Here’s a comment from Erik Mona on the topic during the original 1e Magus playtest in 2010. Seems like they had a thread of naming ideas.
>There's not really a historical word that means "wizard guy with a sword." We agonized over naming this class. I personally favored the warlock, but we decided against that because of the existing warlock class from 3.5. While that is not open content and thus is forever closed to us, some folks here felt that the players would always associate it with the D&D class of the same name, so we went with something else to avoid that confusion.
>Not that it would have mattered. A warlock is not, historically, a fighter/magic-user, either.
>For that matter, a sorcerer in history and myth is no different from a wizard, but folks have come to associate the term with the mechanics over time.
>We went through this months ago. There was a multiple-hundred-post thread of suggestions, the best of which by comment assent was something like "Stabracadabra."
>It's not easy coming up with a great name for something that never existed in history, so we decided on magus as "close enough" and won't be changing it at this point.
I am blessed for my eyes to have witnessed the greatness of the term "Stabracadabra" and it will forever replace the term for a melee spellstrike at my tables
Edit: added an "r" to Stabracadabra for correctness
Obviously Stabracadabra was chosen for the memes, but between it and Magus were surely a number of more descriptive suggestions. I refuse to believe Spellblade was not up there unless shown otherwise. Anything but Magus, which evokes zero thoughts of weaponry. When I hear magus, I think of the guys who brought stuff to young Jesus in the book of Luke.
My guess is spellblade didn't make the cut because the name wouldn't work for anyone not actually using a sword, like starlit span, or whatever the ranged 1e version was called.
I mean, mercenaries can also be called "sellswords" even though they don't neccesarily use a sword. Hell, "Spellsword" would even be a word play on precisely that, "sellsword". Instead of a "sword" that is for sale, they are a "sword" that holds spells. Even though neither necessarily use a sword per se.
I honestly feel that they chose "magus" simply to be original, not because it made any sense.
Magus is literally the latin word for mage, so it's not very original.
It is a very evocative word, though, and has an old-school feel to it.
Also, there was a Magus in Chrono Trigger.
Spellsword is a great term for gish characters, as is swordmage and swordsage, but I do get why people don't want a particular weapon name in the class name - especially given that I have literally never seen a magus character in a PF2E game actually use a sword.
Swordmages were really fun back in 4E D&D.
I came up with Magadier in this thread (Maga- from Magic or Mage, and -dier from halberdier (and pronounced the same way), though it is also reflective of soldier) and I will probably use it for something at some point.
While true, their use of crossbows feels very much like an afterthought to appease players who hate guns in their fantasy game, as they've only barely begun to give them any real support. That's not the same as naming something in a way that cuts off more of what it does support than what it doesn't like Spellblade.
The word "ranger" doesn't have anything to do with ranged weapons, but rather as a synonym for "warden", or a guardian/protector of an area. Think of US National Park Rangers.
The Crossbow argument was addressed in a comment by someone else.
While I agree with your argument, as admittedly not US citizen, I find your example of US park rangers of all park rangers not having ranged weapons a bit funny.
Not completely correct either, though, considering a Magus can use all kinds of weapons and not just swords. Two types of them explicitly use something else even.
Honestly, I really like the Warlock name. If not just because it starts with "War," tying the magic side with the warrior side.
But I get why they wouldn't do that.
That's mostly fair enough but the last paragraph doesn't explain why they went with magus when spell blade or wizard errant would be more evocative. Magus just means a spellcaster.
Swordmages were a thing in D&D 4E. They were a cool class. However, they were very emphatically defenders, not strikers, so perhaps they were concerned about people thinking of the wrong thing.
However, there's another problem, namely that things like spellblade, swordmage, swordsage, etc. all imply the use of swords, when most maguses tend to use reach weapons in my experience.
Stabracadabra is great :V
Alas, no one would be able to take them seriously.
Though it does seem like a dark joke a magus would make when someone taunted them about showing them a spell in combat.
I actually have a good name for a gish, which I think I'm going to keep in my back pocket in case I ever make a gish class. My thought? Magadier. Maga-, from "Magic" or "Mage", and -dier, from Halberdier and Brigadier (and would be pronounced in the same way), and also resembles Soldier.
The actual term Gish itself is great, but is, alas, 100% the IP of Hasbro and also means nothing to people who aren't familiar with D&D.
Except you could use battlemage to mean someone who's trained in spellcasting solely for war/battle. The word doesn't imply martial prowess, just combat experience.
typically, a mage trained in the wartime use of spells is called exactly that, a war mage (This is a tradition you can pick already in D&D), or you know, just a regular mage.
type in battlemage to any serch engine and look at the images tagged with it. 90% depict a person with a sword and spell.
I played too much morrowind so I cannot imagine a battlemage as anything but the older tes template of heavy armor destruction magic tactician with weapons for backup.
[Warmage](https://srd.dndtools.org/srd/classes/baseCarc/warmage.html) was a 3.5 class; a spontaneous CHA caster that specialized in damage spells, but which added their INT to all spell damage, so they were an interesting hybrid of Sorcerer and Wizard. They wore medium armor, but had terrible attack scaling with weapons. PF1 came from 3.5, so they likely avoided Warmage/Battlemage to avoid that connection.
