[HoneyBadger]

I kindof had a similar idea to yours, Uninspired Name. I was thinking, not magic that is balanced against itself-fire to water, air to earth, etc., but that the schools we currently have could "split" from central concepts, kindof like a family tree. If you had a certain level in Earth magic for instance, at some point you'd have the option to gain levels in Metal and Crystal magic as well. There'd still be spells in the Earth school, but some spells would now be in Metal, such as Armies of Gold and Armies of Lead.

Life magic (healing, resurrection) would split into Nature (pretty much as is) and Ego (mind control and soul magic, as well as spells which affect emotions, memory, experience, etc.)
Death magic (pretty much as is, except dealing with corporeal death, corporeal undead like zombies, and the state of death) would split into AEther (summoning spirits, spells that affect the soul, spiritual and more subtley supernatural spells than found in the path of Death) and Entropy (destruction spells like Disintegrate and spells which degrade things, like making provinces worse, worsening scales, etc)
Air (gases) would split into Weather and Static (electricity)
Water and Fire would both lead to Energy (temperature control), Water would also lead to Ice, (breath of winter, unfrozen, etc), and Fire would lead to Light magic (and it's absence: Eyes of God, Utterdark)
Earth to Crystal (not only physical crystals, but geometrics, harmonics, and vibrations) and Metal (lots of item improvements here, some poisons and acids also, plenty of wartime spells, naturally, as well as spells which affect gold/income)
Astral would split into Time (obviously there are plenty of useful battlefield spells that could go here, also spells which effect aging.), Space (teleportation spells, making bigger things smaller, smaller things bigger, bringing things closer together or pushing them further apart), and Void (spells that summon void creatures, do void effects, or deal with pure chaos or nothingness).


This doesn't mean that Metal magic would be more powerful than Earth magic, or Time magic more powerful than Astral, it would just give a mage more options, and more places for us to mod in new spells. It also makes Empowerment more useful in the game, because you could use your gems to "build" a Crystal mage for instance, instead of just shoring up the weak spots in your magical stable. Some mages, and probably Pretenders as well, could start out as a "basic Time mage" etc., having just levels in one of the divergeant mage paths, but this should be more rare. Mages in basic paths should gain a single level in their split-off paths once they reach a certain level in the basic, such as a level 7 Air mage having 1 level in both Weather and Static, just to simulate a broader understanding the mage would gain. Mages who start out in one of the split-paths would not gain paths in the basic paths, however, just because their knowledge is more specialized and less common. Plenty of spells that currently use more than one path could go in the new paths, while plenty more could remain "hybrids".

Four new basic paths I would then suggest would be "Perspective" (one's point of view: changing one thing into another thing, such as Polymorph for example.) "Abberation" (deals exclusively with spells like cross-breeding which subvert or break natural laws and effects which don't fit in any of the other paths).
"Divine" (not in the holy sense, but rather delving-divining. Knowledge, numbers, and word magic.). Divination would split into Ley (as in Ley-lines, ley-energy: spells which have to be "triggered" in order to take effect, landmine spells, in other words, and certain protection spells, also spells which draw things or creatures to the caster, or push them away.) and Clog (sort of anti-magic: spells which, although not holy, are specifically aimed at destroying or subverting demons, undead, and other supernatural forces). "Weird" (this path concerns spells which have to do with Fate and Destiny, leading for instance to charming and enchanting, as well as spells which have a beneficial or detrimental effect over time, such as cursing someone to turn into a werewolf, for example.)

Blood would stay the same, with no splits, except for the absence of Crossbreeding, replacing this with Bloodbreeding (breeding "normal" creatures with demons, and summoning demonic versions of normal creatures, like demon wolves, demonbreds, humanbreds, etc).
Holy would also stay the same, but I'd like to see it renamed to "Presence" as in: "in the Presence of God". Presence would split into Holy and Unholy magics.

This would give us 13 basic magical paths (a good, round number, when you're talking about magic), and 27 split-paths, ultimately, and, if all 15 levels were incorporated, a much broader and more complete magic system in the game.

Edited a bit for the sake of clarity and aesthetics, because I was half asleep when I wrote it.