Alexjh

From past infinity engine games/what has been released so far, I'm guessing Druid, Ranger, Paladin or Barbarian. My usual preference is bards so I might concievably go chanter, but the basic class concept is a bit vague at present and lacking the instruments which I was always fond of.

Keldorn the man who put his own wife in prison because we don't do divorce. That to my mind is one of the reasons why he was an interesting character: even him doing that didn't break him, if a character can make that kind of decision there is more or less nothing you can do within reason to break him. I think one of the weaknesses of the perception of "lawful good" (or to a lesser degree, lawful evil) is that at some point or other these are going to conflict with each other. It's certainly possible to put a character in a position where they have to choose either their own personal rules or what the actual good thing to do is. As paladins are historically the lawful good exclusive class, lets stick with them for now. So for a little example using Keldorn, presented with a choice of the lawful choice (send his wife to prison) or the good choice (forgive his wife) he decides to go by his personal code. A "lawful>good" character is therefore one which while they will try to be LG generally speaking, if they have to choose will go for lawful, while some given the choice will go for lawful<good, but its the nuances of either where you get the real juice of the characters. We don't need alignments. I didn't really want to repeat that since i've mention it in several threads already. Alignment is a narrowminded black and white way of looking at the world, and completely unrealistic. A person doesn't do evil or good just because they are evil or good, they're not prone to lawful or chaotic behaviour because that's just their alignment. that's ridiculously stupid and I won't stand for it. Obsidian wants to make a more mature game? then alignments must be out. People have motivations, sometimes those make them come in conflict with others.It sort of worked for Keldorn, not because he was lawful good, but because the has the religious zeal we know from paladins, he was a narrow-minded idiot who wouldn't stray from his dumb absolutist path. Except that the reason he couldn't ingame, was because switching alignment would have made him lose all the paladin levels. that's not a good way to write characters. I'm happy with the idea that you can influence your companions however. not their alignment, but the way they view the world. Oh I wasn't saying you need alignments (at least not overt/seen by ones, might be interesting for the game to keep track what you and your companions are doing and have the rest of the world react accordingly, and then only as shorthand for something that could never be written longhand) But equally I think you have the wrong end of the stick slightly on what alignments are supposed represent - they certainly aren't definitive solutions or 100% accurate categories in which the world can be broken down into, but they are a simplified gist of how an individual character acts under normal circumstances, lawful-chaotic represents whether they have an internal code or not that they absolutley believe in, while good-evil is perhaps a bit more misleading in name as I'd evil is not so much about doing evil 100% of the time, but by evil things not personally bothering them - a person of evil alignment might go for their entire lives doing nothing but good things, but if put in a situation where they feel they can get away with something and there are no downsides for them, they'd have no personal moral compunction about doing it. Either way, alignment is a measurement of actual behaviour/personality, not the other way round where people can only act according to their alignment. But anyway, as I've said I have no problem leaving alignments out, but I stick with what I say in that some companions should be more easily influenced than others. Some might even purposefully do exactly the opposite of what you want them to because that's what they're like

Well I originally posted it because they all had some things in common: historical design issues and not being talked about by Obsidian yet, so it made more sense to clump them together than post them in 3 separate (at the time, dead) threads. Equally interesting is why you posted this is a thread which no one has posted in for three days? Anyways, as you did bring it back, I'll quickly add to it - one thing that would help out the druid I've realised (having revisited it in IWD2) is if, like the monk, it's wildshape form was treated as magical attacks for the purpose of hitting enemies as they go up in level. I'd assume that as you level up you are not just levelling up as a panther/bear/guinea pig but as a slightly magical one, thus meaning that wildshape never becomes irrelevant against high level enemies. Also on the theme of Druid spellcasting, another possibility I was considering instead of the habitat based one would be doing a season themed one, with each season getting two elements, winter getting cold and wind, spring getting cold and plants, summer getting plants and sand/earth, autumn getting earth and wind or something to that vague effect. As for monks, one thing that'd definitly be fun to bring back is the ability to catch/deflect/redirect projactiles. I've a vague recollection something of that sort being in NWN, but its the sort of thing that'd add alternative tactical options when facing archers and such. Perhaps high level ones might even learn to redirect magical projectiles, I like the idea of a max level monk being able to swing the trajectory of a fireball back at a casters own men.

