Magus Tweaks

[CaffeinatedNinja]

Greetings all. I have been working on some tweaks to the Magus. Nothing earth shattering, but I wanted to

A) Increase their options. They are kind of locked into a set routine now.
B) Give them a little more staying power, once their initial damage boost fades (Spellstrike, focus powers), and gives a better reason to be in Arcane Cascade.
C) Feat Changes
D) Other Tweaks

So, in that spirit, I present the changes, from simpler to more extreme.

A - Simple Changes – Focused on usability, no power increases

1 – Arcane Cascade – Change the requirement to “Must have cast a spell or used Spellstrike since the beginning of your last turn.” This is a quality of life change, making clear you can arcane cascade the next turn, and it won’t be interrupted by reactions, allowing a little more action fluidity.

2 – Focus Abilities – When you use a focus point to cast a Conflux Spell, instead of recharging Spellstrike you may instead enter into arcane cascade at the end of the action. This allows you to lead off with a focus spell if you like, instead of feeling like you have to wait until you need Spellstrike recharged. It doesn’t increase your focus abilities power, you are saving an action either way, it just gives more flexibility.

B – Moderate Changes – Slight power increase in some situations, usually long fights. Mainly an increase in flexibility. I think this will be really helpful later in the game.

1 – Arcane Cascade Change – “While in Arcane Cascade, you may cast your hybrid study conflux spell without using a focus point, if you have not already used that focus ability, this turn. When used this way, the focus ability gains the flourish trait, and does not recharge spellstrike.” This change allows Magus more flexibility to stay in the fight effectively when it can’t really Spellstrike. Late game fights with lots of grabs and disruption often make Spellstrike really hard to get off. It has little to no effect on the traditional Spellstrike – Focus Spell and Attack – Spellstrike 3 round start, but does allow magus to FEEL more magical, and continue doing cool things in longer fights.

C – Feat Changes – Some of the magus feats are not very useful in practice. These changes aim to make unused feats more viable.

1. Raise a Tome – This feat and the follow-up Shielded Tome are essentially useless in practice, while having cool flavor. You pay a massive price for a +1 circumstance bonus to Recall Knowledge in one skill. (And Magus isn’t good at RK)
a. Change Raise a tome to work with Laughing Shadow, so it allows you to still get your weapon damage bonus if holding a book, but don’t allow shield blocking. It is effectively giving laughing shadow dueling parry. Yes it gains +1 to RK in a skill, but at the cost of a free hand, which is pricy.
b. Merge Shielded Tome into Raise a Tome – This is essentially a feat tax, you are paying a lvl 1 and 6 feat to get +1 recall knowledge on your shield for sparkling targe. A lvl 1 feat seems the right price here. So combine them.

2. Capture Magic – Way too situational. I would add that “If you’re already in Arcane Cascade, you can EITHER recharge your Spellstrike” or gain the bonus damage. Give it a better shot of giving you that action economy.

3. Runic Impression – The only useful rune it can add here is ghost touch. The other elements you can all cover with arcane cascade. I would suggest adding extending, and maybe give it the ability to transmute your weapon into cold iron or silver.

D - Other Tweaks

1. Laughing Shadow speed. It needs to stack with longstrider. If is a minor speed buff, and any decent magus is going to have a wand of longstrider by lvl 7, so at that point the Laughing Shadow is going as fast as any other magus. This is an issue with other classes that get status bonus to speed too, but those classes at least get faster than longstrider, or don’t have arcane casting for the wand as a built in class ability!

2. I do think Magus needs some form of stat sub, it is REALLY MAD. Heavy armor is probably the easiest but I know that is controversial.

3. Finally, the elephant in the room, subject of many discussions, Attacks of Opportunity. I do not think AoO should trigger on Spellstrike, as disrupting your big strike isn’t fun, and Magus in their regular routine is doing less damage than fighter, doesn’t need to be hit and disrupted. However, that might depend on some or all of these changes going through. The moderate changes in particular let you fight more effectively without Spellstriking. At a minimum, I would suggest the magus ability to not trigger Spellstrikes on Spellstrike CANTRIPS, as those are your regular damage routine.

Thoughts and feedback are welcome.