Also, the explicit wish of the player was to be able to modify his spellstrike on a very granular level and a round-to-round basis. By level 15 he had a rather extreme range of options when using Focused Spellstrike. As implemented, not for general consumption and if I would do the class as a whole I would definitely scale that back, and focus on what would be appropriate for the different studies.
I think this is a brilliant idea. I think it'd be a benefit to the Magus's options if there were fewer feat barriers to being able to more easily apply a greater variety of effects to Spellstrikes besides just more damage. Spells are capable of applying a large variety of conditions, and applying those with Strikes I feel could easily be a core aspect of the Magus, at least past a certain level.
The rogue archetype starlit span magus hit level 20. Their best crit was 300 plus damage. This was my first magus. It showed me the magus class is pretty insane and well built. Simple, but very powerful.
The second starlit span magus using the bow as a means to extend the range of spells is at level 10.
The spellswipe melee magus is at level 11. Spellswipe is hard to set up. Be nice if they made the swipe feats without needing the adjacent target and two targets within reach. The adjacent targets made swipe hard to use and make spellswipe even harder to use given it is 3 actions. But the base spellstrike and hit still works very effectively, but you have to be careful for reactive strike.
I've seen a laughing shadow magus played to level 7 and a monk archetype fist magus played to level 16. I thought the monk magus wouldn't work very well, but surprisingly it did. The player didn't spellstrike every round, but occasionally spellstriking after using maneuvers and strikes worked very well to amp the damage as needed. Flurry of Maneuvers action economy worked well with recharging spellstrike while moving and attacking.
Interesting! Have you tried going full Int on your melee Magus like you did your Starlit Span Magi? Is there any reason you played melee Magi much less than just Starlit Span, which you picked multiple times? How do you think that Monk archetype Magus would work now that FoB from the archetype has a 1d4-round cooldown?
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Also, the explicit wish of the player was to be able to modify his spellstrike on a very granular level and a round-to-round basis. By level 15 he had a rather extreme range of options when using Focused Spellstrike. As implemented, not for general consumption and if I would do the class as a whole I would definitely scale that back, and focus on what would be appropriate for the different studies.I think this is a brilliant idea. I think it'd be a benefit to the Magus's options if there were fewer feat barriers to being able to more easily apply a greater variety of effects to Spellstrikes besides just more damage. Spells are capable of applying a large variety of conditions, and applying those with Strikes I feel could easily be a core aspect of the Magus, at least past a certain level.
Interesting! Have you tried...The rogue archetype starlit span magus hit level 20. Their best crit was 300 plus damage. This was my first magus. It showed me the magus class is pretty insane and well built. Simple, but very powerful.
The second starlit span magus using the bow as a means to extend the range of spells is at level 10.
The spellswipe melee magus is at level 11. Spellswipe is hard to set up. Be nice if they made the swipe feats without needing the adjacent target and two targets within reach. The adjacent targets made swipe hard to use and make spellswipe even harder to use given it is 3 actions. But the base spellstrike and hit still works very effectively, but you have to be careful for reactive strike.
I've seen a laughing shadow magus played to level 7 and a monk archetype fist magus played to level 16. I thought the monk magus wouldn't work very well, but surprisingly it did. The player didn't spellstrike every round, but occasionally spellstriking after using maneuvers and strikes worked very well to amp the damage as needed. Flurry of Maneuvers action economy worked well with recharging spellstrike while moving and attacking.
The Starlit Span magus eliminates the reactive strike issue which can be very painful for a magus. It makes movement easier as you don't have to move to set up spellstrike. And it does the most ranged damage in the game. They clearly outclass every other type of archer.
I did not max out intelligence as a spellswipe magus because you have to focus on Str, Con, and Int, then spread between Dex and wisdom for stat boosts. The Con is necessary to have a lot of hit points or you'll have a higher chance of getting wasted in melee combat absorbing reactive strikes on top of regular hits. There isn't any other class that activates Reactive Strike in melee like a magus. So a melee magus is going to take nearly every reactive strike while they are in melee using spellstrike. Quite a few of those attacks have effects which are very painful and mostly fort save effects like poison or drain or the like. So a melee magus needs a higher Con if they want to survive with spellstrike in melee.
You can try as often as possible to use Enlarge or a reach weapon to help this some. I did use a Nodachi to provide reach and help set up Spellswipe.
Reactive Strike in melee is a huge downer for the melee magus. That probably hurts the magus class more than anything else on the chassis. Reactive Strike may not super common, but when it is present either amongst a group of creatures or a boss it can be super painful to activate a boss reactive strike that can crit hard or a group of creatures in range all hitting you doing your main schtick as an 8 hit point class.
That's why I built this spellswipe magus as a guy that didn't care if he died as part of his personality. He got face-planted more than a few times by reactive strikes while doing spellstrike because I wasn't going to take extra precautions to avoid spellstrike while everyone else was just teeing off.
I think it would be nice if they redo the magus to at least have a feat or spellstrike progression that allows them to spellstrike with cantrips without activating reactive strike. The reactive strike really makes the melee magus less attractive than a starlit span magus.
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Personally? I think Twisting Tree Hybrid study needs some slight tweaking. I think most of it is great, from its ability and feats, but I have a problem with its conflux spell and first studious spell:
Spinning Staff has you launch two attacks against different targets... to which the multiple attack penalty applies.
All the other hybrid study conflux spells have more utility than Spinning Staff does...
Then there's its first studious spell... Embedded Message... what kind of use does that have in combat? I don't know, I just feel like another spell would be more appropriate/useful.
So yeah, I hope the Remastered Twisting Tree will have a better Conflux spell and better initial studious spell.
I definitely agree that Twisting Tree got the short end of the stick, so to speak, for its conflux spell and first studious spell. It can be okay for a studious spell to be useful more out of combat than in-combat, but embed message, on top of having no real in-combat utility, is a situational spell out of combat as well, so there'd be even less reason to prepare anything other than sure strike there. The conflux spell is also more situational than the others by dint of requiring two targets. Perhaps all of this was done to compensate for the buffs to the staff not requiring Arcane Cascade (though being able to put them to full use does require being in the stance), but it does in my opinion make the subclass a touch overly situational.
The Starlit Span magus eliminates the reactive strike issue which can be very painful for a magus. It makes movement easier as you don't have to move to set up spellstrike. And it does the most ranged damage in the game. They clearly outclass every other type of archer.
I did not max out intelligence as a spellswipe magus because you have to focus on Str, Con, and Int, then spread between Dex and wisdom for stat boosts. The Con is necessary to have a lot of hit points or you'll have a higher chance of getting wasted in melee combat absorbing reactive strikes on top of regular hits. There isn't any other class that activates Reactive Strike in melee like a magus. So a melee magus is going to take nearly every reactive strike while they are in melee using spellstrike. Quite a few of those attacks have effects which are very painful and mostly fort save effects like poison or drain or the like. So a melee magus needs a higher Con if they want to survive with spellstrike in melee.
You can try as often as possible to use Enlarge or a reach weapon to help this some. I did use a Nodachi to provide reach and help set up Spellswipe.
Reactive Strike in melee is a huge downer for the melee magus. That probably hurts the magus class more than anything else on the chassis. Reactive Strike may not super common, but when it is present either amongst a group of creatures or a boss it can be super painful to activate a boss reactive strike that can crit hard or a group of creatures in range all hitting you doing your main schtick as an 8 hit point class.
That's why I built this spellswipe magus as a guy that didn't care if he died as part of his personality. He got face-planted more than a few times by reactive strikes while doing spellstrike because I wasn't going to take extra precautions to avoid spellstrike while everyone else was just teeing off.
I think it would be nice if they redo the magus to at least have a feat or spellstrike progression that allows them to spellstrike with cantrips without activating reactive strike. The reactive strike really makes the melee magus less attractive than a starlit span magus.
So, first off, thank you for this thorough breakdown, this helps a lot. Correct me if I'm wrong, but would it be fair to say that you have the following opinions of the Magus:
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I definitely agree that Twisting Tree got the short end of the stick, so to speak, for its conflux spell and first studious spell. It can be okay for a studious spell to be useful more out of combat than in-combat, but embed message, on top of having no real in-combat utility, is a situational spell out of combat as well, so there'd be even less reason to prepare anything other than sure strike there. The conflux spell is also more situational than the others by dint of requiring two targets. Perhaps all of this was done to compensate for the buffs to the staff not requiring Arcane Cascade (though being able to put them to full use does require being in the stance), but it does in my opinion make the subclass a touch overly situational.
...The Starlit Span magus eliminates the reactive strike issue which can be very painful for a magus. It makes movement easier as you don't have to move to set up spellstrike. And it does the most ranged damage in the game. They clearly outclass every other type of archer.
I did not max out intelligence as a spellswipe magus because you have to focus on Str, Con, and Int, then spread between Dex and wisdom for stat boosts. The Con is necessary to have a lot of hit points or you'll have a higher chance of getting wasted in melee combat absorbing reactive strikes on top of regular hits. There isn't any other class that activates Reactive Strike in melee like a magus. So a melee magus is going to take nearly every reactive strike while they are in melee using spellstrike. Quite a few of those attacks have effects which are very painful and mostly fort save effects like poison or drain or the like. So a melee magus needs a higher Con if they want to survive with spellstrike in melee.
