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So i know everyone talks about how bad armored battlemage is and i looked at it and figured it would be a nice base to prestige into eldritch knight. So let me just lay down why i think it might be a bit much.
1.Intelligence to damage on a 2 handed weapon, allowing you to add 50% more, paired with power attack
2.Accursed Strike, along with accursed critical with spell strike being treated as criting with a spell, basically leads to you getting a free attack if you get a critical hit and frostbite allows you to get multiple chances for this.
I know some people may say this isn't too bad, but i just wanna make sure.
Armored Battlemage/Hexcrafter 8/Eldritch Knight 5
Traits:Elven Reflexes
Magical Knack
Hex:Charm
6.Flamboyant Arcana
1.Weapon Finesse
3.Power Attack
5.Elven Battle Training
Bonus Feat:Elven Battle Style
7.Elven Battle Focus
9.Extra Arcana(Accursed Strike)
Bonus Feat:Combat Reflexes
11.Improved Critical(Elven Curve Blade)
13.Critical Focus
Bonus Feat:Accursed Critical
With both weapon finesse and power attack (and presumably at least 12 Con) you're obviously not stat-dumping enough to get significant benefit out of elven battle focus. With no metamagic feats to use on frostbite you're behind on damage or debuffs there relative to a vanilla magus. You're getting flamboyant arcana so you have an immediate action attack from level 6, another at level 13 won't stack. And the whole thing costs 7 feats (not counting power attack, weapon finesse or combat reflexes) to put together and arrives at level 13.
BTW the usefulness of the charm hex is pretty dubious - it's an out of combat/social thing which lasts Int mod rounds. Rounds are 6 seconds long.
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With both weapon finesse and power attack (and presumably at least 12 Con) you're obviously not stat-dumping enough to get significant benefit out of elven battle focus. With no metamagic feats to use on frostbite you're behind on damage or debuffs there relative to a vanilla magus. You're getting flamboyant arcana so you have an immediate action attack from level 6, another at level 13 won't stack. And the whole thing costs 7 feats (not counting power attack, weapon finesse or combat reflexes) to put together and arrives at level 13.
BTW the usefulness of the charm hex is pretty dubious - it's an out of combat/social thing which lasts Int mod rounds. Rounds are 6 seconds long.
In other words its rather meh right until the end where it all comes together? Also i thought due to intelligence replacing strength that would get the 1.5 boost in damage.
In other words its rather meh right until the end where it all comes together? Also i thought due to intelligence replacing strength that would get the 1.5 boost in damage.
Yeah, but it's only OKish even then - unlike a vanilla magus you have standard frostbite rather than empowered (etc.) frostbite so your 1.5*Int is needed just to make up the difference there. It's meh before that. And the vanilla magus has an extra 4-5 feats to do more stuff after leveling the score with extra arcane pool and empower spell; that's a lot.
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In other words its rather meh right until the end where it all comes together? Also i thought due to intelligence replacing strength that would get the 1.5 boost in damage.Yeah, but it's only OKish even then - unlike a vanilla magus you have standard frostbite rather than empowered (etc.) frostbite so your 1.5*Int is needed just to make up the difference there. It's meh before that. And the vanilla magus has an extra 4-5 feats to do more stuff after leveling the score with extra arcane pool and empower spell; that's a lot.
So the problem boils down to i have to do so much more just to get this to function compared to a standard duelist style magus.
It depends on the optimisation level of your game. For all I know a dex magus is overtuned by the standards of your friends. But you're starting with a serious handicap in the form of the armored battlemage archetype, and while there's a decent trick in frostbite spellstrike crits triggering accursed critical there, it isn't enough to match a standard dex magus on its own (partly because it costs an immediate action and a 3rd level spell for each extra attack).
I feel like you're far better off playing a straight Kensai Bladebound Magus than what you have here. Especially if you're min-maxing stats. The more you focus on INT, the more you mitigate the downsides of the archetypes while increasing their strength at the same time.
If what you want is a tanky frontline Magus who pulls off respectable damage with powerful crits, it's hard to beat a Kensai Bladebound Magus IMHO.
I think sometimes you don't want to be "tanky" as much as you want to be a guy in full plate armor. The image of a guy wearing full plate while blasting out spells is pretty iconic. Not sure if there are better options for that concept though.
The default magus gets there eventually, but sadly a lot of games end before you reach 13th level.
Well, a Mithral Full Plate is affordable at 7th level. It costs just under half WBL, but if people must have that character image...