Spell casting accuracy is way more complicated with the magus than it seems. An anecdotal look at 13th level

[Unicore]

I hear a lot of hubbub about level 13 so let’s jump right to it.

Lvl 13 Magus
2 level 7 spells 2 level 6 spells
Master with weapons
Expert with spells
Attributes:
STR: 20, INT: 19,
Synthesis: Slide Casting (for movement)

Focus spells:
Magus Potency: means that I can make my weapon a +3 striking weapon with level 7 spells
Runic Impression: At level 13, I can make this provide Keen for free.

Feats:
2 - Spirit sheath or Battle assessment (won’t really play a role in this analysis.
4 - Bespell strike (even though I think Striker’s scroll might be better here, we are looking just DPR)
6 - Martial Casting
8 - Honestly I would probably take spell swipe, but for the single target focus lets go with runic impression to give our weapon Keen for free.
10 - portal slide
12 - Overwhelming spellstrike

Equipment:
12th, 11th, 10th, 9th +1000gp

So, because of my focus spells, my weapon will be +3 greater striking at level 13, (a level 16 item and a level 12 item) without spending a copper on it, that means I can spend my gold on other things.

having minimally these things on top of my armor and some other fun stuff is no problem:

Staff of Divination 230gp - charged up with one of your 6th level slots. Brutal, but 6 true strikes for the day means I can cast it on top of every single striking spell I want.
Shifting rune - 225 gp
weapon potency +1 - 35 gp

So now let’s look at combat.

Lets go level +2 enemy, so Ancient white dragon

AC: 36 F: +30 Ref: +26 W: +24
+1 status to all saves vs magic.
(high defenses for a level 15, but that is pretty common against good solo boss monsters)

HP: 330 weakness: 15 against fire

For the sake of comparison, let’s give the magus that it is going to be hasted by the time it acts, but any class you want to drag into this comparison should get the same treatment. They will all start their turn hasted. A dragon is a big creature and it is rare to walk in on one completely unprepared.

Spells:
Well if you knew you were going in to a fight with a white dragon and you have a gambler’s spirit, you’d probably take Fiery body as one of your 7th level spells for the day, because it gives produce flame to you as a spell you can cast for 1 action, and it makes all your fire spells do one extra damage die of fire. Honestly this battle form is so good for a magus that you might take it against any enemy that isn’t immune to fire, because it lets you do the spell striking true strike thing for extra damage, right off the bat since produce flame becomes a 1 action spell.

Otherwise you probably have a 7th level disintegrate and a 6th level disintegrate ready to go.

Let’s look at the 7th level disintegrate first.

At this point, when going all in against a powerful enemy, it is extremely likely that you are working with at least a +2 status bonus to attacks, and against a solo monster, the whole party should be down to help make sure you get flanking. You also might be dealing with a frightened condition, from dealing with a dragon, so we will wash out any potential debuff your party will have worked out.

You probably spend your first round getting your focus spells up, and maybe doing something defensive or otherwise preparing. You’d have to analyze whether keen or a greater fire rune is going to be better for you. My gut tells me the fire rune would be better if you are not going to be doing fire damage with your spell, but it might be better to do fire on both, because they count as separate attacks so doing fire on both is 30 extra damage without the added rune damage, but I am interested in looking at what keen does for the magus specifically here. (the answer is it is a terrible choice against an enemy with a weakness, or if you will be manipulating the numbers to usually crit on a 18 or better with your attacks. Greater flaming is way way better, especially with the likelihood of criting.)

1st round going disintegrate first:
Striking spell
Cast Disintegrate
Slide/teleport into position
true strike
hasted strike

The weapon attack (staff shifted into a +3 greater striking bastard sword with the Greater Flaming rune) (Changed from Keen when I realized keen is useless if the magus is capable of critting on better than 19)
+19 prof+5 attribute+3item+2status=+29 vs flatfooted AC of 34 (25% miss / 50% hit / 25% crit) but let’s add true strike. (6.25%miss/50%hit/43.75%Crit)
Damage: 3d8+5 when wielded 1 handed (necessary in the first round if going for true strike) avg: 18.5
Greater Flaming rune: 3.5 on a hit, 3.5+11persistent fire damage on a critical hit.
(.0625x0) + (.5x22) + (.4375x57) = 0+11+24.9375 DPR: 35.9375

Now the disintegrate would normally have a
+17prof+4attribute+2 status = +23 vs flatfooted AC of 34 (50%miss / 45%hit / 5%crit)
This is where I think a lot of people see the numbers and say, “yikes!” that accuracy is terrible. Maybe it is. Maybe it is too terrible and the class needs an extra +1 or +2 by this point, that might be possible, but the numbers there are only true 56.25% of the time. Because I have a 43% chance of landing a crit on that first attack the numbers shift to (5%miss/ 45%hit /50% crit) on the spell attack. That is even better than getting to use true strike on the spell part of the attack, especially on a spell like disintegrate which keeps cascading upwards if you can get crits.

