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So, this question goes out to my fellow owners of Lost Omens Rival Academies:
How you all feeling about the new Magus Hybrid Study the book introduced?
Do you think it's an awesome addition to the Magus's line up of subclass options?
Do you think it's stupid garbage that should be forgotten and tossed in the trash?
Do you just not care that much, because the book featured other, far more interesting options?
Just indifferent?
Share your thoughts/feelings.
Me though? I love it!
Granted, it might help that water is my favorite of the classical nonchemical elements (with my favorite being Ice), but I find the concept of a subclass built around turning anything you can hold into an effective weapon, and even destroying them to deal extra damage, exciting.
And yeah, I know there was already an archetype for improvised weapons, but I honestly find the Resurgent Maelstrom interesting regardless.
I know I'll frequently be asking my GM, "what items are there I can pick up to fight with?"
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It's interesting, but constantly breaking and destroying your weapon is a frustrating action tax on a class that is infamous for its rigid action economy.
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It's interesting, but constantly breaking and destroying your weapon is a frustrating action tax on a class that is infamous for its rigid action economy.
A fair point, Squark. Although, I do think "Surface Tension" which lets you temporarily unbreak a weapon, and "Whirlpool's Pull", which lets you grab a replacement weapon and cast a 1 action cantrip/focus spell, offset some of that action cost.
...Well, I say all that, but I'm also holding out hope that the Remastered Magus will have some of that rigid action economy removed (like ways to recharge your Spell Strike outside of spending an action, casting a conflux spell, or taking one feat that lets you use a Recall Knowledge).
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It's got an impressive amount of support for improvised weapons. You have to take all the feats to really make it work though as well as needing a nice GM to facilitate decent traits and damage.
You've got your hand wraps to fall back on too. Considering that, your improvised weapons can be more of a resource to add to your burst damage.
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When Magus first came out, I made a Laughing Shadow Magus with the Weapon Improviser archetype I dubbed the "Chair Warrior". It was overall pretty mediocre, but still fun. Honestly, overall happy to see the Resurgent Maelstrom Magus, really improves on the idea and makes it a lot more playable, which I appreciate. It's certainly not amazing, but it seems fun, which is what I care about primarily.
It's interesting, but constantly breaking and destroying your weapon is a frustrating action tax on a class that is infamous for its rigid action economy.
Eh. Perhaps I'm not the best judge because I was hoping for proper duel-wielding support at long last, but I don't see the appeal. I guess picking up and hitting people with random stuff is a fun idea, but the mechanics don't really sell it for me.
I agree. The concept is pretty fun but it's pretty weak and punishes the already constrained magus action economy too much.
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With the Magus's tight action economy, I could see a subclass that repeatedly breaks and draws weapons being a problem. There are feats at level 6 and 8 that help fix that, but then you end up with the "Triggerbrand Problem" where the subclass finally comes together over halfway through your average low level adventure. And since improvised damage/traits is mostly decide by GM fiat, it's really hard to evaluate like other Magus options. There's no strict chart that says a chair deals d10 damage with the shove trait, that a tankard is a D6 throwing weapon. I've thought of some builds using the Improvised Weapon archetype before, and this has all that improvised baggage combined with Magus baggage.
THAT BEING SAID, I love the subclass. I think that sometimes the Pathfinder community can be overly harsh on wonky subclasses like this one. Yeah it's not going to be as efficient as an optimized laughing shadow Magus, but you don't become a chair bashing wizard to be efficient. You do it to style on monsters, to beat a necromancer to death with his own zombies. It's an inherently goofy concept and I think it does a mostly alright job fulfilling it. I would definitely play one.
But I'm a Triggerbrand and Outwit Ranger apologist whenever it comes up for discussion.
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I think it is very interesting, but with the issues have described above. I was also disappointed that it was not a Hybrid-study that let you conjure weapons made of water, which is what I was hoping it would be.
I might have poisoned myself ahead of time because I saw the name "Resurgent Maelstrom" and the bit about crushing tides and water magic and had a lot of really evocative and cool ideas pop into my head, none of which were "good at hitting people with chairs" which is kind of a huge let down.
But man this hybrid study is garbo.
It falls into the really classic trap of creating a feat or archetype to enable a playstyle, while forgetting that feats and options should also provide tangible benefits to.
