| CaffeinatedNinja |
Thought I would toss out my quick review of some of the Magus feats, just initial thoughts and some actual playtime.
LVL 1
Arcane Fists - ****/* - If you want an unarmed magus, mandatory! If you don't, useless. Weird thing is magus doesn't get a lvl 1 feat so if you aren't a human and want to be a monk magus, you have to wait for lvl 2.
Combat Assessment - **** - Essential. Action economy is king, and magus has the int to be good at recall knowledge. Great feat.
Eschew Materials - * - Why, just why?
Familiar - ** - I am not a huge familiar guy, but others rate them higher. Not sure how magus is supposed to use one well though, he has no actions to spare.
Raise a tome - * - Really? Cool idea, 4 stars for flavor. But you can't hold anything in your hand while using 1h style, so when does this come up. Also the book has to be related to the subject, which seems meh. I suppose there is a combo with combat assessment here, but that is a problem when they are both lvl 1 feats. Conflicts with spell parry too.
LVL 2
Cantrip Expansion - ** - Decent if you want cantrips, but a wizard MC is strictly superior here.
Enhanced Familiar - ** - See Above
Spirit Sheath - * - Just no. Awesome flavor don't get me wrong, love the flavor. But +2 to conceal your weapon is insanely situational. Some campaigns will like it, many will never use it. The rest is just a massively worse version of quickdraw. Only works on the one weapon. Only when casting a spell for spirit strike. At least quickdraw works all the time and you can use it on other weapons, like if you want to throw something or switch weapons.
4th Level
Bespell Strikes - ** - Only 4 spells, so not going to get to use this that often. Magus focus spells are mostly unusuable (Potency does nothing 2/3 of the time) so that won't trigger it. All that for a little damage. Which encourages you to stand in front of something swinging. Which equals death. Also if you use it with spell strike you either get this for 1 hit, or use it at the start of your turn which means you wasted one of your no MAP spellstrike hits. Minimal use.
Spell Parry - ** - Love the flavor of this for sure. Although I think AC (regular parry) is better early game when you will be using this. If this gave you + 1 saves to all spells, not just the ones that target you, would be better. And magus does not have the action economy to use it.
Steady Spellcasting - * - No
6th Level
Energized Strikes - *** - By the time you get it, this is 2 damage of one of many energy types to every hit. Really nice. Unfortunately it interferes with spell strike again(wasting a map hit). Also same level as Martial Caster
Martial Caster - **** - Great. This should be a class feature, not a feat. Magus needs this badly. Also a couple of the spell choices are weird. No magus ever is going to use mage armor or magic weapon. Magic weapon is obsolete at this point, and Mage armor has to be cast at max level to be useful (Hint, you have armor, use that.)
Spell Countermeasures - *** - Really nice reaction. I love it. But it shares lvl 6 with the first two abilities, which are both essential.
(Summary, Lvl 6 has good stuff, too much in one level, martial caster should be built in!)
Lvl 8
Capture Spell - ** - 4 points for flavor! Love that. But you have to be targetted (area of effect won't do) and your parry has to be up, and you succeed at the save. Lot of ifs. Magus doesn't really have the action economy to parry sadly.
Standby Spell - **** - Awesome. This lets you make one spell your favorite so you don't have to fill all your slots with it. This should come earlier or be a class feature maybe, and wizards should get this! This feat would make prepared caster's lives so much easier.
Runic Impression - * - Your weapon should already have runes. How often do you really really need to change runes? Maybe to hit a weakness? Eh. Take standby spell, skip this.
Spell Swipe - ** - Cool idea. Not sure how well it works in practice, since your foes have to be in melee reach and adjacent to each other. Maybe an argument for 2h reach Magus?
Ok, that is as far as I got. Let me know what you think!
| shroudb |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You dont need to be spending Actions for Familiar to shine.
It can give you 2 extra spells per day, 1 through Innate Surge and another through Spell whateveryoucall it (max level-3) and that's excellent for a 1st level feat.
Spell parry gives the AC bonus vs every attack, not only against spells, so it's a very nice feat to have if you have an extra action to spare (+1 to AC and +1 to saves vs a lot of stuff)
plus it leads to Capture that when it triggers is basically free spells AND free 2 actions for the next round, which is simply amazing. While it wont trigger every fight, magical effects get thrown around quite often that you are bound to benefit from it often enough imo.