I've always actually kind of liked fighters as a fairly low management class, and while I don't mind a few optional combat abilities I generally do prefer my tactics with them to revolve around positioning and targeting rather than having to tell them every specific attack. If you did want to add a little bit of extra depth to them, perhaps give them a couple of different "combat forms" you can switch between - a normal one, one for just taking as little damage as possible, one for fighting while surrounded, one for defending a specific target, and one for working in tandem with another melee fighters, but really I generally always prefer to give fighters passive abilities, they are the ones I send out there to bear the brunt of the battle while I can concentrate on the more delicate classes. Some of the tactics might just be down to equipment changes. Rogues I'm pretty much again happy with as they are, just perhaps building a few more options for things not really done in infinity engine games like traps, poisons, throwables (caltrops, smoke bombs etc), but these should be items you have to purchase and so on, not just a magic infinite supply. For wizards, I think ideally I'd have a slow regenerating mana with no upper limit, I mean to the point of mana only trickling in and wizards needing to build up a mana supply over days through conservative spell use. If you can't just get your full power from constantly resting constantly then it forces each encounter to be measured about how much the player would be willing to expend. If you really are utterly low, perhaps throw in a meditate ability that'll give you a small mana infusion in the middle of combat while leaving you entirely vulnerable.

Well one solution to the status effect thing would perhaps be for the status effect icons to gradually fade out of view in line with how long they are going to last. That way, you have a vague idea of how things are going without having to have loads of timers cluttering up the place. As for spell layers, I don't really have a problem with that as such, what I'd say perhaps might be worth doing is that protection spells might have one weakness, I think it was already mentioned that some sort of mage-armour spell was vulnerable to gunfire, but if each spell had a specific weakness to it you'd avoid the problem, say, a certain high level protective shield might be broken by cold magic etc, even though admittedly I've never been bothered with dispelling that often and tend to just wait spells out/try random other spells that might go past it.

As with orcs, I'm fine with vampire-ish creatures, but I'd rather not have something which is directly a vampire. With vampires particularly, they are very much a "folkloric" monster, and so tend to be fairly similar to each other. I'd much rather have something similar (bloodsucking corpse based demon) but with a different name and whole different set of details, like perhaps some of the ones the OP mentioned. On a similar note, I'd rather some of the more obscure forms of undead were explores a bit more: both zombies and vampires are done to death (no pun intended), and ghouls and skeletons are fairly ubiqitous. Wights and spectral undead seem to get a short shift in games, so perhaps explore them a little more, but original takes a a bonus for any of them.

I do prefer bodies to linger for a while, at least until resting, also perhaps have the bodies stay as lootable "containers" rather than everything being dropped in a heat when they die. ITs satisfying to be standing on a big heat of slain enemies, especially if some are interesting ones.

Keldorn the man who put his own wife in prison because we don't do divorce. That to my mind is one of the reasons why he was an interesting character: even him doing that didn't break him, if a character can make that kind of decision there is more or less nothing you can do within reason to break him. I think one of the weaknesses of the perception of "lawful good" (or to a lesser degree, lawful evil) is that at some point or other these are going to conflict with each other. It's certainly possible to put a character in a position where they have to choose either their own personal rules or what the actual good thing to do is. As paladins are historically the lawful good exclusive class, lets stick with them for now. So for a little example using Keldorn, presented with a choice of the lawful choice (send his wife to prison) or the good choice (forgive his wife) he decides to go by his personal code. A "lawful>good" character is therefore one which while they will try to be LG generally speaking, if they have to choose will go for lawful, while some given the choice will go for lawful<good, but its the nuances of either where you get the real juice of the characters.

