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?)
What classes have you played before and what class are you looking to play now? Who else is in your party and what kind of role are you looking to fill?
In terms of differences between a one-shot and a campaign, I’d say there are a couple of things to think about. The first is that there’s prerequisites to some options you might want at later levels. While it might pay to think about what options you want to take early to unlock those options you want later, you shouldn’t sacrifice having a fun character to play now to do so. If all else fails, you can always retrain later, something that you should also keep in mind if you choose a feat or other option and later find it not to be useful.
Another thing that might not have been important in a one-shot is magic item distribution. Depending on your campaign, it might be easier or harder for you to acquire magic items, but you should expect some as loot, at least, even if there are no available markets. If there really is no-where that you can purchase magical items with your hard-earned wealth, you may want to encourage the party’s spellcasters to get magic item crafting feats. Craft Wondrous Item is the most versatile, but you might also want some of the others. You can encourage this by offering them a profit; as a magic item crafter I typically charge 20% on top of my expenses, or 60% of the total market value of the item (which is still a great discount for the party). However, magic item crafting rules are a little bit complex, and if your GM doesn’t understand them fully (or if they do understand them but don’t want you to have them for balance reasons) they may wish to veto those feats. If that happens, don’t argue, but do point out that you need magic item shops available at some point, or a friendly NPC crafter to help you turn wealth into magic items.
Then there’s the campaign structure. This is probably not too different to 5e. Your GM probably has some idea in mind how you’re expected to follow the story threads from point A to point B, and what clues point you in the direction to go. Allow yourself to be guided, at least in terms of motive. That is, let your character be interested in the mysteries and plot hooks the GM is dangling. That being said, you don’t need to follow the exact path from point A to point B that your GM lays out. Pathfinder provides a lot of tools for gathering information from the appropriately named gather information use of the Diplomacy skill, to divination magic, to some certain feats. If you want to learn more about a plot hook before charging off in the direction the GM indicates, feel free to ask your GM if you can do some investigating of your own.
Thanks for the detailed reply, I was expecting something much more along the lines of “learn about you lord and saviour the five-foot step”… that said, I’m playing a magus so that was top of the reading list!
The magic item economy being much more of a thing than in 5e is definitely interesting, I’ve already spent a fair amount of time reading up on cool stuff I can buy even with my starting gold. I’ll have a look at crafting if we’re away from civilisation come level 3, cheers!
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?
at level 1 I get two spells to last a whole day
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.
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!
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.
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?
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!
There’s more variety in character power and ability, though if you’re familiar with 5e’s power levels, you’re more or less at home. Casters have the most narrative power, paladins are weapons of absolute destruction, and rangers are just kind of vibing. Though of course, you can put together a ranger in more than 3 or 4 ways, and you’ve got quite a few different methods of wielding that narrative power on the casters.
Specialization in one or two strategies is the order of the day for PF - a fighter who puts feats and ability scores into swinging a scimitar, firing a bow, and casting a spell or two isn’t likely to be effective in battle, and a magician who’se multiclassing and casting from different classes is just going to be worse than a bog-standard wizard who only takes levels in one class.
Power attack is pretty much mandatory for warriors. Similarly, Spellcasters will likely need spell penetration and Spell Focus for their favorite spells. Archers have the highest feat obligations - point blank shot & precise shot are mandatory, rapid shot is essential, and deadly aim is important.
The level of customisation is absolutely off the scale, I’ve just read a 70-page guide to the magus, there are more than 30 archetypes to consider before even thinking about a multiclass! I love how many options there are, I don’t love how long it takes me to read it all, but thankfully the guides seem to summarise pretty well.
While I appreciate how much customisation there is—and that it meaningfully impacts your style of play, rather than just changing out some small bonuses—I also appreciate that you can always decide that you’re just done, pick no archetype and some bog-standard feats from the core rulebook, and it’s good enough, though not optimal.
Oh for sure, my current class obsession, the medium, requires reading up on the entire wizard, cleric, druid spell list in addition to your own, as well as prepping contingencies for weapon combat, temporary skill & occult unlocks, and figuring how to even use two more chasses that don’t touch any of those options, all before you start getting into the advanced cross-spirit synergies, like necromancy and body possession, let alone the customization options you mentioned.
Of course, then there are also your barbarians who really only need to know to hold their sword two-handed & be mad, so it’s not all chargen insanity.
