Character Building – Frontline Magus (Nature-Bonded / Magic Warrior) + Multiclass?


Advice


Hello, reader!

I'm in process of building a 1st-20th level campaign frontline character for a 3-person party. Thinking a Tiefling Magus. Mixing the magus archetypes of Nature-bonded and Magic Warrior has really intrigued me. While I feel I have a handle on managing AC progression, I'm not so sure about damage progression.

Giving up the arcane pool is pretty big sacrifice for the archetype; and while getting two druid spells is awesome (one at every new spell level from Nature-Bonded and another at 19th level from Magic Warrior), I'm not convinced that spells alone can keep the class damage solvent. To solve that, and make the class a bit more interesting, I was considering a two level dip into the Titan Mauler Barbarian archetype (Jotungrip and a Rage Power). Though the build would lose a druid spell per spell level (ouch), if it had over-sized limbs as a tielfing trait, it could wield large-sized two-handed weapons with one hand. Couple that with a high crit weapon like the nodachi and the enlarge person spell and you've got quite a bit of damage per hit (not to mention a few rounds of rage if it runs out spells or something).

I'm not really to trying to make an all-around-monster, just making sure I don't have beer-goggles for a build that is trash in reality.

Thanks for reading and any advice/insight you're willing to share.

P.S. Also looking at a Soul Forger/Bound Blade, but I'm not fluent with it enough to know its merits over the choice above. I'm not precious with my choice of race or build yet.


Druid spells certainly don't help with damage directly, and losing the arcane pool and then taking another attack penalty (jotungrip) is likely to be a problem. Also remember that to use spell combat you're not just required to wield a weapon in one hand, it needs to actually be a light or one-handed weapon. I don't think this works in any way.

Edit: soul forger is almost a strict downgrade on vanilla magus, but not a big one. Bladebound is fine, though I don't think you can enchant the black blade if that's what you're trying there. That combo isn't amazing, but it isn't nonfunctional the way your first idea looks to me.

Silver Crusade

Bladebound is a pretty great archetype IMO, the enhancement progression is actually pretty good and saves you A LOT of money over the course of a game. It also makes it easy to tailor your weapon to your current enemy. Also the weapon teleport is very handy for when you have to go to places "unarmed" (your mileage may very, our group has to do this frequently over many campaigns)

Fighting trolls? Give your weapon flaming/acid quality. Fighting ghosts? Ghost touch. Honestly I don't like EITHER of those archetypes with magus. But thats just my opinion.

Talk to your GM, If I were running the game, I'd likely call ya on being a lil cheesy, but I'd probably let it work, as long as you could wield the weapon in one hand. However, let me try to sell you on why spells actually work enough to keep a (vanilla) magus going. but if strict RAW, your build does not work with spellcombat as said.

1. Spell recall, I've seen people talking about they don't want to be a shocking grasp magus, but, its the bread and butter of the class. Its what you fall back on when the crap hits the fan. I also enjoy making use of shield/bladed dash often as well. With spell recall, you can trade out ONE arcana point to get a casting of shocking grasp back. Throw in magical lineage (shocking grasp) and a ring of wizard or few pearl of powers and you have 10d6 lighting per day, for awhile.

2. Tiefling magus's are great because of the prehensile tail trait. This allows you to use a rod with spellstrike. Which is very nice.

3. You can choose to go Dex based if you wish (although this one is limited, the only way to do it is to use a scimitar or rapier (dervish dance/fencing grace respectively) but with black blade, this won't ever be a problem.

4. You are only really gonna blow your spells in more dangerous fights.

If you are dead set on your archetypes, I wish you luck, but cannot provide any real insight to making them work.


If this is intended to be a Magus, you shouldn't be attempting to use Rage powers. The no-spell casting and no-int skill thing during a rage fights the character's main strengths.

