Well, this is decent action economy compression. 1 Strike+2 action MM or 2+strikes (when you upgrade swipe to whirlwind)+2 actions MM.Yes, but is it good slot use?
And it'll often involve moving, plus recharging Spellstrike.
I'd rather not lose 1/3 of the my spell's damage before even rolling.Of course, the 3-action casting requires a free hand for components, so one has to consider how that interacts with one's style. I wouldn't take the spell unless I could cast the full version w/o extra effort.
I thought the Magus could swap Material components for Somatic using the tip of their weapon.
Because you're a magus, you can draw replacement sigils with the tip of your weapon or your free hand for spells requiring material components, replacing them with somatic components instead of needing a material component pouch.Doesn't that mean you don't need a free hand? Otherwise, I have some rethinking to do about an Inexorable Iron magus I'm working on...
You're right.
I can't recall having read that. :)
Tanglefoot on a ranged magus is absolutely nasty debuffing for cantrip usage. Past level 3 they are wasting actions trying to escape or you are gaining great kiting opportunities.
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@Exocist, your math isn't adding up to me.
1st of all, my claim was about spell striking with a spell slot against a boss (using true strike or a hero point). True strike and hero points both effect the math differently and are difficult to exactly calculate. True strike is a little simpler, because dice are rolled at the same time, but hero points have an if/than that gets complicated because it is a bad idea to reroll if you hit.
Also, against a boss, assuming 70/60% hit rates is pretty unreasonable.
They're quite easy to calculate, but you'll have to define "boss" - level+2? +3? +4?
Also, we were talking about spell strike vs power attack, so that second attack isn't something to factor in.Lastly, giving the fighter 1.4x damage doesn't make any sense to me even with 2 attacks and none of this is calculating critical hit damage very accurately either, since the probability of critical hits is tied to accuracy.
1.4 is assuming a 70% hit chance, you have 50% hit (0.5) + 20% crit (0.4) + 40% hit (0.4) + 5% crit (0.1) = 1.4
I use 0.7 (weapon damage) + 0.2 (extra damage on crit) + 0.45 (weapon damage) + 0.05 (extra damage on crit) as its easier for me to calculate for the damage of 2 strikes.
0.7 is the average hit rate vs on level enemies. In general, enemies gain 1.5 AC every level they are above you, and lose 1.5 for every level below.
Assuming a maul and your damage numbers generally the magus' damage with a cantrip is 52, but the fighter should be4d12+2d6+8 = 41 (+2 weapon dice since we are looking at level 11)
so the question is whether the 10% accuracy boost is worth 11 additional points of damage for the base DPR and the answer is no. Now a lot depends on whether that 10% crosses over a number that reduces the magus to 5% crit or less while keeping fighter over that threshold, so the actual defense does play a big roll in the final calculation, but generally speaking an additional 11 points of base damage average is a very large difference.
Well you're essentially asking whether 0.2 (10% extra crit chance) weapon damage is worth 0.7(11) = 7.7, which if your weapon damage is 38.5 or higher, it is. That's vs on level enemies, but lets say its vs level+2 (i.e. +3 AC)
The magus' hit rate is now 45%, so spellstrike does 0.5 (52) = 26.
The fighter's hit rate is now 55%, so power attack does 0.6 (41) = 24.6.
The fighter's two strikes do 0.6 + 0.35 = 0.95 (28) = 26.6.
Power Attack is just kind of bad unless the enemy has resist, and fighter is still ahead.
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Magus action econ is extremely awkward to be using true strikes constantly unless you go Starlit Span. I've played it, trying to be in melee true striking to get the extra damage, and heck burning slots for more damage too, will just leave you low on resources and dead without giving much extra return.
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Then it looks about right. That's the fighters main shtick. The Magus is not far behind him and has a much greater ability to target weaknesses. Though cascade is very simple to pop up.
Weaknesses only exist on about 25% of the monsters in the game, and still fire (flaming rune), cold (frost rune), cold iron (special mat weapon/blanche) and good (holy rune) cover most of those.