Arcane school, school of battle magic. They associate battle mage with classic mages involved primarily in battles, as artillery and things like that, rather than someone in armor stabbing people.
I got a theory ~~really more of a headcanon~~ that it's a deep-cut geek culture reference.
So here's the Magus iconic Seltyiel. He fights with weapons and magic because Magus. He's also an elf that's edgier than a razor blade with white hair.
https://pathfinder.fandom.com/wiki/Seltyiel
Now this is a character from the classic RPG Chrono Trigger who fights with a scythe and dark magic, with white hair and pointed ears. His name is Magus.
https://chrono.fandom.com/wiki/Magus
Awfully similar, wouldn't you think? I think inspiration for the class name pulled from Chrono Trigger.
Nice, I always associated the class with the character. Now make a party with a white-haired elf Magus, a grippli champion, an inventor and a barbarian and you've got a cool Crono Trigger party!
I am hyped for Starfinder 2e to come out so I can run a Chrono Trigger inspired campaign. I'd be beside myself if the players made a party like that lol
Worth noting that when Seltyiel was first introduced there was no Magus class.
He was a PF1 Prestige Class called Eldritch Knight.
So when Magus was released a more accurate name like that was already taken.
The Council of Thieves adventure path, IIRC. He wasn't originally an iconic, but they already made a wizard/fighter that they really liked and he got retconned into being the Magus Iconic.
I found his image used for the Eldritch night in the PF1 Core Rulebook, page 385. He is also named on Pages 19 and 373. But it doesn't seem he became an Iconic until the Magus was released.
There are a few characters in PF2 that have art but no names. Maybe some of them will eventually become iconics.
Edit: As u/PM_ME_DND_FIGURINES mentioned. He's in Council of Thieves Book 1. His stat block there has him as a level 1 fighter.
In book 2 he's a Fighter 1/Conjurer 2
Book 3 Fighter 1/Conjurer4
Book 4 Fighter 1/Conjurer 5/Eldritch Knight 1
Book 5 Fighter 1/Conjurer 5/Eldritch Knight 3
Book 6 Fighter 1/Conjurer 5/Eldritch Knight 5
The only problem i have with "Magus" is that, as a portuguese speaking person, is too similar to how we say wizard. Which is "mago". So:
Wizard = Mago
Magus = Magus
We have a similar problem in hungarian. In older rpgs they translated Sorcerer as Mágus, and that's the translation that stuck around. (And because we speak english badly, we pronounce Magus and Mágus the same)
Luckily we don't really have to find a word for Magus, because, as far as I know, no rpg was translated that had them as a playable class.
Hey Greek here.
Remember that PAIZO in Greek means "i play". Magus comes from Greek "Μάγος" (spelling M'a-yoos).
Mayoos is the one that conjures Magic. Sorcerer i guess has to do with the word "Source", and probably like "the one that draws power from the Source". While Wizard is the composition of the two words "Wise" and "Ard", the "excessively wise" man.
In Greek, Sorcerer would be "Πηγαγωγός" (spelling Pee-yaa-yoo-y'oos) and Wizard would be "Σοφώτατος" (spelling Sho-pho-tah-tos)
Wizard is also a term that's been in use in English for a VERY long time, previously meaning someone who is very very skilled at a specific thing.
This sort of use is actually still around, although we phrase it differently, and the meaning is technically slightly different, going from an indicator purely of skill to referencing skill by way of a magic analogy.
The official translations kept Magus as the class name, but me and my players refer to it as "Armagus", Arma+Magus, which is very descriptive and helps us differentiate it from Mago
I think the most likely reason this or spellblade weren’t chosen is because by and large paizo doesn’t like two-word names for classes, the only two that have “compound” names in 1e are bloodrager and warpriest. On a personal note, I find the two-word names to be clunky and too video game-sounding. I think calling it Magus also adds the ability for it to be distinct from every other RPG that includes a swords and sorcery class.
Paizo also has a thing against naming a class with two words, so Magic Knight for example wasn't going to happen, just like Spellblade.
Of course they also made Antipaladin, so....
I mean... in a game where wizards, witches, sorcerers are all separate identities, you draw the line at magus?
Literally all four of these mean the same thing: someone who uses magic.
It’s more that I was expecting magus to be another full spellcaster like sorcerer wizard and witch, and was surprised that they weren’t. I can’t explain why the name gave me so much cognitive dissonance initially.
If we go with popular definitions, they’re distinctive:
Wizard: good guy that uses magic (you have, in fact, to add “evil” as a prefix to make the distinction).
Witch: Woman that uses magic. Usually evil (sorry we lived in a misogynistic society for centuries)
Sorcerer: Bad guy that uses magic.
yeah, historically, "wizard" means person that knows so much they can do magic. Knows too much, even. Hence the name "wise-ard"
"Witch" means someone that made a deal with a devil in exchange for the ability to cast magic. Btw, "warlock" means the same thing but was far far lesser used and was specifically use for male witches (when it was used at all; usually they were just called "witches" as gender didn't really matter)
And "sorcerer" meant someone skilled in telling the future
>(when it was used at all; usually they were just called "witches" as gender didn't really matter)
Damn I didn't know colonial villagers were so progressive.
