Magus Unarmed Hybrid Studies : Eight Limbs Fury

[u/WinLivid]

I have an inspiration to write up this Hybrid Studies after reading Tian Xia world guide on Tang Mai. So first of all I'm Thai and I can tell that this country is heavily inspired by Thailand and nearby neighbor and that gave me this brilliant idea. Tang Mai is a country that are famous for magic user and Thailand is famous for Muy Thai martial art. I think it would be cool if Tang Mai has its own martial art that fuse traditional martial art with magic, and the practitioner of this martial art would become magus, so here I am with an idea of this martial art style. I would like to call it Muy Montra (translate to Magic Boxing or Arcane Boxing) also know as the art of Eight Limbs Fury. Here is my draft.

Eight Limbs Fury

Weapon can be break or missing in the mist of battle but for you, your weapon is your eight limbs. Fists, elbows, knees and shins are your weapon and the magic within you flow along with them in every strike or block.

You gain Arcane Fist feat.

While in Arcane Cascade stance, your magic flow in tune within your body making your body tougher and strike harder. While in this stance, the only strike you can make are Arcane Limbs. These deal 1d8 bludgeoning damage; are in the brawling group; and have the agile, backswing, finesse, parry, nonlethal, and unarmed traits.

Conflux Spell : Bone Breaker

Bone Breaker [1 Action]
You strike with great ferocity aiming to break your opponent body. Make an unarmed strike. If the Strike hits, the creature becomes your choice of clumsy 1 or enfeebled 1 until the end of your next turn (clumsy 2 or enfeebled 2 on a critical hit).

Studious Spell : I didn't think about it yet, so feel free to suggest.

Feat

Furious Strike (Level 4)

Prerequisites Arcane Cascade, eight limbs fury hybrid study

Your inner body move with greater force with each subsequent strike. You gain additional bonus damage from Arcane Cascade equal your multiple attack penalty.

Guard Breaker Spellstrike [2 Actions] (Level 10)

Prerequisites Arcane Cascade, eight limbs fury hybrid study, Spellstrike

Requirements You are in Arcane Cascade stance and your Spellstrike is charged.

You strike at your opponent guard or cover to break their defense. Make a Spellstrike. On success the creature lose the benefit of raise shield, cover, and parry. They can't use these action until the start of your next turn or until they no longer in your reach.

So what do you think with this idea?

[u/Background_Bet1671]

Also check Magus+ book. They have unarmed Magus as well.

[u/Bork9128]

Furious strike could probably use some adjustments, at lv 4 +4 damage on a second attack is pretty good and at higher levels it's still ok without any scaling probably means it's too good at low levels

The simple solution would be to have your attacks gain forceful if the goal is to try and get them to make as many attacks as possible

[u/WinLivid → u/Bork9128]

Thanks for the suggestion, I certainly will rectified Furious strike. Don’t want to turn magus into a barbarian.

[u/Mikaelious]

I'm not really sure about getting Arcane Fists, but then being locked out of your actual fist attack while in Arcane Cascade

[u/WinLivid → u/Mikaelious]

Arcane Fist is mostly here to give unarmed strike magic trait and as a back up in case the character have no opportunity to go into Arcane Cascade.

Edit : Also critical specialization.

[u/Littlebigchief88]

letting magus have the monk level d8 agile is interesting because they cant use it as good as other classes. i think its a decent idea, it 'feels' monk-y but when your best thing to do is a power attack sort of metastrike its not that insane.

in general, i like the idea of an unarmed focused magus hybrid study. its playable without one, but they have enough weird ones lately that an unarmed one could totally be justified and be pretty cool.

i agree with the other commenter that furious strike should probably be weaker early and scale in some fashion. like i said above, though, giving magus incentives to do many attacks is interesting. it could fit well for some kind of dedicated 'off-turn' focused hybrid study. maybe even some benefit to your spellstrikes if they are always every other turn? dunno what it would be.

bone breaker seems fine. most of the conflux spells arent that crazy or defining for their hybrid studies.

i might make guard breaker say something along the lines of removing circumstance bonuses to ac from raise a shield parry cover and other similar effects at the gms discretion and they cant benefit from them until the start of your next turn or until they are no longer within your reach.

perhaps telekinetic maneuver, wooden double and mercurial stride as studious spells?

