Content Update and Preview: Magus

Magus is coming along, it is pretty big project, but I wanted to let you guys know it will be, at the latest, up Monday. I will give you a brief overview of what to expect:

Magus is half casting, martial focus class based on the Duskblade from 3.5, the Swordmage from 4e and the Magus from Pathfinder. Each Magus, like Fighters, Paladins, and Rangers, receive a fighting style from the choices of Dueling, Great Weapon Fighting, Archery, or Two Weapon Fighting. The pillars of the class are Arcane Strike, which works like a magically charged sneak attack, essentially, for every spell slot level you have available, you get to deal an extra 1d6 force damage. So racking up a 5d6 at level 17. Other abilities are made available, all with incentive to hold onto your spell slots,. but with a spell list that makes it worth it to cast spells. Mitigating your casting will be a task, but you are rewarded for both holding onto your spells, and casting them.

The Magus uses a prepared spell casting, and pre-known spell list like the Paladin. However, they are an Intelligence based casters as their spell lists are derived from a study in imbued spells and ingenuity. Each archetype known as a Magus Paradigm grants themed bonus spells. The magus will becoming with a good number of archetypes, like the duelist is. They being added in pairs as they are tested and reviewed. The first two coming out will be the  Sword Mage and Pyreblade, the first focusing on the core of magical manipulation with weapon mastery, the second being a blade(weapon) wielding pyromancer. For those of you keeping track, Arrador from the Duel in the Clock Tower story is a Pyreblade.

Finally, the last pillar of the class takes the form of Arcane Imbuements. The Magus bonds a nonmagical weapon to themselves, turning it into a magical weapon, and adds a number of abilities and properties to the weapon over time. Many of these abilities emulate properties of existing magical items, and some are new to 5e and are rehashes of old item properties. Design wise, I am tweaking 3.5's item enhancement system. They may also be helpful for GMs to create some non-magus magical items as well. The most important part is that the magical item created this way only functions for the magus, but doesn't require attunement. A Magus can very well attune to and use a magic weapon, but it won't provide the same benefit as using his bonded weapon.

I look forward to releasing the first draft of this content to you guys. After this base class is finished, I will take a small break from new base classes, square up the duelist and slayer, and focus on archetypes. Let me know what classes you want to see archetypes, and themes you're interested in seeing.

Happy spell slinging, Arcanists!