I, too, don't use dolls much. They make good mules - and when you leave them at the entrance to a dungeon, they'll save you some time walking back. And they are good for setting off traps so my chars can walk through safely. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />
I have one char that I continued playing with in the BF after the game. And there the doll is a bit more handy. I transferred all my DK's skillpoints to it, so I wouldn't completely lose his supporting skills (alchemy, lockpick, etc.). And also added a lot to the radius, so the Ranaar-skelly rarely winked out of existence.
I really liked the class-less system. At first I wasn't completely sure - as I thought "too many options" but then I found it fun to create the char of my dreams, the melee-fighting mage. What annoyed me, however, is the high amount of mana the spells cost.
Concerning the different weapons, it does make sense to have different skills for slashing, piercing, etc. If you ever should try fighting with such weapons, you'll soon notice that a dagger needs very different handling from a club. The Shadow and Bone part was annoying, though. I wanted to use swords, thus learned slashing - and then at one time in the game I found a cool weapon - and realized it was shadow... So I unlearned the slashing and took shadow instead. (But as I didn't want to unlearn skills every time I changed weapons, I was then set for all times to use shadow-weapons...)
As for the resists, well, I agree that there is a bit much. The difference between Spiritual and Ethereal is clear to me, though: ethereal is the damage dealt by ghosts, spiritual by int-based weapons (and thus raising your own Int will help with the resists). Well, resistance against bone is a bit weird - but the one that confuses me is Shadow. What type of dam is that?!
I still managed to have nearly all of them nearly maxed by the end of the game - with my lowest around 56.
