Wizard Archetypes

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For my book/game, I'm working on 8 wizard archetypes. Tell me what you think.

War Wizard: Wizard who uses fire, ice, lightning, and water based spells to immobolize foes then attacking foes from afar.

Conjuror: Wizard who summons powerfull mythological creatures, balls of energy, armor of energy, or weapons of energy.

Illusionist: Wizard who creates imagionary creatures or objects, forms viels to mask others, and decieve others.

Enchanter: Wizard who both influences the minds of others and adds magical power to objects.

Dragon Mage: Wizard who uses dragon based powers, fly, summon a dragon familiar, grow stronger, gain industructable scale armor, control fire, ice, or lightning, and become a humanoid dragon.

Chaos Mage: Wizard who uses spells that are based on random benefits and effects.

Rune Mage: Wizard who uses the powers of runes to enchant allies or hex enemies.

Arcanist: Wizard who minipulates the flow of magic and energy to counter enemy spells, create force field shields, and disrupts physical offenses, and attacks with raw arcane energy.

Well, a couple of these seem to be kind of redundant. An illusionist can easily screw with people's minds because that's the entire basis behind illusion magic - making someone see something that is not there, so why include that in enchanting?

Also, there's a crap-ton of magic that fits into none of the above categories. What about necromancy? Healing spells? Animal magic such as shape-shifting and controlling animals? These are all common uses or schools of magic within the fantasy genre yet they don't seem to have a place in yours.

I think if you're going to categorize magic into these different archetypes and limit mages to using magic from one or two of these archetypes, you should make them so that they still cover a wide range of spells and abilities, and also so that some schools are direct opposites of each other.

A few examples would be the magic schools from The Elder Scrolls, or the Arcana that Mage characters can choose from in World of Darkness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mage:_The_ ... _10_Arcana

Try looking up these and other fantasy games and books, and try to get an understanding of how their magic is categorized. Yours is a very original idea, but it's missing a few things.

For that matter, let me go through your 8 archetypes and compare them to the examples I've listed:

War Wizard: Similar to Skyrim's Destruction school or the Forces Arcanum from WoD.
Conjuror: Conjuration School, as well as the Death & Spirit Arcana.
Illusionist: Illusion School as well as the Mind Arcanum.
Enchanter: Enchantment school as well as the Mind, Matter, Space, and Prime Arcana.
Dragon Mage: Similar to the Shouts from Skyrim. The transformative powers would also be possible using WoD's Life and Matter Arcana.
Chaos Mage: Similar to the Fate Arcana from WoD.
Rune Mage: Destruction/Enchanting schools as well as the Prime Arcana (which allows you to inscribe a spell into an object such as a book or scroll, or even as data in a computer hard drive, thus creating a grimoire that is un-readable except by other mages.)
Arcanist: Prime Arcana from WoD.

That said, there is a lot more you can do with magic than what you've listed. You should try and come up with unique and interesting uses of magic and try and fit those into your categories, and alter them as needed.

Really sounds like the 3.5 D&D wizard spell schools, sans necromancy and some other stuff (Whatever it was that let you summon monsters). Abjurer I think is the one that can use spells to transform into monsters, like you can break 3.5 by making a wiz and turning into a golden dragon. I love how broken wizards are in 3.5

Chaos sounds like warlock from one of the supplements or what little I've read of 4.0, like necros they go off a charisma stat and use demonic eldritch powers. Kinda like sorcerers, they borrow their powers from demons instead of studying like a wizard.

War wizard sounds identical to the evocation school from D&D (fireballs, lightning etc).

In the game I'm working on, Dark Magi, there are nine mages, each from a different school of magic.

Celestial: Theurgist, a mage that uses light and healing magic.

Natural: Druid, a mage that controls the forces of nature.

Psionic: Psychic, a mage built around mental powers.

Elemental: Elementalist, a mage of the four elements.

Arcane: Wizard, standard mage.

Spirit: Shaman, mage who communes with spirits. Evil shamans are often called witchdocters.

Cosmic: Astronomancer, mage who's magic is drawn from outer space or the nine worlds. They are usually infamous because cosmic magic sometimes gambles sanity.

Death: Necromancer, mage who holds power over death, undeath, and the afterlife. I use a mechanic where I allow options that require one to be good, evil, or neutral.

Nether: Sorcerer, mage who uses dark and destructive magic.

Ofcourse non magical mage like classes would be the scholar (scientist character) and priest (religious character).

Each of them are to have several archetypes, builds, talents, basically a term to divercify them.

For example, these are some druid archetypes.

Druid of the Storm: Weather based.

Druid of the Land: Plant based.

Druid of the Ocean: Aquatic based.

Druid of the Inferno: Fire based.

Druid of the Sun: Light and heal based.

Druid of the Monn: Dark and control based.

Druid of the Beasts: Animal and evolution based.

Druid of the Fey: Illusion and transformation based.