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I can only express what I think on the matter rather than others' assessments, but for the Magus, a lot of their subclasses have benefits that don't turn on unless you enter Arcane Cascade stance. To enter Arcane Cascade stance, you need to spend an action, but only after Casting a Spell or Spellstriking, meaning you will need to either spend your whole turn doing nothing but this, or cast a single-action spell like shield just to enter the stance, which still takes up most of your turn. Additionally, most of the Magus's hybrid studies only grant benefits if you have a specific equipment loadout, so Twisting Tree only boosts your staff and Laughing Shadow only gives its benefits while you're unarmored and have a free hand. Thus, the Magus's subclasses tend to be quite restrictive in how you're expected to play to gain their benefits, and jumping through all of those hoops can end up severely hindering you compared to just ignoring those mechanics: the one major exception to this is Starlit Span, which lets you make ranged Spellstrikes, so even though you end up getting pigeonholed into a ranged build, it at least lets you do something you couldn't do before and makes you a lot stronger from the jump.
As for the Gunslinger, a large number of their ways require you to get into melee range to access several of their benefits, namely the Drifter, Triggerbrand, and Vanguard subclasses. This similarly means jumping through a lot of hoops, and in the case of the Triggerbrand also requires using combination weapons, which are generally not very good. This can lead to situations where ignoring all of that and just standing back to shoot can end up being more beneficial than leaning into these subclasses, especially as their unique actions aren't always very rewarding. By contrast, the Pistolero is a subclass that doesn't force you to get up close, yet also has what I'd consider the strongest slinger's reload and initial deed out of the lot.
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As for the Gunslinger, a large number of their ways require you to get into melee range to access several of their benefits, namely the Drifter, Triggerbrand, and Vanguard subclasses. This similarly means jumping through a lot of hoops, and in the case of the Triggerbrand also requires using combination weapons, which are generally not very good. This can lead to situations where ignoring all of that and just standing back to shoot can end up being more beneficial than leaning into these subclasses, especially as their unique actions aren't always very rewarding. By contrast, the Pistolero is a subclass that doesn't force you to get up close, yet also has what I'd consider the strongest slinger's reload and initial deed out of the lot.
Sniper Gunslinger also has requirements for its abilities that are hard to use on a lot of AP maps due to lack of ways to get cover/hide/make enemies flat footed/etc. You can do some of them by being Prone, but since that (somewhat counter intuitively with firearms) grants a penalty to attack, you probably don't want to be doing that all the time.
My experience with a player that had it as a GM is that it got WAY better once they got Legendary Sneak and could use Covered Reload while standing in the middle of an area with a thousand people watching them.
A party member having a reliable means of Trip also got flat footed on things even if they didn't manage to Hide, and of course rank 4 Invisbility can help them a ton. But I found this one needed more friendly maps or party assistance than Pistolero does before Legendary Sneak comes online.
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The Hafling's distracting shadows feat is another great way to consistently make a Sniper's abilities work. But yeah, unfortunately you really need to find ways to work around unfriendly maps as a Sniper.
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To take one specific example, Resurgent Maelstrom magus has this central gimmick around using improvised weapons you magically enhance for significant buffs, including some special attacks where you destroy your weapon on purpose for extra damage.
Fully utilizing the subclass' internal mechanics and feats has you grabbing a piece of furniture to wield, breaking it on purpose with your enhanced spellstrike feat or your conflux spell, then activating another feat to negate its broken condition and give you bonuses. There's even a feat to easily grab a replacement at a distance when your improvised weapon shatters.
But your weapon buffs each take an action to activate, your shattering spellstrike has a fixed damage bonus that never scales, your conflux spell just isn't very interesting, and your core subclass feature is mostly just designed to make your weapon choice closer to baseline rather than actually giving you a benefit.
So at the end of the day you jump through a bunch of hoops that are all more or less just designed to let you swing a normalish weapon for normalish damage.
Though unlike some of the other options here, there's wiggle room on the GM end to make it better because guidance on improvised weapons is so minimal.
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Starlit span:
Self explanatory, works with core spellstrike action loop and actually improves on it by being ranged and not having to move as much. Great action economy (well, for a magus, get slowed and you're still f&$*ed). Only sore point is arcane cascade doing literally nothing (unless you use one of the dogwater subclass specific feats, but why would you). But you never needed cascade anyways so who cares.
Twisting Tree:
Generically good melee magus with a few tricks up it's sleeve. Forced to use a staff, but makes it a fairly good weapon so no issue there, and it's arcane cascade benefit is both non-mandatory and actually pretty useful when you want it. The conflux spell is legit good and it's subclass feats are good to. I don't know that I'd take lunging spellstrike (may as well have maneuvering spell) but it does it's job decently. The student of the staff feat is great too, you don't *have* to use it (could use a normal staff + spellstriker staff gauntlet) but it gives you reasons to, deadly d6 in cascade, crit spec, and a genuinely unique and interesting property rune swap ability.