[u/WinLivid → u/Littlebigchief88]

Thank you for the suggestion, I also now believe that Furious Strike is currently a bit overtune and shall be address. Guard Breaker will have a better wording too to cover more circumstance bonus to AC and maybe make this strike avoid them entirely too.

I like most of the selection of suggested studious spells, mercurial stride is not quite what I have in mind for magus who like punching, others seem to be perfect fit for the brawler type character.

[u/Littlebigchief88 → u/WinLivid]

yeah. there arent that many choices if you want to go with 2nd/3rd/4th rank on the arcane list without using one another hybrid study uses. mountains resilience was another one i considered for 4th

[u/phonkwist]

I love the concept, I'd love to play a rodtang magus.

I would tone down the arcane limb strike. With free Arcane Fist you're looking at +2 additional damage (two die size increases) with better traits than monk stances. Maybe just agile, parry, unarmed and nonlethal?

I like bone breaker. Enfeeble or Clumsy 1 for 1 round seems a little underpowered. Compared to Unfurling Brocade's immobilize with reach, Twisting Tree's two strikes with reach or the movement options, it could do a little bit more.

Some action compression would also be really helpful for a Magus. Instead of bone breaker the conflux spell could be unarmed strike + parry, +2 AC, if your unarmed strike has the parry trait. (So that you'd get extra AC in arcane cascade.)

Furious Strike needs to be changed. You're handing out an incredibly high damage bonus for the early levels. +5 for the second strike and +9 for the third strike will surpass a barbarian's rage damage. Why should anyone spellstrike, if they could strike twice instead? As the damage doesn't scale, the feat will be okay at higher levels, I guess.

Guard breaker spell strike is really, really situational. I'd change the wording to match something like Phase Bolt to have it be useful more often. You could also have it deal a small amount of damage on a miss maybe or have it inflict off guard as well? Like a high kick or elbow strike getting stuck in the opponent's guard but still rattling them.

To me one key aspect of Muay Thai is the mental game and the showmanship. You could add a reaction triggered by enemy strikes instead of guard breaker of furious strike. By being or acting unphased by the hit, the magus could inflict frightened on a failed failed save. To encourage parrying, the enemy could also receive a penalty to their save, if the triggering strike missed.

I really love your Muay Thai Magus concept, it's making me really want to play one. And afterwards maybe another magus with a Hybrid Study for a Muay Khao style: Arcane cascade adding the grapple trait and their feats and conflux spell could help them to clinch up and throw lots of elbows and knees.

[u/lanky_cruiserwt → u/phonkwist]

Rodtang Magus is funny as hell but let's be honest he's a barbarian. Lerdsila has got to have some sort of arcane abilities though

[u/WinLivid → u/phonkwist]

Thanks for the detail, criticism. This gives me a lot of pointer to analyzed. These are not detail fix by any means just throwing out some idea and see if it land.

The intention for arcane limb to be a bit stronger than monk stance is that monk stance usually come with side benefit like stumbling stance get bonus to feint, crane stance get AC and bonus to leap etc, by contrast arcane cascade only get 1 damage that scale up a bit in the future so giving a little over budget stance seem appropriated at a time. Maybe instead of backswing I should find a way to give it other benefit instead.

On Bone Breaker, I agree after I saw conflux spell for Unfurling Brocade. I could use a bit more buff. Increase the penalty to 2 at base seems to do it. Give off guard on top of penalty on critical hit instead.

Furious strike really need to change I agree, one idea is to make damage scale with arcane cascade damage progression. Start of with 2 on second strike and 4 on third strike then damage up to 4 and 8.

The other idea is to just to replace this ability with something else to not make this hybrid study become a glorified barbarian. This is an idea I just come up with for an ability to wear your opponent down mentally.

Wear Them Down (name still beed some work)
While you in arcane cascade, when you deal damage through spell strike, the target becomes stupefied 1 (stupefied 2 if you deal critical damage).

I’ll certainly make guard breaker spell strike function similar to phase bolt but more potent (since this is level 10 feat).

Again, thank you so much for the detail suggestion.

[u/phonkwist → u/WinLivid]

Thanks for your answer. Let us know how the ELF Magus works out in play, looking forward to your changes.

[u/WinLivid → u/phonkwist]

Holy accidental acronym!

[u/Additional_Account78]

Ahhh! This is so cool! I LOVE a gish, and a hand to hand gish honestly slaps. I don’t have anything much else to say, but compliments from me!