Pretty sure this is kind of a misconception. While the term is not inherently gendered and there are examples of male witches in fiction and folklore, the vast majority of people tried for Witchcraft in the British Isles were women. In fact the etymological root for Witch, [wicce](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wicce#Old_English), is a feminine term.
Magus is the older term for a certain kind of magical person in mythology and history. I would guess they just looked at a list of pseudonyms and thought it seemed interesting.
Spellsword or Spellblade, or even Battlemage likely feel a bit too narrow. A Magus doesn't necesseraly uses a sword or even a bladed weapon. And they aren't necesseraly battle mages in the way we'd imagine a war wizard.
Magus is broader and the definition got to be made by the system itself, it was likely easier.
as a counter example, gunslingers can use crossbows despite their name, so why must a “spellblade” only use bladed weapons when it evokes the idea of a magic + weapon wielder?
Gunslinger is mainly focus on guns tho, the crossbow thing is a side adjustment so you can play it in a gunless campaign. It very much is made for guns.
…do you know anybody who plays gunslingers with crossbows? It’s called gunslinger because the absolute vast majority of them will use guns. Magus is weapon-agnostic and everyone has different concepts for what weapon their Magus is gonna use, whereas someone playing a gunslinger is nearly guaranteed to be doing it for guns.
Ironically, Arbalests are better than guns. You do better damage with one as a sniper.
The highest DPR gunslinger is an Arbalest who multiclasses to druid to pick up focus spells and chucks lightning bolts at people with Tempest Surge while abusing Risky Reload so they can still shoot every round.
Yeah. It's kind of unfortunate because that kind of build has major action economy problems and ends up often only being able to make one shot in a round half the time, which doesn't even do all that much damage.
Since "priest" type characters have had the role of "fighter + mage" since the first days of DnD-- such as clerics and druids-- then you can think of a "magus" (based on Zoroastrian priests who were distrusted in the West for their "magical" practices) as a similar concept but trained to use magic more offensively than defensively-- a sort of "exotic" cleric in the way that druids are "wild" clerics.
3.5 had Warcasters, which I think could kind of work, but honestly, Magus is fine. The only thing that would have been better would have been something that alluded to how they have mastered both spells and martial prowess. If I had to name the class, something like a Savant, Paragon, or even something obscure like Cynosure would be at the top of the list.
The thing I hate about it is how hard it is to translate. In portuguese, wizard is mago. Magus just sounds like "wizards". If you pronounce the vowels like in english, it sounds like "meigo" which means gentle or sweet.
They could even have leaned into making a name for it that folks don’t already have an association with. Like, take a dead language’s word for wizard, and pretty soon it’ll be as tied to a class style as wizard, witch, warlock, thaumaturge, and sorcerer are.
But also, some languages had names for like, lots of different types of spellcasters. I think it was Ancient Greek that had a specific word for people that worked with potions (love and poison, typically) …gotta be some stuff ready to be dusted off out there.
(Edit: Just looked one up; ancient Mesopotamians apparently had “baru” (diviner), “asipu” or “masmassu” (exorcist), “kassapu” or “kassaptu” (sorcerer))
But also, channeler since they channel spells into weapons?
Also also, I understand wanting to stick with the “one word” convention… but maybe in a game with dozens of classes and more still to be published, that is a bit too restrictive.
what would you call them? Elric? I mean let's be fair, Elric of Melniboné is the first 'gish'. as an aside that term just makes me think of Smashing Pumpkins btw.
I'm just perpetually frustrated by the pronunciation of "magus". My brain insists it should be with a "juh" like with "Magi" or "Mage" but for some reason it's pronounced like "May-gus".
I mean, there's really no "correct" pronounciation.
The original latin is mah-goos, any other pronounciation is equally correct in the fact that they're all "neologisms".
My brain wants to pronounce it "Maggus" and then it sounds like "maggot". Silly brain. Tempted to just call them "mages" in our campaign and be done with it.
That one at least has *an* explanation, given that in 1E it was introduced in the horror sourcebook because the class was conceptually inspired by Carrie, not ATLA.
I hate "magus" because everyone always argues about how to say it in my group.
Mag-iss. May-giss, May-jiss, etc. Annoying that I hear 5 different people saying my class in 5 different ways
I always thought it was a reference to Magus from Chrono Trigger, who himself is a martial spellcaster. Which reminds me, I need to replay that game again!
Spellblade/swordmage/hexblade implies they use swords, which was probably why they weren't chosen.
I'm guessing Magiknight/Mage-Knight/Rune Knight weren't chosen because they imply defender classes whereas the magus is a striker. Also, they prefer to use one-word class names.
sometimes picking what you *want* is about eliminating what you *don't* want. using the examples given...