In general I like Icy/snowy places, its just easier to get a good atmosphere going with the crunch of snow beneath your feet and the sound of wind blasting through your party. I don't exactly have a least favourite, but I feel that deserts and jungles I've never seen done really well in a fantasy game. Realistically, when doing a certain environment should be about is taking that environments characteristics and transmitting them to the player. Snow does this well because its bleak and its grim and it's cruel, and places which are snowy tend to have fairly difficult to navigate terrain and therefore more linear paths which are all add together for making "gamey" settings. Deserts on the other hand are certainly cruel, but they are also lonely, empty and quiet, and don't tend to have that many paths. An ideally done desert in a game would be about wandering, not seeing another soul for days and days at a time, or finding anything but rocks and sand. Deserts should be a habitat about the slow build of tension and threat, getting progressively more menacing until a climax, they are not an environment of instant gratification and constant foes (I'm looking at you Diablo 3). However, if I've never seen a desert done well, jungles are worse. The tension is jungles is about the unseen: things lurking in the shadows, ancient temples clad in vines and strange noises in the dark. They should have few wide open spaces, and you should spend a lot of your time up to the waist in swampy water with the constant threat of waking up from each rest having caught some new horrible illness. Foes should be stealth based and often poison based, and even seeing them should be a major event, though you might well hear them mixed in with the dozens of other strange noises. Perhaps even more fun, get to the point where you are used to all the strange noises, but then suddenly take it away except perhaps for the crack of a few dry twigs not caused by your party... The problem is both would basically require a whole game to do justice and as project eternity looks rather temperate, it might be better to avoid these entirely and focus on doing interesting things with that.

To me it'd actually be more fun if the orlan were the "orc" race, its be a great fun juxtaposition to have the feared and hated race be fluffy, have big ears and come up to a humans belly button. From the sounds of it their guerilla warfare tactics doesn't sound like they'd be that popular, and there is nothing stopping a race of short people from being/having a reputation of being violent and aggressive.

I never said that. I said that it was MORE of a sci-fi concept, and that it often felt out of place in (Medieval) Fantasy settings. THAT was the point I was trying to make, especially in my third post. Maybe I wasn't very clear. It can be a bit tricky to debate in a language that isn't your mother tongue. Sorry if I was repeating you at all, I literally did a very quick skim of the thread before writing it up. The main thing I'm slightly iffy about with the concept of psionics as a playable class is that to be honest, fighting in pitched battles is surely the least interesting thing for one to be doing. I can imagine them as spies or counter-spies easily, or them being employed to protect people from other psionics. Perhaps even be sent into town to use their powers to demoralize a city due to be captured, but in a pitched battle they just don't quite fit. The idea of a mind blast seems like it should be either overpowered (what could be more dangerous than knocking out a load of people with a thought?) or underpowered (everyone making sure they have good will saves) and they run the risk of overlapping with wizards and bards/chanters. For an example of what I mean, look at the X-men - there's at least 7 or so powerful psychics who are regularly members, so why isn't every fight over before it even begins? Even weirder, Psylocke with her psychic knives is particularly silly - if you've got a power which can take down foes instantly from a distance, why are you making yourself vulnerable to go and psy-knife them? You can blast them in the mind several rooms away!

I have to say, in my view, by far my favourite feature of the original Dungeon Siege was the donkey. There is just something about it that suddenly made it feel more like a true quest through the wilderness. Not the other pack animals they had later, as other things they added later they felt too self conciously cool, the donkey that just was a really fun addition. It was also easily the thing I missed most in DS3. Only thing is, I'd rather it counted outside your party as a 7th member if it was there, it did feel a bit strange to have you artificially choosing between a wizard and a donkey, even if the donkey was cooler.

While I disagree with the perception of psionics are as purely sci-fi concept, equally when psionic (of the trained varieties, not species which possess it naturally) are shoehorned into a world already containing several other flavours of magic, it can feel a bit.... overloaded as a setting, particularly as quite often, unlike the others magics, they aren't given a clear place in the world. Clerics get their power from their deities and use it for the will of that deity, wizards study arcana in old tomes and whatnot and often use their powers to fight for their personal causes. Psionics though... are a bit harder to pin down, are they learned or innate powers is the first question? One solution would be for part of their repertoire be taken from what are classically wizard/sorcerer spells - stuff like invisibility, enhance attributes, hold person, sleep, fear and so on. Remove these from wizards, and then add in a few unique powers and ability and it and you end up with two distinct classes with more specific roles.

