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After recently building and magnetizing an Imperial Knight, I'm at the priming stage now. Will I lose magnetization if I spray primer over the magnets I installed?

If there strong ernough I doubt they do utterly nothing to magnets.

Rare earth etc.

Separating magnets definitely lowers the strength, but with a layer the thickness of paint probably not enough for you to care about. Here's a calculator...

https://www.kjmagnetics.com/calculator.asp

For a 3mm diameter maget you're talking roughly a 20-25% reduction in pull strength for a 0.1mm gap between the magnets, which would be a reasonably thick layer of paint.

Shear strength actually increases if you add primer because it increases the friction coefficient between the magnets, so if you have a problem with arms rotating/drooping but not actually falling off, priming them can help reduce that problem.

Thanks very much for the info. I'm debating covering them with a bit of painter's tape just to make sure nothing unfortunate happens, but I'm on the fence.

I usually just paint over them because shear strength is typically more important than pull strength anyway. If you have a problem with pull strength after they've been painted (falling off rather than rotating/drooping) then just remove the paint from the magnet, magnets being metal paint doesn't stick brilliantly to them and is pretty easy to remove.

magnets being metal paint doesn't stick brilliantly to them and is pretty easy to remove.

This, reading the title I assumed this was about how to make stick to magnets since they're a slick metal surface.

I don't magnetize a ton but in my experience there's not much loss with just paint. I tend to sink my magnets a little deep anyway so they have to have a strong pull to start with.

Prime them...it'll scrape off under normal use anyway.

Thanks for the advice everyone, priming went well, and as several posters mentioned, the magnets actually seem stronger. If things had gone poorly, I would definitely have scraped the paint from the magnets.