The Genius Guide to the Magister

The magister* is a new base class designed for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. She is a hybrid spellcaster, combining arcane spells drawn from power within herself and the faith needed to also call upon divine spells. A magister may be a church wizard, a priestess of magic who has studied the arcane arts, or a dynamic spiritualist who sees no difference in the two traditional forms of magic. Magisters may be called bruxa, church mages, ecclesiathurges, ovates, spell lords, thaumaturges, white wizards, or other titles that suit the needs of your campaign.

A magister is considered both an arcane and divine spellcaster (and can count as either for purposes of requirements and prerequisites). The magister is similar to a sorcerer in that she draws spell power from within herself, casting a limited list of spells known with no need for advanced preparation. Unlike a sorcerer, a magister can draw from both arcane and divine spell lists when selecting spells known, allowing magisters to be prepared for a broader range of circumstances. This is important as the magisters focus is spells to the exclusion of nearly everything else, even more so than other spellcasting classes. Depending on the mystic bond a magister makes, she may not have powers beyond her spells, but instead she’ll learn new ways to use the spells she knows to maximum benefit.

*When this class was originally released in early 2010 in a product called The Genius Guide to the Magus, the class was presented the magus. Then, more than a year later, the book Ultimate Magic was released, with an “official” class named the magus – which looked nothing like our class of the same name. Sometimes picking an awesome name means other people will use it too!

To avoid confusion, we’ve decided to rename our magus “the magister.” As we update our backstock of products we’ll make the name change when referencing this class, but you should be aware that process takes time. For anything released in 2013 or later, a reference to the magus means the class from Ultimate Magic, and any reference to the class from this book will use the name “magister.” For books released before that, you’ll need to check context to know if a Super Genius Games book talking about the magus really means a magus – the class from Ultimate Magic – or if it is actually talking about our class, the magister.

A magus is considered both an arcane and divine spellcaster (and can count as either for purposes of requirements and prerequisites). The magus is similar to a sorcerer in that she draws spell power from within herself, casting a limited list of spells known with no need for advanced preparation. Unlike a sorcerer, a magus can draw from both arcane and divine spell lists when selecting spells known, allowing magus's to be prepared for a broader range of circumstances. This is important as the magus's focus is spells to the exclusion of nearly everything else, even more so than other spellcasting classes. Depending on the mystic bond a magus makes, she may not have powers beyond her spells, but instead she'll learn new ways to use the spells she knows to maximum benefit.