That Spell system sounds pretty cool to me. If the Larians would actually be able to implent this kind of system, it would be awesome.
One thing that I liked to do in Divine Divinity was creating armies of summoned creatures, the only downside was that I could have only 5 creatures follow me. So when I entered a cave, I started summoning a few skeletons, used the skeletal wall skill, summoned the death knight and so on. I'd like to see that in the next gen game to, but so that summoned creatures automaticly follow you, or you could have some sort of control over them, forcing them to go to a specific location, looking through the summoned creature's eyes, that kind of stuff.
I also like necromancer who use the body's of the fallen enemies and allies to create a whole armie of undead minions. Imagine a necromancer walking through a forest, he has no minions at the moment, yet suddenly he gets attacked by a wild boar, he's abble to kill the boar and starts a ritual, creating 3 lower level minions. These minions have low attack power, low constition and are used to distract enemies. So the necromancer continues to walk through the forest, suddenly he notices a group of orcs. He commands his minions to attack one of them, while he prepares himself to cast a powerfull hex upon that orc. all the orcs focuse their attention uppon those minions, while the necromancer continues to cast deadly spells, draining life from his enemies and giving him more power. One of the orcs is defeated and drops to the floor, death. The necromancer starts a new ritual, which takes about 15 seconds to cast(and possibly some reagents) while the other minions are being slaughtered, a new and more powerfull minion rises. This minion has quite some power but not much more health then the lower level minions, so while there is only one of the lower level minions remaining, the more powerfull one starts attacking one of the orcs, the necromancer once again starts casting powerfull hexes to refill his almost empty manapool. another orc drops dead, allowing to necromancer to summon three new low level minions, soon the remaining orc is overwhelmed by the minions and the necromancer uses his corps to heal all his minions.
As the Minion Master(=the necromancer) follows the road throught the forest, he sees a town not far away. If he wants to enter the town, he will need to disband his minions, unless he wants to be attacked by the local guards.
Wow, that was rather long to create an image of what I mean <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/think.gif" alt="" />. I'll try it in short now. Both Conjurers and Necromancers(in the form of Minion Masters) would need a large manapool, as they need a lot of magic to cast the rituals to summon otherworldly creatures, this means they wouldn't be able to have a high constitution or strength, making them very fragile beings whitout minions. The creatures summoned by conjurers would only last a certain amount of time, while the necromancer needs corpses to summon his minions, this would balance things out in my opinion. Also to make sure that a necromancer would not gain to much minions, forcing him to disband his minions when he wants to enter a town or any other area where there are a lot of civil beings would be an option.
Also smarter creatures, like humans may realise that to defeat the army of a conjurer or minion master, they need to focus uppon the conjuror/necromancer and not his summons/minions. This would force the conjurer/necromancer to retreat or rapidly create a shell of minions around him, so that the enemie can't hit him.
I think this is one of the longest posts I've ever written. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/silly.gif" alt="" />