Inexorable Iron:
The two handed "tankier" magus. A lot of people hate on this one for it's d&&&$&# conflux spell and terrible subclass feats but it's temphp is nice and who needs conflux spells or subclass feats anyways, we take archetypes in this house. The studious spells are decent too, nice to see enlarge on there. It's got a great niche in being able to use spellswipe with a high damage two handed reach weapon, and IW even targets 2 creatures when amped, so despite it not getting any viable in class spellswipe options it's a match made in heaven. Feast or famine but hey that's magus for you - wait, I'm getting a phone call, is this the police? They're telling me he's... he's DEAD. They found him lying in the street next to the psychic. Yea go play twisting tree at this point this subclass died in the psychic remaster.
Laughing Shadow:
Ok and now we're finally at our first trap subclass. What seems to be the intended way to play laughing shadow is to go unarmored (or light armored to start with) DEX KAS and that subclass feat that lets you feint before spellstriking. The problem is that this sucks. The movement speed is a joke and the extra damage you get ends up as just compensation for not being able to use a two handed weapon and being DEX based (and it's not even consistent) and as far as the benefits of having a free hand goes twisting tree does the same thing but better if you just activate cascade. The distracting spellstrike feat is such a disappointment to, they deliberately forbade it from working with any of the feint enhancements that could have made it interesting.
The subclass isn't irredeemable though, if you ignore everything it tells you to do. Best way I've seen is to go STR based, using an unarmed attack and a manifold missile wand to really take advantage of the subclass damage boost. You'll need a party that can reliably flank or dish out flat footed though, I wouldn't rely on distracting spellstrike - though taking it isn't that costly as if you're doing champion archetype for fire ray anyways, you already have the CHA.
Aloof Firmament:
Once again trying to bait you into playing a dex based light/unarmored magus. Even if you're not falling for that the "free" cat fall it still manages to f&%& you since it means (strict RAW at least) you can't take cat fall the normal way and actually use it. Anyways, the central problem with this subclass is that you have to action tax yourself to get back the damage you lose by wielding a one handed sword (finesse sword if you got baited). So if you didn't need to move, you're getting smacked with the action tax. And magus don't like action taxes. Thankfully asp coils exist, so being stuck with a one handed sword isn't a total loss, but it's still not great.
Now, this subclass turns on a dime the instant you hit 12th level. That's because this subclass is perfectly fitted for the addition of the maneuvering spell feat, it's like they were made for eachother. Oh my god maneuvering spell saves this subclass. Instead of action taxes, you just jump. When you spellstrike. For free. All over the battlefield - it's so cool. And there are additional feats to enhance this further and help dodge reactive strikes. So give this a try if you're in a level 12+ game, but don't bother if you're not.
Sparkling Targe:
Would you like to have the defensive ability of a shield fighter or the offensive ability of a shield fighter? Pick one, you don't get the action economy for both. That's about it for this subclass, it's fine otherwise and even gets some baller feats (I WISH I could have dazzling block on fighter or warpriest). But it just doesn't have the core action economy to use it's defensive prowess without sacrificing offense, unlike other shield block builds. Pre-remaster I could kinda see it if you really wanted to shield block magic, but with shield runes spellguard shields work fine for that.
Probably the easiest improvement to this subclass would be to make shielding strike have the option to not strike, letting you use it before spellstriking. I don't think that would save the subclass and you'd be *devouring* focus points, but it'd be a step in the right direction.
Unfurling Brocade:
Now we're into seriously deteriorated Mr. Incredibles face territory. "Magus player reportedly forced to use Worst Weapon Known To Man, make athletics maneuvers" . What is this bladed scarf, d6 two handed reach? Why would I want this. I know it has every athletics trait under the sun, but magus isn't a class well suited to athletics maneuvers and the extra support this subclass gets is frankly pathetic.
We can cascade to get:
Additional action that only happens after a crit disarm vs enemies without reach, which hardly every happens.
Get the grapple trait on your weapon as well as the other ones, can pull them towards you as an additional action - why would I want to pull them closer to me, they're already in reach. To disrupt my spellstrike? And if I wanted the grapple trait there are better ways.
Titan wrestler but only for trip and also it doesn't scale
At least the conflux spell is decent, but that ain't compensating for the rest. The subclass feats are bad too.
Resurgent Maelstrom
Please fire whomever designed this subclass's focus spell.