My true strike math for this attack
25 /400 - 6.25% miss
200/400 - 50% hit
Crit 175 / 400 - 43.75% crit

Conclusion:
Not every magus will want to ride the true strike train, but it is an incredibly powerful build that is not especially difficult to stumble upon. People saying that Magi can’t use staves are ignoring that a magus is always able to cast a spell of any level that they have learned, even if they no longer have those slots anymore. The magus arcane spell casting feature only says this: “As you increase in level as a magus, your number of spell slots and the highest level of spells you can cast from spell slots increase, shown in Table 1–2: Magus Spells per Day. “ it says nothing about losing access to the spells that you no longer have lower level spell slots for. Fiery form would need its whole own analysis but seems like an excellent candidate for DPR exploitation without needing haste to do nasty things with truestrike with as well.

Even if we write truestrike out of the picture, looking at the accuracy of the spells without factoring in that, worst case scenario, a magus should have a keen weapon by 13 and a 10% chance of criting against even the nastiest foes by then, radically changes the spell accuracy. I'd recommend using save spells instead of spell attacks if you are not going to be trying to exploit true strike, but having your spell start off with a +1 tier of success 10% of the time is much better than a MC martial/caster casting a spell and attacking.

Giving the magus anything close to one strike roll for both the spell and the attack, would require that the whole process take 3 actions together (like eldritch archer) and not let one of the actions be possible as part of a hasted action.

[Unicore]

Basically, the places where people see the biggest discrepancies between the weapon proficiency and the spell proficiency are the places where the magus is most like to crit with their weapon the most, which has a much stronger effect on the spell part of the striking spell than people are factoring into their math.

The Magus weapon proficiency keeps up with a full martial, this makes their spells hit harder than any kind of MC gish is going to be able to keep up with.

[Kalaam]

I am not sure you need to one hand the Bastard Sword for True Strike since it is only a Vocal component.

And yeah, Magus with the right buffs and gear clearly can work. Slap some Rings on Wizardry on top and you're good.
I think most people's issue with Magus is that it needs all of that to work properly. Without staves etc, he is way less reliable (or burns his fuse too quickly). Of course, without all their items every class is weaker. But if you give just the appropriate weapons for their levels to different classes, it seems (just seems, I have yet to find a group to playtest it with) that the magus will be worst of.

Your example is very instructive still.

[Unicore]

Kalaam wrote:

I am not sure you need to one hand the Bastard Sword for True Strike since it is only a Vocal component.

And yeah, Magus with the right buffs and gear clearly can work. Slap some Rings on Wizardry on top and you're good.
I think most people's issue with Magus is that it needs all of that to work properly. Without staves etc, he is way less reliable (or burns his fuse too quickly). Of course, without all their items every class is weaker. But if you give just the appropriate weapons for their levels to different classes, it seems (just seems, I have yet to find a group to playtest it with) that the magus will be worst of.

Your example is very instructive still.

The magus sinking money into weapon runes is a huge mistake. Their focus spells are way better than an equal level martial will be using, and that wealth can be spent on giving the magus all kinds of neat tricks, especially because they advance at the same rate a wizard for being able to use consumables with spells on them.

Edit: You need the bastard sword 1 handed to be able to slide with your striking spell. The 6% of the time you miss with that first strike, or if you wait a round because you are not hasted, you can grip the sword with 2 hands.

[Kalaam]

Unicore wrote:

Kalaam wrote:

I am not sure you need to one hand the Bastard Sword for True Strike since it is only a Vocal component.

And yeah, Magus with the right buffs and gear clearly can work. Slap some Rings on Wizardry on top and you're good.
I think most people's issue with Magus is that it needs all of that to work properly. Without staves etc, he is way less reliable (or burns his fuse too quickly). Of course, without all their items every class is weaker. But if you give just the appropriate weapons for their levels to different classes, it seems (just seems, I have yet to find a group to playtest it with) that the magus will be worst of.

Your example is very instructive still.

The magus sinking money into weapon runes is a huge mistake. Their focus spells are way better than an equal level martial will be using, and that wealth can be spent on giving the magus all kinds of neat tricks, especially because they advance at the same rate a wizard for being able to use consumables with spells on them.

It is also something I aggree on and argued for the other day.

However I understand how it feels unsatisfying for a lot to have your class rely so much on accessories. A wizard without those trinkets will still feel "complete", and a fighter with a weapon will also feel complete (though less damage die and precision if the weapon has no runes) but for him it'll be numerical changes, not mechanical ones.

