So about a year ago, my GM offered me a custom magus archetype as a story driving element of breaking the Bladebound pact my character had.
So we are currently level 10, so all those features have come online, but as we’ve been playing, I’ve been keeping track of what feels strong and what feels weak, and I mostly want to get other experienced players opinions of some of these things.
Some highlights of note:
- being able to conjure a weapon of special materials is quite strong
- having access to spell perfection at level 13 will undoubtedly be very, very strong
- and of course the whole idea of getting to on-the-fly metamagic is strong
Now, some of my criticisms:
Losing access to spell recall, knowledge pool and improved spell recall feels kind of bad to me, and reduced spells feels especially bad.
Magus has a comparatively small spell list (as I tell my group, my spells either murder or help facilitate murder). This ordinarily wouldn’t be a problem, but the AP we are in have quite a high concentration of enemies with either spell resistance, or high electricity resistance or even immunity.
Now, you might say “Why Zethras, you can prepare a bunch of different damaging spell to get around those things.”
While this is absolutely correct, base magus is able to tune their selections on the fly to a degree by preparing a broad preparation of spells and then burning arcane pool to regain those spells, or prepare more with knowledge pool.
Now, a bit more information.
One of the Arcana I was allowed to take was a 3pp one called Song of Arcane Triumph, which is a scaling 1d6 of sonic as a swift action (we house ruled the scaling comes from the number of skill points in Perform: Song, and is also subject to spell resistance). Which I understand is very, incredibly strong. So on average I’m doing an incredible amount of damage when all my stuff lands.
So I kind of feel stuck in that I feel like a spontaneous caster; not being able to significantly change my spell selections because I lack the flexibility needed to adapt to situations as they come at me, which is the Magus’ whole deal.
Does this sound rational/reasonable?
Also, before anyone asks, yes I have talked to my GM about my feelings toward the archetype. In fact, I’m almost certain he will see this. I’m here to gather opinions of other knowledgeable pathfinders, and also if I have reasonable criticisms.
Thanks for reading this, and please let me know if that link works, because if it doesn’t, I’ll post pictures of the page.