Character concept -doable?

[Sexyshoeless]

Hi all,

So with the rise of Pathfinder and my group's adoption of said system, I started looking over the srd, and lo and behold, the magus. I was hooked instantly, primarily because of the options the staff magus archetype opens up. How great that a spellcaster can actually kick ass with his magic staff? One handed? However, I am wondering, would it be doable to reproduce something like Gandalf in LOTR, fighting with staff AND sword, and not being a simple waste of time? Any ideas?

[Kenneth]

Unless you are planning on either A) havign massive pentalties or B) bieng very high level. It would not be worth it.

though I have to say the magus is a petty neat class in and of istelf. I hope you have fun with it.

[sonofzeal]

PF is a bit different, but at least in 3.5 this isn't doable with a staff...... unless you could treat it as a club instead. And there's no reason why you couldn't, with a flexible DM. You're still looking at a heavy feat cost, and a sub-optimal result.

Far more practical would be merely switching between the two weapons. You could hold the staff without penalty in your off-hand while you attack with the sword, and that replicates Gandalf's style reasonably well.

[Wyntonian]

I'm not the most qualified person on the specifics of this, but as I understand it you would need to be treating your quarterstaff as a two handed weapon, then use a feat, forget the name, to hold and fight with it in one hand, and just eat whatever penalties that applies. You'd also need to spend some feats on the TWF chain, or the pathfinder equivalent, so you're not taking huge penalites for using two one-handed weapons (longsword, I assume, and the effectively one-handed staff). Overall, this is a pretty feat-intensive strategy, and the payout is pretty dang minimal, aside from the badass point you're sure to rack up. If your group focuses more on cool than optimization, then it's fine, and the magus is probably one of the better classes to do that with. If you're in a party of optimizers however, it's definitely sub-par.

[kardar233]

I may be incorrect (it happens once every few thousand years when the stars align and dead Cthulhu rises from the sunken city of R'lyeh) but I'm fairly sure you're able to wield one end of a double weapon (such as a quarterstaff) as a one-handed weapon. Thus you could dual-wield a longsword and a quarterstaff.

What I'd be more worried about is that this locks out your Spell Combat ability (the Full Attack+spell cast one) as you need a free hand for that.

[SamBurke]

I may be incorrect (it happens once every few thousand years when the stars align and dead Cthulhu rises from the sunken city of R'lyeh) but I'm fairly sure you're able to wield one end of a double weapon (such as a quarterstaff) as a one-handed weapon. Thus you could dual-wield a longsword and a quarterstaff.

What I'd be more worried about is that this locks out your Spell Combat ability (the Full Attack+spell cast one) as you need a free hand for that.

Indeed the main issue. I might have a shrinkable staff... perhaps use a Rod of something? (Rod of the Python (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/rods/rod-of-the-python)). That's still a quarterstaff, but it's idiotically worded. (It weighs 5 pounds. Ok. WAIT. TEN POUNDS? WHAT? Just say that the listed weight means that it shrinks down, and claim it as a swift action.)

Also, look at the other rods (Lighting might work... Gandalf does a few things similar to that... kinda.)