Cascade is not that easy IME, especially if your GM rules that the requirement doesn't carry over (i.e. you can't enter cascade as the first action on your next turn if you used spellstrike/cast as the last 2 actions on your previous turn). Magus isn't very safe, 8 hp in melee is really not a good place to be and I often find myself needing to take defensive actions rather than enter a stance which gives... +1-3 damage.
@Exocist, your math isn't adding up to me.
1st of all, my claim was about spell striking with a spell slot against a boss (using true strike or a hero point). True strike and hero points both effect the math differently and are difficult to exactly calculate. True strike is a little simpler, because dice are rolled at the same time, but hero points have an if/than that gets complicated because it is a bad idea to reroll if you hit.
Also, against a boss, assuming 70/60% hit rates is pretty unreasonable.
They're quite easy to calculate, but you'll have to define "boss" - level+2? +3? +4?
Also, we were talking about spell strike vs power attack, so that second attack isn't something to factor in.Lastly, giving the fighter 1.4x damage doesn't make any sense to me even with 2 attacks and none of this is calculating critical hit damage very accurately either, since the probability of critical hits is tied to accuracy.
1.4 is assuming a 70% hit chance, you have 50% hit (0.5) + 20% crit (0.4) + 40% hit (0.4) + 5% crit (0.1) = 1.4
I use 0.7 (weapon damage) + 0.2 (extra damage on crit) + 0.45 (weapon damage) + 0.05 (extra damage on crit) as its easier for me to calculate for the damage of 2 strikes.
0.7 is the average hit rate vs on level enemies. In general, enemies gain 1.5 AC every level they are above you, and lose 1.5 for every level below.
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Assuming a maul and your damage numbers generally the magus' damage with a cantrip is 52, but the fighter should be4d12+2d6+8 = 41 (+2 weapon dice since we are looking at level 11)
so the question is whether the 10% accuracy boost is worth 11 additional points of damage for the base DPR and the answer is no. Now a lot depends on whether that 10% crosses over a number that reduces the magus to 5% crit or less while keeping fighter over that threshold, so the actual defense does play a big roll in the final calculation, but generally speaking an additional 11
So a magus spell striking with a cantrip vs a fighter making 2 attacks is nearly close to the same (about 3 % less)? But can nova with a spell slot for significantly more and will likely have a 1/4 chance of coming up against an enemy that a weakness can target? This seems pretty remarkably well designed.
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Some people think cascade is an every round action. It seems very unlikely to me that is intended and it will get errata’d for clarity in the first round of such things to make its usage more clear.
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? Cascade seems pretty trivial to activate, if you're popping any buff spell to start a fight at all. Or just lob out Ray of Frost. Stride, shield, cascade and pow, force cascade and initial positioning.Then it looks about right. That's the fighters main shtick. The Magus is not far behind him and has a much greater ability to target weaknesses. Though cascade is very simple to pop up.Weaknesses only exist on about 25% of the monsters in the game, and still fire (flaming rune), cold (frost rune), cold iron (special mat weapon/blanche) and good (holy rune) cover most of those.
Cascade is not that easy IME, especially if your GM rules that the requirement doesn't carry over (i.e. you can't enter cascade as the first action on your next turn if you used spellstrike/cast as the last 2 actions on your previous turn). Magus isn't very safe, 8 hp in melee is really not a good place to be and I often find myself needing to take defensive actions rather than enter a stance which gives... +1-3 damage.
I generally open with Spellstrike rather than a buff as I'm not at the level where a decent buff is available outside of Magic Weapon, and running AoE with a million encounters a day I can't Magic Weapon every fight either.
So that leaves cascade as a strictly round 2 thing after I use my Conflux spell, which I'm also not using that often because we always seem to be under time pressure (only on b1c2 so far) so I'm not even able to refocus. We're using soothe scrolls to heal ourselves...
But even if I could cascade after using the conflux spell, how much benefit is it giving me really? As Targe, the +2 saves is useful, but not even monster has something that needs it. In fact, at this level, most don't. So I spend an action to get 1 damage for the remainder of combat on round 2, when the combat is only going to last 1-2 more rounds after that anyway.