Well, I think that there's enough types of elemental magic that it might be worth sub-dividing a bit further.
Holy (Light, Healing)
Nature (Earth, Plants), Energy (Fire, Thunder), and Adaptive (Water, Wind)
Unholy (Dark, Curses)
In this case, Ice/Frost would be considered a form of water. You could let them pick a category (i.e. Holy, Energy) for normal cost, or a subcategory for half cost, or perhaps expand the unholy/holy categories more to match the size of the "Neutral" magic group.
See, the problem with this is that I want to keep the subcategories all symmetrical and relatively low in number. I want each type to be meaningful, and if there's like four subcategories for one of the three subcategories for one of the two branches of magic, a lot of those subsubtypes are likely to be meaninglessly obscure.
I really don't want a Polymorph subsubsubschool just to cover witch hexing or something, for instance, because that wouldn't be a valid type to choose attacks or defenses from, it'd just be something that occasionally happens.
RE: Magic Types
If it were me doing it, I'd arrange it such that defenses are based on power source, the idea being that the way they deal their damage is more important than what specifically they are doing to deal it. Energy would incorporate the various elemental effects which hurt you by beating on your body, Divine would encompass Holy, Unholy, and things that damage by beating on your soul, and Arcane would cover the remainder, including things that damage by just blowing you up with raw magic.
I did consider merging all the elemental effects into just Elemental, all the physical types into just Physical, and possibly Dark/Light into just Divine, but didn't like it much. I'm going for simplicity, but that was just
too simple.
In a similar vein, I also rejected the considerably easier Melee, Ranged, Magic system, both because it was too simple and because I figured Ranged would be somewhat more obscure than the other two.
Since if I were doing it I'd want there to be a mechanical difference between all the subtypes (and generally want to overcomplicate things,) I'd probably bundle extra bonuses into the levelup system. Thus, you might have 2/2 Energy Defense, but also an ability that ignores the first 2 points of any damage with the Fire keyword. Since I would then want things to be nice and symmetrical, I'd probably go and add subtypes to the physical damages as well- Slashing into swords and axes, Piercing into arrows, bolts, and spears, Crushing into maces and hammers, so on and so forth.
I
think this sort of thing will be
mostly covered by classes, ie Dark will be different from Light primarily because Dark-using classes have different stuff than Light-using ones. It's looking like there'll be considerably less restriction on Physical classes, though, because you can justify just using a different weapon in a lot of cases. Physical is already divided like that, though.
Also, I'm fairly comfortable with the differences between damage types mainly just being what they're more or less effective against. I also played around with the idea of special effects on a crit, but crits already work in a particular way and I'm not sure it'd be good to change them.*
*
Mainly because one playtest resulted in someone's fight against a wolf ending by ramming himself down its gullet, killing them both.This is probably not the best way to do it, but it's probably the way I'd end up doing it anyway 
It's entirely likely that, after looking at the mess I had made, I would decide to ditch the Kitchen Sink approach to magic and try to come up with some more streamlined magic system even if it meant I couldn't have all the magic zaniness I wanted.
I've been trying very hard to keep things as simple as they can be and then let the complexity creep out a bit, as opposed to the usual process. Of course, now this has come back to haunt me as I'm concerned that there's not actually enough decisionmaking to do.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I suppose.
In any case, I
think I've kicked Arcane out of Divine and put Nature in. I tried listing all the things that would use each damage type, and Arcane was... Arcane mages and maybe some things you could apply any element or theme to, so I reluctantly dropped it. Nature at least had treants and such.
Of course, Shock isn't looking much better. My first impulse as to what would use Shock damage was "Storm Dragons," which falls squarely under things you can apply any element to. I guess it's possible I'll still swap out Shock for Arcane, though I guess then I'd need to rename Elemental. Plus, at least Shock can be justified as anything from stormy areas, whereas Arcane would have to be spellwarped regions or something.
Next up/concurrent problem- worrying about classes and trying to figure out the economic flow of the game. Yaaaaaaaaay.
Is it just me or does it seem like there aren't really that many RTD's anymore?
I remember getting tons of e-mails a day but now I hardly get any...
Maybe the number hasn't gone down it's just that I'm not actually getting in them. I've noticed a lot of sci fi RTD's but I never play those.
Yeah, it's seemed like it, but yeah, dunno if it's RTDs or RTDs I'm interested in.
Of course, I happen to be in the unadmirable position of remembering that I should be doing something about that every time I notice/think about it. >_>
Annual RTD-off?
There are still a lot of RTDs open there.
Hehe, some kind of contest or event could be fun, I think.
Author
Topic: Roller's Block (RTD Brainstorming Thread) (HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY) (Derm is 5k) (Read 727969 times)