[Ferious Thune]

Magus Potency takes an action. You won't have it if you use that first round set of actions. Saving that 1 action at the start of combat is worth just buying the runes for the weapon, given that Magus is so strapped for action economy.

[Unicore]

The mechanics of the magus are incredibly subtle, and that might sink the class as a whole, because you probably need to play one from level 1 and make the relevant choices at each level, after participating in multiple encounters to really learn what items you need, what spells are going to be worthwhile and how to exploit your feats. This is true of the wizard as well, and as it turns out, the wizard gets a lot of hate as a result. People building and playing a level 13 wizard for the first time are going to have a horrible time, just as they have since the beginning of D&D unless they follow a specific guide that helps them navigate the choices. I would much rather have some classes in the game that have this much subtle flexibility than have their features blunted to the point that you can design an attack routine for the character at any level with 5 minutes of looking them over.

[Unicore]

Ferious Thune wrote:

Magus Potency takes an action. You won't have it if you use that first round set of actions. Saving that 1 action at the start of combat is worth just buying the runes for the weapon, given that Magus is so strapped for action economy.

At level 1 that won't be an option. By level 2 it might feel that way, and when you get the +1 striking rune at 5th level you might already have a similar weapon at your disposal. By level 7 and level 13, you will be way ahead though and with the runic impression ability, you would have to spend all of your gold to be able to keep at 50% of the power and flexibility that you can have in your weapons with your focus spells. There are levels where you are clearly ahead of other martial characters with your accuracy and your damage output without even factoring in your spells.

[Ferious Thune]

None of that addresses anything about the action economy problem. Spending an action to buff just to have a magic weapon on a class that is starved for actions seems like a really, really bad idea. Especially because one level later you could be spending that action to get the haste that you keep including in all of your scenarios.

[Unicore]

Ferious Thune wrote:

None of that addresses anything about the action economy problem. Spending an action to buff just to have a magic weapon on a class that is starved for actions seems like a really, really bad idea. Especially because one level later you could be spending that action to get the haste that you keep including in all of your scenarios.

Spending one round buffing yourself with 2 or 3 focus spells instead of 1 regular spell is probably worth doing in the vast majority of combats.

I think keeping weapons with 1 potency rune that is a level behind maximum, as well as some cheaper runes that do basic things, like shifting or returning is a fine use of your resources, it is just a waste to try to keep up with the best you can get when you can take cover the first round of combat and then be operating at a higher level than any of the martials around you. Writing off the power and utility of your focus spells because they cost 1 action, but stick around for the whole combat seems like a huge mistake to me

[Unicore]

Part of the mistake that I think some people are making in evaluating the magus is thinking that it is failing if it is not spellstriking and hitting with its melee attack and doing some damage with its spell every round.

That is like assuming that a melee martial is going to always be in easy range of their targets. Many times martials are better off not attacking in the first round and taking other actions to prepare for the enemy to come to you. The magus has really, really powerful options for this.

2 times I have seen barbarians die because they suddened charged and moved way too far forward to get a hit in, when the rest of the party was incapable of keeping up and being useful.

[Orithilaen]

I don't understand your math. How do you go from a 50% miss chance to a 5% miss chance on the disintegrate spell attack from a crit you have only a 43% chance of getting?

[Unicore]

Orithilaen wrote:

I don't understand your math. How do you go from a 50% miss chance to a 5% miss chance on the disintegrate spell attack from a crit you have only a 43% chance of getting?

I am not good at crunch all the percentages into a final calculation so i didn't.

When you crit with the weapon attack (something that has a 43% chance of happening), you have a 50% chance of landing a crit with your disintegrate spell.

[QuidEst]

Unicore wrote:

Ferious Thune wrote:

None of that addresses anything about the action economy problem. Spending an action to buff just to have a magic weapon on a class that is starved for actions seems like a really, really bad idea. Especially because one level later you could be spending that action to get the haste that you keep including in all of your scenarios.

Spending one round buffing yourself with 2 or 3 focus spells instead of 1 regular spell is probably worth doing in the vast majority of combats.

I think keeping weapons with 1 potency rune that is a level behind maximum, as well as some cheaper runes that do basic things, like shifting or returning is a fine use of your resources, it is just a waste to try to keep up with the best you can get when you can take cover the first round of combat and then be operating at a higher level than any of the martials around you. Writing off the power and utility of your focus spells because they cost 1 action, but stick around for the whole combat seems like a huge mistake to me

Sure, if you only have one fight for the day. I notice though that your build didn't grab familiar for the ability to recover more than one focus, so you're limited to getting keen only in a single fight. And if you ever don't get ten minutes of rest before a fight, you more or less don't participate in combat beyond flanking and doing half damage with a save-based cantrip.

I'd grab familiar, so that you can either use keen on two fights, or have a panic button if you don't get to refocus before a fight.

