Beyond the points that Acedrummer_CLB exquisitely exposed, I think that in every occasion you could apply more than one effect under the same conditions and these effects come from different sources (powers, feats, whatever), you could apply them in the order you prefer.
I have found no reference to support this "rule": I simply decided that if there is no explicit ordering criterion, an arbitrary one could be used.
I think, however, that the effects of all four feats in the example should fall under the hit or miss phase (they all apply only on a successful hit only).
Under this hypothesis while the decision to exploit the Deft Hurler option takes place before the attack, its effects, Cruel Cut Style, Longhand Student and Criterion of Balic Practice effects could all take place in the hit or miss phase.
These four effect are not simultaneous, but could be applied in any order. A possible sequence of play could be:
- Before the attack: Deciding to use Deft Hurler
- As you attack: You compute attack and damage bonus and check if you hit you primary target.
- Hit or miss: You hit the Cleave target and deal damage as normal.
- You use the Longhand Student benefit, thus pushing the target one square (and isolating it from its allies).
- You use the Cruel Cut Style benefit to the now isolated target and deal it ongong Wisdom modifier damage.
- You use the Criterion of Balic Practice benefit and shift 1 (or 2) square(s); you are now in range for a ranged basic attack against the artillery monster.
- You use the Deft Hurler benefit to make a ranged basic attack against the artillery monster.
- After the attack: none.
I have found no reference to rules that prohibit the appliance of multiple "at-will attack modifier" effects. A more formal at-will attack modifier definition or keyword may be needed.
However, as the number of publish material grows, some at-will attacks could become far more powerful than many encouter attacks.
I'd house rule that no more than one "at-will attack modifier" feat could be applied on a single power utilization; and this decision must be made in the before the attack phase.
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When optimizing a character, it is key to identify what you will be spending most of your time doing.
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In this case, it seems like you want to make a melee character who fights in melee. The problem is, as a Magus, you will be combining spell use with melee attacks, and relying on spells to do your damage or to attach Saving Throw based effects. However, your melee attacks still need to hit to apply these spells. So we need to optimize two things - your to hit and your spell effects.
Why not rely more on melee damage? As a non-Fighter and non-Barbarian and non-Rogue, your melee damage is low. You can't easily use PA to increase your damage as your to-hit is key. Ergo, relying on pure melee damage is a bad idea with this build.
To-Hit
To Hit is made of three parts -
- Stat added to to-hit
- spell bonuses and gear bonuses to hit
- feat bonuses to hit
Spell and gear bonuses are simple - you select spells (such as Haste and Cat's Grace) that give you bonuses to hit and try to have them cast before combat goes up. Additionally, you buy or steal or barter or trade or select items (gloves of dexterity, magical swords, banners, duelist's gauntlets, sashes etc) that increase your to-hit. It's usually fairly binary, and choices between say, a great save or die to apply via sword hits or a spell that increases the chance of hitting, can be decided upon by comparing the great spell to your pre-existing spells, thinking about how often you hit currently, etc.
Stat added to hit is also fairly simple. You want more of the stat that adds itself to your to-hit, within reason, again, by comparing it to other things you might get with the same money.
Feat bonuses are slightly more complex, as some feat chains offer debuffs which can affect to-hit, and computing the result is non-trivial. However, as you aren't a Fighter, you can't afford enough feats to make the Improved Trip line worthwhile (Expertise, Trip 1, Trip 2, Fury's Fall), as you aren't a rogue the Shatter Defenses line isn't worth it, and most of the others aren't great shakes. Weapon Focus is an okay choice as it pays off immediately, doesn't require anything else, and is easy to use with your weapon choice of 'always scimitars'. The Two-Weapon Fighting chain is mandatory. That leaves you with very few feats, so the only real 'bang for buck' feat choice is Dazing Assault. Daze is a great status effect and worth applying.
Spell Effects
Here we start to run into problems. In the proposed build, you have 4 lost caster levels. In a partial casting class like the Magus, that's effectively suicide. Unless there are some vastly powerful low level spells in the Magus list that you are going to be able to rely on, and you're taking the levels in those classes later - which there is no sign that you are, as they appear to be low level dex and BAB boosting classes.
Unless you are going to dual-wield scimitars and take power attack/twf chain etc, I recommend you only take one level instead of four. Taking a second level later might be workable, but 4 levels of delayed casting as a Magus will suck.
If you have 3.5e backwards compatibility, things like the Abjurant Champion prestige class might help you out in getting a better BAB while maintaining your casting progression (although you still lose out on arcane pool and arcana - the only worthwhile things about advancing pure magus).
