New name for "gish"? (forked from Character Concepts: Gish and Teleporter Mage)

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I'm a charter member of my local Gamers Against Recognizing Gish Legitimacy Everywhere chapter.

I'm Olgar, and I endorse this organization.

If you don't like fighter-mage or warrior-mage, why not try:

fighter-wizard
spellsword
swordmage
mageblade
dweomerblade
swordcaster
battlemancer
arcane knight
spellblade


Please, anything but that g-word.

 

[questing gm]

Can we use duskblade again?

 

[Psion]

I approve of the term Gish. It's got actual D&D pedigree. I wouldn't use it in game to refer to anything but a Githyanki.

If you don't like fighter-mage or warrior-mage, why not try:

fighter-wizard
spellsword
swordmage
mageblade
dweomerblade
swordcaster
battlemancer
arcane knight
spellblade

What makes dweomerblade better? Not only does it have a 3 or 4-1 syllable disadvantage (depending on how you decide to pronounce it), but dweomer is just as obscure, a term creatively reintroduced into English by Gygax. (See here, skip down to "the spell that wasn't").

As for the rest, aside from being longer, I find the "just mash synonyms together" technique a bit stale. There was a time I wouldn't have batted an eyelash. But ever since WotC started peppering their monster books with compound word monikers for their creatures, I'm getting a little sick of it.

Further, I bet that most of those have classes named after them. I'm not aware of battlemancer being used anywhere. But then, I can understand why: it sounds stupid.

Yeah, I'll stick with Gish.

 

[Carnivorous_Bean]

I like swordcaster, myself.

Or my in-campaign name, which would make no sense without a lot of context, so I'm not going to bother explaining it here.

But "gish" just sounds the sound of someone stepping in a bowl of half-melted jello.

 

[firesnakearies]

"Gish" is teh suck.

It's not a generic term for "fighter-mage", it's a specific cultural title of one specific, non-common, rarely-PC-playable, extraplanar monster race. It's not general in any sense whatsoever.

If I play a two-blade ranger, should I say, "I'm playing a Drizzt"?

Or perhaps we should use a new term for any character who is a skilled martial combatant in service to a noble house, or anything remotely similar. We could call such characters "a Qu'el'saruk" because hey, that's the Drow word for their Weapon Masters.

Maybe any character who fights with a sword and is in any way spiritual or monastic should be called a "Zerth"?

When referring to any soldier in the real world who ever fought with a spear and a shield, we should just make things easy and call them a "Spartan" eh? African Bantu tribesmen are Spartans now!

Any female magic-using character should be referred to by the convenient generic term, "Aes Sedai." The Wheel of Time is totally universal!

Playing a priestly character of any sort? Clearly you're playing a "Pope"!

Hey, my character rides a horse often. I'm playing a "Rohir" of course.

I think it best if from now on, we refer to any white male on Earth as a "George Bush".

Want to play a clever desert-dwelling tribesman? Don't worry, we have a completely generic label for you - you're a "Fremen"!


It just strikes me as ludicrous to take a word which is so very specific and apply it as a broad term for a hugely variant category of characters. Especially when that word wouldn't mean anything to practically anyone, and most of the ones to whom it DID mean something would think you were talking about a specific caste of Githyanki and be confused.

Especially when it's such an ugly word.



"Hey guys, I finally made my new Lady of Pain character for our game."

"Holy crap, the DM's going to let you play the Lady of Pain???"

"What? Nah, don't be dumb. Lady of Pain is just a common-use term for any female character who is good with blades and can cast Maze."

"...."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's not intuitive: it's historical.

If you're a githyanki.

Otherwise, the "history" is only that a handful of hardcore optimization nerds have been using it among themselves, and have utterly failed to get it to make the jump to more common usage.

If I were at WotC, I'd create a githyanki gish class just to further drive it away from being a generic term.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What, like Magic-User? That was made up for D&D.

Edit: Not to mention swordmage...

Both of which combine actual English words and that anyone off the street can guess at their meaning.

Gish sounds like you're involved in Lillian Gish communal slash fiction play.

"Churn some butter? Why, whatever do you mean?"

 

[Nifft]

If you're a githyanki.

Otherwise, the "history" is only that a handful of hardcore optimization nerds have been using it among themselves, and have utterly failed to get it to make the jump to more common usage.

If I were at WotC, I'd create a githyanki gish class just to further drive it away from being a generic term.

Ah, now I see the reason for the bitter hatred of this linguistic development. It reminds people that optimization exists.

"Why do you hate math?", -- N

 

[Thunderfoot]

Gish has meant Fighter/mage since 2nd edition.
<SNIP>

Only for certain people, for the rest of us, fighter-magic-user is all we've ever used... Gish is for Githyanki only, please let it remain so...


This message brought to you by the Grognard Defense Fund. Because any edition is still better than GURPS. Est 1974.

 

[Cam Banks]

Ah, now I see the reason for the bitter hatred of this linguistic development. It reminds people that optimization exists.

"Why do you hate math?", -- N

Oh yeah. That's what it is.

Only, not it isn't.

Cheers,
Cam