You can try as often as possible to use Enlarge or a reach weapon to help this some. I did use a Nodachi to provide reach and help set up Spellswipe.
Reactive Strike in melee is a huge downer for the melee magus. That probably hurts the magus
Yes. For the most part the above is true.
You consider Starlit Span to perform better than other Magus subclasses.
I consider the Starlit Span Magus to be safer to play than other magus.
The melee magus is pretty scary. A d12 weapon with a spellstrike is pretty insane damage. Melee range allows Spellswipe and when Spellswipe works, it's pretty brutal. I used imaginary weapon spellstrike on two targets and critted both targets and they were wrecked.
Melee magus is still fun and I would say more effective than a starlit span magus at doing damage as you can buy Attack of Opportunity and use your reaction to get a MAPless attack when that activates and using a bigger die weapon, but reactive strike makes the melee magus less safe and harder to survive.
Melee magus may perform even better than the Starlit Span magus.
You do not feel like you would have the same build freedom on a melee Magus as you did with your Starlit Span Magi, at least not without additional tradeoffs, because melee Magi are dependent on Strength in addition to Dexterity, Constitution (which you consider important for supplementing the Magus's HP and shoring up their Fort saves in melee), and Wisdom, and would therefore have to sacrifice important boosts one way or the other to increase Intelligence.
Build options for melee magus are fine. Any melee class should build up Con. Poison, drain, and such things are nasty and those fort save effects from enemy melee strikes are nasty. This is exacerbated by Spellstrike activating Reactive Strike, but any melee class should focus on Con because it's dangerous being in melee and Fort save effects are often the worse to deal with.
I'm on board with the rest.
Personally? I think Twisting Tree Hybrid study needs some slight tweaking. I think most of it is great, from its ability and feats, but I have a problem with its conflux spell and first studious spell:
Spinning Staff has you launch two attacks against different targets... to which the multiple attack penalty applies.
All the other hybrid study conflux spells have more utility than Spinning Staff does...
Then there's its first studious spell... Embedded Message... what kind of use does that have in combat? I don't know, I just feel like another spell would be more appropriate/useful.So yeah, I hope the Remastered Twisting Tree will have a better Conflux spell and better initial studious spell.
My issue with twisting tree is no staves have finesse
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My issue with twisting tree is no staves have finessePersonally? I think Twisting Tree Hybrid study needs some slight tweaking. I think most of it is great, from its ability and feats, but I have a problem with its conflux spell and first studious spell:
Spinning Staff has you launch two attacks against different targets... to which the multiple attack penalty applies.
All the other hybrid study conflux spells have more utility than Spinning Staff does...
Then there's its first studious spell... Embedded Message... what kind of use does that have in combat? I don't know, I just feel like another spell would be more appropriate/useful.So yeah, I hope the Remastered Twisting Tree will have a better Conflux spell and better initial studious spell.
As an enthusiast of staff-fighting and Finesse (or really, using any attribute BUT strength to attack), I agree that this is an issue... Maybe talk it over with your GM and ask if the Twisting Tree ability would add finesse to the added traits (if they're not sure, have it only apply when wielding the staff one-handed).
Actually, why does Paizo hate the staff so much?!?
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I think it's less that Paizo hates the staff, so much that the basic staff is a simple weapon, and it takes a lot to make it worthwhile on a martial class. I suspect Paizo balanced the version on the Twisting Tree almost a combination weapon, given how a d6 agile weapon is still less powerful than most martial options, and a d8 two-handed weapon with the parry, reach, and trip traits is the bo staff. Adding the finesse trait to both, though likely at the expense of some of the other traits on the two-handed version, could have much more easily accommodated Dex-based Magi and made it easier to build some Int to make use of more diverse staff spells.
The other part to this is that staves with spells prepared can't have property runes etched onto them unless you pick the Student of the Staff feat, for whichever reason, which limits a Twisting Tree Magus's options. Because of this, that feat I think feels almost like a mandatory feat tax to make the most out of that subclass, given how it straight-up buffs everything you do and enables what would normally be basic functionality on other builds.
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I think it's less that Paizo hates the staff, so much that the basic staff is a simple weapon, and it takes a lot to make it worthwhile on a martial class. I suspect Paizo balanced the version on the Twisting Tree almost a combination weapon, given how a d6 agile weapon is still less powerful than most martial options, and a d8 two-handed weapon with the parry, reach, and trip traits is the bo staff. Adding the finesse trait to both, though likely at the expense of some of the other traits on the two-handed version, could have much more easily accommodated Dex-based Magi and made it easier to build some Int to make use of more diverse staff spells.
The other part to this is that staves with spells prepared can't have property runes etched onto them unless you pick the Student of the Staff feat, for whichever reason, which limits a Twisting Tree Magus's options. Because of this, that feat I think feels almost like a mandatory feat tax to make the most out of that subclass, given how it straight-up buffs everything you do and enables what would normally be basic functionality on other builds.
Yeah, upon thinking about it further, I think Twisting Tree suffers from being an initial release...
I mean, for a point of comparison: Unfurling Brocade not only lets you treat a piece of cloth like a weapon with Disarm, Finesse, Reach, Sweep, and Trip, let's you switch between one and two hands (albeit, going one-handed turns it into a 1d4 weapon), it lets you apply weapon runes from a Handwraps of Might Blows onto it... all on the base feature AND without needing Arcane Cascade!Granted, you can use the spells in a staff for Spellstriking, so that might have played a factor in its power balance... at the time, anyways.
EDIT
Also, it occurs to me that, while you can't give a weaponized Staff Property Runes, you can still give them Fundamental Runes.
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I am just gonna jump in here again to offer my 2 cents, as it were.
I very much oppose the ideas being tossed around that the magus should lose its 9th level casting or that spellstrike should be restricted to just cantrips etc.
Both of these things would really hurt the class fantasy in a huge way. A Magus is a martial AND a caster, and taking these things away just hurts that fantasy and ironically would make the magus into an ACTUAL one trick pony. One thing I really do not like is when i see someting that is advertised as a hybrid spellcaster/martial or similar type thing is when you start using it only to find that the class/character is not actually a hybrid like that, they are just a martial with very specific, prescribed abilities. Now these can be cool, but they ARE NOT the class fantasy I am looking for, and the Magus is that more than anything else I have played.
Limiting spellstrike to cantrips would just remove options, and adding weird extra rules to get slots and focus spells available again is just a pointless exercise to make the class less complicated but also weaker and less versatile. I like how freeform it is with how you can even use focus spells, it feels like an ability your character has that they can apply how they wish instead of being a thing the devs begrudgingly let you do.
Is the lack of attack spells in the remaster a problem? yes. However "throw a few attack spells into future book" is a far more elegant solution than "completely rework entire class"
on the topic of limiting casting level, no thank you! I think it is super cool that magus gets up to 9th level spells. Yes your saves will never be as good as a full caster, but even if you never use ANY spells that require a save or check, there are so many other sorts of spells you can use. While my current game has been on an unfortunate hiatus, my magus actually provided the party with plenty of utility casting thanks to doing what he could to learn a wide range of spells and acquire scrolls
need a key for a heist? scouting eye and creation let me make a perfect copy.
yeah that is some intense spell ranks, but thats what being a wizard-type caster is for, you can grab utility spells, and being able to do that freely is so much fun. Yeah our meteor probably wont hit the big bad, but you could still wipe out a small army with it, so i say its still useful. Being able to actually be a caster is so much fun.
Like, I have a 5e eldritch knight I have played all the way to 20, the FIRST thing my DM did upon seeing me play it was remove the spell school restrictions because they were pointless railroading.
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Earlier I briefly popped in to say that I think its fine that the magus often needs to use spells to perform at peak efficiency in combat. I stand by this once again. I do not think it is strange or bad. It confuses me how much the idea is resisted. Saying that the Magus should not have to cast spells to perform well in combat is like saying it shouldn't have to hit things to deliver a spellstrike.
People on reddit and forums are very quick to pretend that spellcasting is a singular monolithic class feature and not a collection of a wide variety of different abilities. Will all of them be useful to you? no. but more of them will than people realize. Yes, haste is incredibly good on a magus. almost like it is a combat buff spell and the magus cares about using magic to enhance its martial ability or something. Finding ways around the limitations using spells is part of the fun for me. That doesn't mean I think the class is flawless, but too many write it off as janky when they are maybe just not looking at it holistically
Is another casting archetype hugely important for a magus to get? yes, but archetypes are part of the core systems of the game, so instead of the class being made weaker to accomodate more slots I can just throw out a few feats I do not care as much about (and if its free archetype I don't have to, or could even take TWO casting archetypes, which I have wanted to try)
In that currently hiatused campaign, I play a STR laughing shadow magus. He has been far away the MVP of almost every combat encounter except for the druid, who is always an essential figure for her own wide array of abilities). we have a fighter, but he just kinda hits things and gets a decent amount of crits, but those crits tend to be pretty weak. LS Magus though? zipping around the battlefield, spellstriking, becoming invisible, doing all kinds of s%~~. One of the last combat encounters we had before hiatus was a big arena fight and due to some bad offensive rolls from the other characters I basically did all of the damage myself
I have also used its mobility and mobility spells to catch up to escaping villains for example
The magus can really sing once you get into the right mindset, at least that has been my experience
thank you for reading this awful ramble
ah curses, I mistyped in the early part it should say "more complicated" not "less complicated
Earlier I briefly popped in to say that I think its fine that the magus often needs to use spells to perform at peak efficiency in combat. I stand by this once again. I do not think it is strange or bad. It confuses me how much the idea is resisted.