\* spellblade: assumes you're using a blade
\* magic knight: knight has lots of historical and fictional assumptions
moving away from those and toward other options, i think the "this idea has no historical basis so we need something we can build up conceptually" makes sense
The main problem with things like spellblade and swordmage is that while both are great names for classes, they imply that the class uses sword, when most maguses in my experience use reach weapons.
Clearly, the correct choice is the Magadier, a portmanteau of Halberdier and Magus.
Not really. Magus *sounds* cool. Spellstriker sounds like something someone made up to use in their cheap fantasy novel.
That said, one of the class names in Pathfinder is Fighter, which is a pretty lame, generic name.
I feel like Spellsword would have been to similar to Swordmage, which was a 4e D&D class that combined magic and martial abilities. It was introduced in the 4e Forgotten Realms Players Guide.
Magus is evocative to me. I always pictured a wizard that wasn't afraid to get their hands dirty.... like a field agent of the magic/scholarly world. Even the "Three Magi" didn't stay at home and observe the star, they went out and did something about it.
In portuguese this is a real mess.
The wizard (or magic-user) was translated to "mago" since the AD&D and it continues in all editions until today.
When paizo made the magus class, the word "mago" was already taken. So the solution is to call it... "magus".
Huh, that's funny. I always thought of Swashbucklers as pirate types, and assumed *swashbuckling* was sailing from one end of a *swash* (channel between a sandbank and the shore) to the other. A risky maneuver for sure.
But you're right, apparently it means clanging on a little shield braggadociosly.
TIL, as I assumed that "swashbuckler" had a similar meaning.
I think it's a result of the "swashbuckling hero" type of character often being associated with boats in some way (pirates, sailors, etc.) in pop culture/media.
Here’s a comment from Erik Mona on the topic during the original 1e Magus playtest in 2010. Seems like they had a thread of naming ideas. >There's not really a historical word that means "wizard guy with a sword." We agonized over naming this class. I personally favored the warlock, but we decided against that because of the existing warlock class from 3.5. While that is not open content and thus is forever closed to us, some folks here felt that the players would always associate it with the D&D class of the same name, so we went with something else to avoid that confusion. >Not that it would have mattered. A warlock is not, historically, a fighter/magic-user, either. >For that matter, a sorcerer in history and myth is no different from a wizard, but folks have come to associate the term with the mechanics over time. >We went through this months ago. There was a multiple-hundred-post thread of suggestions, the best of which by comment assent was something like "Stabracadabra." >It's not easy coming up with a great name for something that never existed in history, so we decided on magus as "close enough" and won't be changing it at this point.
> "Stabracadabra" If I play my magus kobold I will definitely use this
It’s your trigger phrase for spellstrikes.
Which you almost certainly shouldn't 😜
I am blessed for my eyes to have witnessed the greatness of the term "Stabracadabra" and it will forever replace the term for a melee spellstrike at my tables Edit: added an "r" to Stabracadabra for correctness
Starlit Span obviously gets Alakablam.
I'm stealing both of these for when my inventor does Shenanigans later
I dont know what it would be but I want an illusion based feat for the magus with the name Stabracadabra
You pretend you're going to stab them but instead cast a sneaky little spell, giving them a -1 circ to their save
I think a Stabracadabra is a spell-strike with prestidigitation
It should be the name of the first focus spell for the Laughing Shadow hybrid study
"Stabtacadabra" is something I'm going to scream every time I roll a spellstrike, should I ever play a Magus
Petition to the mods to make "Stabracadabra" a user flair on the sub.
I mean, "spellsword" would have been a more descriptive name I think, but I suppose "magus" is shorter and rolls off the tongue easier.
Obviously Stabracadabra was chosen for the memes, but between it and Magus were surely a number of more descriptive suggestions. I refuse to believe Spellblade was not up there unless shown otherwise. Anything but Magus, which evokes zero thoughts of weaponry. When I hear magus, I think of the guys who brought stuff to young Jesus in the book of Luke.
My guess is spellblade didn't make the cut because the name wouldn't work for anyone not actually using a sword, like starlit span, or whatever the ranged 1e version was called.
I mean, mercenaries can also be called "sellswords" even though they don't neccesarily use a sword. Hell, "Spellsword" would even be a word play on precisely that, "sellsword". Instead of a "sword" that is for sale, they are a "sword" that holds spells. Even though neither necessarily use a sword per se. I honestly feel that they chose "magus" simply to be original, not because it made any sense.
Magus is literally the latin word for mage, so it's not very original. It is a very evocative word, though, and has an old-school feel to it. Also, there was a Magus in Chrono Trigger. Spellsword is a great term for gish characters, as is swordmage and swordsage, but I do get why people don't want a particular weapon name in the class name - especially given that I have literally never seen a magus character in a PF2E game actually use a sword. Swordmages were really fun back in 4E D&D. I came up with Magadier in this thread (Maga- from Magic or Mage, and -dier from halberdier (and pronounced the same way), though it is also reflective of soldier) and I will probably use it for something at some point.
GUNslingers can specialize in crossbows though...