Also 2 levels of a full BAB class don't make up for the permanent -2 to hit you're setting yourself up for. Not to mention the 2 level dip will hurt your caster level. Having to make concentration checks every cast is normal for a Magus. Getting 5' of reach doesn't change that against medium sized opponents, and that just makes you even against large opponents. Eventually you'll have to deal with SR and being 2 levels behind isn't good. Sure you can make that up with a feat...that you should be spending to get better at casting or melee, not making up for deficiencies in the build.

And the benefit you gain? 2d8 weapon damage instead of 1d6 for a rapier or scimitar. I'd rather have the extra spells 2 levels of magus would give you.

I'm also not convinced the whole nature-bonded + magic warrior is a good thing. The mask thing doesn't do much for you since you ditched arcane pool. You can't gain animal aspects without arcane pool points. You can cast nondetection once a day for free... Actually if you dip 2 levels of anything taking Magic Warrior only gives you negatives and a benefit that isn't worth the negatives to concentration checks.

Nature Bonded has a better payoff, but it comes at a high cost. Being able to add special abilities to your weapon is very good. Getting a druid spell is good too, but that good? Maybe. It really depends on if you'll be able to get your hands on cheap Pearls of Power or not. Anyone else in the group planning on crafting magic items?


So the main problems people are having are that you lose your Arcane Pool - which is a problem of accuracy more than anything - and that you're then taking a further -2 to hit with Jotungrip. This equates to -4 to hit by level 5, which is a pretty huge deal.

What does it give gou back?

Oversized Limb plus Titan Mauler = Large Nodachi 1-handed at -2 to hit.

Large Scimitar = 1d8 (~4.5) damage, or 2d6 (~7) if Enlarged.

Large Nodachi = 2d8 (~9) damage, or 3d8 (~13.5) if enlarged.

So you're taking -2 to hit for +4.5 damage, or +6.5 damage if enlarged.

At normal size that's probably not worth it, at large size it's a good trade ... if your to-hit is good enough.

You're getting Rage, so that van counter the -2 to hit for a few rounds per day, but you also can't use Spell-Combat while Raging. If you want to make use of Rage more than once per day I'd take Extra Rage, which means you're also spending a feat.

If you're not using spell-combat you can hold the weapon 2-handed, which goves you bonus damage and negates the -2 to hit, so when you're raging your attack bonus should go up by 4 and your damage go up by ... depends on your STR but a fair bit.

The other downsides of this are that you'll spend a lot of time not using Spell-Combat, and that the dip delays all your class abilities by 2 levels.

This COULD work if you pump your accuracy as high as possible, but that's harder to do without an Arcane Pool. You're basically trading a lot of attack boosts for a few damage boosts that don't quite make up for it.

(EDIT: I hit Submit before I meant to =P )

I wonder if you'd get the flavour you want out of a Fey Bloodline Bloodrager or Eldritch Scion Magus if you like Spell-Combat? You could even get a lot of this out of a combat focused Druid (Maybe Goliath Druid?).

Anyway I don't think I'd take the dip into Titan Mauler, but the Magus can work. It's not the best, but Magus is very strong. If you need more damage you can rely on spells - Shocking Grasp is the obvious choice but Frostbite actually deals more damage overall. There are other fun debuffs and buffs you can throw in, so your damage doesn't have to be the highest if you're doing more than just damage for the party. The Druid spell list should add some nice battlefield controll options, so there's enough to work with that you should be useful.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

halig feax wrote:
Mixing the magus archetypes of Nature-bonded and Magic Warrior has really intrigued me. While I feel I have a handle on managing AC progression, I'm not so sure about damage progression.

I think you'd be fine with damage progression using spells like Frostbite. I mean, you won't be the most damaging Magus build, but your damage should still be good. The tradeoff here is that you're getting better defenses. Also, bear in mind that the Flameblade spell makes you hit pretty much 95% of the time, which should work well for your damage totals.

Quote:
P.S. Also looking at a Soul Forger/Bound Blade, but I'm not fluent with it enough to know its merits over the choice above.

Bladebound is one of the best archetypes for the Magus. Soul Forger sucks pretty badly, so I'd recommend just Bladebound by itself.

Also, enjoy this Magus Guide.

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