What I mean is that essentially the archetype creates a problem (it's built around using improvised weapons, which suck by design) and then sells you solutions to the problem but doesn't go much beyond that. So while other characters are getting class features and feats that make them better, you're grabbing options that just fix the problems created by your subclass, and many of the options just get you back to where everyone else started.
Paizo unfortunately does this a lot.
It also does this in a second way, because RM's implied gameplay loop is somewhat antithetical to the Magus': It has several things it wants you to spend actions on, and multiple features that add flat damage to your strikes encouraging you to attack as often as possible, while the core Magus is built around its highly restrictive One Big Attack.
The trouble is, again, that these options don't go far enough pushing back against the Magus' inertia, so the result is less "This changes how I play the class" and more "These features don't feel like they work properly and like I could just grab a greatsword and do the same thing without jumping through extra hoops" instead.
below the spoiler I break down my issues with literally everything it gives you:
Of course, there's another problem here in the traits they chose. Both Backstabber and Forceful (especially forceful, which does literally nothing on your first attack) are traits that benefit from making as many attacks as possible in a round. The Magus is a class that's built from the ground up around the idea of making one big attack every round and then hitting maximum MAP.
Taking a class built around singular strikes and giving them as their primary class feature a bonus trait that expects you to attack 4 times a round to have real value feels almost malicious.
There's the Conflux Spell ... which gives you a vanilla strike... then destroys your weapon, ruining the action economy benefits of using a conflux spell. In exchange you get, uh, fort save vs a 5 foot push. IDK I just don't feel remotely inspired by a fort save vs a 5 foot push with nothing else going on.
Oh but there's a special clause if your improvised weapon is especially hard to break. In that case- ... you skip the secondary effect. You spend a focus point to make a strike, no notes.
I'm not a huge fan of the Studious Spells but it's far from the only subclass with meh ones. Feel like it could have leaned into the theme more, or given the precedent set by Brocade give the hybrid study some non-arcane water spells.
Which leaves the feats.
Shattering does a better job fulfilling the fantasy of breaking your weapon for a cool effect than the Conflux spell, but the damage scales really badly and I'm still not a fan of the 'nothing happens' clause.
Surface Tension is actually cool, and synergizes well with your break options... but like the base hybrid study benefits it feels like it was made for a different class. You want to make lots of attacks after activating this power and the Magus doesn't, and even if you did given the low base dice you could just pick up a real weapon and hit people a bunch without the extra action economy concerns.
Whirlpool's Pull is fine. Grab a new improvised weapon after destroying yours and cast Shield or Force Fang or whatever in the same action, but again it suffers from sort of just solving a problem the archetype creates for itself. You're not any better off than someone with a normal weapon who just felt like casting Shield, even though you're down a feat
Maelstrom Flow is neat. Bonus rune for a minute is cool. Action economy is a bit problematic on the magus but w/e ... kind of a shame it never scales up to greater runes
All in all not great. A lot of spending budget to solve problems that only exist because of the playstyle you're buying into, and a lot of features that support something the Magus isn't really designed to do.
Coming off this archetype my main feeling is just that it's a shame it means we're never going to get a more focused improvised weapon option and probably never going to get another 'water mage' type magus either.
Just looking at the art on page 88, why does the magus there need the twig she is holding at all. The spear is almost entirely water.
as far as Water mage goes... I mean, the Kineticist is still a thing. You can play a water "mage" just play a water kineticist.
I agree. This is the lore behind Weapon Infusion feat:
With a signature flair, you shape blasts of elemental power into the form of a weapon, such as a sword made of whirling wind or a bow that shoots flames. If your next action is an Elemental Blast, choose a weapon shape for it to take. You can choose to change the blast's damage type to bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing—whichever suits the weapon shape—and you can choose other alterations depending on whether you make a melee or ranged blast.
Melee Add one of the following traits of your choice: agile, backswing, forceful, reach, sweep.
Ranged Choose one of three options: range increment 100 feet and the volley 30 feet trait, range increment 50 feet and the propulsive trait, or range increment 20 feet and the thrown trait.
You basically creates your elemental weapon of your choice. Mechanically you still are attacking with an elemental blast switching its damage type and adding traits but thematically you are forging an elemental weapon of your choice at will.
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Actually, I have one other question... anyone else want to see a few more Elementally themed hybrid studies for the magus?
Just looking at the art on page 88, why does the magus there need the twig she is holding at all. The spear is almost entirely water.