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Brocade and Maelstrom both seem to suffer from wanting to create new ways to play the Magus (Brocade buffs maneuvers and Maelstrom gives you benefits for striking multiple times in a round) but vastly underestimate how much they need to give to make those actually superior to your vanilla playstyle so they end up turning into traps.
Unfortunately I think this is an problem Paizo runs into semi-frequently, where they don't properly budget feats that are designed to buff deficient options.
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Brocade and Maelstrom both seem to suffer from wanting to create new ways to play the Magus (Brocade buffs maneuvers and Maelstrom gives you benefits for striking multiple times in a round) but vastly underestimate how much they need to give to make those actually superior to your vanilla playstyle so they end up turning into traps.
Unfortunately I think this is a problem Paizo runs into semi-frequently, where they don't properly budget feats that are designed to buff deficient options.
That seems about right
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Unfortunately I think this is an problem Paizo runs into semi-frequently, where they don't properly budget feats that are designed to buff deficient options.
Yeah, this is a bit of a shame. I think the idea of keeping certain actions limited as a baseline can be good design, but only if the options that build upon them buff them significantly enough to be worthwhile. Done right, this could make those choices feel like massive power-ups even when they make you as powerful as if you'd taken a competing option. In practice, though, for all the text that gets put into these options sometimes, the end result is that you're about as powerful as if you'd used less limited actions, minus the benefit of an actual power-up. The Gunslinger I think suffers from this as well in that a lot of their features are about compensating for having to use weak weapons, yet a lot of their deeds and reloads are just okay, so they don't really catch up to other martials unless they pick notably strong options like Fake Out.
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Gunslinger as an archetype has the big issue of reloading, the "good" reload feats are only available at lvl 10. Guns without reloading compression are just plain worse.
Combining this with an already action-starved class is just shooting yourself into the foot.
Spellshot/Beastgunner seems to be a way to achieve something similar.
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In defense of the laughing shadow magus, I actually see the focus spell working out well quite a lot.
I wonder if sparkling targe should take a page from thaumaturge shield implement/champion defensive advance and compress raising shield with another action (entering cascade, striding a bit, or recovering spellstrike)?
Combining actions into arcane cascade feels like a bad direction to go because it is something your character only does once an encounter. I think that is one of the things that feels flat about the gunslinger is that one of the defining elements of each way is something that only happens once an encounter when you roll initiative. As a whole I really don’t mind Arcane cascade being a flat action tax for extra melee damage for the magus. If anything, like monk stances, I think the coolest fix for arcane cascade would be giving the magus more stances accessed through feats that do other cool things, and then have competition for what stance to be in and have a couple more feats related to combining stances or getting a boost from changing stances like the monk. I think that would really bring out the hybridity of the class and represent a martial practices tied to magical study.
The absolute make or break issue with the magus is whether or not the impossible magic book is going to introduce a spread of spell attack roll spells, especially spell slot spells, that are fun and interesting and worth using for spell striking. The only one in Secrets of Magic that really fit the bill was Horizon Thunder Sphere, but the base game had enough to provide some additional variety, but there were still not enough as a whole to support the spell striking with spell slot spells play style. And the existing implementation of using save spells is depressingly boring compared to the playtest magus: cast a spell with a lower spell DC than a real caster, but get a weapon strike in there that can fizzle your spell if you roll badly on your strike, is just not interesting to me. So if, after this book, there are not more spell slot spells worth spell striking with, then the class is going to be pretty dead in the water as far as I am concerned. If it uses focus spells to spell strike, I feel like it might as well have been designed from the beginning to be more like the kineticist with a small handful of ways to do a spell strike, rather than have spell slots at all.
The absolute make or break issue with the magus is whether or not the impossible magic book is going to introduce a spread of spell attack roll spells, especially spell slot spells, that are fun and interesting and worth using for spell striking. The only one in Secrets of Magic that really fit the bill was Horizon Thunder Sphere, but the base game had enough to provide some additional variety, but there were still not enough as a whole to support the spell striking with spell slot spells play style. And the existing implementation of using save spells is depressingly boring compared to the playtest magus: cast a spell with a lower spell DC than a real caster, but get a weapon strike in there that can fizzle your spell if you roll badly on your strike, is just not interesting to me. So if, after this book, there are not more spell slot spells worth spell striking with, then the class is going to be pretty dead in the water as far as I am concerned.
While more attack spells to use would be great, magus already has good options. Briny bolt, shocking grasp, blood feast, and polar ray will cover you through your entire magus career. The reason why everyone grabs focus spells instead is because you don’t have the slots to maintain offense throughout the day. Before giving them more options, just give them more slots (spellstrike font when?). The options aren’t very useful without those.
