Help... either I have a metal block.. or I''m making this task too difficult for myself. BACKGROUND TO THE BACKGROUND: (just to bore you) Basically I have (at long last) almost put down my pen and paper and actually got on with the task of actually coding something. Well actually I started and then suddenly (as you do.. or as I do) had another idea and though ''this might be good'' so basically I''ve been getting the details of it down at work (naughty me) and coding the other bits (that dont realy heavily upon this change). BACKGROUND (THE GAME): The idea is something vaguely similar to Sacrifice (because most, if not all, of you will have heard of it and know what it''s about). Basically you play a Wizard (no supprise there) who has to fight other wizards (blah blah blah) powerful spells (blah) summon creatures to fight for you (blah). It differs from Sacrifice in lots of ways.. but mainly.. - Turn based (easier to code...) - Even less (well none really) in terms of resource management. You have four types of Mana (which is where my problem comes in.. more on that later) which regenerate at a set rate. - No Alters, Manaliths, souls, etc... If you kill an enemy wizard, thats it he''s dead. - No following the Wizard about.. so it''s more of a starcraft type of view. - You "buy" spells with your experience points (and each spell has a limited "charge", one per ''buy'', you can however buy more than one of a spell, up to.. some number I havent decided yet). There are other differences, but I want to get onto what I really need the help with.... MANA AND MY IDEA: The orriginal idea (that this replaces) was (what I call) a balance system. There were only 2 mana types, which were the opposite of each other. So the more of one type of spell you cast the faster that mana regenerated, and slower for the other one. (Also capacities you could hold would increase and decrease for both of them, which you needed to do to get to your most powerful spells). (Problem is this has the potential to leave one player able to cast real powerful spells, and the other really weak spells,,,) The new idea is slightly different. There are now four types of Mana (just to make my task harder) each of which is independent of the other (no "balance"). The more you cast spells from one Mana type, the more mana of that you can hold. This will drop back towards your base value over time (quite a long time really). But beware.. the more of one type of mana you introduce into the world (by casting spells) the closer you come to its "stable limit" and once you''ve gone over the limit, bad things start to happen... (well thats the idea). The problem I actually have is this... What to actually CALL the mana types. I''ve loosely categorized them.. but the need names. One I have already named "Light Mana", which is basically a mixture of "fire" spells, and light absorbtion (bending.. etc.. e.g. shroud which will reduce the distance a unit can be seen). The other catagorys comprise of... 1) Enchanted units (Faree units, etc.. like Unicorn and Troll..), and enchantment type spells (e.g. Green Fire [only one I can think of at this moment.. lol]) 2) Air and Water units (like Crocodile and Roc) and Air and Water spells (like Lightening and Flood) (probably going to call this "Elemental mana" if no-one comes up with something better) 3) (and the one giving me the biggest headache) You Life and Death spells (I am looking at it mainly from the point of view that they''re connected to the manipulation of Life Force.. but "Life Force Mana" doesnt sound right to my ears.. and well I ran out of spell ideas and "extended" it slightly to cover "Natural creatures" like horse or Saber-toothed Cat.) So you have creatures like Zombie and Automation. And spells like Healing Potion (to make a potion u need some ingredients and a cauldron, then cast the spell), Raise Dead, Curse and Vines etc. So any ideas what I can call these types, and any other comments (questions, etc.) on what I''ve writen??? NightWraith

Life mana -- osirisean. Who says you have to make them catchy or sensible? Osiris was the egyptian god of life and death

Air/Water -- thorean. Norse lightning god, and since wind+water=storm->lightning, Thor would be perfect. If you''re familiar with the character of Norse mythology, the misery evoked by being cold and wet is quite the correct image.

Since both of these are gods, it might make sense if you accept these ideas to make it consistant by finding gods for the others, like the Greek goddess of nature whose name eludes me and zeus for the one you already have.

How about elemental for the air/water? When talking about elements with respect to the weather, elements generally means wind and rain and snow, which seems to fit.

For the enchanted stuff, arcane is always a magic sounding word. Or perhaps interplanar since D&D magic creatures typically come from another plane.

Vitae mana for the last? Vitae is latin for life, or something like that. Chi or Ch''i for a more chinese sounding word. There are several more words that mean life force, which seems to be an age old concept.

Artemisean would be the greek god of nature, and Zeus is the god of the heavens and the weather, so you''ve already got that covered in your Thorean magic (and Zeusian just doesn''t have a ring to it).

George D. Filiotis
Are you in support of the ban of Dihydrogen Monoxide? You should be!

I can''t remember the author. It might have been L.E.Modesitt or soemthing. I read one book of the Recluse(?) series - "The Magic Engineer" In it, there are two types of magic Chaos, and Order.
The real catch with this was that the more magic that one used of say.. Order, the more Chaos magic was available to Chaos magicians, sorta for free. So if you did a big Order spell, like sword blade casting, there was a huge flux of available magic for Chaos, and fireballs.
just my 2 cents.

Gias, Gaes, Giaes - Life, something to do with the Earth

Optanean- The light one, optics deals specifically with light.

Hiemnean- Nordic for Living Dead (Actually it''s Hiemnar)

Thor sounds good for the air/water one,

Cant think of one for enchanted though.

L.E.Modesitt J.R. BTW. Those books are excellent

Thanks for all the suggestions guys.. keep ''em coming.

SoakinKittens, Never read thoose books, but although the idea sounds good (and is very similar to what I was originally thinking, as u know... ) It does give problems with the whole building up of Mana to get to the powerful spells bit I think. After all if you have a lot of Chaos spells you cant get to the really powerful ones unless you opponant has a lot of Law spells... But maybe the basis can still be worked on.. I dont know...

DrMol, yeah, Enchantment is the one giving me headaches now, lol, after all I need an Icon for it for the information bar and for the spellbook page button....

Lokisis, Lokean, etc-Loki- trickster god, sort of fooling the enchanted animals into your power maybe? Or am I reaching? I just think Loki is awesome, so I had to find a way to mention him