank you

Paizo Employee Pathfinder Society Lead Developer

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Chill touch would be pretty cute, especially combined with spellstrike. As a force effect, shield also provides its advantage against any incorporeal undead you might face.

Lantern Lodge

Chill touch gets even better at higher levels when you have more touches.

It's always entertaining to watch zombies flee in terror.

Silver Crusade

John, Genuine thank you both for your advice


Disrupt Undead does allow a fairly safe ranged option to deal with undead enemies. As a 0th level spell, it's also able to be constantly used as well.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

Disrupt Undead + Close Range arcana is a good combo.

Also, Chill Touch + Gifted Adept trait + salt alchemical component.


I say Corrosive Touch since you hist a Skeleton with that it nasty


Magic Missile is probably the single best 1st level Magus spell for dealing with undead. While Chill touch does cause undead to flee it goes up against their best save and at higher level the low DC of the spell is going to make it nearly useless vs anything level appropriate. Because you are only get a limited number of spells known you really do not want to waste a spell slot that will not be useful as you level up. Magic Missile is a force effect and as such deals full damage to incorporeal creatures. Because you get more missiles as you level up the damage scales up to remain useful. It is also the only regular force spell on the magus list before 3rd level.


The usual shocking grasp is effective as ever against most undead, against incorporeal undead magic missile is the best option because force damage

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

Mysterious Stranger wrote:
While Chill touch does cause undead to flee it goes up against their best save and at higher level the low DC of the spell is going to make it nearly useless

On the contrary. Chill Touch gets attached to one hit per level. If you make four attacks per round, the enemy has to make four saves against fleeing. They're bound to fail eventually.


Kurald Galain wrote:
Mysterious Stranger wrote:
While Chill touch does cause undead to flee it goes up against their best save and at higher level the low DC of the spell is going to make it nearly useless

On the contrary. Chill Touch gets attached to one hit per level. If you make four attacks per round, the enemy has to make four saves against fleeing. They're bound to fail eventually.

What you're not going to be able to do as a First Level Magus which is the focus of the OP's question.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

Right, but at first level your DC isn't that much worse than a full caster's yet.


If this were a normal Magus than Chill Touch is a good first level spell. This is an Eldritch Scion which means he is only going to have 6 first level spells known period. Tying up 1/6 of your 1st level spells with a situational spell that does not scale up is not a good tactic. They can replaces spells starting at 5th level so maybe taking Chill Touch would not really be all that bad as long as you replace it when you can.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

Pages of Spell Knowledge are pretty cheap for level 1 spells.


Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
Kurald Galain wrote:
Mysterious Stranger wrote:
While Chill touch does cause undead to flee it goes up against their best save and at higher level the low DC of the spell is going to make it nearly useless

On the contrary. Chill Touch gets attached to one hit per level. If you make four attacks per round, the enemy has to make four saves against fleeing. They're bound to fail eventually.

What you're not going to be able to do as a First Level Magus which is the focus of the OP's question.

At first level it's just okay, but as you level up even a little bit, it starts to have staying power. So at 3rd level (when you haven't quite gotten 2nd level spells yet), you are striking with it for 2 rounds, or 3 rounds if for some reason you can't do Spell Combat (to get 2 attacks in the 1st round) when you cast it (like maybe you are trying to save on Eldritch Pool points or already ran out of them, since Eldritch Scion has to spend these to use Spell Combat before level 8), or more if you miss (you keep holding charges of the spell until you use them up). Each Undead that fails its Will Save is 1 fewer Undead that you have to fight at the same time; when they recover, you can deal with them after you have already dealt with their allies that did save or that you didn't hit with the spell.

If your campaign doesn't have much Undead in it, then this spell might not be so great, except that if it has a lot of minion opponents that are already taking penalties on their damage rolls due to low Strength, and their Strength is an even number, you can reduce their damage even more with Chill Touch (which will tend to be brutal on such opponents, since opponents whose Strength is already low enough to give them penalties usually won't have very high base damage dice). They also usually won't have very many hit points, which means that the 1d6 damage that the spell does on each hit is actually not too shabby, although it takes longer to finish delivering it than with a Shocking Grasp, which does all its damage in 1 hit.

Later, when monsters get tougher and their Saves get higher, Chill Touch will become a good candidate for swapping out, but depending upon the campaign and how much use you are getting out of it, you might want to wait past the first opportunity to do this. However, note that at higher levels you could use Persistent Spell and/or Heighten Spell with it to bolster it against higher monster Saves -- normally, metamagic would be bad on an Eldritch Scion unless you go through some kind of hoops like getting Spontaneous Metafocus for this spell, but since this spell last for as many successful hits as you have levels, the action economy hit gets amortized over multiple rounds. (And if you are really getting a lot of use out of it, Spontaneous Metafocus could actually be worth getting, to get rid of the action economy hit altogether for that spell.)

Frostbite is another spell that gives you up to 1 successful hit per level, and against non-Undead opponents, this might be more useful than Chill Touch, since it does more Strength damage on the 1st hit (by way of Fatigue and No Save, although the Fatigue effect doesn't stack with pre-existing Fatigue, including Fatigue from an earlier hit by this spell), and the non-lethal damage is useful if you want to take opponents alive. Of course, nothing would be wrong with having both spells, except that if you are going to use both of them a lot and don't want even the amortized action economy hit, then you need 2 instances of Spontaneous Metafocus to boost them with metamagic.

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