(Ok they do need a good spell to use with spellswipe since IW got canned, I’ll give you that.)
Not one of those spells appears in a remastered book.
Hydraulic Push is ok at low levels and against oozes but doesn’t have the lasting value of shocking grasp. Blazing Bolt is your multi target. But other than that there are very few remastered options.
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I understand why players like grabbing focus spells to spell strike with, but I personally dislike how much that became the 1 true build of the magus. I would much rather magi not be able to use focus spells at all and the class be adequately balanced around cantrips and the occasional nova spell slot than balanced around using focus spells to spell strike and having to stand still and waste actions recharging because every focus point has to go into spell striking.
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Not one of those spells appears in a remastered book.
Hydraulic Push is ok at low levels and against oozes but doesn’t have the lasting value of shocking grasp. Blazing Bolt is your multi target. But other than that there are very few remastered options.
Briny Bolt is from the Gatewalkers hardcover, which is full remaster.
Exploding Earth and Splinter Volley are both Rank 2 from RoE and are good substitutions for Blazing Bolt if you don't want to do fire damage for the rest of your life.
Unfortunately, the next (and last) spell attack spell is Rank 6 disintegrate. So from levels 3 to 11 you are stuck with one of the three above spells.
I would expect to get a few more such spells from Impossible Magic.
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Combining actions into arcane cascade feels like a bad direction to go because it is something your character only does once an encounter. I think that is one of the things that feels flat about the gunslinger is that one of the defining elements of each way is something that only happens once an encounter when you roll initiative. As a whole I really don’t mind Arcane cascade being a flat action tax for extra melee damage for the magus. If anything, like monk stances, I think the coolest fix for arcane cascade would be giving the magus more stances accessed through feats that do other cool things, and then have competition for what stance to be in and have a couple more feats related to combining stances or getting a boost from changing stances like the monk. I think that would really bring out the hybridity of the class and represent a martial practices tied to magical study.
The absolute make or break issue with the magus is whether or not the impossible magic book is going to introduce a spread of spell attack roll spells, especially spell slot spells, that are fun and interesting and worth using for spell striking. The only one in Secrets of Magic that really fit the bill was Horizon Thunder Sphere, but the base game had enough to provide some additional variety, but there were still not enough as a whole to support the spell striking with spell slot spells play style. And the existing implementation of using save spells is depressingly boring compared to the playtest magus: cast a spell with a lower spell DC than a real caster, but get a weapon strike in there that can fizzle your spell if you roll badly on your strike, is just not interesting to me. So if, after this book, there are not more spell slot spells worth spell striking with, then the class is going to be pretty dead in the water as far as I am concerned. If it uses focus spells to spell strike, I feel like it might as well have been designed from the beginning to be more like the kineticist with a small handful of ways to do a spell...
The thing is that the magus needs to be in arcane cascade to access their class features, except for spellstrike. If you introduce other stances then nobody is going to use them because they need arcane cascade, and if you remove the need to be in arcane cascade, I honestly don't see most magus using them anyways because of their action economy.
Britney bolt is worse than hydraulic push though, with the same heightening issue for critical hits.
Splinter volley requires 3 actions to hit two targets and Exploding Earth with hurt yourself with most melee builds.
Remastered spell slot options for spell striking are not good. The problem with impossible magic presenting a bunch of good ones is that it will have made taking ones like shocking grasp, acid arrow and polar ray out of game mechanically in the first place. They got rid of spell attack roll spells to help guide newer players away from them as the only spells to have memorized. If there a bunch of new good ones, then there will be a return to many “casters are terrible and require martial accuracy with item bonuses” that plagued the game before the remaster.
I am curious how the devs will navigate it.
Edit: New stances could count as being in arcane cascade for the sake of class features, just do different things than give bonus damage of a certain energy type.
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Britney bolt is worse than hydraulic push though, with the same heightening issue for critical hits.
Splinter volley requires 3 actions to hit two targets and Exploding Earth with hurt yourself with most melee builds.
Remastered spell slot options for spell striking are not good. The problem with impossible magic presenting a bunch of good ones is that it will have made taking ones like shocking grasp, acid arrow and polar ray out of game mechanically in the first place. They got rid of spell attack roll spells to help guide newer players away from them as the only spells to have memorized. If there a bunch of new good ones, then there will be a return to many “casters are terrible and require martial accuracy with item bonuses” that plagued the game before the remaster.
I am curious how the devs will navigate it.Edit: New stances could count as being in arcane cascade for the sake of class features, just do different things than give bonus damage of a certain energy type.
Briny bolt isn’t good because of its damage, it’s good cause of it’s baller rider.
