Good Name for a Fighter-Mage Class

[Aplus]

I'm working on a B/X-style Elf class that can be played by any race, and I'm struggling to come up with a good name. Here are a few, but none of them really do it for me.

Spellsword
Sword Mage
Battle Mage

Any ideas?

[DeBracy]

Sword Sorcerer
War Wizard
Melee Magician
Combat Conjurer (OK, OK, I'll stop now!)

Black Blade or Demon Blade if you give the class some flavor text connecting it to black magic or a demon pact of some sort, but that'd make it very specific compared to the other pretty open classes.

I think Spellsword is good as a more generic term.

[Finarvyn]

How about "Fighter-Magic User" That's the class name I've used for 30+ years. ;D

[Aplus]

Oct 27, 2011 14:35:01 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

How about "Fighter-Magic User" That's the class name I've used for 30+ years. ;D

Too many hyphens.

Let's see...

Fighting-Man-Magic-User
Fighting-Magic-Using-Man
Fighting-User
Magic-Man

I don't know. Maybe just "Sorcerer". All those dudes in the old S&S stories often fought and wore armor. And Geoffrey uses it. I would just have to break people of their preconceived notions that stem from the 3E sorcerer...

[doctorx]

I've used 'Spellblade' in a previous campaign. That seemed to work with the players okay.

The old DRAGON WARRIORS RPG called their fighter/wizards 'Warlocks' - a bit of a cheat, maybe, but having 'War' in the title perhaps gave an indication of intent...

(Great system, by the way - I still mine it for ideas now and again...)

[Azafuse]

My personal suggestions are Eldritch Fighter or Sworcerer. ;D

[waysoftheearth]

As already suggested by DoctorX, I use Warlock too.

It seems appropriate to me as War means all out fighting, and is also is the beginning of "warrior", but everyone knows a warlock is a magic-user.

[DeBracy]

Warlock does indeed sound pretty badass.

In a magic supplement for the Swedish game Drakar och Demoner* there was a vocation called bastardmagiker, which'd be Bastard Magician in English. I've always liked the sound of it in Swedish, but I don't think it's got quite the same ring to it in English (maybe it's because we seldom use the word bastard in Swedish?). I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.


* Originally a translation of RuneQuest way back in 1982, but soon went its own way. The titel litteraly means "Dragons and Demons".

[Morandir]

I never thought about using Warlock that way. It does, indeed, sound badass. I may have to steal that...

[Aplus]

Spellblade
Eldritch Fighter/Warrior
Warlock
Bastardmagiker

All good stuff!

[thorswulf]

blademage or mage of the blade?

[darkling]

I would totally use it Warlock in that fashion. Sorcerer works too. (Although for the sake of pedentry it should be noted that warlock is actually derived from the word for 'one who breaks oaths' in some flavor of old English and does not have martial connotations built in).

[foxroe]

Battle Mage

... or maybe Elf-Wanna-Be

[DungeonDevil]

Glamour-Gladiator? (No, doesn't strike the right image. That requires big hair, spandex and a frilly tunic like one of those 80's-rock posers.)

Bellator cum incantationibus is far too many syllables.

Were the Melniboneans (e.g. Elric) part warrior/part MU?
The Kai Warriors (of the Lone Wolf books by Joe Dever) were half-half too.

[thegreyelf]

I was always partial to Spellsword, myself.

[jasons]

Fighting Mage (hyphenate to taste)

[Finarvyn]

Warlock or Sorcerer both sound pretty cool.

Wizard sounds 100% magic. Funny how we take words that are similar in the English language and assign different mental images to them. Wizardry sound good but sorcery sounds evil to me. I always thought of a Warlock as a male witch.

[miked]

What about "Warrior-Mage", taken from Rolemaster Companion II.

[aldarron]

Oct 27, 2011 16:51:35 GMT -6 thorswulf said:

blademage or mage of the blade?

I'll second Blademage; that sounds cool to me.

Or you could just do a reworked version of the d20 Blackmoor Arcane Warrior

[coffee]

I'd call it Flamelord.

[maxvale76]

Using terms that others have mentioned;

War Wizard (I use it in a BECMI/AD&D 2nd mash-up of rules)

Or, if you want to make the class available only to those that can "make it" thru the training (i.e. whose stats qualify them for the class) and you want to make it a singular order:

Mage Knights of the order of Spellswords

Or something along those lines...

Just my two cents!

[Ghul]

Oct 27, 2011 15:58:38 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

As already suggested by DoctorX, I use Warlock too.

It seems appropriate to me as War means all out fighting, and is also is the beginning of "warrior", but everyone knows a warlock is a magic-user.

Warlock is the term I use in my AS&SH RPG. In my system, it is a fighter subclass with some spell use (up to L3 spells), and medium weight armor limit; also, the XP progression is slow.

[cooper]

Eldritch knights.
Arcane warriors
Theurgist swordsmen.
Swashbucking seers.


Honestly, the class name should be descriptive and banal. Fighting magic-users. Level titles as above.

Level 1: arcane veteran
Level 2: arcane warrior
Level 3: theurgist swordsman
Level 4: swashbucking seer
Level 9: elderitch knight

3e explosion of classes like "shadow blade" sound a mite uppity when you're talking about some guy with 4 hp and a thac0 of 20. I mean a 1+1hd veteran does go around calling himself demon hunter or dragonslayer or giant killer.

[Deleted]

I like Eldritch knights, I would not use warlock since it reeks of real world occult.

[thorswulf]

For everyone's information neo pagans and Wiccans do NOT like the term warlock. It means "oath breaker" and is not used lightly. So you are right TPD, it is an occult term, and it has very negative conotations.

[aldarron]

Oct 28, 2011 21:46:20 GMT -6 thorswulf said:

For everyone's information neo pagans and Wiccans do NOT like the term warlock. It means "oath breaker" and is not used lightly. So you are right TPD, it is an occult term, and it has very negative conotations.

Yeah, I guess its a perception thing but Warlock to me conjures up an image of some barefoot balding guy in robes. The "male witch" meaning holds no association or imagry to a sword weilding warrior in my mind. I mean the "war" part of the name doesn't smack or warrior anymore than the "lock" part smacks of key maker.

[Aplus]

We all have these images in our head that we associate with words. Here is one of my Warlock images, from when I was a kid, back when we went to the video store all the time. I loved looking at the horror movie covers, and I would always pass this movie called Warlock with this dude on the cover.

[jasmith]

Oct 28, 2011 20:54:31 GMT -6 @theperilousdreamer said:

I like Eldritch knights, I would not use warlock since it reeks of real world occult.

Not meaning to be smart-alecky, and I'm all for endorsing thorswulf and aldarron's comments, but...

It's D&D. That ship kinda sailed almost 40 years ago, even without bringing AD&D into the discussion. The spell lists contain numerous examples based upon real world occult practice.

[Necropraxis]

I like cooper's suggestion. I would probably just call the class fighter-mage, though maybe that's my 2E background bubbling up to the surface.

The 1-to-1 blending of the title names is inspired.

If you don't mind mining more recent games, 3E has the hexblade, and 4E has the swordmage, though I don't like either of those because they seem to be too tightly coupled to a particular weapon. It would be like renaming "fighting man" to "sword master" or something; just not general enough. That being said, I think hexblade has a really cool ring to it, and would totally consider using it for an in-campaign organization name: Hexblades of Whosamawhere (or whatever).

[kenmeister]

Spirit Warrior