I can't speak for anyone else, but to me this sits in rather significant tension with this other part of your same post:
While my current game has been on an unfortunate hiatus, my magus actually provided the party with plenty of utility casting thanks to doing what he could to learn a wide range of spells and acquire scrolls
As well as this:
People on reddit and forums are very quick to pretend that spellcasting is a singular monolithic class feature and not a collection of a wide variety of different abilities. Will all of them be useful to you? no. but more of them will than people realize.
The Magus has four spell slots in total. According to you, not spending those spell slots in combat will come at a significant cost to the class's effectiveness, which sounds to me like the class's breadth of choice is falsified by the necessity of putting those options to use towards the same goal. A Fighter, by contrast, does not need to spend resources to be effective in combat, and a Wizard doesn't have to make the choice between being good in combat or in exploration when they have enough spell slots for both. This, to me at least, sounds more restricted than being able to use those limited spell slots for the breadth of utility offered by the arcane list, without having to eat into my combat effectiveness.
I also can't help but feel there's a lot of admissions of limitations being couched in a degree of copium here, specifically:
Is the lack of attack spells in the remaster a problem? yes.
Earlier I briefly popped in to say that I think its fine that the magus often needs to use spells to perform at peak efficiency in combat. I stand by this once again.
People on reddit and forums are very quick to pretend that spellcasting is a singular monolithic class feature and not a collection of a wide variety of different abilities. Will all of them be useful to you? no
Is another casting archetype hugely important for a magus to get? yes
So when you have a class that has to put their limited spell slots to use in combat to be effective at it (according to you), doesn't actually make use of the full breadth of arcane spells terribly well, has only limited options for attack spells in their spell slots, and needs another spellcasting archetype to work to full effect... forgive me, but that doesn't sound like a terribly functional class. That sounds like a class that could at the very least use a few improvements, rather than a whole lot of justifications for why their laundry list of issues aren't so bad when you build a character specifically to work around them, like Deriven has by favoring Starlit Span Magi.
So the issue with Magus is that Spellstrike is too good to not spam, and that it wants to be a Psychic?
While I don't personally agree with the suggestion to take out Spellstrike or change the Magus's Spellstrike progression, I can agree that currently the class's identity is being dominated by Spellstrike to the detriment of its other features. Part of this is because Spellstrike is such a strong feature, but part of this is I think because the rest of the Magus's features aren't really that well fleshed-out, so there's not all that much to draw upon, and what exists is often subsumed in service to Spellstrike.
It's also for this reason that I agree with Angwa that the solution to the Magus isn't necessarily to force more attack spells to happen: if we need attack slot spells just for this one class to have a few more options, that to me doesn't really say that we need more attack spells, so much that this one class is overly dependent on attack spells. If Spellstrike were expanded as a baseline to include save spells, as I and others have suggested, that would open up its options significantly, and wouldn't make attack spells as mandatory. That people would accuse proponents of change of trying to limit the Magus when often the express intent has been to open up the class's options I think speaks more to a fear of change than anything else.
The playtest for the magus made it clear that a very large majority of people wanted spell strike to be more powerful, simple to use and the center piece of the class. I highly recommend any one dissatisfied with the magus try out the playtest version of the class. You could cast any spell with it, you still needed a good casting stat, you could combine it with other classes combat feats (like power attack), it didn't feel like such a monolithic action sink for the class because you could hold the charge till the next round and then really unleash.
Eh, for someone complaining about Spellstrike being too central the playtest won't help, because Striking Spells was the only feature it had and its mechanics demanded you dedicate all you resources to improving it because it was so wildly unreliable at baseline.
"Wanted spellstrike to be more powerful" is a bit of a mischaracterization too, the main issue was how often striking spells failed in the absence of additional optimization. Most of the time striking spells would not work.
I mean at the time you were arguing that Striking Spells was better because of the way it interacted with to-hit bonuses.
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I still like striking spell because it changed the math on spell casting, but really required the player go all in on crit fishing when you used it.
I am just suggesting here that people dissatisfied wit the current spell strike try it out, because it was different in interesting ways that address some of the OP concerns. One of the biggest being that combining spell strike with low level spell slot debuff spells was very effective, making scroll striker very good, and letting the magus use a lot of different spells.
Earlier I briefly popped in to say that I think its fine that the magus often needs to use spells to perform at peak efficiency in combat. I stand by this once again. I do not think it is strange or bad. It confuses me how much the idea is resisted.I can't speak for anyone else, but to me this sits in rather significant tension with this other part of your same post:
While my current game has been on an unfortunate hiatus, my magus actually provided the party with plenty of utility casting thanks to doing what he could to learn a wide range of spells and acquire scrollsAs well as this:
People on reddit and forums are very quick to pretend that spellcasting is a singular monolithic class feature and not a collection of a wide variety of different abilities. Will all of them be useful to you? no. but more of them will than people realize.The Magus has four spell slots in total. According to you, not spending those spell slots in combat will come at a significant cost to the class's effectiveness, which sounds to me like the class's breadth of choice is falsified by the necessity of putting those options to use towards the same goal. A Fighter, by contrast, does not need to spend resources to be effective in combat, and a Wizard doesn't have to make the choice between being good in combat or in exploration when they have enough spell slots for both. This, to me at least, sounds more restricted than being able to use those limited spell slots for the breadth of utility offered by the arcane list, without having to eat into my combat effectiveness.
I also can't help but feel there's a lot of admissions of limitations being couched in a degree of copium here, specifically:
Is the lack of attack spells in the remaster a problem? yes.Earlier I briefly popped in to say that I think its fine that the magus often needs to use...
Yeah the magus has wizard style prepared casting so if they feel like they will be doing less combat they can prepare spells that will be useful in that situation. Yeah a wizard might not have to choose between the two because they are a full caster but again, that is the point is it not? Every class has limitations, the magus not being just as good at casting as a full caster makes sense? It is a gish, not a full caster. I do not really know what your point is to be honest.
Also spellstrike is an important core feature of the class for a good reason, it is a great way of fusing magic and martial ability (what the class is about) and gives you a good way to use offensive spells that otherwise would not be as useful to you because you are a gish.
also leave that "copium" garbage in 4chan where it belongs.
So the issue with Magus is that Spellstrike is too good to not spam, and that it wants to be a Psychic?
Clearly, the solution is to remove Spellstrike and give Magus the same amount of spell slots as Psychic.
I'm only half joking.
Being serious, the way I've seen Magus being talked and how it seems to be "Spellstrike: the class" instead of the Gish class makes me think Magus plays more like, and forgive me for this sin, a 5e Paladin instead of the Bladesinger, Eldritch Knight Hexblade or "Fighter×Wizard" it seems to be advertised as.
Now, there's nothing wrong with a playstyle centered around big hits being viable, what's wrong is that there doesn't seem to be an option to mostly ignore Spellstrike.
I'll admit, I'm not an expert at the game (I've played like 5 sessions of the game, none which were as a spellcaster or Magus).
EDIT: maybe you could make Spellstrike into a Focus Spell?
Bladesinger is still 75% caster and is attached to an incredibly strong, kinda busted class so its cool but also not really a proper 50/50 gish
As someone who has played an EK to 20, calling it a gish is a joke. RAW its spell school limitations force you to barely have any useful spells and even if you remove those it is just a s&$%ty paladin until you get a third attack at level 11. I love my EK but a big part of that is my DM being really nice. RAW, they are kinda terrible, expecially at low level play where 5e mostly lives.
hexblade is cool
While paladin is part cleric and not part wizard, it is actually the best gish in 5e
The playtest Magus is fascinating in its own right. I can see why it was changed, and I'm very glad it did, because making the base Magus MAD by default would have caused significant problems, and the mechanism of having to set up for your next turn with Striking Spell is much more in line with 1e's design than 2e's, the latter of which tries to avoid overly intricate setup turns. I think the issue there isn't so much that Striking Spell was changed to Spellstrike, because "act now, recharge later" I think makes for much smoother play, as does using the Magus's weapon attack modifier rather than their spell attack modifier, but that the end result lost its interaction with save spells by default. Expansive Spellstrike doesn't really make up for this in my opinion, especially as the whole bit about critical strikes affecting the degree of success got abandoned in the release version.