[Orithilaen]

Unicore wrote:

I am not good at crunch all the percentages into a final calculation so i didn't.

When you crit with the weapon attack (something that has a 43% chance of happening), you have a 50% chance of landing a crit with your disintegrate spell.

I'll do it, using your numbers.

Disintegrate base: 5% critical miss, 45% normal miss, 45% hit, 5% crit

Disintegrate when you crit on the weapon attack: 5% miss, 45% normal hit, 50% crit

Disintegrate when you miss on the weapon attack: no effect this round (but maybe you get to try again next round--using another true strike).

Weapon attack probabilities: 6.25% miss, 50%hit, 43.75% crit

Multiply through by the probability of each outcome:

Disintegrate crit: 2.5% + 21.875% = 24.375%
Disintegrate normal hit: 22.5% + 19.6875% = 42.1875%
Disintegrate miss: 22.5% + 2.1875% = 24.6875%
No effect this turn: 6.25%

So all that and you have a roughly ~31% chance of your spell not going off this round. (We're not getting into saving throws yet.)

Now compare true strike + disintegrate, normal unhasted round:
Disintegrate crit: you need a 20, so it's 9.75%
Disintegrate normal hit: you need an 11, so it's 65.25%
Disintegrate miss: anything else, so 25%

Your chance of your spell hitting this round is actually higher. Your chance of your spell outright missing is about the same (very slightly higher). Your chance of critting is a lot lower. You don't get the weapon damage. And you don't spend the action or the focus point on hasted assault. On the whole, the spellstrike sequence seems better, though it requires a lot to make it work.

[Ferious Thune]

There’s also the issue of only being able to recover 1 focus point between fights. If you’re using a FP on Magus Potency every fight, then you’re not using any other focus spell that fight unless you feel like it’s the last/biggest for the day. Throwing money at removing the need for taking an action and having to spend a limited resource is one of the easiest decisions in the game.

No, a Magus shouldn’t expect to do everything every round, and there are fights that they want to buff. But for example, if you Magus Potency, then cast a spell with striking spell and move up with Slide Casting, you’re buffed for the next round, but you’re now in front of the creature without even having a shield spell up.

If instead you cast Magus Potency and Hasted Assault and Shield, you’re giving the enemy a round to murder your party for free.

Compared to just hasted assault and a damaging spell on round one, then striking spell, move up, attack twice on round two.

Magus Potency is bad because the majority of the benefit that you get from it you can throw money at, it competes for your limited actions, and it competes for your limited focus points.

If it was just a straight buff to your weapon/attack at every level instead of just some it might be worth it, but even then I think it’s doubtful it would get used most fights.

[Unicore]

What I like about the magus math is that it is just works so much differently than the math for other classes. Critical effects on spells are incredible. We finally got a class that has features that specifically enable building to exploit that. Keep in mind, we are talking about using spells against higher level enemies right now as well. A region of spell casting in other classes that is much more focused on doing useful things with the miss effect.

I really hope we don't lose that.

[WWHsmackdown]

Unicore wrote:

What I like about the magus math is that it is just works so much differently than the math for other classes. Critical effects on spells are incredible. We finally got a class that has features that specifically enable building to exploit that. Keep in mind, we are talking about using spells against higher level enemies right now as well. A region of spell casting in other classes that is much more focused on doing useful things with the miss effect.

I really hope we don't lose that.

I very much hope we lose that if it means spellstrike is easier to set up and lands more reliably. I'll take functionality over very occasional awesomeness anyday

[shroudb]

Crit fishing through true strike spam from a shifting staff seems viable indeed, although i think disintegrate is bad choice for a spell for Magus.

I rather go for a normal save DC spell to have at least have effect on the ~55% of the rounds i'm not critting.

Haste is kinda mandatory for the class, since even when you're not true-striking you probably want to spell parry.

There are ways to get enough Hastes (as an example, on my sample build (Spell Miner), going Halfelf and getting the familiar gives you 2 self-Hastes by level 9, plus another 2 from Martial caster, and you have most of your day covered) but before level 9 it generally eats from your "damaging" spell pool to get them.

[Martialmasters]

What you showed me confirms my issues.

The crit mechanic needs to go in favor of the class performing consistently good before she after buffs. Not s!*+e before and stellar after.

That's just poor design and it's ight fun if your idea of fun is pulling slots. If you do enjoy that that is fine. But that should then be a playstyle to invest in but a basis for a class. I still very much disagree with this design.

[manbearscientist]

Unicore wrote:

The magus sinking money into weapon runes is a huge mistake. Their focus spells are way better than an equal level martial will be using, and that wealth can be spent on giving the magus all kinds of neat tricks, especially because they advance at the same rate a wizard for being able to use consumables with spells on them.