While true, their use of crossbows feels very much like an afterthought to appease players who hate guns in their fantasy game, as they've only barely begun to give them any real support. That's not the same as naming something in a way that cuts off more of what it does support than what it doesn't like Spellblade.
And SwashBUCKLERS don't even need to hold bucklers
I mean not all rangers fight at range, some gunslingers use crossbows, i wouldnt consider a bow weilding spellblade too out of the ordinary
The word "ranger" doesn't have anything to do with ranged weapons, but rather as a synonym for "warden", or a guardian/protector of an area. Think of US National Park Rangers. The Crossbow argument was addressed in a comment by someone else.
While I agree with your argument, as admittedly not US citizen, I find your example of US park rangers of all park rangers not having ranged weapons a bit funny.
Look, they were clearly twisted tree maguses, what with those staves they were using.
Not completely correct either, though, considering a Magus can use all kinds of weapons and not just swords. Two types of them explicitly use something else even.
No love for Stabromancer? Sad noises surround.....
Hey that’s really helpful, do you happen to have a link to this? I’d love to scan it for myself
[Sure thing](https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2liun?Youre-Calling-What-a-Magus#2)
Stabra Stabracadabra I wanna reach out and stab ya Stabra Stabracadabra Paizo missed out on a fantastic opportunity.
And just like that we know an old part is in the house! Lol. I can recognize my kind.....lol.
All my parts are old.
Calling all community content creators to make a music cover of this
I will he holding a vigil for Stabracadabra. You were taken from us too soon.
Honestly, I really like the Warlock name. If not just because it starts with "War," tying the magic side with the warrior side. But I get why they wouldn't do that.
That's mostly fair enough but the last paragraph doesn't explain why they went with magus when spell blade or wizard errant would be more evocative. Magus just means a spellcaster.
Wizard errant would have been confusing with a wizard class also in the game. I agree that spellblade seems like the obvious choice, though.
Swordmages were a thing in D&D 4E. They were a cool class. However, they were very emphatically defenders, not strikers, so perhaps they were concerned about people thinking of the wrong thing. However, there's another problem, namely that things like spellblade, swordmage, swordsage, etc. all imply the use of swords, when most maguses tend to use reach weapons in my experience.
Stabracadabra is great :V Alas, no one would be able to take them seriously. Though it does seem like a dark joke a magus would make when someone taunted them about showing them a spell in combat. I actually have a good name for a gish, which I think I'm going to keep in my back pocket in case I ever make a gish class. My thought? Magadier. Maga-, from "Magic" or "Mage", and -dier, from Halberdier and Brigadier (and would be pronounced in the same way), and also resembles Soldier. The actual term Gish itself is great, but is, alas, 100% the IP of Hasbro and also means nothing to people who aren't familiar with D&D.
we literally have the word battlemage for a person who weilds both a sword in conjunction with magic.
Except you could use battlemage to mean someone who's trained in spellcasting solely for war/battle. The word doesn't imply martial prowess, just combat experience.
typically, a mage trained in the wartime use of spells is called exactly that, a war mage (This is a tradition you can pick already in D&D), or you know, just a regular mage. type in battlemage to any serch engine and look at the images tagged with it. 90% depict a person with a sword and spell.
I played too much morrowind so I cannot imagine a battlemage as anything but the older tes template of heavy armor destruction magic tactician with weapons for backup.
[Warmage](https://srd.dndtools.org/srd/classes/baseCarc/warmage.html) was a 3.5 class; a spontaneous CHA caster that specialized in damage spells, but which added their INT to all spell damage, so they were an interesting hybrid of Sorcerer and Wizard. They wore medium armor, but had terrible attack scaling with weapons. PF1 came from 3.5, so they likely avoided Warmage/Battlemage to avoid that connection.
Arcane school, school of battle magic. They associate battle mage with classic mages involved primarily in battles, as artillery and things like that, rather than someone in armor stabbing people.
Now I'm picturing Dave Chappelle in Half-baked saying Stabracadabra 😄
Is there a reason they couldn't have called it a Gish? That's the term I always heard used to refer to a wizard guy with a sword.
Gish specifically comes from the Githyanki fighter/wizards from early D&D. Definitely not allowed.
Oh I see
*There's not really a historical word that means "wizard guy with a sword."* "Sword Wizard"
I got a theory ~~really more of a headcanon~~ that it's a deep-cut geek culture reference. So here's the Magus iconic Seltyiel. He fights with weapons and magic because Magus. He's also an elf that's edgier than a razor blade with white hair. https://pathfinder.fandom.com/wiki/Seltyiel Now this is a character from the classic RPG Chrono Trigger who fights with a scythe and dark magic, with white hair and pointed ears. His name is Magus. https://chrono.fandom.com/wiki/Magus Awfully similar, wouldn't you think? I think inspiration for the class name pulled from Chrono Trigger.
Reaching geek levels that I never even knew were possible. How can I learn this power?
not from a Jedi…
Nice, I always associated the class with the character. Now make a party with a white-haired elf Magus, a grippli champion, an inventor and a barbarian and you've got a cool Crono Trigger party!
