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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6795698" data-attributes="member: 82106">All four of them are wizards. Numbers 1 and 4 are using a different title. I can call myself a lot of things: teacher, professor, tutor, instructor, pedant, academian, scholar, sage, but my degree is in Secondary Education and my training is in that field. I can choose to call myself by the common title of my profession (teacher), a name of lower rank (tutor) or one of the highest rank (professor) just as the wizard can call himself a hedge mage or an archmage. Number 3 is lying, or at least posing. He is either a wizard pretending to be a sorcerer (using the title of another profession to hide his own) or a sorcerer who is attempting to mimic the actions of a wizard (fruitlessly, as he doesn't need the spellbook and gets no benefit from it). In either case, he is mis-identifying himself willfully or not. (I am a teacher, but I can say I'm a graphic design artist if I want. I could also play around in Photoshop for hours, but nobody is going to pay me to do so). Number 2, if I am reading it right, is a wizard in the meaning of fictional-identification (rather than game-rule identification). If so, he's using the generally assumed term that most people understand. I often introduce myself (when the question of profession comes up) as a teacher, even if the title doesn't encompass my job description perfectly, because it explains my skills and area of employment. I COULD get more specific (High School Literature Teacher) just as the Wizard could (A Fire-focused Evoker) if I wanted to. Now, if you wanted to be sneaky, you'd claim one of them was a Tome-Pact Fiend Warlock who was studying his Book of Shadows for rituals earlier and using Fireball (gained from the Fiend Pact) later and the two actions were unconnected. (It would be the equivalent of a School counselor coming in to talk with my students for a class period; to the outside observer he is a "teacher" teaching even though that is actually his job description). One observation would not be enough to identify the subject. However, a pattern of behavior and reasonable cause-and-effect could deduce some correlation between in-game behavior and "rules" governing said behavior.Else, we create a reality where regardless of my actual training or abilities, I can claim to be a chef, an engineer, an airline pilot, or the President and I am not wrong to say that. ~ Remathilis, President of the United States of America.</blockquote>I would think about 'magic users' much like we might think about counsellors. There are a LOT of different kinds, they operate based on different theories, have somewhat different goals and purposes, work with different populations of people in different contexts etc. However,  at some level, they all have basically the same core skill set and do essentially the same sort of thing. They talk to people, advise them, help them solve their problems, provide some form of coaching, encouragement, etc. There are related professions, Psychiatrists for instance, that also do a lot of the same things, though they have additional and somewhat different skills. A given 'warlock' might well be hard to tell from a wizard. While he may not study to memorize a spell, he's almost certainly got a lot of arcane knowledge, probably books and other paraphernalia he uses to learn his craft of wheedling power out of higher beings, etc. His patron may well have a desire for arcane knowledge, may even be a patron of wizards as well, etc. There are a million shades of grey. A given wizard might instead of having a spell book per-se, carry around a bunch of augury sticks that tell him which symbols to use today to cast his spells.[/QUOTE]

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