Edit: You need the bastard sword 1 handed to be able to slide with your striking spell. The 6% of the time you miss with that first strike, or if you wait a round because you are not hasted, you can grip the sword with 2 hands.

Unfortunately, while I think this could be the intention, I don't think it is necessarily the case.

First, it takes actions to charge up. Second, it doesn't replicate property runes.

You can't go from non-magical weapon, to +2 Striking with two property runes with the two focus spells. At best, you can go +2 Striking with one.

And it isn't true that the magus is universally ahead of the game. At level 1, sure. At level 5, your martials have already had a level to play with +1 striking weapons. It really only benefits you from level 7-9 and from 13-15. Which is a pretty small amount of the game.

[Lightdroplet]

Unicore wrote:

What I like about the magus math is that it is just works so much differently than the math for other classes. Critical effects on spells are incredible. We finally got a class that has features that specifically enable building to exploit that. Keep in mind, we are talking about using spells against higher level enemies right now as well. A region of spell casting in other classes that is much more focused on doing useful things with the miss effect.

I really hope we don't lose that.

I really hope we do lose that. A class' power should not come from stellar highs, separated by abysmal lows. Consistency is far more important if you want the class to feel fun to play as all the time. Crit-fishing should be left behind in 1e so that Magus can be rebuilt without it.

[Callin13]

I 100% agree

[Capn Cupcake]

The problem with these kinds of anecdotes is they rely on either

A) The stars aligning and everything going perfectly or

B) Tremendous resource expenditure which you can only do a couple of times per day.

I am so, so glad that you have found joy in a class that takes this much work to bring up to the baseline that every other class can do but most of us would like to be able to play it without needing everything to go perfectly and have the exact correct treasure and the exact right circumstances.

Your example is anecdotal indeed.

[shroudb]

Capn Cupcake wrote:

The problem with these kinds of anecdotes is they rely on either

A) The stars aligning and everything going perfectly or

B) Tremendous resource expenditure which you can only do a couple of times per day.

I am so, so glad that you have found joy in a class that takes this much work to bring up to the baseline that every other class can do but most of us would like to be able to play it without needing everything to go perfectly and have the exact correct treasure and the exact right circumstances.

Your example is anecdotal indeed.

Not really though.

Let's take my build, at level 9 he has 4 Hastes per day and 7 True strikes.

True strikes are reserved for his 4th and 5th level damaging spells, and he has the equivalent of fighter attack bonus (+1 from Potency and +1 from Marshal Stance)

[Capn Cupcake]

shroudb wrote:

Capn Cupcake wrote:

The problem with these kinds of anecdotes is they rely on either

A) The stars aligning and everything going perfectly or

B) Tremendous resource expenditure which you can only do a couple of times per day.

I am so, so glad that you have found joy in a class that takes this much work to bring up to the baseline that every other class can do but most of us would like to be able to play it without needing everything to go perfectly and have the exact correct treasure and the exact right circumstances.

Your example is anecdotal indeed.

Not really though.

Let's take my build, at level 9 he has 4 Hastes per day and 7 True strikes.

True strikes are reserved for his 4th and 5th level damaging spells, and he has the equivalent of fighter attack bonus (+1 from Potency and +1 from Marshal Stance)

Okay I'll bite, where is he getting 7 True Strikes from?

[shroudb]

he cast level 5 spells. So his staff of divination naturally gets 5 charges.
Magus is a prepared spellcaster, so he can sacrifice a spell at daily prep to get equal amount of charges, he sacrifices his 2nd level spell he gets from his familiar (max spell level-3)for the extra 2 charges.
The familiar is also the one that's providing the 4th Haste through Innate Surge.

[Angel Hunter D]

shroudb wrote:

he cast level 5 spells. So his staff of divination naturally gets 5 charges.

Magus is a prepared spellcaster, so he can sacrifice a spell at daily prep to get equal amount of charges, he sacrifices his 2nd level spell he gets from his familiar for the extra 2 charges.

I don't really think the staff should be considered when we're trying to evaluate a class.

[Capn Cupcake]

shroudb wrote:

he cast level 5 spells. So his staff of divination naturally gets 5 charges.

Magus is a prepared spellcaster, so he can sacrifice a spell at daily prep to get equal amount of charges, he sacrifices his 2nd level spell he gets from his familiar for the extra 2 charges.

Okay. And if you don't have the perfect treasure to play this character? Like that's my point. A class should be able to function on its own without needing to rely on DM fiat to give it class fixing items. Outside of basic math fixing items the game assumes you have like magic weapons, any class should be able to function on its own. Otherwise it's no different than homebrewing a fix in the form of magic items.

"Yeah the class isn't great but if you give it an additional 5 True Strikes a day then it's a lot of fun"

[WWHsmackdown]

shroudb wrote:

he cast level 5 spells. So his staff of divination naturally gets 5 charges.