Not all of us may agree on the specifics here, but I do feel that it wouldn't be terribly uncontroversial to want to reintroduce save spells to the base Spellstrike, whether it be by removing the feat tax to it, improving the current feat to make save spells more effective with Spellstrike, or both. Many of the builds mentioned here to advertize the Magus's build diversity hinge on Expansive Spellstrike and save spells, and are usually done on Starlit Span Magi to avoid the MADness of a melee Magus, so that to me is an indicator that the benefits that are currently available to a subset of Magi could easily be made to benefit the whole class.
Although I don't ascribe all that much to the request to make the Magus less vulnerable to Reactive Strikes, I think it's worth bringing up the Channel Smite feat in this discussion, i.e. the Cleric's Spellstrike:
If this is any indicator of Paizo's up-to-date opinion of Spell+Strike actions, then there's quite possibly a lot of room to improve the Magus before even getting into tradeoffs and sacrifices.
I am just suggesting here that people dissatisfied wit the current spell strike try it out, because it was different in interesting ways that address some of the OP concerns. One of the biggest being that combining spell strike with low level spell slot debuff spells was very effective, making scroll striker very good, and letting the magus use a lot of different spells.
I'd very much like to see this come back on the entire Magus, and not just on niche Starlit Span builds. Being able to add the entire breadth of arcane crowd control and debuff spells to the Magus's Spellstrike by default I think would be a massive boon to their versatility, and allow players to play the class as much more than just a big burst machine if they wanted to. Expansive Spellstrike sort of allows this, but the math still doesn't really do save spells that many favors, which isn't great on a class that has only precious few spell slots.
Yeah the magus has wizard style prepared casting so if they feel like they will be doing less combat they can prepare spells that will be useful in that situation. Yeah a wizard might not have to choose between the two because they are a full caster but again, that is the point is it not? Every class has limitations, the magus not being just as good at casting as a full caster makes sense? It is a gish, not a full caster. I do not really know what your point is to be honest.
What is the point, if I may ask? The Magus is a class in the adventuring party by the same right as the Wizard; if the Magus is there to do what the Wizard does but with fewer resources, why not just play a Wizard? The point here isn't to ask for the Magus to be a full caster on par with a Wizard, the point is that as a gish with limited spell slots, the Magus should probably not be expected to use their limited spell slots to work well in combat, because that means using all of their spell slots for combat. FWIW I don't think that's the case, as you can still do fine just Spellstriking with cantrips (and imaginary weapon, of course), but the class is certainly pushed heavily to do this.
Also spellstrike is an important core feature of the class for a good reason, it is a great way of fusing magic and martial ability (what the class is about) and gives you a good way to use offensive spells that otherwise would not be as useful to you because you are a gish.
also leave that "copium" garbage in 4chan where it belongs.
Forgive me, but I do think that is an accurate descriptor when the bulk of your post is about trying to downplay all of the aspects of the Magus that drag it down, rather than explain what actually makes the class good. "A good way to use offensive spells that otherwise would not be as useful to you" is good in theory, but in practice the remaster has more or less given up on making lots of attack spells (there are only 5 arcane attack cantrips and 4 arcane attack spells across both Player Cores), so a Magus sticking to remaster content is going to have only scant options without Expansive Spellstrike. I'd also argue that stacking nothing but attack spells basically just adds more of the same, when the typical spellblade fantasy involves not only merging spell and strike at the same time, but also incorporating other forms of magic to control the battlefield and otherwise make the character do things no martial or caster class would. The Magus does have the potential to get there, and certainly can do that, but it'd be nicer if their kit genuinely complemented this, instead of pushing them away from those amazing wall spells and other utility effects.
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Magus being a full list, but small daily spell limit hybrid is important, or downright essential.
The co-scaling martial and spellcasting proficiency is not something that other classes can do. It is this chassis power that has to be compensated for in their kit. This takes the form of a very low spell per day limit, and the intentional "anti-synergy" of Magus features like Arc Casc being a stance, and Spellstrike always being 2A.
The important thing is that while this low spell count creates common player responses/behaviors (spellstriking w/ cantrips and focus spells), the Magus does not mandates this, and that flexibility to differ from a player norm is genuine.
Due to how full list casters can add additional spellcasts that are mechanically identical to spells cast from slots via wands, rings, grimoires etc, this leaves the Magus with a rather unbound amount of (generally lagging) pseudo-slots to cast from.
This is the sort of paradigm that other similar classes like Kin and Summ dodged in their design. Neither can Strike like a martial, which is why it feels like the spellcasting side of Magus is so restricted. Because it is.
That unique compatibility with a Fighter, Mauler, Magic Warrior, etc, Archetypes is not something that should be ignored.
IMO, because the Magus *can* scrape around the system for more pseudo-slots via gp, while existing in a system where the reverse is not really possible, it means that the Magus is rather uniquely positioned to make full use of pf2's design.
While many players may be satisfied with only one or two small gp boosts to their slots, this is exactly my point. Because they have the chassis prof w/ spells, every Magus player can "feel the need" to have more slots, while having the ability to spend effort & gp to help that pain point.
Same goes for the action "clunk" / restrictions around spellstrike. Intentionally hard to work with, but despite common responses (Star Span, Haste), the system leaves the conundrum an open question. It leaves S-Strike as a recharging 2A thing instead of a cooldown or other "it just is" dictated limitation.
This kind of "intentionally designed pain" is not something that's common in other classes, but is something that I personally see as huge mark of excellence in design. Not only does it thread the needle in what should be a contradiction of design (allow a class to have both martial and casting proficiency instead of either or), but the devs still left plenty of room for players to find/create potent synergies, instead of locking Magus down.
Alchemist is a rather appropriate counterexample of a class of similar design blueprint. A "low effort" Star Span Magus that S-Strikes w/ cantrips and maybe carries a couple scrolls alongside a staff w/ utility spells can be a great contributor to the party without much fuss. Meanwhile, a "low effort" Bomber will generally have an experience with considerably more friction, and the outputted numbers don't measure up.
Like Magus, Alchemist is designed to Strike in combat while having a big list of planned spontaneous utility (still have to seek and obtain all formulas). However, Alchemist is denied spellcasting benefits & proficiency; it's ability to Arch into casting is equal to a Fighter. Yet, Alch also lacks martial prof. It's accuracy with Strikes lags, and it struggles to get martial weapons. While an Alch can get more benefit than full casters via martial Archetypes, those Archetypes were designed with the expectation of a martial's accuracy (and class specific Strike boosters), meaning an Alchemist will always get less from any Strike-related features.
This leaves Alchemist in a "worst of both worlds" position, and extremely dependent on milking their exclusive alchemy features to make up for this *baseline* deficiency. And after the remaster Archetype removed the lagging item level, that essentially means that the Alch Arch scales at max "Alch-Spell" Rank. There are the same caveats as any spellcasting dedication, like item DC not matching, the lack of feats/features, etc. Yet the comparison holds up very well; if Archetype prepared spellcasting was changed to suddenly allow for max R spells, that would raise some eyebrows. It rightfully would have people saying it devalued the class as a core selection. Compare all that to Magus.
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The point of that tangent is to give the Magus a (very) favorable class comparison to redirect attention to the chassis.
I still get the impression that the discussion's focus on Spellstrike is lampshading the real reason why Magus is such a good class that has a lot going for it (and is dangerous to buff). Magus really is a proper hybrid martial-spellcaster in a system where those core proficiencies are the most exclusive and impossible to acquire post PC creation, while slots and even Strike feats can be obtained later.
While S-Strike is a Magus' signature feature, I think waaaay too many people don't take much time to explore what combos/shenanigans a Magus can (exclusively) get away with as a real hybrid, and over-focus on what is essentially a 1A action compression + fused activity.
As an Alch with bombs that inflict slashing dmg on miss, I have a genuinely good combo going with Witch's Blood in the Water. Yet a Magus/Alch/Witch (all INT classes!) would have better strike and spell proficiency doing the same thing. As I have a freshly Lvl 12 Alch who just got the focus spell, this is just the single example that's on the top of my mind. Discovering/planning one's own combo is half the point/fun.
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The fundamental danger of buffing the magus has very little to do with its casting—which is already held back by its proficiency progression and slot count on ranged, and further held back by its need for str and survivability stats in melee. You would have to increase their casting proficiency progression for this to even come close to being a factor, and magus would still lag behind a typical full caster because of stat allocation and slot count. Two top level slots is just not enough for a prepared caster to work with; worse saves mean the average action efficiency of casting spells is worse; and a lot of later caster action economy coming from effective use of lower-level slots for reactions/1A spells means magus is losing out on that aspect of caster action economy as well. Their lack of permanent L3/L2 slots to fill with laughing fit/slow/roaring applause likewise means a buffed magi wouldnt put a wizard out of a job anytime soon. Magus casting isn't very strong without spellstrike.
