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The concept here is to pull enemies from (up to) hundreds of feet across the map and have them land next to you, prone. The basic combo is Wolf Trip and toppling magic missile.
Using Magical Lineage you can cast toppling magic missile as a 1st level spell (which is already pretty handy.) But the build really comes together at 7th level when you get Wolf Trip, at which point you can pull enemies from anywhere so long as they are trippable. At 9th level, you take Poised Bearing, and by this point you might be permanently enlarged, to make sure you can trip huge foes. If their CMD is too high to trip with toppling magic missile, you use blade lash instead.
Traits: Magical Lineage (magic missile)
1: Toppling Spell, Dirty Fighting, Medium Armor
2:
3: Improved Trip, Armor Training
4:
5: Improved Unarmed Strike, Wolf Style
6: Magus Arcana
7: Wolf Trip, Heavy Armor
8: Armor Training II
9: Poised Bearing
Any ideas to make this work better? I don't think I can get earlier access to Wolf Trip, but it would be awesome if there was a way. I think I could also afford to lose Improved Trip and Dirty Fighting if there are better feats to replace them with. Also, not sure what to take for my Magus Arcana at level 6. And the Armored Battlemage is pretty harsh in that it gives up Spell Combat, but it helps qualify for Poised Bearing - maybe better just to take Armor Focus instead at 9th level and then Poised Bearing at 11th?
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Screw Poised Bearing. Be Vudrani (or have a permissive GM) and get a Belt of Impossible Action:
This gem-studded belt is woven of several different colors of silk. The wearer can perform combat maneuvers against foes that would normally be immune due to being too large for the wearer to affect. In addition, a Vudrani wearer can move and charge normally through difficult terrain that would otherwise cost 2 squares of movement to enter as if it were normal terrain.
A steal at 16,000 gp.
P.S. A truly brilliant abuse of Wolf Trip, btw.
Ooh, that belt is very nice! OK yeah, then forget about Armored Battlemage, probably just vanilla magus instead.
Are you using Wolf Style to trip the target?
No, so this does not work.
While the OP's combo shouldn't work, this argument doesn't stop it. Wolf trip only requires you to be 'using Wolf Style' which means to have spent the swift action to start it. Wolf trip then applies to any successful trip attempt. The writer didn't think of ranged trip attempts, apparently.
I know the advantage of magic missile vs thunderstomp is that magic missile does damage and thunderstomp does not, but thunderstomp will treat your caster level as BAB so your to hit will be better.
Some ideas which may or may not work all together.
*Greater thumberstomp will do this against all creatures in the area, you actually would need to find a way to exclude your friends.*If you are human, you may want the bred for war trait, which would give you a +1 on the trip attempts.
*vicious stomp. Every body that falls prone next to you triggers an attack of opportunity...
*Kobold groundling: everybody prone is denied its AC against you... You could sneak attack with that vicious stomp
Toppling Spell actually also allows you to use your caster level as BAB. I looked at thunderstomp but toppling magic missile is almost strictly better (it can hit multiple targets, works if they're standing on something besides ground, has longer range, and does damage.) The only case I can think of using thunderstomp is if they have shield up.
Greater thunderstomp is interesting though because it inherently ignores size restrictions. That's a good stop-gap for before I can afford the Belt of Impossible Action. But once I have the belt, probably toppling magic missile becomes better again (as I have 4 missiles by that point, and it's unlikely I'll hit more than 4 enemies with a 60ft line.)
Bred for War is interesting, but the racial pre-req (Shoanti) conflicts with the Belt of Impossible Action (Vudrani) unfortunately. It's also not clear to me whether enhancing BAB actually benefits toppling magic missile, the text reads:
make a trip check against the target, using your caster level plus your casting ability score bonus (Wisdom for clerics, Intelligence for wizards, and so on.)
I would read that as using caster level plus casting ability score instead of your CMB, in which case I don't think Bred for War applies.
Vicious Stomp is very tempting, I would love to squeeze it in. It's just a choice between Improved Trip and Vicious Stomp. If I could use a weapon attack for Vicious Stomp I would go for it, but being limited to an unarmed strike on a build that's not really very good at unarmed strikes is maybe less worthwhile.
Kobold Groundling would be a pretty amazing feat for another party member to take. The magus doesn't have the Sneak Attack to make it pop, but if I could tell the party rogue, "just stay within 10ft of me and I'll deliver the enemies prone next to you," and then let them full-attack the prone flat-footed enemy for Sneak Attack damage, how awesome would that be?!?!?
Oooooh, and greater thunderstomp also works super nicely with true strike, because you are only making one attack roll that applies to all targets.
Even if your GM chooses not to allow Wolf Trip with toppling magic missile, you can still use blade lash for much the same effect (and a much higher success probability!)
The Kobold Groundling suggestion has me really enchanted. Pair this magus with a kobold unRogue, who has bite and tail attacks (Dragonmaw and Tail Terror) and TWF and Kobold Groundling, and just deliver the little guy prone flanked flat-footed enemies to utterly demolish. Or use a different small race and buy the natural attacks as items.
It won't work anymore (if it ever did) as of 2017's Ultimate Wilderness updating of Wolf Trip:
Benefit: While using Wolf Style, you gain a +2 bonus when you attempt a trip combat maneuver as part of an attack of opportunity. Whenever you successfully trip a creature, as a free action you can choose an available space that is both adjacent to you and the creature’s original space for the tripped creature to land prone in.
So, no more enemy-teleporting via a nonmagical feat.
Oh gods, that is a mega-nerf. Errata to specify it needed to be a melee attack was probably called for, but now you can't even throw them behind you or anything. That is really a pretty terrible feat now, especially considering Wolf Style is a bad feat as well.
Granted, the build I suggested in this thread never had any business being legal, but this also sucks for my PFS brawler. One of the main reasons I gave him Wis 13 was so I could flex Wolf Trip at level 6, and now the feat is basically trash. Grumble grumble.
Just use Ki Throw. :)
Yes, I do use Ki Throw for my brawler, but I was looking forward to Blade Lash + Wolf Trip. I wish they had at least made Wolf Style into something half-decent at the same time they nerfed Wolf Trip.