Much as I can appreciate that some people might like corrupting characters, I think it shouldn't be possible with every character, and indeed, some characters should equally be trying to change *you*. To pick a couple of examples from Black Isle/Obsidian/Bioware games: A character like Keldorn should generally speaking basically try to kill you if you are acting particularly evilly, but if it just extended to petty crime, he should be trying to reform you. "Breaking" him should be either incredibly difficult or impossible, and if the former, require sticking him in a position where he had been repeatedly forced to challenge his own beliefs and THEN sticking him in a situation where there is no correct answer for him according to his ethos. Even then, realistically, I would kind of imagine that even if you did get him to that point, you'd rest in an inn one night and wake up to discover he'd commited suicide. A Blackguard type character should work in the opposite direction, but as to be evil you generally have to be selfish, and perhaps instead of a true reformation the lesson they actually learn is that its easier to get what you want out of people if they think you are a hero while still being a reasonably unpleasant person. The Zaalbar/Mission evil ending I've heard of was interesting to: doing that doesn't make Zaalbar a different alignment in my mind, as he clearly knows what is right and wrong, but, if you are warping people to your own ends, knowledge of their customs and society might help. If you wanted your neutral good wizard who believes foremost in the power of knowledge, to help you kill good villagers, you might lie to him to say they are evil book burners who have destroyed ancient tomes of lore to get him to go along with it. As mentioned, Kreia is another interesting one, she shouldn't mind as such whatever you do, but challenge you to see the ramifications of all of them, and be equally as scornful of the goody-two-shoes paladin type as of someone who kills villagers for the fun of it. Similarly, if you have an amoral master thief in your party they should be trying to get you to act like them and if they are morally lose would be willing to play along to good or evil. But a master assassin might be disgusted by you pandering to the weak. Some characters might eve just be apathetic to whatever you do: they are with you for some specific reason, and anything you do otherwise is none of their business. Either way, there should be a good mix of good and evil, corruptable and incorruptable, indifferent and impassioned and so on, and like Baldur's Gate, there should certainly be the possibility of intra-party conflict should things get too serious...

I'd rather have a short prologue that forms part of the main storyline but teaches you the basic mechanics without feeling on rails and perhaps give you the opportunity to get a little bit of starter loot suited to your chosen class. I've for some reason always pictured the "event" that starts the game as you literally walking into something happening along a stretch of semi-abandonned road (no idea if this is true obviously) so if that was the case you could always insert some very brief optional things before you got to where it was happening.

Classes in some ways are a bit tricky to get right as a mechanic, in theory I love the Elder Scrolls mechanic of levelling up anything you want to create some freeflow classes. The problem with that is however, that the result is always a fighter, a rogue a wizard or a combination thereof. This comes at the expense of things I consider to be "specialist" abilities which include among other things, D&D class features like bardic music, barbarian rage, druid wildshape, turn undead, favoured enemy and all monk skills. For the sake of characters not just being overpowered and maintaining the ability to build on the archetypes would mean somehow preventing people learning all of those together because it would be both overpowered and a bit silly to have raging panther running through the middle of a fight, singing and burning all the undead it went near. One option would be to let you select a class, which then locks you into these specialist abilities but then from there on in its a free for all on anything else. This is still a bit clunky though. If you had them at the opposite end of training as skills only a few could master it could theoretically work but then it'd turn these classes into prestige classes which doesn't do them justice in my view. I'm not really sure there is a solution that covers all the issues that either system brings up...

If the aumaua are a semi aquatic race I really hope they are NOT reptilian or amphibian, as the world of Project Eternity seems to be fairly temperate it doesn't make sense for them to be so, especially as amphibians die in salt water. I'd much rather they went with something that hasn't been done before, or at least, not in games. Perhaps a version of selkies or something like otters? Something that doesn't look silly having arms and being constantly on land...

That's always one of the slightly interesting things about the monk class, that of all the classes they are one without really any grounding in European history or literature. Probably because Christianity evolved into a fairly martial religion anyway during the middle ages despite ostensiably being a peaceful one, the discipline and learning side was fairly detatched from the violent side. I guess is you were looking for something like a hyper-disciplined warrior ethos the closest I can think of offhand would be sparta or maybe the romans, although they'd very much be fighters more than monks. You can probably imagine little cults based on some of the older religion with martial-religious orders, but probably based on specific weapons rather than unarmed. As for P:E monks, I guess one thing that could be core to the class would be a greater ability to disarm relative to other classes, perhaps even an ability where they "confiscate" the weapon of an opponent to use against them. I do feel that monks as a class work better when they are specifically controlling the battlefield more carefully than the other melee fighters would, using stunning attacks, disarming, perhaps 1 hit KOing a wizard with a quivering palm like thing and then dashing (or perhaps wuxia cinema style leaping...) to the next target. That could be quite fun actually: if you leap over the battle, you get the bonus of never being exposed to attacks of opportunity and looking really cool while at it, perhaps a damage bonus on that initial flying strike.