But anyways, why does it matter if the remaster made a bunch of save version of attack spells? The attack spells are still in the game and perfectly valid to use, and the only way that’s changing is if Paizo outright breaks their word about legacy content.
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I understand why players like grabbing focus spells to spell strike with, but I personally dislike how much that became the 1 true build of the magus. I would much rather magi not be able to use focus spells at all and the class be adequately balanced around cantrips and the occasional nova spell slot than balanced around using focus spells to spell strike and having to stand still and waste actions recharging because every focus point has to go into spell striking.
I mean if you don't want to use focus spells you don't have to.
The main thing that focus spellstriking does that's really appealing is it frees up your spell slots for anything else, which make the magus a lot more versatile in practice. The amount of spellstriking doesn't really change.
It's also kind of out of scope of this thread, since spellstriking is something you do regardless of subclass.
... If anything more spellstrike content just makes stuff like Maelstrom even less appealing.
The problem is that focus spell offer equal options to spell slots for spell striking with remaster equivalent spells, so it’s not really a choice. 3x an encounter for the same damage as 2 times a day and even more damage than spell slot spells for the other 2. Shocking grasp is better than any focus spell (but only with IW being nerfed), but there isn’t any comparable remaster spell available. The magus will need something like that in Impossible Magic for slot casting spell strike to even be better than focus spell casting 2 times a day.
I’d much rather see spell striking with cantrips to be able to be as good as spell striking with focus spells since 3x an encounter is pretty much all encounter long in most cases, with slot spell providing noticeable nova potential past that and Magi just being better off not focus spell poaching to do their thing/allow confluence spells to be the best use of Magi focus points.
Britney bolt is worse than hydraulic push though, with the same heightening issue for critical hits.
Not directly relevant to the topic of discussion, but the first thought that crossed my mind when reading this was "Leave Britney Bolt alone!"
I also do think focus Spellstriking carries some degree of relevance to subclasses, in that it widens the gap between Starlit Span and melee hybrid studies in my opinion: melee Maguses have a particularly tough time with their action economy, because they will generally need to move or do something other than recharge Spellstrike on the turn where they use that activity. This makes conflux spells at least somewhat desirable for their action compression on the Magus's off-turns, whereas using an amped imaginary weapon (RIP) or another focus attack spell instead can make their off-turns more cumbersome, especially if they also want to enter Arcane Cascade. By contrast, a Starlit Span Magus can very easily recharge Spellstrike each turn that they use it, and they make no use of Arcane Cascade either, so there are even fewer tradeoffs to focus Spellstriking. This, combined with a dependence on fewer attributes that makes it easy to opt into Int without sacrificing as much damage or survivability, I think is one of the reasons why most of the Magus's other subclasses tend to feel much clunkier by comparison, not to mention straight-up weaker.
The problem with impossible magic presenting a bunch of good ones is that it will have made taking ones like shocking grasp, acid arrow and polar ray out of game mechanically in the first place. They got rid of spell attack roll spells to help guide newer players away from them as the only spells to have memorized.Right, in the Player Core books, a.k.a, the first books a new player is going to look at, and the books which contain the majority of the game's casting classes. Putting lots of attack roll spells there makes less sense than, say, putting them in a supplemental book with a class whose central conceit revolves around using attack roll spells.
It is my hope this works out well because we do need those kind of spells for existing magus spell striking to work. I just hope getting a new shocking grasp-like spell doesn’t have every new caster player wanting to cast this spell, a spell attack roll focus spell and cantrips exclusively, and then getting mad their accuracy with spell attack roll spells aren’t as good as martials, when the design of casters is “target the weak save,” so the ability to make AC just always the weak save would just make all damage dealing saving throw spells a waste of time.
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It is my hope this works out well because we do need those kind of spells for existing magus spell striking to work. I just hope getting a new shocking grasp-like spell doesn’t have every new caster player wanting to cast this spell, a spell attack roll focus spell and cantrips exclusively, and then getting mad their accuracy with spell attack roll spells aren’t as good as martials, when the design of casters is “target the weak save,” so the ability to make AC just always the weak save would just make all damage dealing saving throw spells a waste of time.
Of course, having spell attacks in the game and then having their accuracy be so bad that casters are not supposed to use them was a design error from the outset and still is.
If spellcasting is designed around juggling saves and spell attacks are supposed to be bad, don't have them and just fix Magus to use save spells.
But having a whole class of spells that are bad unless you're a Magus is a lousy design and also creates a bunch of trap options for newbies who won't know why they're bad.
Sometimes AC is the bad defense. Bad enough that the expected damage can work out to match or beat a saving throw spells even with half damage on a save factoring in. Also debuffing AC is a common party wide tactic, as is giving out group bonuses to attack rolls, in ways saving throw spells can’t. Plus hero points can’t help a caster land a saving throw spell nor can sure strike.
