Stick-Fighting Style Staff Magus

[Minigiant]

After reading the Style Feat Post I became intrigued with combining the Stick-Figting Style feat line with the Staff Magus Archetype.

On the surface at least it looks as if it can combine the damage output build with the combat maneuver build into something that could be quite fun. From my understand Combat Reflexes + Flamboyant Arcana + Stick-Fighting Counter could create two Attacks of opportunity a turn (Admittedly at a cost).

Bladed Magic does double duty with Quarterstaff Defense

True Strike makes any Maneuver useful but I was thinking of focusing primarily on dirty trick or trip

Doing a Maneuver followed by applying a curse (Hexcrafter) could be rather fun

By level 12 I should have: 1 Maneuver, 1 Haste Attack, 1 Brand Attack, and 1 Iterative Attack starting at my highest BAB, then 2 iterative attacks

Race: Human
Class: Hexcrafter Staff Magus
Alternative Racial Traits: Dual Talent

STR: 18
DEX: 15
CON: 14
INT: 16
WIS: 10
CHA: 8

Traits:
__________ (Campaign)
Bladed Magic (Magic)
Bred for War (Race)
___________ (Drawback)

Feats:
1 (Level) - ??????
1 (Class) - Quarterstaff Master
3 (Level) - Weapon Focus (Quarterstaff)
5 (Level) - Stick-Fighting Style
5 (Class) - Combat Reflexes
7 (Level) - Stick-Fighting Counter
9 (Level) - Stick-Fighting Maneuver
11 (Level) - Dimensional Agility
11 (Class) - Lunge

*Not having +1 BAB at level 1 is a real pain in this build

Arcana
3 (Level) - Flamboyant Arcana
4 (Class) - Hex: Flight
6 (Level) - Maneuver Mastery: ???
9 (Level) - Hasted Assault
12 (Class) -

Any suggestions? Level 1 feat?

[avr]

Take combat reflexes at level 1 and your level 5 feat is free. Make SF style the L5 combat feat and that can be a general feat. Extra magus arcana could be useful (accursed strike, arcane accuracy, familiar, another witch hex, whatever) or you could get rime spell or intensified spell for the usual magus uses.

[Minigiant]

avr wrote:

Take combat reflexes at level 1 and your level 5 feat is free. Make SF style the L5 combat feat and that can be a general feat. Extra magus arcana could be useful (accursed strike, arcane accuracy, familiar, another witch hex, whatever) or you could get rime spell or intensified spell for the usual magus uses.

I like this idea. By taking Close Range Arcana at 3, and Rime spell at 5, I can do both damage and lockdown with the pathetically named Snowball spell

[Scott Wilhelm]

So, you are a melee spellcaster. You are fighting and casting defensively, so you provoke Attacks of Opportunity while using Spell Combat and Spellstrike, so when their Atack comes, you get an Attack of Opportunity from Sick Fighting Counter and another one from Parry and Riposte, and if the Parry works, you get an Immediate Action Attack. Nifty.

Minigiant wrote:

True Strike makes any Maneuver useful but I was thinking of focusing primarily on dirty trick or trip

I'm not seeing any Maneuver Feats. You have an Attack of Opportunity thing going on, maybe you should exploit that, and that sounds like Tripping.

If you take Tripping Staff, you can use Spellstrike along with your Trip Attempt.

Greater Trip and Vicious Stomp both give you Attacks of Opportunity when you Trip your opponent, and they Stack.

You could start out with 2 levels in Fighter with the Eldritch Guardian Archetype, then take the Familiar Archetype, use a Mauler Familiar (probably), and you can get a whole mess of Attacks of Opportunity. A Familiar of an Eldritch Guardian gets all the Combat Feats of his master, including all those Teamwork Feats. So, if you took Improved Feint, Improved Feint Partner and Paired Opportunist, then if either of you Feinted your opponent, both of you get Attacks of Opportunity. If you took Broken Wing Gambit, if either of you were attacked, both of you get attacks of Opportunity.

What Paired Opportunist does is make it so if either of you get an AoO, both of you do, so that would work with those Tripping Feats. If you took Greater Trip and Vicious Stomp, if either of you scored a Trip, both of you would get 2 attacks of Opportunity. You could also take Harder they Fall, and that would allow you to still Trip opponents that were too big to Trip.

So now I'm talking about a whole bunch of feats and what would amount to a whole build. I'm also not sure to what extent you want to be a Magus and to what extent you want Attacks of Opportunity. But I'm really pretty sure Eldritch Guardian and the Familiar Arcana would combine well to give you lots of AoOs. For starters, those levels in Fighter give you Medium and Heavy Armor Proficiency, which allows you to upgrade to your Mithril Agile Breastplate as soon as you can afford it instead of waiting until 7th level, and it would be at 7th level when you can put on and use Mithril Full Plate.

[avr]

Minigiant wrote:

avr wrote:

Take combat reflexes at level 1 and your level 5 feat is free. Make SF style the L5 combat feat and that can be a general feat. Extra magus arcana could be useful (accursed strike, arcane accuracy, familiar, another witch hex, whatever) or you could get rime spell or intensified spell for the usual magus uses.

I like this idea. By taking Close Range Arcana at 3, and Rime spell at 5, I can do both damage and lockdown with the pathetically named Snowball spell

Or you can use the frostbite spell and skip close range arcana. But yeah that works.

[MrCharisma]

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but this looks pretty cool.

I've been looking through style feats lately. A lot of them seem underwhelming, and then you find something like this and go "Oh I get it".

Anyway, nothing really to add, just thought I'd chime in and say thanks for the inspiration ^_^

[Minigiant]

MrCharisma wrote:

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but this looks pretty cool.

I've been looking through style feats lately. A lot of them seem underwhelming, and then you find something like this and go "Oh I get it".

Anyway, nothing really to add, just thought I'd chime in and say thanks for the inspiration ^_^

I'm glad I can be of some assistance. I will probably share a different Magus + style build in the coming days so please feel free to take a gander at that too

[Scott Wilhelm]

It seems like the classic Magus is you focus on Color Spray at Level 1, then you focus on Combining Shocking Grasp with Rapier--probably Estoc or Rhoka these days--for the 18-20 Threat Range, and use your Ki Pool to give your weapon the Keen Enchantment for the 15-20 Threat Range.