[HoneyBadger]

JimMorrison, you're turning this into an entirely more complicated proposition than it ever has to be.

I was referring to Endoperez, when I said he was underestimating the modding community, but you clearly are as well. Not being able to come up with anything new beyond the 4 elements, and 4 fairly random power sources is hardly fair. Better to say that we'd never be able to come up with any new and unique Nations-after all, we've got 60! Nations that come with the game! we could *never* come up with anything that wasn't just a rehash of what's already been done... In this, I refer you to Amos and Sombre's mods.

Why would any of the current paths be diminished? Sure, they might be altered a bit, but you don't cut down a tree just because you want it to grow in a slightly different direction. Mages in the game would go unaltered. Why should they change at all? some might gain a path or too, possibly, but it hardly can be said that we have a perfect balance in the game, in it's current form.

And if you have death gems, where you were hoping for sex gems, that doesn't make death gems useless, in any way.

The random sites are "random" for a good reason.

I have no idea what you mean by "Pretender acquisition". Do you mean when you "buy" Pretenders in the beginning of the game? In that case, there would be very little, if any, change to the process. Adding fire to the Niefel Pretender is the same as adding crystal magic would be.

The only path that would necessarily overlap would be the metal path. And that would just make sense, because Earth is already such a powerful path. Ofcourse, the key here is that it would be *optional*.

And we're already adding magic sites, so that's really a moot point. It's not that far-fetched for one determined person to come up with 100 new magic sites in a month. Creating a site is not terribly labour-intensive, after all.

And ofcourse, as I explained, some or all new paths could be alchemized from pearls.