That is a whole lot of accuracy boosting math to have to compensate for if the default average spell attack roll spell was not a little behind from the beginning.
Britney bolt is worse than hydraulic push though, with the same heightening issue for critical hits.
How? It has a great rider. Why do you only evaluate spells based on the damage numbers?
Also I think a fair reading of Briny Bolt would allow the damage on both the crit and success parts to scale by 2d6. It says "the damage increases by 2d6". It doesn't say that it only increases on a success. The damage is only written in the success and crit success effects. Whatever logic would make it only apply to success, would also be able to be used for it to only increase crit success, at least from interpreting the text written and not reading into background design.
But anyways, why does it matter if the remaster made a bunch of save version of attack spells? The attack spells are still in the game and perfectly valid to use, and the only way that’s changing is if Paizo outright breaks their word about legacy content.
It would be nice if they added some more. The amount of Attack spells in this game are very low. It seems like Paizo avoids making them outside of Focus spells.
But having a whole class of spells that are bad unless you're a Magus is a lousy design and also creates a bunch of trap options for newbies who won't know why they're bad.
Yep. I don't know if the Ivory Tower design is intentional in this game, but it's most certainly present. Especially with the Sure Strike nerf I don't really know what the place of these spells are outside some niches. It's really strange how they design a whole type of spells that seem to only really be useful against low AC enemies, or if you use some other thing to make them useful (Sure Strike, Magus, Shadow Signet).
The critical damage for Britney bolt increases by 2d6, just like the success result. So at rank 2 that is 4d6 regular damage and 6d6 critical damage. A few ranks up and the critical result is a paltry 2d6 higher than a success. It is useful for creatures immune to criticals because crit immunity only applies to the doubling of damage, not to the other results of a critical success, but against most enemies, the magus loses quite a lot of damage per round when their spells don’t double damage on a critical success.
For regular casters, briny bolt is not a bad rank -3 or 4 spell option because past rank 3 you just don’t get much heightening it any more. But Magi don’t have those spell slots.
Other effects are fun, and making an enemy waste an action is a good one, but Britney bolt will fall way behind even the new Imaginary Weapon for damage at medium to higher ranks. And most Magi players want some kind of maximum damage option that can go in a spell slot, which isn’t really in the game right now at allx
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Shocking grasp, blood feast, and polar ray are all maximum damage options for their respective ranks that are in fact in the game.
If magus wants to do max damage with it’s spell slots it has those, and both blood feast and polar ray also have additional riders that are pretty great.
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Shocking grasp and polar ray are fine spells if you know about them and can find them. They are legacy options that don’t even show up on Archives of Nethys anymore, rerouting you to saving throw spells if you search for them. They are not good spells for saying “the magus has plenty of Spell striking support in the remaster.” Blood Feast is an uncommon spell from an early AP with themes and descriptions that will make many GMs hesitant to toss out to players too easily.
I don’t really get the point of saying the remastered Magus is still fine without additional spell striking spell slot options, and then point to pre-remastered spells that will be difficult for players to find and access. I do think the new book will have some options but I am curious to see how they are balanced. Maybe they will just be exactly the old spells, at least mechanically, that would get a laugh from me.
Fair enough that pre-remaster spells would be harder to find for new players. And I don’t think Paizo could just print a list of of attack spells next to magus as that would use their OGL names.
Ok yea that’s a problem, they should make some equivalent remaster ones they can put on a sidebar list.
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I think one of the reasons that the Remastered Magus is going in a new book instead of trying to somehow hammer Secrets of Magic into non-OGL form, is so you have space to print a bunch of new spells to replace ones we lost in the remaster.
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The critical damage for Britney bolt increases by 2d6, just like the success result. So at rank 2 that is 4d6 regular damage and 6d6 critical damage. A few ranks up and the critical result is a paltry 2d6 higher than a success. It is useful for creatures immune to criticals because crit immunity only applies to the doubling of damage, not to the other results of a critical success, but against most enemies, the magus loses quite a lot of damage per round when their spells don’t double damage on a critical success.
For regular casters, briny bolt is not a bad rank -3 or 4 spell option because past rank 3 you just don’t get much heightening it any more. But Magi don’t have those spell slots.
Other effects are fun, and making an enemy waste an action is a good one, but Britney bolt will fall way behind even the new Imaginary Weapon for damage at medium to higher ranks. And most Magi players want some kind of maximum damage option that can go in a spell slot, which isn’t really in the game right now at allx
I missed that, but it still seems perfectly fine to spellstrike with considering how good the rider is. It still gets an enchanced critical which is pretty good. I'm not gonna exactly be unhappy to waste an enemy action.