The danger of buffing Magus has everything to do with it being balanced as a high-payout slot machine that can trivialize encounters with good crits. The primary way the class would be buffed would be via consistency improvements. But better consistency would be a deceptively large buff for a class designed to swing between underperforming and wildly overperforming. The very soul of Magus is being able to annihilate encounters (and especially single-encounter days) with slotted spellstrikes and crits. It's also worth noting that magus becomes disproportionately more powerful as encounter difficulty lowers, since so much of its damage is loaded into spell crits—and as content has gotten less difficult over time, magus has received a disproportionately larger stealth buff from this already. Magus is just dangerous to buff because its bursty playstyle is inherently dangerous to buff in this system.
WRT Twisting Tree: I think the devs are just (over?)compensating for magus getting a staff without it affecting their hand economy. At bottom, a Twisting Tree magus is going to have the easiest access to sure strike of any Magus, and they are paying for it dearly.
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I'll throw my hat into the ring here.
About Action Economy and Arcane Cascade :
I do think Arcane Cascade is generally not very impactful and underutilized. Some hybrid studies barely benefit from it and it's hard to justify the action sometimes.
It would be nice to give it a better value, maybe by having other actions requiring to being in the stance, special attacks and all kind of like Cascading Ray. Supportive abilities exclusive to the magus in that way, like a 2 actions strike that inflicts a penalty to saves against spells on a hit or crit for a round.
But one baseline change I'd like to suggest to Arcane Cascade is a free action, call it "Cascade Recycling": As a free action, end Arcane Cascade and Recharge your Spellstrike.
This could help a bit the action economy, at a cost and make Arcane Cascade feel more like an investment into your future rounds when you need it. Maybe limit it to once per 10 minute if need be.
Regarding Spell Slots and Attack Spells
I too find it dissonant how some feats or features REQUIRE to use a spell slot exclusively (which you get 7 of total including studious spells, without multiclassing. 10 with a ring of wizardry) in order to be used.
What feels weird is that it is inconsistent between Hybrid Studies:
Inexorable Iron can heal itself for 16-18 Hp four times at high level and that's it. Why not have the effect be weaker on cantrips ? Just the spell rank, or half the spell rank for example.
Meanwhile Twisting tree only requires the spell not not be a cantrip or a focus spell, so it can benefit from staves for example.
I do not think that Magus necesseraly needs more slots, but abilities that rely on them should be made more consistent accross all Hybdrid Studies. Plus it might help clear up the conflicting ideas between "should the limited slots be meant for spellstriking or for buffing and support"
As for Attack Spell, getting more of those overall would be very nice I think.
But maybe something about Save spells could be done too, at least for targetted spell that inflict damage (not sure how to denominate them. Non-Area damaging spells ?) would be to allow them with spellstrike to begin with to expand options a bit.
But my main suggestion might be: on a hit or critical hit with the Strike portion of the spell: the target has a penalty to the save against the spell. -1 on hit, -2 on crit maybe but this would help out making it just as viable of an option as attack spells.
Having the target auto-fail on a hit, like Channel Smite, would likely be too powerful (maybe locking this behind a high level feat and a daily restriction ?)
I do think it is fair to call Magus a hybrid that prioritizes the martial side.
However, I strongly, strongly disagree that Magus' spellcasting is not a source of significant class power due to the slot limit and prof lag. Magus getting top R slots is huuuuge.
Unlike Strikes, spell prof (and even a dumped casting stat!) can be literally irrelevant to the effect of *many* spells. And the lack of quantity of slots similarly has 0 negative effect on the potency of each spell when cast. When a Magus casts a non-save spell, it's at the system's full power.
I also want to draw attention to how costly the system puts top R spells. It is super hard for full spellcasters to get extra top R slots, and the feat:slot trades that are offered by classes generally are seriously harsh trades, like 1 feat for a couple of lagging slots.
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I would argue that Magus getting top R slots in its core progression is *the* most important/powerful feature of spellcasting, which Magus acquires without any cost to its feats.
Top R slots mean that 2x per day, Magus can cast those big once per fight spells while still being a martial. Right at L13, a Magus can Haste the whole party in one spell. That spell carries the exact same magical power as any full caster could provide, and it is this equal-level access as full casters that gives Magus such a good foundation to then take in either a more martial or a more caster direction.
A Magus can genuinely take a caster Archetype like Witch, happily take options like Cackle and a focus spell, and then choose to save their feats and skip the basic/expert/master spellcasting unlocks.
Heck, Magus getting top R slots even affects things like a familiar's spell battery & spellcasting abilities.
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The ability for a Magus to *choose* to dump their casting stat while not sacrificing their Strike-based offense is a luxury of a hybrid that a full caster could never get away with.
And this powerful luxury does not come at the cost of 2 + 2 big honking spells each day, which is right at that line where you could budget 1 p fight and squeak through.
Getting top R spells also is a necessity because of how spell damage scales with rank and not character level in 2e compared to 1e. If Magus lagged behind the basic mechanic of Spellstrike wouldn't be nearly as powerful as it is now.
I aggree that it's great that it gets those spells as a martial.
Then the question is: what are they meant to be used for, buff or spellstrike. Lots of class features/feat seem to say "well, spellstrike obviously!" stuff like Double Spellstrike as a core feature. Though I guess you could argue that it also helps having both, since with it you can have 2 buffs/utility and 2 attack spells, and it turns your attack spells into 4, if used well.
It'd likely be way more simple to manage as a spontaneous caster, which makes me wonder if that may be why we haven't seen an eldritch scion class archetype for Magus yet.
Getting top R spells also is a necessity because of how spell damage scales with rank and not character level in 2e compared to 1e. If Magus lagged behind the basic mechanic of Spellstrike wouldn't be nearly as powerful as it is now.
I aggree that it's great that it gets those spells as a martial.
Then the question is: what are they meant to be used for, buff or spellstrike. Lots of class features/feat seem to say "well, spellstrike obviously!" stuff like Double Spellstrike as a core feature. Though I guess you could argue that it also helps having both, since with it you can have 2 buffs/utility and 2 attack spells, and it turns your attack spells into 4, if used well.
I think leaving the choice to the player is a super important part of the design.
There are plenty of features, like Dangerous Sorcery, that are restricted to spells cast from your (sorcerer) spell slots.
Magus could have limited Spellstrike in the same way, but choose to allow all forms/sources of cast a spell.
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This "harsh but still open" approach to design leaves the entire "problem" of Spellstrike being painful up to the player to solve in whichever way they personally wish.
Maybe they only care about S-Striking once or twice per fight, and are happy to use a max H Organsight spell for slot-efficient sustain damage while they mix in a Wrestler Archetype.
Maybe they want to use those top slots for a super-crit Sure Striked, Hasted Assaulted, SpellSwipe blast.
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Whatever the preference, Magus just barely has every core essential (marital prof + top R slots) in its base chassis, and has the confidence to let players try to break the numbers via it's open design.
(Meanwhile, Alchemist can't even be trusted with an action compression feat that an Alch Sciences Investigator has access to)
However, I strongly, strongly disagree that Magus' spellcasting is not a source of significant class power due to the slot limit and prof lag. Magus getting top R slots is huuuuge.
While I agree that the Magus having top-rank slots in addition to better-than-archetype spell proficiency scaling both represent a significant amount of power that can't be ignored, I also wouldn't want to lean too far in the opposite direction and state that this is what categorically forces the Magus to have limitations to their spellcasting, because the Summoner is a good counterexample to this: the class has martial-level durability and Strikes with their eidolon, along with spell proficiency slightly under that of a full caster (in fact, they'll be exactly on par with a full caster at certain levels), and to top it all off they effectively get four actions to play with every turn, so they can Cast a Spell + have their Eidolon Stride + Strike or Strike x2, all on the same turn.
I also think that Witch of Miracles makes a good point that the limitations don't necessarily come just from hard constraints, like Spellstrike being limited to attack spells by default, they also come from bits of the feature that are probably too strong for their own good: deleting a major enemy in a single critical hit, for instance, is probably not something that should really be made to happen, yet that sits on the upper end of the gamble the Magus takes with their slot Spellstrikes. The class adds a lot of power that happens specifically when you Spellstrike with a spell slot, whether it be through class features like double spellstrike, or feats that expressly require you to expend a slot, and that leads to this very unstable, all-or-nothing gameplay that's a bit too volatile for its own good. It's not great when the Magus whiffs their slot Strike, but it's also not great when the GM's challenging encounter turns to pink mist just from one lucky roll.
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I think leaving the choice to the player is a super important part of the design.There are plenty of features, like Dangerous Sorcery, that are restricted to spells cast from your (sorcerer) spell slots.
Magus could have limited Spellstrike in the same way, but choose to allow all forms/sources of cast a spell.
I aggree but that's why there is complaints about some feats and features being restricted to using slots for spellstrikes in order to benefit from them.
On top of that focus spells tends to be better for damage it seems, they have similar if not straight up better damage than ranked attack spells and are a renewable ressource.
That could be addressed in the future with the addition of more attack spells ofc.
Summoner (and Kineticist) help pinpoint what I mean when I call Magus a "true hybrid" that is ~unique to the system.
