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The party!
A: an alchemist who favored pepper bombs
B: a dragon summoner
C: a gnome flickmace magus
D: a human sustaining steel magus
I played the gnome flickmace magus. I built the sustaining steel magus for a player who didn't have time to build a character for themself. It is largely a conversion of their ranger character.
STR 16
DEX 14
CON 14
INT 18
WIS 12
CHA 12
AC 26; Fort +14, Ref +14, Will +13
hp 88
Slide Casting Synthesis
1st- Gnome Weapon Familiarity
2nd Spirit Sheath
3rd Gnome Obsession
4th Striker's Scroll
5th Gnome weapon innovation
6th Energize Strikes
8th Runic Impression
Skill feats went mostly to downtime activities
4th- phantasmal killer, vampiric maiden
3rd- haste, shocking grasp
cantrips: daze (staff), chill touch, electric arc, produce flame, prestidigitation, ray of frost
Additionally, scroll of command on the +1 striking frost flickmace, goblin pox on a hook hammer kept in the spirit sheath, and hideous laughter and touch of idiocy on a pair of kukris.
STR 18
DEX 14
CON 14
INT 18
WIS 12
CHA 10
AC 26; Fort +14, Ref +14, Will +13
hp 88
Sustaining Steel Synthesis
1st- Familiar
2nd Fighter Dedication
4th Attack of Opportunity
6th Energize Strikes
8th Runic Impression
4th- phantasmal killer, vampiric maiden
3rd- haste, shocking grasp
cantrips: acid splash, chill touch, electric arc, produce flame, ray of frost, shield
+1 striking wounding halberd +17 (reach, vers S) 2d10+6 P plus 1d6 bleed
The other magus had a bad experience with Plaguestone, so the GM went a little easy on us for the encounters.
The theme of the night was lizards. Up first were a couple frilled lizards and a hodag, then a pair of hydras, and lastly a Krooth.
Against lower level foes, we got by with Striking Spell on cantrips. The summoner summoned a bear in the first encounter that distracted the frilled lizards long enough for D to clean up the hodag with a lucky crit.
Against the hydras, I used both my focus points to add a corrosive rune on top of my frost rune. A +2 frost corrosive striking flickmace does a very satisfying amount of damage. I was about to Energize Strikes with fire to just make extra sure those hydra heads stayed dead, but the summoner and alchemist finished it off. The halberd magus didn't bother with magus potency before turning his wounding rune into a corrosive rune. The hydra was bleeding already. D basically soloed that one.
I still had most of my spell slots for the Krooth encounter. The alchemist failed a skill check and managed to get himself separated from the rest of the party across a fast moving stream. I caste haste on the alchemist to kite the creature and when I got across and closer, hit it with paralyze (4th). It succeeded on the save, but I think it died before it had a chance to suffer from the stunned condition.
Overall both I and the other magus were impressed with how much damage we could deal to on-level or below creatures. We each had several critical hits on our Striking Spell Strikes.
One question we ran into was whether the Strike and the Spell were separate for the purposes of proc'ing the Hodag's Ferocity. The GM ruled them separate, so when D reduced the Hodag to 0 with a Strike, it used it's reaction, and then died to the spell damage.
I never thought of how easily a magus could attach scrolls to a bunch of weapons and cycle through them. I really have to go back and look at the dex based magus rogue idea I had. I wrote it off when I saw how ineffectual finesse weapons were for a magus, but quick drawing weapons with scrolls of fear attached to them and going a dread striker route could be a lot of fun. If you had a bard with Bon Mot in your party I bet you could get nasty mean with the debuffing. I understand why people don't love magus potency all around, it has some real problems, but it is such an interesting and build opening focus power, I hope they continue to work with it and keep the idea that a magus can pick up anything and make it incredibly deadly. It would be disappointing for the arcane pool concept to disappear entirely in exchange for a low damage single action attack roll focus spell. While it may take some tweaking, the arcane pool concept is definitely worth holding on to.
PS: Goblinpox is a brilliant spell for scroll striking. Sickness 1 on a success is already rough cause it is a debuff that sticks around until they spend actions to get rid of it and when you crit, it is just so brutal.
Really cool write up!
That scroll idea on the Magus seems great!
One of the things that really appeals to me about the magus is that they can really come to just about every encounter with the perfect tool for the job. Pull out a weapon and power up with Magus Potency. And with Energize/Runic, you can hit weaknesses with both your Strike and your Spell. That's something the white room analysis doesn't really capture well.
I hope there are more single-target Reflex spells in Secrets of Magic. My goal was to have scrolls to target a creature's weak save, but most of the single target spells are Fort or Will.
With more time playing the gnome, I think I will get better at waiting for information before choosing a weapon to power-up. Getting out the kukri with a hideous laughter scroll versus the hydra would have great for shutting down it's multiple Attacks of Opportunity.