...Not to be a nag, Bluemagetim, but there are three issues with that statement:
1) The art of the Resurgent Maelstrum Magus is on page 82.
2) What she's holding appears to be made of metal.
3) The only part of the formed weapon that is purely water is the spear head.
Actually, I have one other question... anyone else want to see a few more Elementally themed hybrid studies for the magus?
Just looking at the art on page 88, why does the magus there need the twig she is holding at all. The spear is almost entirely water....Not to be a nag, Bluemagetim, but there are three issues with that statement:
1) The art of the Resurgent Maelstrum Magus is on page 82.
2) What she's holding appears to be made of metal.
3) The only part of the formed weapon that is purely water is the spear head.
Oh!
Right 82 it is.When i looked at it I saw all that blue as water and a thin brown twig thing in the center of what i thought was a shaft made of water
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I like the concept but it just does the wrong thing for Magus. You don't need to add more to their rotation, it is already Draw weapon, Move, Strike or Move, Spell-Strike (If your GM is nice enough to pull out your weapon) then Recharge > Spell-Strike. There is no time to Break your weapon only to have to draw a new weapon while also recharging Spell-strike...If it wasn't Magus this type of class would be amazing, pick up new weapon, break weapon for bigger bonk! It would also be nice if the Magus got Quick Draw just for this Hybrid Study or I guess you could use the inbuilt one that lets you grab a new weapon and a cast the shield cantrip, I Dunno I like it but it is too difficult to use.
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I cant be the only one that thought of using this magus subclass and using the spell Summon Instrument and use the instrument to just bash people. El Kabong/Quick-Draw McGraw style. true it sucks for action efficiency but oh the flavor of it is amazing.
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Thematically, it's a pretty cool subclass, but mechanically it has the fundamental issue of action-taxing what is already one of the most heavily action-taxed classes in the game, so it's fairly impractical to put to use. It doesn't help that the conflux spell, which is meant to set you up easily for a Spellstrike on your next turn, breaks your improvised weapon and therefore forces you to spend even more actions picking up a new one.
The other big problem as I see it is that this subclass looks like they could play better just by using a regular weapon: a d6, versatile B/P/S forceful weapon isn't terribly impressive next to a glaive, for instance, nor is a d4 versatile B/P/S agile backstabber weapon next to a war razor. It's not just that regular weapons are still stronger despite all the buffs the subclass gives to improvised weapons, they're a lot more diverse too, so you get to choose from hundreds of weapons instead of essentially just two. You wouldn't be able to use your conflux spell properly, but then all the more reason to swap to a subclass that'd build upon what you already have, instead of one that spends a lot of text bringing something that's normally crap up to still below par.
And not to get on my soapbox, but I do think this subclass highlights how rigid the Magus can sometimes be as a class, and how difficult that makes it to enable new playstyles. When your class already prescribes a lot of action taxes to the point of implicitly expecting a two-turn rotation, it's difficult to enable playstyles on the class that require more actions to enable. Because the class relies so hard on dealing big bursts of damage in a single attack on about half their turns, it makes otherwise meaningful boosts to damage, like backstabber's +1/2 precision damage (or even 2/4 from the subclass), or forceful's own bonus damage, feel quite small in comparison. There's certainly ways to implement interesting Magus subclasses, as we've seen with the previous two new additions, and even then, the inherent difficulty of turning on Arcane Cascade limits their ability to express their own unique contributions.
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Part of it is the magus itself being restrictive, but part of it is just the options not having enough juice on their own.
Ultimately, if you want to introduce feats and options to change how you play a character, then at the end of the road that alternative playstyle should be about as strong (or stronger) than a 'normal' character spending feats to improve their 'normal' style.
... but Resurgent Maelstrom struggles to compete with just normal weapons.
There's this implied gameplay loop of breaking your weapon with Shattering Spellstrike or Turbulent Tide, then augmenting it with Surface Tension to effectively bump you up a couple die sizes (ish) before just wailing away to take advantage of forceful or backstabber/agile. It's a cool idea and plays differently than a standard Magus
but none of the options are strong enough when put together to make it particularly worthwhile, especially considering the cost of resetting your routine, or the fact that this is essentially replacing rather than stacking with your martial gimmick because it wants you to spellstrike less.
Maybe if Shattering scaled better, or Turbulent was good, or the Cascade benefit gave a more direct power spike, or Whirlpool came online earlier (or was even just baseline).