Gunslinger as an archetype has the big issue of reloading, the "good" reload feats are only available at lvl 10. Guns without reloading compression are just plain worse.
Combining this with an already action-starved class is just shooting yourself into the foot.Spellshot/Beastgunner seems to be a way to achieve something similar.
*good reload feats*
That's a laugh...
Where's the reload feat that allows me to reload as a free action upon scoring a Critical Hit? or a feat that allows me to "reload" a Capacity weapon right after Striking as a free action?
Dude, the Gunslinger CANNOT strikes 3 times in a round unless it has a Repeating weapon, which for some reason are rare.
I think one of the reasons that the Remastered Magus is going in a new book instead of trying to somehow hammer Secrets of Magic into non-OGL form, is so you have space to print a bunch of new spells to replace ones we lost in the remaster.
Probably the true reason is that the SoM had so many OGL things on its pages (including many pages explaining the concept of schools inside of Golarion) that just doesn't worth to try to save its original layout. It's similar to what happened to the Divine Misteries due the high number of changes.
The classes remaster will simply benefit getting more freedom due this.
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The point of a gunslinger is to make one or two big hits per turn, not 'unload' three shots off black powder weapons, though...
I agree with this, and I'd have likely preferred a Gunslinger that made just one big attack each turn; the issue there is more that the Gunslinger's features push them into this shoot-reload-shoot loop more than they significantly buff their hit damage, and the expectation is more for them to get a lucky crit in order for the fatal trait on their guns to kick in. Making just one attack every other turn and having it deal piddly damage, let alone miss, isn't a great feeling, yet it happens often enough to be a fixture of the class in my opinion.
The point of a gunslinger is to make one or two big hits per turn, not 'unload' three shots off black powder weapons, though... People keep seeming to think gun technology in Golarion is more advanced than it actually is...*good reload feats*
That's a laugh...
Where's the reload feat that allows me to reload as a free action upon scoring a Critical Hit? or a feat that allows me to "reload" a Capacity weapon right after Striking as a free action?
Dude, the Gunslinger CANNOT strikes 3 times in a round unless it has a Repeating weapon, which for some reason are rare.
Says who? Jealous players who watched Gunsligners steal their thunder?
I don't see people complaining about Gunslingers using Advanced Repeating Crossbows. Why should it be an issue with firearms?
Capacity weapons feel like they should work like early revolvers, where you had to manually cock the hammer back every shot, also known as "fanning". I should be able to shoot 3 times with a Pepperbox, if I'm have a hand free.
Saying that "a gunslinger shouldn't shoot 3 times per round" is as dumb as saying that "a magus shouldn't spellstrike every round".
What's next? "A spellcaster shouldn't cast spells every round" ?
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The point of a gunslinger is to make one or two big hits per turn, not 'unload' three shots off black powder weapons, though... People keep seeming to think gun technology in Golarion is more advanced than it actually is...*good reload feats*
That's a laugh...
Where's the reload feat that allows me to reload as a free action upon scoring a Critical Hit? or a feat that allows me to "reload" a Capacity weapon right after Striking as a free action?
Dude, the Gunslinger CANNOT strikes 3 times in a round unless it has a Repeating weapon, which for some reason are rare.
Says who? Jealous players who watched Gunsligners steal their thunder?
I don't see people complaining about Gunslingers using Advanced Repeating Crossbows. Why should it be an issue with firearms?
Capacity weapons feel like they should work like early revolvers, where you had to manually cock the hammer back every shot, also known as "fanning". I should be able to shoot 3 times with a Pepperbox, if I'm have a hand free.
Saying that "a gunslinger shouldn't shoot 3 times per round" is as dumb as saying that "a magus shouldn't spellstrike every round".
What's next? "A spellcaster shouldn't cast spells every round" ?
Funny you say that, I don't think the Magus should spellstrike every round..... I don't think anybody should do the same thing every round. I genuinely think combat design, class design, and player desire should be more engaging than *looks down from phone* "I do the same thing as last turn"
I think one of the reasons that the Remastered Magus is going in a new book instead of trying to somehow hammer Secrets of Magic into non-OGL form, is so you have space to print a bunch of new spells to replace ones we lost in the remaster.Probably the true reason is that the SoM had so many OGL things on its pages (including many pages explaining the concept of schools inside of Golarion) that just doesn't worth to try to save its original layout. It's similar to what happened to the Divine Misteries due the high number of changes.
The classes remaster will simply benefit getting more freedom due this.