Both Summoner and Kin are denied "true Strikes" in that they cannot interact with other features and effects throughout the system that alter Strikes. A Summoner would only enhance their own wimpy Strikes, while Kin's basic attack is fully isolated as a "Kinetic Blast."
Both these hybrids are limited to their in-class options precisely in the manner that Magus, by token of being a "real" hybrid, is not.
Magus' strike alteration is kind of limited to Spellstrike itself though. It has some feats altering it but no other ways to do unique strike actions, which is kind of a shame, there is untapped potential on the gish aspect in there. Stuff similar to some of the Eldritch Archer special shots.
I aggree but that's why there is complaints about some feats and features being restricted to using slots for spellstrikes in order to benefit from them.
When you keep the full context of Magus mind, and know that those top R slots could be used for non-save spells identically to full casters for things like walls and buffs, that's how you know to separate feel complaints from actual mechanical problems.
Players asking for more power is universal and unavoidable. This means that being able to sort and identify which feedback one ought to "respectfully acknowledge, and then decline/reject" is an essential part of revision.
Sure, the martial-hyrbid wants as many spells as a full caster. But we know their feature of S-Strike is completely fine w/ cantrips & focus spells, and we know those top R slots are as potent as a full casters'.
Therefore, it's a very small jump in logic to say "hey, if changes are warranted, it's certainly not to the daily slots"
Both Summoner and Kin are denied "true Strikes" in that they cannot interact with other features and effects throughout the system that alter Strikes. A Summoner would only enhance their own wimpy Strikes, while Kin's basic attack is fully isolated as a "Kinetic Blast."
Magical Adept lets your eidolon cast sure strike on itself, and I don't think a Kin's Elemental Blast would be particularly broken with the effect given that it's less damaging for its action cost than a regular Strike. The reason why it's so desirable on the Magus is because you're buffing two attacks at once with it, and it's for that very same reason that I don't think the spell is all that healthy on the class, particularly as it further widens the gap between Starlit Span and a melee Magus. A melee Magus needs 3 actions to sure strike + Spellstrike, which can't work if they also need to move or do something else, whereas a Starlit Span Magus can easily do pull this off to exceed ranged martial damage even further. It also makes the Magus even more all-or-nothing, since at that point you're expending two extremely limited per-day resources for one big Spellstrike.
The info you are adding very much reinforces my point. Summoner is restricted to its limited in-class options. Even a 3 feat chain only provides lagging R slots to the Eidolon. Act Together is carefully constructed so that only one 2A action p turn is possible.
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Meanwhile, Magus is not restrained in any way to the use of Sure Strike.
As in, a Magus is *allowed* to combo a very powerful feature of S-Strike with fortune effects like Sure Strike if the player wants to.
Note that this also means that there's no reason to settle for the most obvious combo of Sure Strike. Other fortune effects, Strike enhancements, foe debuffs, etc, are all compatible.
The primary "restriction" of S-Strike is that hard 2A limit, which really is just the 2A spell underneath. Even S-Strike recharge has a feat for a 1 p day freebie if the player finds that anytime 1A recharge action too onerous.
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Trip.H, this is what i'm saying. Those slots mechanically are often better used for stuff other than spellstrike, which makes the features that require a spell slot to be used on spellstrike feel clunky and kind of useless.
I am not saying Magus should get more spell slots.
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The info you are adding very much reinforces my point. Summoner is restricted to its limited in-class options. Even a 3 feat chain only provides lagging R slots to the Eidolon.
Hold on, let's not change subjects here. Magical Adept, the second feat in the chain, is only being brought up here within the specific context of sure strike, to point out that an eidolon can in fact sure strike their own Strikes if they really want to. They generally don't, because it's costly and the lone Strike is generally not powerful enough on its own to warrant it. You made the claim that the Kineticist and Summoner are "denied" these augmented Strikes, when my point is that they don't want to empower their attacks like this in the first place.
Act Together is carefully constructed so that only one 2A action p turn is possible.
Correct, because firing off two spells per turn would be broken. This limitation still lets a Summoner play with four actions as a baseline, which carries an immensely varied range of applications. None of this relates in particular to Striking or spell power, other than the fact that the Summoner can reliably Strike and Cast a Spell on the same turn, and with a better casting modifier than the Magus.
Meanwhile, Magus is not restrained in any way to the use of Sure Strike.
As in, a Magus is *allowed* to combo a very powerful feature of S-Strike with fortune effects like Sure Strike if the player wants to.
Yes, this is part of the problem being discussed. A class with only four spell slots, or six if you count studious slots, should not in my opinion be pushed to spend two spell slots on one single Strike. It is way too large a gamble whose payoff is itself so excessive that it breaks the bounds of how much damage is allowed to be dealt in one instance, and not in a way that is healthy to gameplay. Part of the problem comes from sure strike's own design, and that's unlikely to change, but part of this issue comes from the Magus's Spellstrike firing off of top-rank slot spells, which could be mitigated.
I would also argue that the Magus is restrained in their use of sure strike when it comes to Spellstriking, simply because the sheer number of actions required to pull this off makes this combo extremely difficult to do on a melee Magus without haste, which brings us back to that "potential man" meme and all the setup required to make them work. Of course, a Starlit Span Magus doesn't need to position as much, and so they get to fire away and break the ceiling of ranged martial damage even harder.
I also do agree with Kalaam here that the point is being missed: I'm not asking for the Magus to have full caster spell slots or better spell proficiency, and I'm pretty sure Kalaam isn't either, nor anyone else I can see. Rather, what they, Witch of Miracles, I, and others have pointed out is that Spellstrike is currently very much designed and balanced around this big spell slot gamble that both constrains what the Magus can do with their slots, and makes for some occasionally very unhealthy gameplay moments. For all the various other people crying bloody murder at the very idea of touching Spellstrike or claiming that changing it would limit the class, discouraging the Magus from Spellstriking with spell slots, or barring them from it entirely by default, would free up those slots to be used for a much greater variety of spells, and would allow the feature to be balanced around consistency rather than the promise of unhealthy extremes of damage.
Again, Summoners cannot do what Magus can.
As with my example of Sorc's "From your slots" limits that feature, the Summoner's hybrid nature is exactly as in-class limited as I said before. The spell being cast via Eidolon means no Scrolls, magic items, etc. Even w/ all 3 feats of that chain, SMN gets 1 slot p R. And it's not a good idea to fill those with Sure Strikes.
Restated again, the Summoner's hybrid potential is carefully restrained and limited to the exact design of the intra-class writing; the design intentionally walls the SMN away from out of class acquisitions.
Any acquisition a SMN makes of further casting or martial features does not function with the class *as a hybrid*. You cannot take Mauler to help your Eidolon Strikes, nor can acquired castings/slots combo with those Strikes as if they were your own. Even spells like Organsight are denied typical proper function to the SMN.
This is intentional design.
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Meanwhile, Magus is open to use its features with spells of any source. And it pays for this ability with a lagging spell prof, low daily slots, and anti-synergy with archetyping (Arc Casc being a stance, etc).
It is expensive, but Magus can always buy high R scrolls and spellstrike with them. The feat Striker's Scroll is an option if one wants to spend budget specializing in this already-compatible option. This is the kind of design approach that's A+ in my book.
To mention it quickly, Library Robes (w/ a Plated Duster) is a nice suggestion because it's a basically a daily 1/2 price scroll that you don't need to draw. Though you are giving up the ability to wear property armor runes.
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Almost all the S-Strike feats are as open as S-Strike is, with no requirment of using "your (Magus) slots". The big hitters like Expansive and Spell Swipe are of this "a spellstrike" group.
The "from your slots" options are limited to a very small number of feats, and at no level are your feat choices constrained/narrow enough where you've not got good alternatives if you want to avoid them.
Players who do not want to S-Strike with their limited slots do not have any class power budget occupied via core chassis features. While it's easy to see that such contextual and limiting feats may only be seen as desirable by a minority, that does not mean the features simply existing is a negative for the class.
Players who do like to use their 4 slots for the super-spellstrikes are given the option to further enhance that, without causing any issues/pressure for others who want to do something different.
That's kinda exactly the way it should be done. The core chassis is as open as it gets, and feats allow for player-chosen specialization.
Especially coming at this from a "As an Alchemist" point of view, they really did a great job w/ the Magus. Like it or not, the remaster made *all* Alchemists occupy class chassis power with infinite lil bombs.
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Edit: Didn't catch that Double Spellstrike overlook quickly enough. While it is a L19 feature that's going to be seen by a tiny fraction of players, it is absolutely a core chassis feature that specifies your slot-strike only.
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Again, Summoners cannot do what Magus can.
As my example of Sorc's "From your slots" limits that feature, so is Summoner. The spell being cast via Eidolon means no Scrolls, magic items, etc. Even w/ all 3 feats of that chain, SMN gets 1 slot p R. It's not a good idea to fill those with Sure Strikes.
Exactly as I said, this small bit of hybrid potential is carefully restrained and limited to the exact design of intra-class writing.
