Some thoughts on what abilities the classes could have to mix things up. Then there is some terrain and positions to help introduce tactics into the game.

Character Abilities
Knight

• Cleave - hits units in a 180 degree arc with 6 damage.
• Interception - Allies soak 30% of all damage (post defense) for 5 seconds

Painter

• Death Rot - Damages enemy 2 damage/sec over 20 seconds.
• Fireblast - Deals 25 points of damage.

Monk

• Healing Chant - Allies are healed of 50 damage.
• Charm - Single ally gains 1 magic & 1 physical defense.

Scholar

• Tactical Weakness - Allies’ attack is increased by 3 for 5 seconds.
• Target - Single enemy loses 1 magic & 1 physical defense.

Terrain

• Grasslands/plains
• +0% movement
• +0% attack
• -0% defense
• Forest
• -20% movement
• +0% attack
• +20% defense
• River/stream/snow/ice
• -30% movement
• -30% defense
• -10% attack
• Hills
• -50% movement
• +30% defense
• +20% attack
• Road/dirt
• +20% movement
• +0% defense
• +0% attack

Tactical Positions

• Flanked
• attacker +25% to attack a flanked target
• Behind
• attacker +50% to attack from behind
• Pincered
• attacker +40% to attack a pincered target

Ok, I don’t know what’s wrong with the wiki, it just stopped displaying suddenly. Working on it, but it never gives me any error to work with, just a blank page.

In the interim, I wanted to post some skill ideas for discussion:
stra - Strategist, illu - Illusionist, danc - Blade Dancer, monk - Monk, summ - Summoner, sorc - Sorcerer

• Birds-Eye View [stra] - Gives a view of non-battle movements (minimap) and discussions even during battle.
• Elemental Cocktail [stra, sorc] - Attempts to determine elemental strengths / weaknesses via an attack utilizing weak damaga of all elements.
• Camoflage [illu] - Disguises self as random non-combat object
• Group Camoflage [illu] - Camoflage for the whole family
• Mirror Shadow [summ, illu, sorc] - Summons a Mirror Shadow from target (Hovering near to target, mimics every move, immune to phys., aspects are inverse of target, damage done to mirrow shadow is dealt to target, mirror shadow vanishes after taking 1/4th target’s MaxHP in damage)
• Mirror Demon [summ, illu, sorc] - Summons a Mirror Demon to attack target (Mirror demons are copies of target, can cast Mirror Color and Mirror Blood on target or self, all damage applied to target applies to demon)
• Mirror Color [sorc] - Flips all aspect values for a duration
• Mirror Blood [monk, illu] - All damage dealt to target is *-1
• Quivering Sky [sorc, danc, stra] - All ranged projectiles are at +100 to PA,AA
• Crushing Sky [sorc, danc, stra] - All units move at 1/2 speed
• Assassin’s Fold [danc, illu] - Teleport to melee range behind target (breaks lock condition)
• Trading Spaces [danc, illu] - Teleport-swaps caster and target
• Turpentine [monk, stra, sorc] - All aspect attack is converted to Physical
• Palette Knife [danc, sorc] - Target’s aspect points are randomly redistributed
• Certainty [danc, monk] - The next physical attack cannot miss or roll less than 0.5 factor
• Sincerity [danc, monk] - The next attack does not trigger any defensive chains (other than resists and onDamage)
• Vicissitude [illu, sorc] - Caster’s defense aspects continually randomize
• Perfection [danc, monk] - The caster’s factor rolls are forced to 1.0 for the duration.
• Vortex of Hunger [sorc, summ] - Summons a Vortex of Hunger (keeps track of color damage done to it, will suck away 100% damage of the color that has damaged the Vortex the most from surrounding attacks, attenuated by distance)
• Masonry Wall [summ] - Summons a wall in the battlefield, drawn by caster

Many of these are obviously powerful abilities (ones that need careful tweaking and consideration). But remember that the game plays more at card-game speed than FPS speed, so you don’t have the ‘breakneck’ to consider.

Couple ideas:

• Structures are world items that are databased, but don’t move. They have hitpoints, and they block movement. Trees, rocks, walls, etc. Summoners can make them with permenence (but they can be destroyed through damage). I feel this could present some interesting metagaming as long as the griefing was kept out.
• Along with the idea of ’sympathy’, I’ve thought it would be neat to have land mass items (with radius and position, or some just based on box clipping / zone) that affect abilities, or can be used in ability scripts.  Like “Caster’s EA +100/+150 if there are turnips nearby”.  Summoners could be useful for this too.
• Characters could have ‘Titles’, in one part stealing from Fable and the like, and in another part replacing the traditional concept of ‘class’. If we came up with 20-50 ‘classes’, and just had a large matrix assigning points to each bin for each skill, you could have something that’s easy to lookup with a spell that tells you someone’s ‘class’. Like: Fredrick Tantalone Ranger - if someone got used to these names (and many of them are self explanatory), it would be a lot better than the traditional “hey 50% healer, 20% mage, 30% fighter LFG” arguments against skill systems. These ‘classes’ could also have their own Guilds if they so wished, for the purpose of acting as guides for people of that class.
• I like the idea of powerful abilities being ‘inherently neutral’.. meaning they are only situationally useful, but even so, the enemy part could take advantage of it as well. Basically the litmus test for this is “does it matter who cast it?”. Notice I haven’t yet come up with any abilities that affect the whole other party (cause those are harder to turn around and therefore not neutral).