Magus is a prepared spellcaster, so he can sacrifice a spell at daily prep to get equal amount of charges, he sacrifices his 2nd level spell he gets from his familiar (max spell level-3)for the extra 2 charges.
The familiar is also the one that's providing the 4th Haste through Innate Surge.

So staff is the only functional path for magus? And in top of that, only people with system mastery should bother to play one? I'll say no to both. Better to make spellstrike easier to do and nerf the damage

[shroudb]

I'm not sure that we shouldnt.

Staff of divination is arguably the best way to crit fish in this edition and Magus is still a critfishing class like PF1.

Any consideration for class balance has to account for that.

[shroudb]

I'm not arguing if that's the way it should be.

What i'm saying is, that currently, this option DOES exist and should be taken into account.

[Capn Cupcake]

shroudb wrote:

I'm not sure that we shouldnt.

Staff of divination is arguably the best way to crit fish in this edition and Magus is still a critfishing class like PF1.

Any consideration for class balance has to account for that.

Then my argument doesn't change. Striking Spell is badly designed and it shouldn't be designed this way.

[Lightdroplet]

shroudb wrote:

he cast level 5 spells. So his staff of divination naturally gets 5 charges.

Magus is a prepared spellcaster, so he can sacrifice a spell at daily prep to get equal amount of charges, he sacrifices his 2nd level spell he gets from his familiar (max spell level-3)for the extra 2 charges.
The familiar is also the one that's providing the 4th Haste through Innate Surge.

I've got a question for you. Which Synthesis is the Magus using that he can fight while holding a staff and a weapon? None of the three we have would work in that kind of setup. Unless he's meleeing with the Staff, which is inadvisable at best given the full martial proficiency Magi gets.

[shroudb]

Lightdroplet wrote:

shroudb wrote:

he cast level 5 spells. So his staff of divination naturally gets 5 charges.

Magus is a prepared spellcaster, so he can sacrifice a spell at daily prep to get equal amount of charges, he sacrifices his 2nd level spell he gets from his familiar (max spell level-3)for the extra 2 charges.
The familiar is also the one that's providing the 4th Haste through Innate Surge.

I've got a question for you. Which Synthesis is the Magus using that he can fight while holding a staff and a weapon? None of the three we have would work in that kind of setup. Unless he's meleeing with the Staff, which is inadvisable at best given the full martial proficiency Magi gets.

you can put shifting rune into the staff to change it into another 1 hander, in my case a Pick.

[Lightdroplet]

shroudb wrote:

Lightdroplet wrote:

shroudb wrote:

he cast level 5 spells. So his staff of divination naturally gets 5 charges.

Magus is a prepared spellcaster, so he can sacrifice a spell at daily prep to get equal amount of charges, he sacrifices his 2nd level spell he gets from his familiar (max spell level-3)for the extra 2 charges.
The familiar is also the one that's providing the 4th Haste through Innate Surge.

I've got a question for you. Which Synthesis is the Magus using that he can fight while holding a staff and a weapon? None of the three we have would work in that kind of setup. Unless he's meleeing with the Staff, which is inadvisable at best given the full martial proficiency Magi gets.

you can put shifting rune into the staff to change it into another 1 hander, in my case a Pick.

Oh, so you have a DM that lets you do that. I've seen a few rule it out due to them feeling it passed the "too good to be true" line. (Which I personally agree with) So your build relies on a ruling which is inconsistent at best.

[Ressy]

Well, you've at least shown that one should absolutely not be playing a magus if you're in a game where the GM isn't letting you get exactly the magic items you want/need. I've been in a few of those games.

On the other hand, if your GM lets you go past wealth per level, with total freedom to get whatever items you want, Magus will probably get a larger boost than other classes. Seeing as they can take advantage of both Caster items and Martial items.

[Unicore]

Shroudb is hitting all the major points here, so I will only want to add that anyone attempting to "fix" the striking spell mechanic also has to account for what will happen when players stack true strike on the attack roll.

Eldritch Archer does make it incredibly difficult to true strike your super shot, but it does that by being one single activity that takes three actions. Striking Spell as it is currently written gets away with delivering all of its nastiness on a single melee strike used before the next round, which opens up all kinds of interesting martial MC options as well as Spell casting ones.

There are lot more interesting things to do with striking spell than we have scratched the surface of. I personally would rather this stay true at the cost of the feature itself looking a little bland in isolation, than have it locked up into a 3 action activity that can't be combined with anything.

[Unicore]

Also the staff of divination is a pretty low level item. The GM has to be pretty active in denying it to you by the time you are 10th to 13th level.

[shroudb]

Lightdroplet wrote:

shroudb wrote:

Lightdroplet wrote:

shroudb wrote:

he cast level 5 spells. So his staff of divination naturally gets 5 charges.

