New Magus Arcana - Balanced?

[Occasional Sage]

Synergistic Strike (Ex)
Prerequisite: Magus 6

Benefit: The magus can expend 1 point from his arcane pool as a swift action; for the rest of the round, all uses of spellstrike use the critical multiplier of the magus's weapon rather than the typical x2.


Thoughts?

[StreamOfTheSky]

Sounds fine to me, possibly too short a duration if anything. Encourages use of weapons beyond scimitar, rapier, etc... Even if that weren't an arcana and was just how things worked all the time, the 18-20 weapon is still mechanically better than a x4 since every magus has keen at 5th level and frequent reliable crits for solid damage is better than rare, totally sporadic super mega-death criticals that will likely be overkill in a lot of situations they happen. Falcata, which walks the tightrope in between with a 19-20/x3 (but costs a feat or other method to get exotic weapon prof.) might become much more tempting.

[TheMonocleRogue]

Intensified maximized shocking grasp on a x4 crit hurts. There is a weapon that crits x4 that has 10ft reach (naginata). With some critical focus feats and an auto-confirm you could potentially deal 240 electricity damage on a crit in addition to weapon damage.

[Kurald Galain]

Intensified maximized shocking grasp on a x4 crit hurts. There is a weapon that crits x4 that has 10ft reach (naginata). With some critical focus feats and an auto-confirm you could potentially deal 240 electricity damage on a crit in addition to weapon damage.

How would you get an auto-confirm?

[TheMonocleRogue]

How would you get an auto-confirm?

Pendant of the Blood Scarab: (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/m-p/pendant-of-the-blood-scarab) Auto-confirms one critical hit a day, costs 1000gp. Worth every gold piece to magus one-shot builds.

[Kurald Galain]

Pendant of the Blood Scarab: (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/m-p/pendant-of-the-blood-scarab) Auto-confirms one critical hit a day, costs 1000gp. Worth every gold piece to magus one-shot builds.

Nice. I'm curious if there's an easily searchable list of items by slot and price? There's this one, of course (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items#table-slotless-lesser-minor) but it doesn't actually contain this particular scarab, and that means it's probably missing other things as well.


As to the OP: this arcana strikes me as pretty weak, and there's a good chance that when activating it it won't do anything (because you happen to not roll a crit that round). Perhaps there's a niche build somewhere that may want it, but in general a magus would have better things to spend his arcana slots, and pool points, and swift actions for.

[Baron Malkar]

My group is under the impression that a Magus uses the crit multiplier of his weapon for his spellstrike out of the box. if that isnt true than a few things may have to change...:smallconfused:

[DarkSonic1337]

My group is under the impression that a Magus uses the crit multiplier of his weapon for his spellstrike out of the box. if that isnt true than a few things may have to change...:smallconfused:

It uses the critical threat range of the weapon, but only uses a x2 multiplier for damage.

[Kudaku]

I like the Arcana, but I too think it should have a longer duration.

I like it because: It adds options to those magi who don't want to use the high-threat low crit multiplier weapons, like axes or scythes. As it stands currently the vast majority of magi I see in play and on the forums are either using an agile rapier (with weapon finesse), scimitar (with dervish dance), or scimitar (with strength focus). Offering an arcana to make axes, scythes and picks viable alternatives is a worthy cause.

I think the duration is too short because: Barring situations where you're guaranteed a critical hit (helpless foe), the odds of scoring a 19-20 threat during the one round you're using this arcana is fairly low.

If you feel it would be overpowered to have it activated continuously, as an alternate solution you could bake it into the arcane pool weapon enhancement feature. That way it would be active for 1 minute when the magus needs it, but not constantly active.

Note: I think it's worth saying that a spellstrike critical hit with an x3 or x4 weapon from a competently built magus will most likely obliterate whatever he's hitting. That said, it will also frequently be major overkill and an x2 crit would have had the same effect. Your combat might get a little swingier with this arcana in play.

[Spore]

I think it's too bursty. Let the ability stay the same but it should cost 1 AP for every two points of threat range your weapon has.