To me, this is actually one of the more problematic issues in RPG design - while it doesn't feel right that if your party has been fighting to the very brink of death against insane odds for them to get back to the nice warm pub and discover that your 7th party member has been sitting on his or her backside eating unicorn steaks and has levelled up as much as you it kind of makes your own levelling less cool. The other problem is it they match your own level and XP was shared across the party, if you soloed the game for a bit to concentrate the XP just into you and then went back to get them you could effectively power level them. Conversely though, making companions become rundundant is possibly even worse. One partial solution would to be to have companion achievement-bonuses along the way that only unlock if a certain companion is with you, say, if your party does something particularly noteworthy that has some connection to that character. Say, your wizard gains a bonus from being in the party when you find the great lost library of doom, or your monk gains a bonus when you defeat the leader of a rival monk school. Add to that perhaps say a 1 or 2 level penalty to those left behind so if your guy reaches level 10, the guys left back slobbing around at the Inn only end up at level 8. One other option would be to be able to allocate tasks to those not coming with you, tell them to guard something, scout something, steal from someone, patrol something or just study something. This way you are offering a plausible reason for them keeping levelled with you, plus you might get a bit of minor bonuses from their activities in form of money, loot, information or reputation.

I never managed to get into them either I have to say at least as they were in NWN2, but the basic principle of them seemed like a very interesting and very different approach to spellcasting. I think the key though would be making sure they didn't end up too much like wizards as overly offense based spellcasters. I'd like to try and mix in things similar to what I consider "classic" D&D Druid spells - the key ones I'd say would include things like: Healing Poison Entangle Shillelagh Charm Animal (turn into an ability rather than a spell?) Barkskin (habititat flavoured version? sandskin, frostskin etc) Spike Growth Insect Plague Summon elemental (something a bit more subtle than the big golems of element x for preference) Contagion Things like that can't really be simulated in the shapes system, but perhaps could be integrated in other ways into the spell system.

If we're talking giving the forms any depth, then any month than tow, three, maybe four seems unwise. Too readily it would fall into 'copy paste' territory, and 'quantity without quality' territory. I'd rather a few forms with deep and interesting specialization options to a great deal of forms with low to no quality, or, worse, copy paste quality. That's my entire reason for keeping it down to just a very few, bare minimum forms, to choose between, only one, thay are then outfitted with the ability to upgrade, modify and specialize in them to a great degree. On the other hand, I don't disagree with you that having very few options could easily lead to them just using the very 'typical' choices (wolf/bear/some form of large cat). In that regard, I actually do understand and sympathize with the point you're trying to make, so, please, don't think for a second I'm dismissing your concern, nor your want for variety in forms. I'm simply, as always, more concerned with the quality of what is there. Sort of like a Cleric Domain sort of deal, only with forms/spell types? You could go beyond the animal forms with that, actually. I talked about the difference between a spell casting Druid and shape shifting Druid, and I wholly believe in that separation. I also like the idea of a, somewhat, Domain like system where the Druids represent different 'natural areas' of the world; keeping it within the range of areas you'd practically find within the areas of the game world we're exploring. A Territory system could define which type of Shape Shifting Druid and which type of Spell Casting Druid you were, and thus what elements/animals you were pulling from. I'm curious what a Desert themed Druid would have at their beck and call, in terms of Shape Shifting Druids and Spell Casting Druids. It would act like the school system, after a fashion, you were talking about, but concentrated more on the nature element - where a Druid and their magical abilities or shape shifting abilities would be dictated by the type of natural territory the Druid represented. In terms of Shape Shifting different territories could be represented by a key animal, of sorts, so one territory might typically be represented by a wolf, another 'this' and another 'that' perhaps a desert snake, of some sort, for a desert territory. Then apply similar thinking to the Druid spell casting system, 'these types of spells represent that territory' so a spell that buffeted you with wind and skin shredding sand might be representative of a Desert territory (just an example, and obviously, again, let's stick to territories we're actually going to be seeing in the actual game world). Still, I imagine some people would dislike their magical or shape shifting abilities be limited by a particular area their Druid represented ('druid of the desert' or 'druid of the forest' or 'taiga druid' or 'swamp druid' and so on), so it's likely completely moot to bring up. If you were doing habitat themed "domains" that might be a place to bring in the warlock style casting I was playing around with earlier. If you had, a selection of casting "shapes" (cone, beam, wall, entangling, blast, "dagger spray" etc) and each of the habitats was associated with one particular element which had a themed version of each of those shapes, so the tundra one would be ice and get to do ice themed versions of those shapes, mixed in with some general druidic spells. You could then choose to develop your thematic form (perhaps polar bear in this case) or focus on spells, plus to keep it from just being a palette swap, some unique abilities each, and different status effects. Other domains could have the associations with vines or sand or mud like you mentioned. Would certainly produce a very different tone to D&D druids while still retaining the basic themes.