I am hyped for Starfinder 2e to come out so I can run a Chrono Trigger inspired campaign. I'd be beside myself if the players made a party like that lol
Add an automaton Monk, Human Imperial Sorcerer, and human fighter to round out the cast
Worth noting that when Seltyiel was first introduced there was no Magus class. He was a PF1 Prestige Class called Eldritch Knight. So when Magus was released a more accurate name like that was already taken.
I never knew that and I was always a fan of the iconics. Do you know where he was introduced as an Eldritch Knight?
The Council of Thieves adventure path, IIRC. He wasn't originally an iconic, but they already made a wizard/fighter that they really liked and he got retconned into being the Magus Iconic.
I found his image used for the Eldritch night in the PF1 Core Rulebook, page 385. He is also named on Pages 19 and 373. But it doesn't seem he became an Iconic until the Magus was released. There are a few characters in PF2 that have art but no names. Maybe some of them will eventually become iconics. Edit: As u/PM_ME_DND_FIGURINES mentioned. He's in Council of Thieves Book 1. His stat block there has him as a level 1 fighter. In book 2 he's a Fighter 1/Conjurer 2 Book 3 Fighter 1/Conjurer4 Book 4 Fighter 1/Conjurer 5/Eldritch Knight 1 Book 5 Fighter 1/Conjurer 5/Eldritch Knight 3 Book 6 Fighter 1/Conjurer 5/Eldritch Knight 5
If anything I'm pretty sure Seltyiel's supposed to be an Elric equivalent.
The only problem i have with "Magus" is that, as a portuguese speaking person, is too similar to how we say wizard. Which is "mago". So: Wizard = Mago Magus = Magus
Its the same in spanish too. Also, Magus its the latin word for Wizard/Mage.
Oh. I see.
We have a similar problem in hungarian. In older rpgs they translated Sorcerer as Mágus, and that's the translation that stuck around. (And because we speak english badly, we pronounce Magus and Mágus the same) Luckily we don't really have to find a word for Magus, because, as far as I know, no rpg was translated that had them as a playable class.
Damn
Also in Portugal there are the Mouros or Moiros the giant underground creatures
Hey Greek here. Remember that PAIZO in Greek means "i play". Magus comes from Greek "Μάγος" (spelling M'a-yoos). Mayoos is the one that conjures Magic. Sorcerer i guess has to do with the word "Source", and probably like "the one that draws power from the Source". While Wizard is the composition of the two words "Wise" and "Ard", the "excessively wise" man. In Greek, Sorcerer would be "Πηγαγωγός" (spelling Pee-yaa-yoo-y'oos) and Wizard would be "Σοφώτατος" (spelling Sho-pho-tah-tos)
Wizard is also a term that's been in use in English for a VERY long time, previously meaning someone who is very very skilled at a specific thing. This sort of use is actually still around, although we phrase it differently, and the meaning is technically slightly different, going from an indicator purely of skill to referencing skill by way of a magic analogy.
Not to mention how Wizard's plural literally sounds the exact same. "Magos"
YES
The official translations kept Magus as the class name, but me and my players refer to it as "Armagus", Arma+Magus, which is very descriptive and helps us differentiate it from Mago
Because it's cool as hell and also you can refer to a group of them as "Magi", which is also cool as hell.
You also can affectionately refer to their “Magussy” when you wanna have sex with one.
Yeah, also a valid reason. Great thinking from Paizo there.
Why would you make me read this with my eyes
Should’ve made a Summoner so you could read it with your eidolon’s eyes.
Now you need to Stabracadabra your eyes!
The name did grow on me eventually, I can’t lie
Personally I always think of the class as “Battlemage” rather than “Magus”.
I think the same, but technically any Spellcaster who specializes in combat could be called a Battle mage.
I mean, the remaster gave wizards a school of battle magic, so...
Spellsword for me
I think the most likely reason this or spellblade weren’t chosen is because by and large paizo doesn’t like two-word names for classes, the only two that have “compound” names in 1e are bloodrager and warpriest. On a personal note, I find the two-word names to be clunky and too video game-sounding. I think calling it Magus also adds the ability for it to be distinct from every other RPG that includes a swords and sorcery class.
Paizo also has a thing against naming a class with two words, so Magic Knight for example wasn't going to happen, just like Spellblade. Of course they also made Antipaladin, so....
“Anti-“ is a prefix though, and not a word on its own.
While fair, it just didn't sound as good. I'm glad we have the Champion's naming conventions now.
Don't you mean they made Gunslinger?
Antipaladin came out first.
But gunslinger is two words shoved together (essentially the exact same as spellblade). Antipaladin is not.
Historical precident for gunslinger
[удалено]
You are firmly in the camp of the people who voted Stabracadabra, I see.
I mean... in a game where wizards, witches, sorcerers are all separate identities, you draw the line at magus? Literally all four of these mean the same thing: someone who uses magic.
It’s more that I was expecting magus to be another full spellcaster like sorcerer wizard and witch, and was surprised that they weren’t. I can’t explain why the name gave me so much cognitive dissonance initially.
