Shield Spell or the spell Shield Arcana:Which is better overall?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

Silver Crusade

I was leaning towards the spellshield arcana, but now im not so sure.


It really depends on your swift action economy and how you plan to spend your arcana pool.

Until your Int bonus is +5 or higher it is better to cast Shield on round 1 with spell combat because level 1 spells are less rare than arcana points. The great thing about being aa prepared caster is that you can stop prepping Shield later in your career when Spellshield becomes more useful.

Silver Crusade

thorin001 wrote:

It really depends on your swift action economy and how you plan to spend your arcana pool.

Until your Int bonus is +5 or higher it is better to cast Shield on round 1 with spell combat because level 1 spells are less rare than arcana points. The great thing about being aa prepared caster is that you can stop prepping Shield later in your career when Spellshield becomes more useful.

SO for a Str or Dex based magus not that good, for an int based magus Really good..right?


Depends on playstyle some still. My STR magus will take it ASAP, but then I won't be using spell combat anyway. If you really get a lot of leverage out of other first-level spells, or perhaps already have really good AC and thus would have more use out of other buffs in that slot (windy escape from crits, wave shield, etc) then perhaps the lower shield bonus from a different more flexible daily pool is better.

Then again, if you use your swift actions a lot, most notably your first one or two swift actions, to put up important buffs like entering a style, enhancing your weapon, casting a quickened buff, using a tail to draw a rod, or any number of other choices, using shield as part of a full attack and not putting more pressure on the swift actions available may be far better than bothering with an arcana.

Similarly, your arcana needs may make one less useful than the other. For instance, if you are taking a lot of feats already and especially if you have one of dozens of archetypes that shave a few arcana off, it might be best to take a more generic arcana like Wand Weilder and use a wand of shield while also having tricks like a wand of truestrike combined with using longarm/lunge for combat maneuvers or using a wand of obscuring mist after a full attack for some concealment.

These latter two positions tend to be far more common than the former, so spellshield likely is not great unless/until an intelligence headband makes your score 20 or higher.

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