Ultimate Magus worth it?

[Eldariel]

I'm not entirely sure what their advantage is, mostly versatility at the expense of higher spelllevels for either class?

The primary draw of the class is Augmented Casting. The ability to mitigate level adjustment of metamagic feats is very powerful and thus very difficult to obtain, and very desirable. Also, Expanded Spell Knowledge is a wonderful ability, adding many spells impossible for the spontaneous side to learn normally to its list.

And Spell Power is just awesome especially if you build a focused Ultimate Magus (one that has all the "lower level"-adjustments applied on one side; Practiced Spellcaster, Krau-sigil Illumian, arcane PrCs with their own progressions and few other ways exist to ensure this; you just need to make the "slower advancement"-side's caster level equal to the faster advancing one's for each of them), allowing you to far exceed the casting capabilities of a normal caster of your level.


But make no mistake, Augmented Casting is the selling point of the class. And the reason it works out (better than Theurges) is because it's easy to apply all the "lower level" advancements on the side you're focusing (generally Wizard).