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Okay so I was wondering about the Phantom Blade, and what people do with them, cause I think they're kewl. I came up with a build for one which seemed fairly simple and obvious, was wondering if I'd missed a trick.
From what I can see I feel like concentration checks are the biggest issue this archetype has to deal with until level 12 when they can center themselves as a free action. At level 4 they can do so as a swift but then that conflicts with Ectoplasmic pool and even with the centering it just makes the concentration checks manageable, one can still fail.
So Combat Casting was an obvious pick, I took lunge so that the problem can be circumvented against medium and smaller foes.
Also question, is the dimensional assault line pointless? I'm now worried it overlaps with spell combat. Although I think it probably doesn't?
So this is what I came up with (25pb)
Cha: 8
Int: 10
Wis: 15
Str: 18 (post racial)
Con: 14
Dex: 14
Traits: Nothing sticks out
Feats:
1) Weapon Focus Scimitar
1) Combat Casting
3) Combat Reflexes
3) (Bonus Fighter feat) I can't think of anything that takes advantage of this.
5) Power Attack
7) Improved Initiative
8) Greater Weapon Focus (Bonus Fighter feat)
9) Lunge
11) Extend Spell
13) Critical, Focus
13) Critical, Staggering (Bonus Fighter feat)
15) Dimensional Agility
17) Dimensional Assault
18) Critical, Stunning (Bonus Fighter feat)
19) Dimensional Dervish
1) Expeditious Retreat, Chill Touch, Protection from Evil, Burst of Adrenaline, Feather Fall, Shield
2) Stricken Heart, Invisibility, See invisibility, Spiritual Weapon, Pilfering Hand, False Life
3) Heroism, Vampiric Touch, Haste, Displacement, Phantom Steed(replacing fly), Dispel Magic
4) Dimension Door, Freedom of Movement, Invisibility (Greater), Aura of Doom, Cure Critical Wounds, Thoughtsense
5) Plane Shift, Overland Flight, Breath of Life, Teleport, Slay Living(this is the closest thing they get to nova, but the save concerns me :/)
6) Heal, Dispel Magic Greater, Disintegrate, True Seeing, Getaway
The idea would be to use displacement and medium armor for defense, prebuff with shield when possible, always try to prebuff with Heroism and later Freedom of Movement and Overland Flight.
For Spell strike, Chill touch is the only real option at level one and lets you get some mileage from your spell slots, Stricken heart is amazing for shutting down opposing full attacks. Vampiric touch would be the standard eventually, for good damage, pseudo healing and no save.
Slay Living and Harm both offer a lot more damage than anything else on the list, but both offer saves and I don't see his DCs being high enough that they'd ever be relevant.
So would you say this was a fairly reasonable standard or have I completely missed the point?
IMO you've missed a few tricks anyway. As well as direct attack spells the spiritualist gets some offensive buff spells. Mindshock works well with crit-fishing which I think you're aiming at, spirit-bound blade adds versatility, vampiric shadow shield does a surprising amount of damage sometimes and heals you a little. Offensive buffs tend to use less spell slots than direct attacks too.
Then there's one of the nastier area-denial effects on their spell list, etheric shards. With that and some sort of forced movement - like maybe force punch - you could hurt an enemy quite badly.
If you have dimensional agility and spell combat you don't really need dimensional assault. Use spell combat to cast dimension door, then take your attacks. It needs dimensional agility to not end your turn when you cast dimension door but that's all.
Getting those higher level spells to stick will be hard, true. A metamagic rod of persistent spell would help, but it'd be largely incompatible with spell combat if not spellstrike.
There's a lot of force spells on the spiritualist list. Have you considered getting toppling spell to take advantage of them? Also I'd want one of the spells in the possession line and/or the object possession line simply because they're so unlike what a magus can do. Note that object possession generally doesn't give a save.
Crit fishing just seemed to be the obvious route when you're limited to one handed martial weapons by spell combat, since those limitations make scimitars and rapiers the best options and also prime crit fishers.
Mindshock is somewhat interesting but it competes with stricken heart and I think it loses
because
-mind affecting
-less damage
-only triggers on a crit
-75% chance is high but not a guarantee that you'll stop the opponent acting, +confusion isn't as strong in my opinion when you apply it in melee
meanwhile stricken heart is a death effect, I.E much less commonly resisted, always denies a full attack and deals more damage.
I suppose their is an argument that it could take the place of Spiritual weapon, that was kinda a spot filler.
I looked at spirit bound, it isn't very good for Phantom blades, their weapon is always ghost touch so you're looking at a level 3 spell to get one special ability on the weapon for probably about 10 minutes.
Vampiric Shadow Shield is nice though, probably chuck out Slay living for it.
I really agonized over Etheric Shard but I decided I wasn't too interested in this character doing control, although I suppose for a generic builds it would be strong. Force punch does combo nicely with it though, if you can get the save DC high enough to be reliable.
Wooo two free feats, I had a feeling there was gonna be some funny interaction with dimensional agility.
Not that I know what to do with them.
I think I'll give up on the Harm and Slay living, stick to Vampiric touch as the damage option. Faffing around with DCs isn't worth the effort.
The Possession line is tempting, I've actually wondered "Weapon of the mind" means the Phantom blade can actually manifest their blade even if they're possessing someone. I think it does. The DC is again a deterrent, although with those two free feats maybe its worth taking spell focus necro late just for possession, it would certainly be strong. Possession greater with 3 points invested in wis over leveling
would be 23, combine that with a persistent rod and pump both feats into spell focus and you hit 25 take the lowest, which isn't great but it should work against weak will save targets, bruisers and such.