Just kidding about the Mindblade - its actual use is to make you feel stupid when you forget to manifest a weapon.
Edit: Okay so on a serious note, quick eval of the Mindblade
- Spontaneous casting
- Your normal magus spells are cast as psychic instead of arcane. You also get to pull a few spells from the Psychic spell list.
- However, psychic casting requires "emotion" and "thought" components (instead of somatic/verbal/material) which means if you get a mind-affecting effect, you can't cast.
- Psychic casting also increases the spell concentration checks by DC10.
- There are traits (Sound of Mind) and feats (Combat Casting) to mitigate those issues. But you do want to have a high Intelligence even if you are melee because your casting stat affects your concentration check. You also do not want to dump Wisdom as you don't want to fail a mind-affecting save.
- There is no psychic spellcasting failure in armor, though on the other hand the Mindblade doesn't provide Med. or Heavy Armor. Then again, with a 1 level dip in a class with armor, then you can be in Heavy Armor at level 2 if you want to go STR. So your choice here is (A) the typical Dex build that pays the Finesse-Dervish feat tax or (B) a STR build that loses 1-2 levels of class progression in return for extra feats if you go Fighter, or Barb/Bloodrager for faster movement speed in armor.
- Weapon manifesting
- Manifest ANY weapon in which you have proficiency in one OR both hands. So you can TWF and you can THF and you can polearm lol. The advantage of two-handed fighting is that you'll do more damage any time you can't use iteratives (e.g. moving and attacking, attacks of opportunity). The benefit of TWF... is more attacks I guess? lol. Well if you use a touch spell with multiple charges (e.g. Chill Touch, Frigid Touch) the more hits the better.
- Manifesting weapons temporarily points from the pool. They return when you de-manifest. In fact, you choose the enchantments (elem damage/keen/etc) of the weapon before you manifest, so enchantments are included in the temporary cost. You don't need to pay extra to enchant but at the same time you cannot enchant a non-psychic weapon.
- Other benefits... It's a little bit of color/variety and you don't need to buy a weapon.
Besides that it's mostly a spontaneous side-grade to the regular Magus.
Now, compared to the Eldritch Scion:
- The Mindblade has less of a need for extra pool point feats/favored class bonuses because you're not relying on the Scion's "Mystical Focus" (non-rage rage mode). And, as above, your enchantments return their pool points when you de-manifest.
- Mindblade uses INT, Scion uses CHA, that's pretty even because neither provides saving throws. Well, I suppose that the Scion will have better CHA-based skill checks, whereas the Mindblade will have more skills but crappier on Persuasion (though you can grab "bruising bully.")
- All of the above rules on psychic casting vs. arcane casting.
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I read this ingenious idea of 2 levels of Arrowsong Minstrel with the rest as Skald (and maybe 2-3 levels of Arcane Archer). Note that the Arrowsong Minstrel's Precise Shot ignores soft cover from whatever your song effects and the Skald's songs are equivalent to Baldic Performances. I'm using a Court Poet, so all my party can cast AND gets Greater Beast Totem for a Pounce.
You should be able to do the same with the Urban Skald but whatever, I'm happy with a Pounce Party and my melee can make use of casting buffs anyway. I'm not sure what STR/DEX/CON skills the Court Poet prevents.. I can move/charge and attack as normal. Maybe combat maneuvers would be disabled but I haven't checked.
Actually I stacked Court Poet with Red Tongue, which means I lose most of my Versatile Performances in return for a few Rogue talents. Given that I have three skill monkeys already... Good stuff.
Edit: Okay so on a serious note, quick eval of the Mindblade
- Spontaneous casting
- Your normal magus spells are cast as psychic instead of arcane. You also get to pull a few spells from the Psychic spell list.
- However, psychic casting requires "emotion" and "thought" components (instead of somatic/verbal/material) which means if you get a mind-affecting effect, you can't cast.
- Psychic casting also increases the spell concentration checks by DC10.
- There are traits (Sound of Mind) and feats (Combat Casting) to mitigate those issues. But you do want to have a high Intelligence even if you are melee because your casting stat affects your concentration check. You also do not want to dump Wisdom as you don't want to fail a mind-affecting save.
- There is no psychic spellcasting failure in armor, though on the other hand the Mindblade doesn't provide Med. or Heavy Armor. Then again, with a 1 level dip in a class with armor, then you can be in Heavy Armor at level 2 if you want to go STR. So your choice here is (A) the typical Dex build that pays the Finesse-Dervish feat tax or (B) a STR build that loses 1-2 levels of class progression in return for extra feats if you go Fighter, or Barb/Bloodrager for faster movement speed in armor.
- Weapon manifesting
- Manifest ANY weapon in which you have proficiency in one OR both hands. So you can TWF and you can THF and you can polearm lol. The advantage of two-handed fighting is that you'll do more damage any time you can't use iteratives (e.g. moving and attacking, attacks of opportunity). The benefit of TWF... is more attacks I guess? lol. Well if you use a touch spell with multiple charges (e.g. Chill Touch, Frigid Touch) the more hits the better.
- Manifesting weapons temporarily points from the pool. They return when you de-manifest. In fact, you choose the enchantments (elem damage/keen/etc) of the weapon before you manifest, so enchantments are included in the temporary cost. You don't need to pay extra to enchant but at the same time you cannot enchant a non-psychic weapon.
- Other benefits... It's a little bit of color/variety and you don't need to buy a weapon.
Besides that it's mostly a spontaneous side-grade to the regular Magus.
Now, compared to the Eldritch Scion:
- The Mindblade has less of a need for extra pool point feats/favored class bonuses because you're not relying on the Scion's "Mystical Focus" (non-rage rage mode). And, as above, your enchantments return their pool points when you de-manifest.
- Mindblade uses INT, Scion uses CHA, that's pretty even because neither provides saving throws. Well, I suppose that the Scion will have better CHA-based skill checks, whereas the Mindblade will have more skills but crappier on Persuasion (though you can grab "bruising bully.")
- All of the above rules on psychic casting vs. arcane casting.
---
I read this ingenious idea of 2 levels of Arrowsong Minstrel with the rest as Skald (and maybe 2-3 levels of Arcane Archer). Note that the Arrowsong Minstrel's Precise Shot ignores soft cover from whatever your song effects and the Skald's songs are equivalent to Baldic Performances. I'm using a Court Poet, so all my party can cast AND gets Greater Beast Totem for a Pounce.
You should be able to do the same with the Urban Skald but whatever, I'm happy with a Pounce Party and my melee can make use of casting buffs anyway. I'm not sure what STR/DEX/CON skills the Court Poet prevents.. I can move/charge and attack as normal. Maybe combat maneuvers would be disabled but I haven't checked.
Actually I stacked Court Poet with Red Tongue, which means I lose most of my Versatile Performances in return for a few Rogue talents. Given that I have three skill monkeys already... Good stuff.
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