I’m a filthy 5e casual, what sort of madness should I expect?
(I’ve played a couple of PF1e one-shots and built a few characters so I know the surface-level differences, but what sort of 5e thinking do I need to un-learn?)
I’m a filthy 5e casual, what sort of madness should I expect?
(I’ve played a couple of PF1e one-shots and built a few characters so I know the surface-level differences, but what sort of 5e thinking do I need to un-learn?)
I figured the 5-foot step would have come up in your one-shots, so I didn’t bother. But yeah, it’s an important tactical option to be aware of, both when considering your own options and when considering your opponents’ options.
There are a couple of magus-specific pieces of advice I can give.
Spell Combat and Utility Spells
First is that, in terms of action-economy, your core class feature is not spellstrike, but spell combat. Spellstrike helps you deal more damage and feel like a bad-ass, but spell combat lets you do something pretty unique: Cast your buffs and debuffs while simultaneously dealing significant amounts of damage. It also acts as pseudo-two-weapon-fighting if you cast a touch-range cantrip (such as arcane mark) just so you can deliver it with a spellstrike.
In summary, it’s better to think of yourself as a bad wizard who can also deal a lot of damage, rather than as a martial that deals damage by casting spells.
The Specifics of Spellstrike
Second, the way spellstrike in particular works interacts with some rules that don’t come up very often and have some details that are easy to miss. I’m talking about the way that delivering touch spells work, and therefore by extension the way that delivering a spellstrike works. When you cast a touch-range spell that affects a single target (such as shocking grasp), you don’t actually deliver the attack as a part of casting the spell. Instead, casting the spell grants you a free action that you can use any time in the same turn to deliver the spell. This means that you can cast shocking grasp from a safe position, move, and then deliver the shock (as a spellstrike in your case) as a free action. Of course, if you’re using spell combat, you can’t also take a move action, but you can still begin spell combat from five feet away, five-foot-step, and then attack.
However, if you miss, or otherwise don’t successfully deliver the spell on that turn, further attempts to deliver it on later turns are their own attacks, made however you normally make those attacks; e.g. as a regular attack action or part of a full attack, or even an attack of opportunity.
How this interacts with spell combat is that you can cast the touch spell as your spell for spell combat, take your free action to deliver it immediately, and then even if you miss, the rest of the attacks in your full attack can each attempt to deliver it.
Magic Item Crafting
Magus being a spellcaster, and an intelligence-based spellcaster at that, means that you are indeed one of your party’s first picks for magic item crafting. A wizard, with their bonus crafting or metamagic feats, would top that; you’re going to be a little more starved for feats than the wizard would be. But lacking one of those, you’re the first choice. That being said, you don’t have to take magic item crafting feats if you don’t want to bother with that—or if your GM doesn’t want to bother with that—as long as decently-sized settlements where you can stock up are going to be available. Like I said, it depends on the campaign.
Cheers! The ability to make a second attempt to hit with a spell definitely seems useful especially as pathfinder seems to be incredibly stingy with the number of spells you get - at level 1 I get two spells to last a whole day, and I have to vancian-casting prepare them at the start of the day! I’ve already re-adjusted my character to care less about casting spells because it seems I’ll hardly get the chance to do it! Also I don’t seem to have any damaging touch-range cantrips, is that a deliberate decision because they’d be too good for spell combat + spellstrike?
This is going to get better at higher levels, but will never not be an issue. Full-casters need to be able to make the most of their higher-level spell slots and still be able to function with their lower-level spell slots. Mid-casters like yourself need to be able to function without spells, and make sure the spells they do cast count.
All the more reason to make sure your spells have an impact when you do cast them. That’s not to say it should never be cast just to deal more damage, but it does mean you should be asking yourself what spell would have the most impact and also when to cast it to have the most impact.
I’m not sure about that. The basic arcane cantrip list predates the Magus (by a lot, considering it was based mostly on the 3.5e DnD cantrips), so spellstrike and spell combat were certainly not considerations when putting that list together. Considering those cantrips were designed for use by low-level sorcerers and wizards, I believe the designers probably just thought no-one would ever use a touch-range cantrip to deal a bit of damage.
Where it comes to the magus, a damage-dealing cantrip would only be a little bit of extra damage for you. Nice, but the main benefit comes from having a touch-ranged cantrip at all, no matter what its effect. Arcane mark fits the bill, allowing you to make that extra attack without expending a spell slot.
Coming from 5e land where spellcasters would probably never touch a physical weapon and have higher damage from cantrips it seems odd not to have a touch-range cantrip that a squishy wizard can use if someone gets in their face. I guess in PF you don’t generally want to be casting touch-range spells due to the AoE provocation, you’d generally just 5-foot step back and use your ranged spell, right?
I’ve seen arcane mark mentioned as the “default” spellstrike spell, I guess it makes sense to get the free attack, just seems like a waste to be casting a spell that does nothing when I could be doing more!