Now, as for advancing your spell effects, we have two main things to worry about - save DC and damage.
Save DC is increased by int and various feats, none of them amazingly good. Spell Specialization is a good choice, as is spell Focus in a school you have multiple good options in (like Conjuration or Transmutation).
Damage is increased by CL and metamagic feats. The Gifted Adept and Metamagic Master traits are key to increasing the power of a spell you'll use a lot, such as Shocking Grasp. Otherwise Spell Focus, Mage's Tattoo (Varisian Tattoo), Spell Specialization, can all increase your CL. At lower levels, an Empowered Shocking Grasp for 5d6 x 1.5 damage is crazy at level 4 or whatever. At higher levels, an Intensified Empowered Shocking Grasp out of a 2nd level spell slot for 10d6 x 1.5 damage is great in addition to a full attack.
Taking a level in Crossblooded Sorcerer (Draconic/Orc, or anything else that boosts damage) can greatly increase the damage of touch spells you use also.
Once you have all that handled, damage, status effects, how you are applying them, then you can think about ratios of int to dex.
And in this case, mathematically speaking, you want 2 more points of Int than Dex at any one time, but both are important.
Best Answer
Typically, Bladed Brush and Slashing Grace can't work together
The benefit of feat Bladed Brush, in part, says, "When wielding a glaive, you can treat it as a one-handed piercing or slashing melee weapon… for all feats and class abilities that require such a weapon" (emphasis mine). The benefit of the feat Slashing Grace, in part, says, "Choose one kind of light or one-handed slashing weapon…." A creature that possesses the feat Bladed Brush only counts a glaive as a one-handed slashing weapon while the creature wields a glaive; the glaive itself remains a glaive, which is not a one-handed slashing weapon. No matter how an individual creature treats its glaive when that particular creature wields its glaive, the glaive is still an unsuitable weapon choice for the feat Slashing Grace.
Were Bladed Brush not to require actual wielding, and, instead, its benefit started with You can treat a glaive as a one-handed piercing or slashing melee weapon…, it and the feat Slashing Grace would work fine together. Were the feat Slashing Grace not to mandate picking a specific kind of weapon, it and the feat Bladed Brush would work fine together. However, the feats both don't give an inch and remain incompatible.
While this GM can see that a few issues arise were either feat subject to a house rule changing it to make the two feats compatible—their interaction with the magus's extraordinary ability spell combat springs to mind—, I imagine that because of the significant feat investment other styles of play would remain popular. I'd ask the player who pitched the house rule to show me his PC's plan first before I'd consider making such a house rule, though.
Making them work together anyway
To be extra clear, the feat Slashing Grace says, "Choose one kind of light or one-handed slashing weapon" (emphasis mine). However, while this GM views a weapon's kind as the weapon in the abstract—possessing only its printed statistics—, there's actually no formal definition of a kind of weapon. With that in mind, a GM that rules that the feat Bladed Brush changes what kind of weapon a glaive is while the creature wields a glaive gives creatures some options for gaining the feat Slashing Grace (glaive) if the creature's first taken the feat Bladed Brush.
For example, a human fighter that's already a worshiper of Shelyn (the Golarion deity of love and beauty) and that possesses the feats Weapon Finesse and Weapon Focus (glaive) takes at level 1 the feat Bladed Brush. Then, at the end of the session wherein that human fighter gained enough experience points to advance to level 2, if that human fighter is wielding her glaive, she can take the feat Slashing Grace (glaive) as the feat Bladed Brush says that the glaive counts—while the feat's possessor wields a glaive—"for for all feats… that require" a one-handed piercing or slashing melee weapon.
That is, while it's normally impossible to use the feat Bladed Brush to meet the prerequisite of the feat Slashing Grace (glaive), Character Advancement says, "A character advances in level as soon as he earns enough experience points to do so—typically, this occurs at the end of a game session, when your GM hands out that session’s experience point awards." To do this then the character and the player must be aware that advancement is about to occur and the character must be at that session's end in a position to wield her glaive.
This is neither impossible nor particularly shady, but it will typically be unexpected, certainly the kind of thing that should be discussed with the GM beforehand rather than suddenly sprung on the GM.
Likewise, a GM may allow a character like the aforementioned human fighter—if she's not in a position to wield her glaive upon advancing a level or if the GM nixes the character advancement scheme—to use the rules for Retraining to exchange another feat for Slashing Grace (glaive), although the GM may require the character to wield the glaive continuously for five days.
Note: In addition to your Paizo messageboard threads from 2017, 2017, and 2017, there're other threads about this interaction like these from 2016, 2017, and 2017.