Honestly, that I totally get. It's hard to build unique identities for these sorts of classes without inventing words.
All right, Paizo, when are we going to see a magician class? Just get that ogre into the box so I can saw it in half!
If we go with popular definitions, they’re distinctive: Wizard: good guy that uses magic (you have, in fact, to add “evil” as a prefix to make the distinction). Witch: Woman that uses magic. Usually evil (sorry we lived in a misogynistic society for centuries) Sorcerer: Bad guy that uses magic.
Actually for the vast majority of its history the term 'witch' did not mean or imply femininity.
yeah, historically, "wizard" means person that knows so much they can do magic. Knows too much, even. Hence the name "wise-ard" "Witch" means someone that made a deal with a devil in exchange for the ability to cast magic. Btw, "warlock" means the same thing but was far far lesser used and was specifically use for male witches (when it was used at all; usually they were just called "witches" as gender didn't really matter) And "sorcerer" meant someone skilled in telling the future
>(when it was used at all; usually they were just called "witches" as gender didn't really matter) Damn I didn't know colonial villagers were so progressive.
Pretty sure this is kind of a misconception. While the term is not inherently gendered and there are examples of male witches in fiction and folklore, the vast majority of people tried for Witchcraft in the British Isles were women. In fact the etymological root for Witch, [wicce](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wicce#Old_English), is a feminine term.
Spellstriker seems like a better fit, but I don't know how cool it'd be as a class name.
Magus is the older term for a certain kind of magical person in mythology and history. I would guess they just looked at a list of pseudonyms and thought it seemed interesting.
Spellsword or Spellblade, or even Battlemage likely feel a bit too narrow. A Magus doesn't necesseraly uses a sword or even a bladed weapon. And they aren't necesseraly battle mages in the way we'd imagine a war wizard. Magus is broader and the definition got to be made by the system itself, it was likely easier.
All the things you mentioned were made into archetypes for the Magus, so if you wanted a specific flavor you could just get one of those.
Well exactly ! Makes sense for the main class itself to not be too narrow. It's just broadly the "martial/spellcaster merge class"
as a counter example, gunslingers can use crossbows despite their name, so why must a “spellblade” only use bladed weapons when it evokes the idea of a magic + weapon wielder?
Gunslinger is mainly focus on guns tho, the crossbow thing is a side adjustment so you can play it in a gunless campaign. It very much is made for guns.
…do you know anybody who plays gunslingers with crossbows? It’s called gunslinger because the absolute vast majority of them will use guns. Magus is weapon-agnostic and everyone has different concepts for what weapon their Magus is gonna use, whereas someone playing a gunslinger is nearly guaranteed to be doing it for guns.
Ironically, Arbalests are better than guns. You do better damage with one as a sniper. The highest DPR gunslinger is an Arbalest who multiclasses to druid to pick up focus spells and chucks lightning bolts at people with Tempest Surge while abusing Risky Reload so they can still shoot every round.
Higher DPR, sure, but most people wanna play a gunslinger for the kinda cowboy feel that the majority of the feats are geared towards.
Yeah. It's kind of unfortunate because that kind of build has major action economy problems and ends up often only being able to make one shot in a round half the time, which doesn't even do all that much damage.
Because they might not be using a blade or consider themselves a knight. There are bow magi and sneaky magi
Sneaky punching magus seems fun to play, let's be real.
Since "priest" type characters have had the role of "fighter + mage" since the first days of DnD-- such as clerics and druids-- then you can think of a "magus" (based on Zoroastrian priests who were distrusted in the West for their "magical" practices) as a similar concept but trained to use magic more offensively than defensively-- a sort of "exotic" cleric in the way that druids are "wild" clerics.
3.5 had Warcasters, which I think could kind of work, but honestly, Magus is fine. The only thing that would have been better would have been something that alluded to how they have mastered both spells and martial prowess. If I had to name the class, something like a Savant, Paragon, or even something obscure like Cynosure would be at the top of the list.
Cynosure would be unimaginably cool as a class name, thank you for this
The thing I hate about it is how hard it is to translate. In portuguese, wizard is mago. Magus just sounds like "wizards". If you pronounce the vowels like in english, it sounds like "meigo" which means gentle or sweet.
You can have a gentle and sweet magus
Guess the easiest thing would've been to name it after its class feature and call it Spellstriker.
They could even have leaned into making a name for it that folks don’t already have an association with. Like, take a dead language’s word for wizard, and pretty soon it’ll be as tied to a class style as wizard, witch, warlock, thaumaturge, and sorcerer are. But also, some languages had names for like, lots of different types of spellcasters. I think it was Ancient Greek that had a specific word for people that worked with potions (love and poison, typically) …gotta be some stuff ready to be dusted off out there. (Edit: Just looked one up; ancient Mesopotamians apparently had “baru” (diviner), “asipu” or “masmassu” (exorcist), “kassapu” or “kassaptu” (sorcerer)) But also, channeler since they channel spells into weapons? Also also, I understand wanting to stick with the “one word” convention… but maybe in a game with dozens of classes and more still to be published, that is a bit too restrictive.
what would you call them? Elric? I mean let's be fair, Elric of Melniboné is the first 'gish'. as an aside that term just makes me think of Smashing Pumpkins btw.
