Magus - Dex or Str based? [PF]

[acid_ninja]

Pretty much what is says on the tin. I'm building a magus and wondering whether to go Str or Dex based.

I like dex because the magus can't wear armor heavier than light for the first third of their career and only gets heavy quite late - by that point I'll have invested a great deal in my armor, only to get rid of it and start again.

On the other hand, Str saves you the two feats you need to get Dex fighting online (Weapon Finesse and Dervish Dance and possibly agile manuevers) and lets you focus on other stuff like expanded arcane pool, extra arcana and metamagic. You become more MAD but if you pump Str your attack and damge go up and your ac increases come from increasingly heavy armor.

What does the playground think?

[ericgrau]

It is a tough call. I once made a 3.5 5th level light armor build and found that a finesse elf and a str half orc were on par with eachother, though the half-orc was a nose ahead. Armor is fairly cheap to replace too and strength will be even more ahead later on so I'm tempted to say that the answer is strength.

You can more than get away with dex if you expect to play several low levels and that's what you want to do. If only magus had acrobatics it would be even better. I bet there's a trait for that.