Red Mage custom archetype (magus archetype to recreate the final fantasy job)


Homebrew and House Rules


Hello gamers! A player of mine has made a custom archetype for the magus, inspired by the Red Mage class of Final Fantasy. I'd like to let him play this, but I'd also like to have an opinion about it from someone else. What do you think about it?

Crimson Magus archetype

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I'm not a fan of it. You get rid of the class's iconic spell combat and then try to balance it by giving them quicken spell at a level the class should not have access to. Even in most Final Fantasy games with the Red Mage, being able to cast two spells in a round is a capstone ability.


Bring back spell combat, scrap the bonus feat.

Charisma and Intelligence should be capitalized, as should all ability scores. Also, Charisma and Ibtelligence are ability scores - not "stats".


You think it would be ok if it had back spell combat? Wouldn't it be too much?

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I'd scrap the bonus feat and early quicken spell arcana entirely.

You need to keep in mind that the FF job is really bland and doesn't have anything going for it other than being a fighter that can cast spells and having the ability to doublecast as a capstone. Except for having healing spells, these are things the magus can already do.


He added also a lot of other stuff: charm person, dominate, knock, scrying, lesser restoration... even contingency and heal are on the list. If I put back spell combat it would become just a magus with more spells, there would be no reason to use the standard magus. So if I put spell combat back into the class, I probably had to remove something else... I don't know what though


Maybe I could remove the magus arcana at level 6 and 12, remove greater spell access, then put back armor proficiency and spell combat? Of course the bonus feat and quicken spell would be gone.

I could also reduce the arcane pool a bit


Ok, I did it. Now he still has spell combat and the armor proficiencies, but the arcane pool is 1/3 magus level + cha instead of 1/2 + cha, and he loses the arcanas at leves 6 and 12 and greater spell access. I feel like it's almost perfect right now: nodoby would take this archetype if he wanted to go with a straight dps magus, but if someone would want more spellcasting versatility they might take it


Here are your changes as I see them:

-Skill points change from 4 to 2, and a few skills change for flavor. This is fine because the class shifts its focus from Intelligence to Charisma.

-Magical abilities like spellcating, arcane pool, and magus arcana are governed by Charisma instead of Intelligence. The spell list was changed for flavor. Some spells were added, some were removed. You view the increased versatility as an overall loss in power.

-You reduce the size of the arcane pool and take away two magus arcana.

Without question this magus has been knocked down. I see no reason at all for the third change, especially if you feel that the modified spell list is more or less equal to the original one.

You have left something unanswered about the Cha-based spellcasting. Using Charisma strongly suggests that this is a spontaneous spellcaster, which brings up the following:

-You need a table of spells known.

-There is no spellbook.

-Spell recall, knowledge pool, improved spell recall, and greater spell access do not function as written. You can either modify them to function with spontaneous casting or simply replace them.


Wouldn't be easier to, instead of creating a custom spell list, to replace something like Spell Recall/Greater Spell Recall with the ability to learn a handful of spells from the bard list?

I think you should add some more abilities overall to give this archetype a stronger identity.

Also, if you've never seen it Here is the Red Mage as done by ffd20. Perhaps it could provide you inspiration?


Thank you all for your help, I am reading everything you wrote and also asking to other people I know. Due to all the ideas flowing in, the archetype is going to be completely rewritten as a base class. It will have a lot of differences with this, I am really curious to discover what will turn out of it. In the next days I'll post a link to the doc for it, and begin a new thread about it. I thank you again and leave you with one last question:

What do you think of prepared or semi-prepared (arcanist-like) Charisma-based spellcasting? This has never been done in Pathfinder, but we already have spontaneous Intelligence and even Wisdom spellcasting, so it seems it's not all wrong, if of course there is a roleplay justification for that


I found that White Mage Arcanist archetype with 1 level of Swashbuckler and picking up the Eldritch Knight prestige class made for a superb Red Mage.

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I think making it a base class is the complete opposite of what you want to do. Designing classes is really difficult and requires a very strong game mechanic and large scope to support it. The concept you have doesn't have enough to support an entire Pathfinder base class. The red mage just doesn't have enough there. And as Hark points out, most players might be better off just making an eldritch knight.


Yes, I also realize that an eldritch scion magus is also perfect, a gm may just give the cure spells to it and it would be done.

However, this is how it ended:
The player decided not to play this right now. He chose to play a multiclass character (going for the white mage eldritch knight route) and decided as a personal goal of his character to create the Crimson Order, which will be an entire gish base class and will be quite different from the original red mage. It will feature different styles so that one can build different types of gisj within the class, and will be most probably a medium bab cha-based spontaneous class. The olayer is probably going to olay this in the next campaign, so we're taking our time with it. It's becoming very fun since this is becoming good materil for the story.

This archetype is probably unuseful, I'll leave it but discourage its use, recommending an eldritch scion magus or a multiclass character.


Is there some way to add a [discontinued] tag to the thread title?

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