Again, this misses the point completely. The Summoner gets access to extra spells more easily than the Magus, so this "carefully restrained" hybrid potential restrains the Magus more than the Summoner, and the point is that even if a Summoner or Kineticist got access to sure strike on tap, they would still not want to use that spell very often. I think we can all easily agree that the Magus and Summoner play differently and do different things, but claiming that the Summoner is somehow not a hybrid, or is somehow more restrained in their hybridity than the Magus, is the literal opposite of the truth.
Meanwhile, Magus is open to use its features with spells of any source.
Well, specifically attack spells unless you pick the feat that lets you pick save spells too, but also: welcome to the point. Being able to pair Spellstrike with literally any spell, including spells from highly limited or finite resources like their six spell slots or spell scrolls, is what constrains the Magus, because when you can massively amplify the power of those resources by combining them with your class feature, why wouldn't you?
It's important that these "from your slots" options are limited to a very small number of feats, and at no level are your feat choices limited/constrained where you've not got good options if you want to avoid it.
"This problem doesn't exist if you ignore it" does not prevent the fact that these feats explicitly push the Magus to Spellstrike with spell slots. It does not prevent the fact that one of the Magus's class features is useless if you don't Spellstrike with spell slots either. The very existence of these feats is proof positive that the Magus is pushed to commit their extremely limited spellcasting resources towards Spellstriking, when those extremely limited spellcasting resources ought to be used more freely to access a greater breadth of spells from the arcane list.
Players who do not want to S-Strike with their limited slots do not have any class budget occupied by chassis features.
This is simply not factually correct, given the existence of double spellstrike. If you want to use your spell slots for something other than Spellstriking, enjoy not having a class feature. In fact, for every spell slot you dedicate to something other than Spellstriking, consider that spell slot's output halved compared to using double spellstrike.
Players who do like to use their 4 slots for the super-spellstrikes are given the option to further enhance that, without causing any issues/pressure for others who want to do something different.
That's kinda exactly the way it should be done.
This is indeed the way it should be done, which is why several people have advocated to take out the content pushing the Magus to use their limited slots towards Spellstriking. At the end of the day, so long as Spellstrike can do this by default, the pressure will continue to exist, because multiplying the effectiveness of an slot spell and dealing massive burst damage will never not be appealing.
Especially coming at this from a "As an Alchemist" point of view, they really did a great job w/ the Magus.
While you have my sympathies for the Alchemist, I feel this mentality is fairly pernicious. "My pet class got shafted, so it's fine if this class someone else likes suffers because it could always be worse" is the sort of mentality that tears down constructive discussion and puts players at odds with one another, when we could easily be advocating for improvements to both. Enjoyment is not a zero-sum game, and improving the Alchemist or the Magus does not come at the expense of the other. A few people have tried this same argument earlier in discussion with the Oracle, and the same applies to that too.
This is indeed the way it should be done, which is why several people have advocated to take out the content pushing the Magus to use their limited slots towards Spellstriking. At the end of the day, so long as Spellstrike can do this by default, the pressure will continue to exist, because multiplying the effectiveness of an slot spell and dealing massive burst damage will never not be appealing.
This is the exact type of thinking I feel the need to object to. The Magus class enabling a new option that is appealing is the exact opposite of a designed limitation in need of revision.
Magus wanting to spellstrike is normal, and a good thing. Feeling pressured to make careful use of their daily freebies is a good thing. It is a sign of their core feature being fun to use.
so long as Spellstrike can do this by default,
There's only one way to interpret that implication, which is the removal of that functionality as the default.
Any limitation or restriction "to remove temptation" is a rather absurd and serious deviation from the existing class that needs some hella justification.
If one wants to propose a Class Archetype that changes the core functionality like that, be sure that everyone knows the full context of such a proposal. Because I cannot imagine many will be receptive to such changes being made to the core class, and the best chance of a positive reception would be if it does not screw with every existing Magus PC.
This is the exact type of thinking I feel the need to object to. The Magus class enabling a new option that is appealing is the exact opposite of a designed limitation in need of revision.
Magus wanting to spellstrike is normal, and a good thing. Feeling pressured to make careful use of their daily freebies is a good thing. It is a sign of their core feature being fun to use.
Yes, and being pressured to only use their daily freebies in a certain way lends itself against this. This is a limitation disguised as a boon, because there is no such thing as free power in PF2e, and if you can do it, you're balanced around it, much like full casters and their spell versatility. If the Magus had to carefully prepare their spells from a larger breadth of options, then that would lend itself to much deeper gameplay in my opinion, whereas being pressured towards a tiny subset of choices (again, literally just 4 arcane attack spells in the remaster across all ranks) that are made much stronger than the rest cheapens this choice, which is why so many players end up with one-note builds.
There's only one way to interpret that implication, which is the removal of that functionality as the default.
Any limitation or restriction "to remove temptation" is a rather absurd and serious deviation from the existing class that needs some hella justification.
If one wants to propose a Class Archetype that changes the core functionality like that, be sure that everyone knows the full context of such a proposal. Because I cannot imagine many will be receptive to such changes being made to the core class, and the best chance of a positive reception would be if it does not screw with every existing Magus PC.
There's that massive overreaction again. To be clear, I'm not advocating to remove this completely (notice the specification of "by default", which you've chosen to interpret as "completely"), and have outlined at length in other posts how a Magus could be made to healthily incorporate slot spells into Spellstrike, but it is a demonstrable fact that Spellstriking with slot spells from level 1 creates significant balancing problems and warps the class's choices in a way that is harmful to their diversity of play. Decrying change on the mere basis that it would change things fails to address any specifics of the disruption you're opposing or consider whether that disruption may be positive, and the fact that you expressly announced how you were jumping to a conclusion and assuming the worst demonstrates how little genuine interest there is here to actually discuss design. Nobody is forcing you to play this hypothetical Magus being floated around, so you might as well cool your jets and sit down to have a constructive discussion, if a constructive discussion is what you want to have.
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The magus could use some clean up too if they Remaster it:
1. How does an item like a ring of wizardry work with a magus? This should be cleared up even when they reach high enough level slots that the ring is adding slots they supposedly no longer are able to access.
2. Arcane Cascade needs to be better or gotten rid of.
3. Spellstrike progression to allow at least cantrip spellstrikes with no Reactive Strike.
4. Some kind of Sudden Charge type of Spellstrike ability for melee magus.
Quality of life improvements would be nice.
I don't think "this class can occasionally vastly out perform the damage expectations of any other character" is seen as a bad thing by that many players. People like big moments and rolling dice.
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Again, this misses the point completely. The Summoner gets access to extra spells more easily than the Magus, so this "carefully restrained" hybrid potential restrains the Magus more than the Summoner, and the point is that even if a Summoner or Kineticist got access to sure strike on tap, they would still not want to use that spell very often. I think we can all easily agree that the Magus and Summoner play differently and do different things, but claiming that the Summoner is somehow not a hybrid, or is somehow more restrained in their hybridity than the Magus, is the literal opposite of the truth.
I don't know why you always get like this, but for whatever reason, you are confidently stating that up is down, again.
.
A Summoner is restrained and limited by being a "split-body hybrid." You cannot enhance the martial half of the Summoner with the general means available to every martial in the system. I take that martial incompatibility and label the Summoner as a spellcaster with a specific martial-like feature.
In this framing, I am denying Summoner from the label of "true hybrid" for the sake of comparing to Magus, which I do label as a "true hybrid."
Both halves of the Magus genuinely can function with all outside features gained via items & Archetypes. Similar to classes like Inventor, Ranger, Invest, etc, these have their own class "thing" that can cause complications, but never limitations. Magus has spellstrike, it's "thing" that is a class bonus, not limitation. Spellstrike being the conceptual union of a Striking martial with spells certainly does not hurt the presentation of it being a "true hybrid."
There is no contextual requirement nor incompatibility with a Magus' Strikes nor spells. At any moment, they can Strike as a martial and weave spells as a caster.
The magus could use some clean up too if they Remaster it:
1. How does an item like a ring of wizardry work with a magus? This should be cleared up even when they reach high enough level slots that the ring is adding slots they supposedly no longer are able to access.
2. Arcane Cascade needs to be better or gotten rid of.
3. Spellstrike progression to allow at least cantrip spellstrikes with no Reactive Strike.
4. Some kind of Sudden Charge type of Spellstrike ability for melee magus.
Quality of life improvements would be nice.
These are all good suggestions IMO. I'd go as far as to say that if we're using Channel Smite as a reference, which lets a Cleric use a max-rank slot to deal slightly below gouging claw damage, using Spellstrike with a cantrip could probably drop the need to recharge in addition to dropping the manipulate trait on the cantrip. Again in the case of cantrips, having Spellstrike directly determine the degree of success if it imposes a save would also likely cause no problems. It might even make daze worth picking on occasion, imagine that!
I don't think "this class can occasionally vastly out perform the damage expectations of any other character" is seen as a bad thing by that many players. People like big moments and rolling dice.
