Magus (Card Caster) and Holding the Charge

Question

If a Magus casts a spell with the range of "touch" such as Shocking Grasp, and attempts to deliver that spell via a thrown weapon as per the Harrowed Spellstrike ability, and the attack misses, does the Magus continue to Hold the Charge, as per the normal rules for failing to deliver a Touch attack, or does the shift in Range mean that the spell is wasted?

Furthermore, can a Magus continue to Hold the Charge of ANY Spells while using Harrowed Spellstrike? It would seem that if the range changes to match the thrown weapons increment, than that spell may no longer be "Held" as a touch spell.

Answer 1

Harrowed Spellstrike specifies that the range of the spell is changed to the range increment of the thrown weapon. Because 'Touch' is unfortunately a range increment, this means according to the book rules you need to make a ranged attack (not a ranged touch attack) with your cards for the spell to work. That sucks. This is also true of the regular Spellstrike ability, but that ability specifically replaces the touch attack granted by casting a touch range spell rather than the range of the spell itself. The base Spellstrike, then, allows its user to Hold the Charge (a property of the touch range), while the Harrowed Spellstrike does not and, in fact, loses all benefits of the Touch range.

However, you're in luck! The designers, addressing ill-founded concern over a magus's ability to use spellstrike at all (concern which clearly does not draw basis from the RAW) posted this:

Basically, the spellstrike gives the magus more options when it comes to delivering touch spells; it’s not supposed to make it more difficult for the magus to use touch spells.

Sean K Reynolds
Designer

This gives you some ground in trying to talk your GM into making Harrowed Spellstrike better in some way.

Answer 2

I believe that in this case, whatever the card hits, if the spell can target that, the spell will discharge on it, otherwise the spell will be lost.

Your second paragraph has it; the spell is no longer a touch spell and therefore the charge cannot be held. It's now effectively a ranged (non-touch) spell, relying on your attack roll. The energy of the spell is packaged with the ranged weapon and thrown away.

Note that the other ranged archetype for the Magus doesn't encounter this problem by requiring that only ranged spells be used with its ranged spellstrike ability; Card Caster balances this by requiring thrown weapons rather than the ridiculous ranges you can get with bows and certain firearms.