I'd rather not have orcs persay as they've been a bit done to death, but I'd be quite happy to have an equivalant race reputation and/or with a history of violence/brutishness but with a bit of a different flavour, tone and visual design to them.

Umberlin: I do like the idea of having a single form/variations thereof, but I'd rather there was a bigger selection than two or three to choose from, because you know almost exactly what those choices would be, and there are other interesting creatures in the world than wolf, big cat or bear which is what it always is. Not that those are bad, but I like to have other choices too. I'd go with a list something like, Wolf, Bear, Panther, Boar, (Giant) Spider, (Giant) Raven, Badger/Wolverine, (Giant) Snake, (Giant) Bat, (Giant) Owl etc. Maybe something unusual like a bison or auroch kind of thing. While the first few would be fairly obvious in terms of being very much direct combat orientated, you could have some fun with the later ones, owl gets big bonus to spot and move silently, snake gets poison and regenerate, bat gets automatic detect invisibility/stealth (from their sonar) and so on. Edit: Perhaps you could pick an "order" at character creation, something like "order of claw" "order of feathers" and "order of venom" which give you access to slightly different spells each (similar to mage schools) and then when you get to the point where you can shapechange, you pick an animal within that school as both your form and your companion, and while the general schools would give you some general bonuses (order of claws would be melee focused for instance) the animal you chose would give you further specific bonuses - wolf some kind of group buff, bear to strength and fortitude, panther to stealth and critical or something. This gives the player a little more time to decide what they want. Personally, I'm kind of liking the idea now of an owl-themed druid...

I see what you are going for but I don't see how this is really workable I have to say without turning it into a different genre or having some system where it's very rare for anyone to actually get hit which would be a bit tedious. You could go for increasing levels of damage resistance, but that's still arguably even less realistic than increasing HP. The fundemental problem is with this supposition is that it's the same enemies getting more powerful. However, what would likely happen is you are having a system where at level 1 a goblin with a flickknife has the potential to kill you, which is fine, however, if you are maintaining constant HP throughout, if said goblin can kill you, what happens when you encounter an attack which is exponentially powerful than said flick knife - say, a high level beam of energy from a wizard, or a blast of fire from a dragon or a swing giant's club. Assuming that the same damage from the flickknife if it connected/wasn't resisted would still kill you, these are all instant kill scenarios, as they would realistically be in real life, but in a game would likely end up being some tedious lesson in giant-safety. While I certainly agree with the general principle of wider is more interesting than taller, I'd suggest that more to the point, players should just get bigger is all regards, and just with the wider being more prominent. In my view, HP is the best of a poor bunch of solutions to trying to simulate the character shield of fantasy characters without actually doing what Gandalf, Conan, King Arthur and their ilk do in a fight - which is basically never get hit except perhaps in the occassional "boss battle". You want that feel that your guy is up there with these characters, but getting hit in a 50 hour campaign can't be an occassional thing or you lose all suspense if you know that no one in the entire evil tower except Wizbad the bad at the top is the only one that can ever hit you.

Since you bring up Airbender, thats actually one way of doing Druids that'd be quite a different take, focus on the normal elements of nature (plant, earth, water, air, ice, sand etc) and focus on manipulating the stuff in the environment around you rather than actually brining anything new forth (like a wizard would). You'd probably want to ditch the shapeshifting angle if you were going that route, as it'd be a very "busy" class otherwise though. Only manipulating the elements present around you (so no snow in the desert etc) and perhaps based on a similar system to how warlocks worked in NWN2, ie forming you attacks into shapes ie cone of ice/sand/earth/vines or immobilising mud/rocks and so on. Lower damage potential and less overall versatiliy than wizard but no limit to uses/day or /mana or whatever.