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Related: Magus question: Combining spell strike and spell combat

I was reading the Spell Combat and Spell Strike abilities of the Magus and was curious how they would interact with Quicken Spell. Quicken spell allows you to cast a spell with a casting time of less than 1 round or 1 full round as a swift action and spell combat allows you to cast spells in your free hand as part of a full attack.

Spell strike lets you channel that spell through your weapon granting you a free attack.

So using quicken spell could you cast a spell (Let's say Shocking Grasp) as a swift and using spell strike to make a melee attack and then, assuming your attack hit, cast it again as a standard gaining another free attack and then still make your normal melee attacks?

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Aaron
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2 Answers2

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TL;DR: Yes. That is exactly how it works.

Spellstrike doesn't make any mention of caring what type of action the spell originally took to cast. It simply allows you, whenever you cast a touch spell, to make a free weapon attack as a part of the action to cast that spell. As a part of whatever action it took to cast that spell. It makes no difference to the Spellstrike ability whether that spell was cast as a Standard action, or with a casting time of 10 minutes or 10 days, or as a Swift action, or if you somehow managed to cast it as a free action. Whatever the action type, you simply get a free weapon swing out of it as part of that action.

Matthew Najmon
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Yes you can, but there are some things to point out here.

  • Quicken costs +4 spell levels. So just to use this once per day you have to be 13th level and you need the Quicken feat and you have memorize the first level spell in the Quickened format.
  • You can't do this with the metamgic Rod because you already have both hands occupied for casting and holding your sword.

Spell strike lets you channel that spell through your weapon granting you a free attack.

  • You only get the free attack if the Quickened spells is a touch spell. So you're basically going to Quicken a Shocking Grasp (5d6 + weapon damage), while spending your only 5th level spell. That spell could be something like Cone of Cold (13d10 area effect), which is probably more useful in general terms.
  • In fact, instead of the Quicken, you probably want to look at the Intensified feat. Here you can spend a second level slot and make that shocking grasp 5d6 points more deadly. And you could do that several times.

While you are definitely within the rules, I don't think any of us are really worried about this being over-powered.

Gates VP
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  • Could one use Spell Perfection Arcane Mark (Quicken Spell) to gain a free attack every round? – Arkhaic Aug 17 '14 at 23:32
  • So Spell Perfection has a prerequisite of 3 other Metamagic Feats and 15 ranks of Spellcraft. To achieve this you would need to spend 4 of your 10 feats (at 15th level) and the Spell Perfection would only work for Arcane Mark. Then end result would be one extra attack per turn. And of course you would be leaving magical marks on all of your targets :)

    I'm not sure there's anything RAW against this. But I'm also not clear if it's really dangerous. Magus characters tend to deal most of their damage from Shocking Grasp-style spells, not from their straight attacks.

     – Gates VP Aug 18 '14 at 06:19
  • There is a spell that allows you to merge a rod/wand with your sword, IIRC, such that you could use a rod. – Stackstuck Jul 18 '23 at 18:11