Okay, so I've played very little Pathfinder until recently, and my experiences were briefly a Rogue and slightly less briefly a gnome alchemist all about throwing them bombs.
However, now I have some friends obsessed with the opportunity to run 1st Edition, and I now have Slayer with an owl animal companion and a Magus that the GM allows me to wield 2H weapons and utilize Spell Combat/Spellstrike without any crazy penalty, and while the Slayer has been AMAZING in combat with everything I can do between me and my birb (flanking, feinting, in the future having lots of teamwork feats setup)...I'm more in love with my Magus character but struggling to understand efficiency.
So I read the long post here that explained Spellstrike and keeping the charge in your weapon if you miss but loses the free melee attack since you only get the touch attack upon casting and that is converted into a melee attack. My issue is understanding buffing spells with duration and losing the touch spell on my weapon.
So my understanding is that if I use a touch spell and utilize Spellstrike with it (Shocking Grasp for instance), and I miss my attacks, on my next turn if a cast another spell before I attack...the 'charge' of Shocking Grasp on my weapon goes *poof* into the aether.
However, Magus has spells like True Strike and Blade Tutor's Spirit that allow you to assist in hitting your attacks since it's a caster/melee hybrid class, but I was given the impression that if I cast one spell and then another on my next turn, I am no longer concentrating on that previous spell and therefore lose it's effects...but that doesn't make sense to me when True Strike gives me +20 to my next hit as long as I strike before the end of the next round and BTS reduces my attack penalties from feats and certain actions for a minute per caster level.
Did I just misunderstand something here? Do you always lose a previous spell when you cast a new one? Is it just if you cast a spell after 'charging' your weapon with a touch attack spell and not landing the attack to 'discharge' it before casting? Is the right method when starting a fight to typically utilize Spell Combat to buff my attacks with a spell, then strike, and on my next turn potentially utilize Spellstrike?
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I believe its optional and not concentration. That is . . .
Cast shocking grasp and empower your weapon. You now have 1 charge stored. If you successfully attack its discharged via your weapon into your opponent. If you don't attack or miss the charge is retained.
New round you can now do two basic things. One attack again, two don't attack again. If you have the charge stored and you attack succesffully you discharge it into your opponent. If you miss the charge remains still. Now if you do something else the charge is still stored in your weapon till next round.
If you cast a spell then there are again two ways it can go. One you cast a new touch spell via spellstrike for example chill touch you still have 1 charge stored it is just chill touch and not shocking grasp. However if you choose not to use your spellstrike ability it is cast normally, and the same if you are casting something that is not a touch spell which without special abilities can't be cast into your weapon to begin with. In this case you don't discharge the stored charge because you have not (1) succesfully attacked or (2) replaced it by using the magus spell strike ability.
Remember spellstrike is something you can do not something you must do. That is you can use spellstrike to cast a touch spell through your weapon with its rules for this OR you can cast a spell normally. If you cast it normally it does not affect a stored spellstrike spell.
It sounds like you are pretty close on the mechanics.
Spell Strike simply allows you to deliver touch attack spells with your weapon instead. What you are referring to is called "holding the charge", which is a quality of touch attack spells. If you miss with a touch attack spell, you can still try to deliver that spell with further touch attacks, but in the case of a magus you also have the option to deliver the attack through your weapon, which would resolve against regular AC instead of touch AC.
Spell Combat lets you cast a standard action spell and make a full attack as a full action. So, what you can do is cast something like shocking grasp. That gives you a free touch attack, which you can instead deliver with a regular sword attack. If that attack misses, you still have your regular full attack attacks, which can also deliver the touch attack through spell strike. And if all of those miss, you could switch up the order of spell combat and keep attacking, hoping to deliver the spell with the full attack. Unfortunately, if you cast any further spell, then you stop "holding the charge" or "lose the charge".
Touch Spells and Holding the Charge: In most cases, if you don't discharge a touch spell on the round you cast it, you can hold the charge (postpone the discharge of the spell) indefinitely. You can make touch attacks round after round until the spell is discharged. If you cast another spell, the touch spell dissipates.
Holding the Charge: If you don't discharge the spell in the round when you cast the spell, you can hold the charge indefinitely. You can continue to make touch attacks round after round. If you touch anything or anyone while holding a charge, even unintentionally, the spell discharges. If you cast another spell, the touch spell dissipates. You can touch one friend as a standard action or up to six friends as a full-round action. Alternatively, you may make a normal unarmed attack (or an attack with a natural weapon) while holding a charge. In this case, you aren't considered armed and you provoke attacks of opportunity as normal for the attack. If your unarmed attack or natural weapon attack normally doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity, neither does this attack. If the attack hits, you deal normal damage for your unarmed attack or natural weapon and the spell discharges. If the attack misses, you are still holding the charge.
You can use spell combat to cast a spell that is not a touch attack spell, but in this case there is no free attack from spell strike. You simply benefit from whatever the spell was and then get your full attack.
This is likely a player that came from 2e/5e(dnd) where you can only have one spell active at a time, e.g. a wizard can cast and concentrate to maintain a haste spell on allies, but can't cast a fireball spell unless they drop the haste for allies. Aside from this being hilariously dumb as it invalidates many types of spells (e.g. aforementioned shield example), it's simply not how 1e works. You can hold onto the charge of a spell for-theoretically-ever so long as you don't touch anything that would discharge it (even allies), but that isn't anything to do with a spell's actual duration.
On the other hand, often people forget detect magic is a concentration spell, which is a really good way to introduce players to the concept of concentration.
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Holding the charge (CRB p. 185) has nothing to do with spell duration. A spell with a duration lasts until that duration ends or the spell is canceled.
A touch spell with an instantaneous duration can be held if the caster is unable to touch something, and it is canceled if you cast another spell.
Spellstrike doesn't change that. You aren't forced into making a weapon attack instead of a touch attack and nothing stops you from touching yourself.
True strike has a range of Personal (so it isn't a touch spell) and has a duration:
Your next single attack roll (if it is made before the end of the next round) gains a +20 insight bonus.
It isn't affected in any way by you casting another spell besides potentially giving a to hit bonus if the spell requires a to hit roll.
Blade Tutor's Spirit is a personal spell and has a duration of 1 minute/level. Again, it doesn't care at all if you cast other spells during the duration.
Remember - if your opponent is wearing metal armor, you get +3 to hit them when using Shocking grasp.