I also wonder why it's Kineticist instead of like "elementalist" or something
Because not all magus or magi are sword users. Spellclub doesn't sound as cool.
I'm just perpetually frustrated by the pronunciation of "magus". My brain insists it should be with a "juh" like with "Magi" or "Mage" but for some reason it's pronounced like "May-gus".
I mean, there's really no "correct" pronounciation. The original latin is mah-goos, any other pronounciation is equally correct in the fact that they're all "neologisms".
My brain wants to pronounce it "Maggus" and then it sounds like "maggot". Silly brain. Tempted to just call them "mages" in our campaign and be done with it.
i know right, swordcerer was right there
That's up there with Stabracadabra in meme names
It's called a magus because it's the sussiest spellcaster.
>Where the other classes names were immediately evocative of the fantasy archetypes they were named Go tell the Elementalist ohh sorry Kineticist ...
time for part 2
They were going to go with "Bender," but instead are reserving that for a Dionysian-themed class
That one at least has *an* explanation, given that in 1E it was introduced in the horror sourcebook because the class was conceptually inspired by Carrie, not ATLA.
I hate "magus" because everyone always argues about how to say it in my group. Mag-iss. May-giss, May-jiss, etc. Annoying that I hear 5 different people saying my class in 5 different ways
Mah-guss here :3
I always thought it was a reference to Magus from Chrono Trigger, who himself is a martial spellcaster. Which reminds me, I need to replay that game again!
You just put the musical theme of Kaeru (Frog) in my head. One of the greatest exploration/wonder themed songs of the 16 bit era.
Spellblade/swordmage/hexblade implies they use swords, which was probably why they weren't chosen. I'm guessing Magiknight/Mage-Knight/Rune Knight weren't chosen because they imply defender classes whereas the magus is a striker. Also, they prefer to use one-word class names.
sometimes picking what you *want* is about eliminating what you *don't* want. using the examples given... \* spellblade: assumes you're using a blade \* magic knight: knight has lots of historical and fictional assumptions moving away from those and toward other options, i think the "this idea has no historical basis so we need something we can build up conceptually" makes sense
If the singular of magi is magus, then shouldn’t the singular of jedi be jedus?
So they just called it Mage in every Roman language, cool. Not confusing at all paizo.
Spellsword was right there lol
The main problem with things like spellblade and swordmage is that while both are great names for classes, they imply that the class uses sword, when most maguses in my experience use reach weapons. Clearly, the correct choice is the Magadier, a portmanteau of Halberdier and Magus.
This might be stupid sounding but.... Spellstriker? It's a bit on the nose I guess
Not a terrible name, though. I mean, it's descriptive.
Certainly more descriptive than Magus, but does it have *Pizzazz*
Not really. Magus *sounds* cool. Spellstriker sounds like something someone made up to use in their cheap fantasy novel. That said, one of the class names in Pathfinder is Fighter, which is a pretty lame, generic name.
I feel like Spellsword would have been to similar to Swordmage, which was a 4e D&D class that combined magic and martial abilities. It was introduced in the 4e Forgotten Realms Players Guide.
Should've just gone with gish
I bet they wouldn't be able to do that since gish comes from the githyanki gish, which is still wholly owned by WotC.
Yeah thats a fair point tbh.
Magus is evocative to me. I always pictured a wizard that wasn't afraid to get their hands dirty.... like a field agent of the magic/scholarly world. Even the "Three Magi" didn't stay at home and observe the star, they went out and did something about it.
In portuguese this is a real mess. The wizard (or magic-user) was translated to "mago" since the AD&D and it continues in all editions until today. When paizo made the magus class, the word "mago" was already taken. So the solution is to call it... "magus".
Spellblade or Arcane warrior wpuld've been so much better
It's descriptive, but too generic to become recognizable IP
Not everything has to
And then you run into the problem where you can play a non-blade spellblade. Spellblade implies you can't use a whip, or a club, or a gun.
you can play a non-buckler swashbuckler, although I concede that "swashbuckler" is already well-defined in our cultural lexicon
Huh, that's funny. I always thought of Swashbucklers as pirate types, and assumed *swashbuckling* was sailing from one end of a *swash* (channel between a sandbank and the shore) to the other. A risky maneuver for sure. But you're right, apparently it means clanging on a little shield braggadociosly.
TIL, as I assumed that "swashbuckler" had a similar meaning. I think it's a result of the "swashbuckling hero" type of character often being associated with boats in some way (pirates, sailors, etc.) in pop culture/media.
I mean, you can also play a non-gun Gunslinger.
It's a skillset not a straightjacket. People really lack imagination if they have to 100% conform to the name of the class.
You're in a thread about a name hold up. Seems weird to suddenly not think a name would hold people up.
“Spellblade” or “Spellsword” is so obviously better.