Spell Trapper (Magus Archetype)
In places where arcane magic and the wilds of the world meet, magic inevitably integrates into the daily lives of the locals just as it does in other areas. As a result, such lands are often rife with magical warriors that use placed runes as a hunting aid, infusing magic into location-based traps.
These spell trappers might have little to know formal training, picking up the secrets of spell and steel along the way with their worldly know-how. Others, however, might have received basic training and either quit those studies for practical arts, or otherwise adapted them towards living in the wilds.
Of course, their traps, being able to be laid down anywhere, need not be limited to outdoorsmanship, but also military defense and skirmishes as well. Regardless, these magi are rarely without a trick up their sleeve.
Focused as they are on their magical traps, these warriors have difficulty masterin more advanced arcana, but they can learn a variety of magical traps in their place.
Indeed, as long as they have a spell component pouch, they can sacrifice spell energy in order to imbue a location with such a magical trap, though they diminish in potency the longer they lay untriggered.
At later levels, they can even channel the power at a distance, laying down a rune from a short distance away, though doing so leaves them vulnerable.
A simple archetype that makes use of the ranger trap rules, this archetype is great for setting up ambushes or defensible positions. Their ability to lay down traps at range means that they can even place down traps during combat on turns in which they cannot safely get into the fray. I’d say either pick your spells based on common mainstays, or experiment with oddball spells, since you can sacrifice spells you don’t need to set up the battlefield.
This class, with it’s combination of martial, magic, and the tricks of a specific ranger archetype, kinda feels like a true jack of all trades in survivalist form, someone who picks up tricks as they find a use for them, rather than mastering a single vocation.
Blasted by rare mythic chronomancy, the Battlefield Untouched is a forsaken place that no sane person goes, lest they be subjected to the violence of an ancient war, everything from the raging of mage-bred battle beasts to magical traps laid down by skirmishers, still fresh by the way time flows in that place.
While most have turned to occult traditions and psychic magic, there are still some munavri that remember the arcane path. When they join with patrols fending off the horrors below, they often set explosive arcane runes to blast the hordes of monstrous slave-beasts such beings rule over.
Undead are not the only things guarding the complex of the dread necromancer Vegsug. Indeed, he also has a blood golem guarding his sanguine laboratory. However, his most insidious traps come from an undead magus under his thrall, a now-nameless skeletal champion with a knack for setting arcane runes in strategic places.