Runic Impression. The real kicker is the "keen" enchant at level 13+, an otherwise uncommon Property (so it could be barred to you without the feat) that's simply amazing for every crit fishing martial (and amgus is one of those due to how spellstrike upgrades spells if you crit)
Energised strikes lasts for a minute, so i dont see how this interferes with your MAP, like at all? It's not an attack. It's basically use 1 action to get +2 -+ 4 on your attacks. Not THAT great because you dont multiattack but you usually rely on 1 max 2 attacks per round, but it's not that bad either.
| CaffeinatedNinja |
Energised strikes lasts for a minute, so i dont see how this interferes with your MAP, like at all? It's not an attack. It's basically use 1 action to get +2 -+ 4 on your attacks. Not THAT great because you dont multiattack but you usually rely on 1 max 2 attacks per round, but it's not that bad either.
The way spellstrike currently works you have the rest of the round after you cast the spell and the next round to hit. If you fail to hit, you lose the spell.
So if you use energize after spell strike, that is a full turn. You just used one of your no MAP attacks. That basically doubles the chance you will lose the spell entirely by never hitting.
Energize works much better if you aren't using spell strike, so that isn't a concern. But if you aren't useing spell strike, you are casting spells at bad proficiency, etc etc. So your first round is what, cast a cantrip and energize and keep standing back, don't engage till first round? Maybe
| shroudb |
shroudb wrote:
Energised strikes lasts for a minute, so i dont see how this interferes with your MAP, like at all? It's not an attack. It's basically use 1 action to get +2 -+ 4 on your attacks. Not THAT great because you dont multiattack but you usually rely on 1 max 2 attacks per round, but it's not that bad either.The way spellstrike currently works you have the rest of the round after you cast the spell and the next round to hit. If you fail to hit, you lose the spell.
So if you use energize after spell strike, that is a full turn. You just used one of your no MAP attacks. That basically doubles the chance you will lose the spell entirely by never hitting.
Energize works much better if you aren't using spell strike, so that isn't a concern. But if you aren't useing spell strike, you are casting spells at bad proficiency, etc etc. So your first round is what, cast a cantrip and energize and keep standing back, don't engage till first round? Maybe
Well, sure, but it's entirely possible, like more probable than not, that at 1st round you wont be attacking either way due to distance of engagment. So, Striking spell->cantrip->energised Spell, does give you a passive boost on every attack for the combat while not really wasting an attack.
that was a specific example, sure, but it's not something uncommon.
That said, as i pointed before, i think the 2 major issues of Energised are a)it competes with MArtial Caster which feals almost like a feat tax (i cant imagine any build NOT taking this feat), and b)not enough Strikes to actually benefit that much out of it (you are usually only striking once per round)
| CaffeinatedNinja |
Well, sure, but it's entirely possible, like more probable than not, that at 1st round you wont be attacking either way due to distance of engagment. So, Striking spell->cantrip->energised Spell, does give you a passive boost on every attack for the combat while not really wasting an attack.that was a specific example, sure, but it's not something uncommon.
That said, as i pointed before, i think the 2 major issues of Energised are a)it competes with MArtial Caster which feals almost like a feat tax (i cant imagine any build NOT taking this feat), and b)not enough Strikes to actually benefit that much out of it (you are usually only striking once per round)
As to the first, you can slide in when casting spell strike, so in 2 actions you can cast and close the distance, then strike. So it costs you that.
As to the second part, absolutely. Martial caster is completely a feat tax, it should be part of the class.
| shroudb |
I was accounting slide, but at this point it's semantics.
An action to give a passive boost to damage may or may not be better than a second chance to land the strike. That "may or may not" is directly tied to how many attacks you will benefit from it. And as i said, due to how magus work, not many.
Not a bad feat, not a great one either, i actually agree with your rating (but for slightly different reasons).
That said, i still disagree on the other ones i pointed out for the reasons i wrote in the first post (all in good faith though, i assume the rason why you asked opinions about your ratings in your post was exactly that)
| Capn Cupcake |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I was accounting slide, but at this point it's semantics.
An action to give a passive boost to damage may or may not be better than a second chance to land the strike. That "may or may not" is directly tied to how many attacks you will benefit from it. And as i said, due to how magus work, not many.
Not a bad feat, not a great one either, i actually agree with your rating (but for slightly different reasons).