Magus is a prepared spellcaster, so he can sacrifice a spell at daily prep to get equal amount of charges, he sacrifices his 2nd level spell he gets from his familiar (max spell level-3)for the extra 2 charges.
The familiar is also the one that's providing the 4th Haste through Innate Surge.

I've got a question for you. Which Synthesis is the Magus using that he can fight while holding a staff and a weapon? None of the three we have would work in that kind of setup. Unless he's meleeing with the Staff, which is inadvisable at best given the full martial proficiency Magi gets.

you can put shifting rune into the staff to change it into another 1 hander, in my case a Pick.

Oh, so you have a DM that lets you do that. I've seen a few rule it out due to them feeling it passed the "too good to be true" line. (Which I personally agree with) So your build relies on a ruling which is inconsistent at best.

Not really.

\
The rule specifically says "You can put runes to staffs as normal weapons"

Quote:

Source Core Rulebook pg. 592 1.1

Staves are also staff weapons, included in their Price. They can be etched with runes as normal for a staff. This doesn’t alter any of their spellcasting abilities.

Those arguing against it dont argue using "too good to be true" but argue that staves are specific weapons, when there is a seperate table that has "specific weapons" and make no mention of staves. Plus, you would think that if staves couldnt be runed with property runes, then the rules would say "staffs can be runed with fundamental runes" instead of saying "staves can be runed as normal staff weapons"

Also, i'm the GM like 99% of the time in my group.

[Lightdroplet]

shroudb wrote:

Those arguing against it dont argue using "too good to be true" but argue that staves are specific weapons, when there is a seperate table that has "specific weapons" and make no mention of staves.

I am not interested in debating this, but I have seen the "too good to be true" ruling applied to that more than once. That means I would be far behind in how effective my character would just based on one specific, still unclear ruling. Which in my mind is a significant design flaw.

[shroudb]

well debating it or not, for most tables (at least for every table i sat and every table i gmed) so far everyone has agreed to let runes on staves when shown the "staves are also staff weapons and can be runed as normal" actual rule on the book.

Since this is a playtest, i prefer to go with as strict RAW as possible, and that enables this approach.

[PossibleCabbage]

We just came from an era of a cookie cutter magus build with dervish dancing shocking grasp Magi.

I wonder if Striking Spell should be prevented from stacking with True Strike so it can be better, just to prevent every other Magus from owning a shifting staff of divination.

It's okay if one build is powerful, but if every other build is decidedly less so that's not great.

[Unicore]

So I think one major issue that the magus is running into in play testing, is that a bunch of armchair designers have had a year now to imagine how the magus features were going to look, that when it dropped, and it looked different than they expected, they are spending their time on these boards trying to argue that their idea is better, rather than looking honestly at what is present in the class and how to have fun with it.

For me, the ability to crit fish like no other class in the game, and do so with spells that have some of the most fun and interesting crit riders in the game is incredibly new design space I had never considered before. I haven't even started to look at what you can do with martial MCs that do cool things with your ability to make a strike.

One thing I really respect and enjoy about PF2 is that most of the core mechanics are all very similar to each other, but the classes give you very small ways of really turning those mechanics on their head. The ranger and the hunted shot for example. Subtle, but overall quite game changing.

The Magus is similar in that, on the surface striking spell is relatively subtle and not that different from a caster/martial casting a spell and making an attack roll. However, the sliding synthesis and the crit slider of on the weapon attack actually add a lot of difference, if you set yourself up to exploit it. I don't want the magus to invalidate MC gishes as a waste of time. I don't want them to just be flatly better than cast a spell and attack in a turn. I want them to do something different than that in a way that previous Gish builds cant. The current spell strike does that.

True strike is the obvious stand out way to exploit that. The keen weapon rune on the runic impression is another, less grand, but viable option for dealing with enemies that you can't get the accuracy advantage on. A familiar and familiar focus can be a good way to exploit what you can do with your focus powers, which again, it seems like people are trying harder to write off and demand work differently, rather than evaluate for what they can be used to do.

[shroudb]

That said, i do think that an alternative on causing a major price spike on Staves of Divination across Golarion would be appreciated.

Being a Fortune effect it's easy to design a seperate class feature that's also a Fortune effect and helps with crit-fishing, what's hard is finding a way to make it so that you can't stack it with the bunch of free true strikes from a Staff.

Except if they make it something like a synthesis for two-handers.

