Arcane Spellcaster W / Staff and Shield

[Epic Hoagie]

So I recently did a doodle of a warrior mage that I really liked. She's wielding a staff in one hand and a heavy shield in the other. I wanna do something like that in Pathfinder. What I want to know is whether or not her staff could feasibly be used in place of somatic components.

Like, channeling arcane spells through the staff a la Dragon Age 2 and onward, kinda deal. Maybe even use it like a ranged weapon firing off non-tracking magic missiles in place of sayyy a bow, using your BAB and whatever score.

I'm guessing, ahead of time, the answer is a pretty solid no. But yeah, If someone has a way to do this without metamagic feats, or if someone could explain the use of arcane spell focuses to me, that would be swell.

Thanks!

[avr]

A clawhand shield (magic item) would do the shield part for an arcane spellcaster, or you could get the shielded mage feat, or you could play a psychic spellcaster. Using a staff for bonuses to magic is oddly hard in PF though.

Perhaps the best way would be to play an occultist whose staff is her evocation implement; getting the quarterstaff master feat would let her use the staff as a one-handed weapon when necessary.

[Epic Hoagie]

avr wrote:

A clawhand shield (magic item) would do the shield part for an arcane spellcaster, or you could get the shielded mage feat, or you could play a psychic spellcaster. Using a staff for bonuses to magic is oddly hard in PF though.

Perhaps the best way would be to play an occultist whose staff is her evocation implement; getting the quarterstaff master feat would let her use the staff as a one-handed weapon when necessary.

Awesome thank you :>

[Meirril]

Link to Shielded Mage feat. If you were going to aim to become a Eldritch Knight You could qualify for Shielded Mage at 2nd level...if you wanted to.

For a Wizard it costs 1 feat to be proficient with shields, then 1 for Shield Focus and finally 1 for Shielded Mage. 3 feats is very, very expensive. Most wizards would have to be 5th level before they could do this.

If you put 1 level into a class with proficiency with heavy shields that saves you a feat. If that class is fighter it gets a bonus combat feat, and Shield Focus happens to be a combat feat. Though the argument can be made that a 1st level fighter can skip the Shield Focus feat and take Shielded Mage as their bonus feat.

For the staff stuff, use bonded object and make it your staff. When you use your school ability you can just say it comes from your staff, for no extra benefit. The only drawback is that a staff is a 2-handed weapon so you can't swing it as a weapon until you manage to get a feat or class ability that says otherwise.

As a compromise I'd just talk to the GM about using a walking cane that looks like a short staff but has the stats of a club. After all, you're doing this for the appearance, not for any game effect right? I think most GMs could be convinced to let it slide, so long as you don't push to be able to use actual staves one handed as melee weapons.

[avr]

Oh yeah, the hanbo is a one-handed staff. You can't get staffs which store spells made in hanbo size, but it's as effective as a quarterstaff when the latter's used as a one-handed weapon, and it doesn't require a feat to do so. Staffs which store spells are expensive enough to be a late-game thing anyway.

[MrCharisma]

You could try a SKIRNIR Magus? I don't know if it's any good, but it's a shielded wizard/warrior.

[Thedmstrikes]

There is a thing called a spellstaff from Flaming Crab Games that is very close thematically to what you are describing. It requires its own feet to use, but becomes a ranged weapon only a magic user can wield. The PDF is like $1 and I think it is available here on Paizo. This does nothing for the shield half of your concept, so that will rely on the other advice.

[Chell Raighn]

If you go with Magus, you can combine the Skirnir Archetype and Staff Magus Archetype to be able to use a quarter staff one handed and wield a shield in the other... simply wielding the shield would count as fulllfilling your somatic components, you can even use a tower shield (though your free shield for arcane bond can’t be a tower)... it opens several options without costing any feats...