But also when they remastered the player core a lot of the spells that previously had spell attack rolls (which the Magus wants, but nobody else does) were changed to targeting saves (e.g. Acid Arrow targets AC-> Acid Grip targets reflex.) This was a positive change since Wizards, Druids, Clerics, etc. don't usually want to be targeting AC. My understanding was always "when they get around to remastering the magus, they will fill in some of those gaps they created in the Magus kit."
Like it makes sense to print the spells that use spell attack rolls alongside the class that wants to make those.
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Funny you say that, I don't think the Magus should spellstrike every round..... I don't think anybody should do the same thing every round. I genuinely think combat design, class design, and player desire should be more engaging than *looks down from phone* "I do the same thing as last turn"
The Fighter does the same thing over and over... yet everyone adores the class...
My main issue since "the departure from 3.5" is how combat encounters became looooooooooooooong, as in enemies got double HP while the players could no longer attack multiple times, let alone not longer dishing big amounts of damage.
If all classes are limited with their damage-dealing abilities, it's gonna turn every fight into a chore...
Funny you say that, I don't think the Magus should spellstrike every round..... I don't think anybody should do the same thing every round. I genuinely think combat design, class design, and player desire should be more engaging than *looks down from phone* "I do the same thing as last turn"The Fighter does the same thing over and over... yet everyone adores the class...
My main issue since "the departure from 3.5" is how combat encounters became looooooooooooooong, as in enemies got double HP while the players could no longer attack multiple times, let alone not longer dishing big amounts of damage.
If all classes are limited with their damage-dealing abilities, it's gonna turn every fight into a chore...
Some turns our Season of the Ghost fighter strikes, some turns he vicious swings, other turns he grapples. I've also seen him take turns to pull out and use items. His combat to combat action economy is extremely open ended.....and, yes, the fighter class is well designed
Some turns our Season of the Ghost fighter strikes, some turns he vicious swings, other turns he grapples. I've also seen him take turns to pull out and use items. His combat to combat action economy is extremely open ended.....and, yes, the fighter class is well designedFunny you say that, I don't think the Magus should spellstrike every round..... I don't think anybody should do the same thing every round. I genuinely think combat design, class design, and player desire should be more engaging than *looks down from phone* "I do the same thing as last turn"The Fighter does the same thing over and over... yet everyone adores the class...
My main issue since "the departure from 3.5" is how combat encounters became looooooooooooooong, as in enemies got double HP while the players could no longer attack multiple times, let alone not longer dishing big amounts of damage.
If all classes are limited with their damage-dealing abilities, it's gonna turn every fight into a chore...
Versus casting 3 different spells in 3 rounds?
Funny you say that, I don't think the Magus should spellstrike every round..... I don't think anybody should do the same thing every round. I genuinely think combat design, class design, and player desire should be more engaging than *looks down from phone* "I do the same thing as last turn"The Fighter does the same thing over and over... yet everyone adores the class...
My main issue since "the departure from 3.5" is how combat encounters became looooooooooooooong, as in enemies got double HP while the players could no longer attack multiple times, let alone not longer dishing big amounts of damage.
If all classes are limited with their damage-dealing abilities, it's gonna turn every fight into a chore...
So this is a criticism of PF1 right? And not PF2? Because high level PF1 encounters could have one round last an hour. Even with 15 enemies on the battlefield I’ve never had a PF2 round take 30 minutes without some kind of break happening in the middle. Average is definitely around the 10 to 15 minute mark, tops.
Says who? Jealous players who watched Gunsligners steal their thunder?
I don't see people complaining about Gunslingers using Advanced Repeating Crossbows. Why should it be an issue with firearms?
Capacity weapons feel like they should work like early revolvers, where you had to manually cock the hammer back every shot, also known as "fanning". I should be able to shoot 3 times with a Pepperbox, if I'm have a hand free.
Saying that "a gunslinger shouldn't shoot 3 times per round" is as dumb as saying that "a magus shouldn't spellstrike every round".
What's next? "A spellcaster shouldn't cast spells every round" ?
Advanced repeating crossbows have worse traits and damage die than firearms.
Capacity could probably use a buff, sure.
I'm pretty sure it's common to say that martials in general shouldn't strike 3 times per round. It's not a very effective thing to do. Magus often does not spellstrike everyone round. A spellcaster not casting spells every round is more comparable to a martial not making any strikes than not making 3 strikes per turn.
Versus casting 3 different spells in 3 rounds?
Is there some kind of point hidden here?
So this is a criticism of PF1 right? And not PF2? Because high level PF1 encounters could have one round last an hour. Even with 15 enemies on the battlefield I’ve never had a PF2 round take 30 minutes without some kind of break happening in the middle. Average is definitely around the 10 to 15 minute mark, tops.
I'm not entirely sure what their point even is. It's not like fighters are attacking 3 times a turn outside of some exceptions.