[CForCartosin]

I'm sorry but I just don't see this way of the magus being appealing to many people. You have to have a very specific set up with treasure and spells and having a chance to prebuff and have everything just right to make it really work. This setup requires a specific staff, the ability to prebuff, the enemies to be within your stride distance on the first turn, and then rolling decently (true strike definitely helps with this part). Otherwise this whole thing will require 1 to 2 round of setup at the beginning of a combat, in a game where most combats I've had last about 5 or so rounds, or you could just roll unlucky and waste all that setup for nothing. And even if everything goes really right with you critting with the martial attack and that causing your spell attack to crit, which is about an 11% chance. You're still relying on the white dragon can still only fail their fort save against your spell DC because they succeed on a natural 1, they have to roll a 10 or lower to fail. So the damage you are getting is only going to be 120 damage. And that's with every roll going perfectly and a whole turn used for it. For all that work, any average fighter is going to be doing the same damage as you did with all that setup and PERFECT luck on all your rolls in about 2 rounds with average rolls and zero setup needed.

[Capn Cupcake]

Unicore wrote:

So I think one major issue that the magus is running into in play testing, is that a bunch of armchair designers have had a year now to imagine how the magus features were going to look, that when it dropped, and it looked different than they expected, they are spending their time on these boards trying to argue that their idea is better, rather than looking honestly at what is present in the class and how to have fun with it.

For me, the ability to crit fish like no other class in the game, and do so with spells that have some of the most fun and interesting crit riders in the game is incredibly new design space I had never considered before. I haven't even started to look at what you can do with martial MCs that do cool things with your ability to make a strike.

One thing I really respect and enjoy about PF2 is that most of the core mechanics are all very similar to each other, but the classes give you very small ways of really turning those mechanics on their head. The ranger and the hunted shot for example. Subtle, but overall quite game changing.

The Magus is similar in that, on the surface striking spell is relatively subtle and not that different from a caster/martial casting a spell and making an attack roll. However, the sliding synthesis and the crit slider of on the weapon attack actually add a lot of difference, if you set yourself up to exploit it. I don't want the magus to invalidate MC gishes as a waste of time. I don't want them to just be flatly better than cast a spell and attack in a turn. I want them to do something different than that in a way that previous Gish builds cant. The current spell strike does that.

True strike is the obvious stand out way to exploit that. The keen weapon rune on the runic impression is another, less grand, but viable option for dealing with enemies that you can't get the accuracy advantage on. A familiar and familiar focus can be a good way to exploit what you can do with your focus powers, which again, it seems like people are trying harder to...

There's a large gap between "This isn't what I wanted so I'm upset about it" and "Crit fishing is an inherently unhealthy design because the highs are too high and the lows are too low and it's just too swingy to be healthy for the game" and insulting people who recognize that probably isn't doing you any favors. You like crit fishing. Good for you. Most people don't. Right now the only way to make the Magus even remotely viable is to twist the campaign into knots around the Magus's whims and I'm very glad you get joy out of doing that but that's not viable or healthy for most tables.

But you need to stop insinuating people who are aware of the inherent flaws in its current design are somehow disingenuous or unreasonable just because you find joy in something that's going to frustrate 80% of the people who play the class.

[Unicore]

Orithilaen wrote:

Lots of math to say:

Your chance of your spell hitting this round is actually higher. Your chance of your spell outright missing is about the same (very slightly higher). Your chance of critting is a lot lower. You don't get the weapon damage. And you don't spend the action or the focus point on hasted assault. On the whole, the spellstrike sequence seems better, though it requires a lot to make it work.

Thanks for running these numbers, I actually agree with Shroudb that disintegrate probably isn't as much fun as thinking about throwing debilitating spells that require saves on the striking spell, as those are spells you can't otherwise use Truestrike to cheese. Giving yourself close to a 25% crit chance with a nasty save spell against a level +2 monster is a pretty incredible ability. Again I feel like I am only in the beginning stages of seeing everything a Magus can pull off.

[shroudb]

Having a Gish needing a round to buff himself at the start of combat isnt something new, nor is it something that necessarily has to change.

Having a buff round in the start of combat is also negates the issue of distance, since that means that you need to be within striding distance on round 2, not on round 1, which is certainly more easy.

Overly relying on a singular piece of gear does make it seem like a tax though, and this is not something i'm fond to start seeing in PF2.

AS ONE approach? it's cool to exist. As the ONLY approach? Nope.

[Unicore]

shroudb wrote:

That said, i do think that an alternative on causing a major price spike on Staves of Divination across Golarion would be appreciated.

Being a Fortune effect it's easy to design a seperate class feature that's also a Fortune effect and helps with crit-fishing, what's hard is finding a way to make it so that you can't stack it with the bunch of free true strikes from a Staff.

Except if they make it something like a synthesis for two-handers.

Especially because the spell sticks around for an extra turn so you have 6 actions to really work with. For example, one advantage of using a spell attack spell for the spell is you can use true strike on the weapon attack, and then use your hero point to reroll a bad spell attack. You can't do that with a save spell