That said, i still disagree on the other ones i pointed out for the reasons i wrote in the first post (all in good faith though, i assume the rason why you asked opinions about your ratings in your post was exactly that)
I'm not advocating this as positive health for the class but rather trying to salvage what we've been given
Would it be better to just...cantrip and Energizing Strikes then spend future turns attacking twice? I honestly feel like that might actually be the best way to play the class as frustrating as that is.
| CaffeinatedNinja |
I was accounting slide, but at this point it's semantics.
That said, i still disagree on the other ones i pointed out for the reasons i wrote in the first post (all in good faith though, i assume the rason why you asked opinions about your ratings in your post was exactly that)
Well of course, didn't want people to just praise my wisdom lol.
I agree that spell parry is nice, just not sure if 1 ac + 1 saves vs targetted spells is equal to regular parry. It would be better if magus had the action economy to use it more. I note that at lvl 14 there is a feat that lets you use spell parry as a reaction and makes it +2/+2. Perhaps if spell parry were a reaction? Magus doesn't have much use for their reactions otherwise.
Runic Impression, that is an interesting point about uncommon runes. But if you don't have access to it normally, would Runic Impression give you access?
| shroudb |
Depends, if you're Hasted and dont want to True Strike you do have an action left.
That can be a second Strike or a spell Parry.
Spell Parry + Capture is basically encounter winning vs spell heavy encounters by itself giving you free spells AND 2 free actions per turn basically.
+1 to AC and +1 to saves as an action is not a bad option to have in more defensive positions either.
| CaffeinatedNinja |
Depends, if you're Hasted and dont want to True Strike you do have an action left.
That can be a second Strike or a spell Parry.
Spell Parry + Capture is basically encounter winning vs spell heavy encounters by itself giving you free spells AND 2 free actions per turn basically.+1 to AC and +1 to saves as an action is not a bad option to have in more defensive positions either.
True, although it just occurred to me that since you have the shield cantrip you will likely use that first, since it can also block damage.
| CaffeinatedNinja |
Now with lvl 10 Feats -
Cascading Ray- * - Awful. Good idea, but a couple of problems. First, it is spell attack. Spell attack is bad in this game because the numbers never catch up to melee. (Not sure why that has never been fixed, but anyways..) Second, magus is not as good as a regular caster for that, as his proficiency often lags behind and his stats are usually worse. Third, you use the MAP penalty. So best case you are -5, -10 if you used a spell attack spell. (Why do spell attacks apply to MAP, they are already bad, but anyways.) So in theory a second target is great. In practics you odds of hitting are miniscule.
Comet Spell - ** - Not bad with the right positioning. You don't have to hit with the initial spell, just discharge it. And unlike cascading ray you don't have to roll to hit, and they take full damage. So if you cast a lvl 5 spell, and it was evocation, you do 7 force damage to each creature in a line. I mean not a ton of damage, but it is free, repeatable, and with the right positioning could be good?
Healer's Steel - ** - So, striking spell lvl 5, gain 10 health at lvl 10. Not horrible, because free actions never are. Striking spell is mostly useless right now, but I assume that will change. But the more I think about it, the less it works. I mean you have 4-6 spells depending on feats. That is one, maybe 2 spells a fight. Sustaining steel seems to want to be used before you get hit. This one is better after you get hit. So, which is it? I think this would be a lot better if it gave you the choice of healing OR an extra amount of temp hp stacking with sustained steel.
Portal Slide - *** - Good ability to avoid AoA and clear space. Hampered by the fact that striking spell is bad.
Quickened Spellstrike - **** - Great. Except striking spell should have this incorporated all the time to be even halfway decent. Once a day you are ok with this spell. wtf?
Lvl 12 -
Bespelled Persistence - ** - Bespelled strikes is bad. Arguably the magus is supposed to be spell striking, which means actual sword swings are not as often as other martials. This is only good if you take that, so... This is good if you have an enemy with a weakness though, as you can give it persistent damage to it's weakness potentially.
Magic Sense - * - 12th level feat to get a cantrip. Ok...
Overwhelming Spellstrike - ** - So if a foe is resistant to my damage, this will do your level in extra damage to it. Eh, not great. IF the enemy has resistance, usually better to hit it with a different element, although I suppose you don't always have one. This won't help with immunities, and only single target.