It's really not "occasional" when a Starlit Span Magus can consistently outperform ranged martial classes every turn. Outperforming others' damage on occasion is fine; accidentally trivializing encounters with a single lucky roll is not. In a game where enemies get their spell list errata'd just so that they don't accidentally one-shot a PC, I don't think it really makes sense to argue that it's okay for a single PC to instantly end what was meant to be a challenging encounter in one critical hit. Breaking the usual rules of design with classes is great when it leads to fun gameplay for all; breaking the upper bounds of burst damage to a degree that genuinely messes with encounter difficulty and makes the class extremely unstable I think is not one of those instances, even if it may feel fun for the Magus player when it happens as a once-off.
I don't know why you always get like this, but your insistence and goal-post shifting has resulted in you confidently stating that up is down, again.
I like how you feel comfortable saying this when it's not just me, but several people here who have called you out for trying to shift the goalposts on this exact matter. Read our conversation again, and see how you desperately tried to shift away from the false claim you made that the Summoner and Kineticist were somehow being deliberately excluded from sure strike as part of their balance, and into how supposedly the Magus gets better access to spell slots. In fact, I have noticed you've made it a consistent habit of yours in the arguments you partake on these forums to aggressively argue beside the point, often going into lengthy tangents revolving around your personal pet peeves (such as the Alchemist), and then blame this on the person you're arguing with. Please don't do this.
A Summoner is restrained and limited by being a "split-body hybrid." You cannot enhance the martial half of the Summoner with the general means available to every martial in the system. I take that martial incompatibility and label the Summoner as a spellcaster with a specific martial-like feature.
You can label the Summoner however you like, your claim is false. An eidolon benefits from flanking and the off-guard condition, circumstance and status modifiers, and even item bonuses in the same way as every martial, which means they also benefit from buff spells (including spells like true target) in the same way as any martial, on top of the Summoner having bespoke buffs for their eidolon like boost/reinforce eidolon). The entire point of the Summoner is that they control two bodies, one caster and one martial, and their power comes from leveraging the advantages of both. To label the class as a caster is to forget a significant portion of their power.
In this framing, I am denying Summoner from the label of "true hybrid" for the sake of comparing to Magus, which I do label as a "true hybrid."
I contest this claim significantly. Unlike the Magus, a Summoner can in fact make much broader use of spells thanks to their better spellcasting modifier and class features that don't pressure them to use a hyper-specific subset of spells, while also leveraging the Strikes and maneuvers of a martial class as mentioned before. A Magus, by contrast, has all of their casting pushed through the lens of Spellstrike, which means they're pushed to use their limited slots specifically just to make Spellstrikes, instead of wielding them independently like a full spellblade. Mixing spell and Strike is great, but that is only part of the spellblade fantasy, so it is the Magus I'd argue that currently struggles to be a "true hybrid".
Both halves of the Magus genuinely can function with all outside features gained via items & Archetypes. Similar to classes like Inventor, Ranger, Invest, etc, these have their own class "thing" that can cause complications, but never limitations. Magus has spellstrike, it's "thing" that is a class bonus, not limitation. Spellstrike being the conceptual union of a Striking martial with spells certainly does not hurt the presentation of it being a "true hybrid."
Spellstrike only working with a tiny subset of spells is a major impediment to that presentation, I'd say. It also means that unlike the Summoner, the Magus is pressured to pick a Psychic dedication just for that imaginary weapon synergy. Because of the class's busy action economy and heavy focus on Spellstriking, the class also infamously struggles to synergize well with other archetypes, as there's generally not enough room to slot in other actions, nor do the benefits of other archetypes necessarily kick in when they can't enhance Spellstrike.
There is no contextual requirement nor incompatibility with a Magus' Strikes nor spells. At any moment, they can Strike as a martial and weave spells as a caster.
They can, if they want to be a lot less effective. It's not just that they're choosing to not opt into the action and MAP compression of Spellstrike; past a certain point this represents an active decision to squander your precious few resources. Not only is your spell going to be far less accurate if you fire it without Spellstriking, it eventually becomes twice as expensive to cast as if you'd used the slot to Spellstrike instead. This is a hard fact ingrained in the class's chassis and core features as currently written. By contrast, a Summoner can in fact weave Strikes as a martial and weave spells as a caster, and their core class feature gives them effectively an extra action to do this.
I don't think "this class can occasionally vastly out perform the damage expectations of any other character" is seen as a bad thing by that many players. People like big moments and rolling dice.
My fighter with magus archetype crit an enemy for 155 damage obliterating him last night. It felt great. This is at level 11 with only one spellstrike a minute.
The magus class is one of the more addicting classes in PF2. If you love to see those big numbers, the magus class is for you.
I don't think "this class can occasionally vastly out perform the damage expectations of any other character" is seen as a bad thing by that many players. People like big moments and rolling dice.My fighter with magus archetype crit an enemy for 155 damage obliterating him last night. It felt great. This is at level 11 with only one spellstrike a minute.
The magus class is one of the more addicting classes in PF2. If you love to see those big numbers, the magus class is for you.
One neat quirk of design is that excessive overkill damage can actually be a good thing from a balance perspective. The more one overkills any specific foe, the more damage was "wasted."
In comparison, you've got things like Flurry of Blows which'll let you re-target the 2nd Strike if the first is enough to down them.
Spell casters "accidentally" trivialize encounters very frequently when enemies crit fail saves. Even solo powerful monsters roll natural ones and become slowed 2 for a minute (happened to an enemy boss caster in a game I was playing) or crit fails against a blindness spell and is blind for a minute in a boss fight (Happened against a level +3 demon we were fighting at 6th level).
My Maul fighter functionally ended encounters against boss enemies on round 1 or 2 multiple times (3, maybe 4 or more times, sometimes when it happened it was hard as a player to tell if the creature was really meant to be a boss fight) between levels 4 and 13 when I left the game. Getting hit with a Greater Fearsome Knockdown crit leaving essentially a -4 to AC while left prone next to the fighter was minimally a death sentence when their turn began if they didn't die from the initial hit, or from the rest of the party having a very easy target. The GM occasionally got frustrated when he put a lot of time into prepping for a difficult fight, but the rest of the party loved to see it happen.
The key is for these moments to close to a 5% chance of happening at the start of the boss encounter and not letting them get too much more likely that 25% even when the party is really working together well to set up the big strike. The occasional easier boss fight remains very memorable.
The starlit span magus actually can have a hard time getting the crit accuracy much above 10%, especially with cover issues.
Spell casters "accidentally" trivialize encounters very frequently when enemies crit fail saves. Even solo powerful monsters roll natural ones and become slowed 2 for a minute (happened to an enemy boss caster in a game I was playing) or crit fails against a blindness spell and is blind for a minute in a boss fight (Happened against a level +3 demon we were fighting at 6th level).
Citing what is arguably one of the most overpowered spells in the game and an incapacitation spell that takes care to not make a monster directly easier to kill does not exactly come across as a representative example of spell balance in 2e. The very existence of the incapacitation trait demonstrates that spells are not intended to single-handedly trivialize combat, and one of the biggest complaints made by 1e players is the greater controls placed upon effects that have the potential to end-fights single-handedly. To claim that casters "accidentally" do this with any frequency, let alone "very frequently", is misleading at best and dishonest at worst.
My Maul fighter functionally ended encounters against boss enemies on round 1 or 2 multiple times (3, maybe 4 or more times, sometimes when it happened it was hard as a player to tell if the creature was really meant to be a boss fight) between levels 4 and 13 when I left the game. Getting hit with a Greater Fearsome Knockdown crit leaving essentially a -4 to AC while left prone next to the fighter was minimally a death sentence when their turn began if they didn't die from the initial hit, or from the rest of the party having a very easy target. The GM occasionally got frustrated when he put a lot of time into prepping for a difficult fight, but the rest of the party loved to see it happen.
Out of curiosity, which lone bosses were these that were repeatedly getting nearly one-shot by a single critical hit? I'll be quite curious to see the actual math behind this, as well as how you found yourself able to just instantly appear within melee range of the boss on round 1 of combat each time to Demoralize + Slam Down each time.
The starlit span magus actually can have a hard time getting the crit accuracy much above 10%, especially with cover issues.
I fail to see how this can be the case on a class that can dedicate spell slots to sure strike and whose subclass being discussed has a focus spell specifically designed to reduce cover. Have you actually played a Starlit Span Magus?
I don't think "this class can occasionally vastly out perform the damage expectations of any other character" is seen as a bad thing by that many players. People like big moments and rolling dice.My fighter with magus archetype crit an enemy for 155 damage obliterating him last night. It felt great. This is at level 11 with only one spellstrike a minute.
The magus class is one of the more addicting classes in PF2. If you love to see those big numbers, the magus class is for you.
One neat quirk of design is that excessive overkill damage can actually be a good thing from a balance perspective. The more one overkills any specific foe, the more damage was "wasted."
In comparison, you've got things like Flurry of Blows which'll let you re-target the 2nd Strike if the first is enough to down them.
It was definitely overkill damage. I think the enemy had 50 hit points left. Magus gets a lot of overkill damage.