First things first: If you blew your top, do the apology thing. You're the only one who knows if that's needed.
Second: The magus is a class with the highest single target damage dealing potential in the game. And then they run into countermagic and large groups of monsters. The player playing the game WANTS this. He wants you to go into gory detail about how much overkill he just did to the mob. If a magus kills with a spell strike you should be having mobs explode like we're watching an action movie.
Third: The magus' primary weakness is their endurance over the course of a day. The magus is supposed to kill anything they see. That's what they do. They are not a wizard, they are a fighter that specializes in making things dead.
Basically you have to treat the magus like you treat a paladin. They hit almost as hard, and have nearly the same AC.
But that means certain things a magus can't deal with. A magus is very much like a ranger with legitimate damage spells. Hit them with traps, hit them with terrain modifiers. Never stand next to him for a full turn. Use large groups of weak mobs to make him consider not charging a spellstrike up. When he charges a spellstrike up realize he's basically declaring smite evil on that target and let him do his thing.
The reason the magus seems more powerful than the other players is probably because you're not putting the party in enough non-traditional combat situations. You don't need to jump the magus alone - leaving the party out of the fight ruins the game for everyone else, and gunning for a character because of a failure to challenge them is not just bad GMing, it's bad table etiquette and would have me walking from any table it happened at. Don't assume you can fool your players. You can't.
You want to stop a magus without being a total jerk? Disarm/break his sword, then ignore him for the rest of the combat. Attack around him. Make him have to constantly run to his friends to save them. The more the magus has to move about the battle the less ridiculous he can be. Remember - a magus is action starved. They use every action they can in a turn and arcane strike is a swift action (As is charging up their arcane bonded weapon) so if you force them to move every turn their damage output doesn't ramp into the silly range until 3rd round of a combat, and at that point you frankly WANT the players to be cutting through enemies at a ridiculous pace otherwise your encounter will drag on into the night and you'll bore your players.
Bottom line - What you're seeing isn't broken. It's intentional. You need to rethink your approach here. He's giving you access to massively fast encounters which means your combat cycles run smoother and you can get more encounters in each night. That's GOOD for the game. It keeps the pace of the game flowing and makes the players feel like they make real progress. If the magus is outpacing the group, then the problem isn't the magus - it's that the rest of the players need to be boosted up to his level.
Second: The magus is a class with the highest single target damage dealing potential in the game. And then they run into countermagic and large groups of monsters. The player playing the game WANTS this. He wants you to go into gory detail about how much overkill he just did to the mob. If a magus kills with a spell strike you should be having mobs explode like we're watching an action movie.
Third: The magus' primary weakness is their endurance over the course of a day. The magus is supposed to kill anything they see. That's what they do. They are not a wizard, they are a fighter that specializes in making things dead.
Basically you have to treat the magus like you treat a paladin. They hit almost as hard, and have nearly the same AC.
But that means certain things a magus can't deal with. A magus is very much like a ranger with legitimate damage spells. Hit them with traps, hit them with terrain modifiers. Never stand next to him for a full turn. Use large groups of weak mobs to make him consider not charging a spellstrike up. When he charges a spellstrike up realize he's basically declaring smite evil on that target and let him do his thing.
The reason the magus seems more powerful than the other players is probably because you're not putting the party in enough non-traditional combat situations. You don't need to jump the magus alone - leaving the party out of the fight ruins the game for everyone else, and gunning for a character because of a failure to challenge them is not just bad GMing, it's bad table etiquette and would have me walking from any table it happened at. Don't assume you can fool your players. You can't.
You want to stop a magus without being a total jerk? Disarm/break his sword, then ignore him for the rest of the combat. Attack around him. Make him have to constantly run to his friends to save them. The more the magus has to move about the battle the less ridiculous he can be. Remember - a magus is action starved. They use every action they can in a turn and arcane strike is a swift action (As is charging up their arcane bonded weapon) so if you force them to move every turn their damage output doesn't ramp into the silly range until 3rd round of a combat, and at that point you frankly WANT the players to be cutting through enemies at a ridiculous pace otherwise your encounter will drag on into the night and you'll bore your players.
Bottom line - What you're seeing isn't broken. It's intentional. You need to rethink your approach here. He's giving you access to massively fast encounters which means your combat cycles run smoother and you can get more encounters in each night. That's GOOD for the game. It keeps the pace of the game flowing and makes the players feel like they make real progress. If the magus is outpacing the group, then the problem isn't the magus - it's that the rest of the players need to be boosted up to his level.
laystyle could be a factor also.
