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Inspired by Midnight Joker's quote that PF2 should play smooth and be improved by tactics, I have come up with a rework the ability to match a lesser version of the AOA NPC's . It would read like this:
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Striking Spell (Free Action)
Metamagic, Fortune
Frequency: once per round
Trigger: You begin to Cast a Spell that targets 1 creature.
Effect: You channel the Spell through a weapon or your body. Make a Strike against a target within reach. If the Strike is successful, the target is automatically subject to the Spell. If the Spell required an attack roll, the target is hit, even if you rolled a critical hit. If the Spell required a saving throw, the target takes a -2 penalty to their saving throw instead. That penalty increases to -3 if you are an expert with your weapon or unarmed attack and to -4 if you are a master.
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My case for it:
- Narratively fits the spell-imbuing premise.
- Easier to understand.
- The tactics department would still come into play quite often since you'd not have True Strike. However, your chance to hit would be improved because you're using your martial strike. You're still 'high risk, high reward' because of your few slots.
- The 'keeping your spell on a martial miss' idea could become something like Recall Spell working as a focus spell or standalone ability similar to Drain bonded item. This would bring your slots to effectivelly 3/3. You could even have Second Chance Spell Strike as is, coming into play as a powerful lvl. 18 ability.
- Int is not dumped. You still depend on it for Save spells and your proficiency will lag behind a caster's.
- Casters would not be outshined. They'd still have more slots, unique abilities and a higher spell save DC .
Magi should be, IMO, the best at using attacking spells. A Shocking Grasp infused blade should feel more dangerous than a Wizard's electrified hand in the same way that their mind control should be harder to resist than the one steming from the character that spent their precious magic school years swinging swords.
- Crit rider effect replaces one of the mid or high tier abilities. I intentionally made the spell only be a hit (not crit) if the melee strike connects. Its still viable, but rather than creating the class that needs to crit fish, we have a cool class that can be cooler by crit fishing.
- Synthesis -es stay pretty much the same:
-> Slide gives you movement (could be reduced to half Stride speed while the portal feat improves it to full Stride speed)
-> Sustaining Steel: remains the same
-> Shooting Star: maybe needs to be reworked to not outshine the Eldritch Archer, though, I don't know, if MC Magi never got syntheis-es, Eldritch Archer would still be the way to go for non-Magi. To me its more of a Monk/Martial Artist comparison than a 'this Archetype needs to work with the new class' situation.
- Cantrip use would be incentivized. You can either hit reliably for less damage and maybe go for a weakness or attempt to strike more times for a higher damage output.
- I think the class would be closer to but still be behind Rogue, Flurry Ranger and Barbarian in damage dealing terms. They'd still get few slots to compensate for their ability to go nova.
- You'd still get versatility. With this, you're basically freeing up an action that could be used to stride, grapple, trip, shove, demoralize and feint, among others.
I really like it, although I have a couple of nitpicks:
First, metamagic abilities are used before the altered spell is cast, so keeping the Metamagic trait on Striking Spell doesn't seem appropriate to this new version given how it is used after you start casting the spell. (And it not being metamagic means it can get renamed to the simpler and more traditional Spellstrike instead due to not having to follow the naming convention for metamagic actions.)
Also, I think it should be given the Flourish trait instead of having 1 use per turn as Frequency. This achieves the same goal, while also ensuring you can't stack it with other powerful Flourish abilities from archetypes, which could result in unexpected power spikes.
Finally, although this might be a bit larger of a change, I think it should have wording similar to other dual attack abilities about it couting as two attacks for the purpose of MAP but only if you use an Attack spell. Something like this:
Additionally, if the spell required an attack roll, this counts as two attacks when calculating your multiple attack penalty.
Not bad!
It is likely too strong with Save spells. -3/4 to Saves is just a pretty massive decrease to a person's save.
Even with Magus lagging behind in Proficiency, that would put their net casting kind of above the casters they are emulating when they land a Striking Spell, as opposed to even (which is where I personally feel they should be).
I would also say the "automatic hit" of a Spell Attack Roll could probably simply be "Spell Attack Rolls receive the Potency bonus from your weapon to the attack roll" and then drop the Fortune trait, that or simply extend the same bonus (+2 to hit) to the Spell Attack Rolls.
But those are my personal opinions. If you just dropped the scaling proficiency bit at the end, that'd probably be relatively close to balanced though (the rest is just my personal preferences).
Not bad!
It is likely too strong with Save spells. -3/4 to Saves is just a pretty massive decrease to a person's save.
Even with Magus lagging behind in Proficiency, that would put their net casting kind of above the casters they are emulating when they land a Striking Spell, as opposed to even (which is where I personally feel they should be).
I would also say the "automatic hit" of a Spell Attack Roll could probably simply be "Spell Attack Rolls receive the Potency bonus from your weapon to the attack roll" and then drop the Fortune trait, that or simply extend the same bonus (+2 to hit) to the Spell Attack Rolls.
But those are my personal opinions. If you just dropped the scaling proficiency bit at the end, that'd probably be relatively close to balanced though (the rest is just my personal preferences).
** spoiler omitted **
Sorry about that! Would be totally fine with what you or Lightdroplet suggested!
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Could also make it -2 on the save (nonscaling), -4 on a crit instead.
I feel like with the fortune trait on the effect you can have it do more on a crit (crit spell attacks, bigger penalty on save) without worrying too much about true Strike abuse. Superbufifng a magus should be theoretically equivalent to superbuffing a barbarian.
Maybe get the save debuff be a higher level upgrade of spellstrike, so only pure Magus gets them (like level 7 for -2 and level 15 for -4)
One thing that was brought up on my 2-action suggestion (I'm partial to 1-action right now) is that baking the strike into the activity means you can't use it with other combat feats as easily.
In effect, I think casting the spell at an action discount and having it simply "charge the receptacle" might be the smoothest.
I do think that a slight penalty on the saves works out well though, and anything to stop crit fishing is good in my books.