In the game I’m making, when you get the Wizard talent, you get to pick two styles for it (provisional list):
Heaven – Hell – Eldritch – Night – Winter – Animalistic – Natural – Knightly – Necromancy
You cast spells by saying what you want to achieve and rolling + Spirit. The idea is that the styles of your magic determine what exactly does happen in the fiction (and influence greatly the costs in case of partial success-miss).
Say you want to heal somebody? Ok you do it. But if you took the hell background, the patient might get demonic seizures. Or you might set the room aflame. On a Knightly background, the patient might be judged unworthy and only heal half HP unless you’re gentle enough to give him your own HP.
Basically there is no spell list.
Mechanically, healing gives d6 hp; attacking does d3 damage (yeah, I use d3. I’m hacking the World of Dungeons Turbo and I like the weak/normal/great damage concept); aid somebody with +1 ongoing to a single purpose or call for a minor effect.
The Styles also determine the kind of things you summon when you summon. Mechanically they’re all the same: (You can pay 1d6 HP to call for a creature with that amount of HP; which is skilled in something or attacks for d6 damage. Extra 1d6 HP can be payed to give it extra HP, d6 extra damage or a new skill) But the styles will determine things like their loyalty, behavior, etc. They must be commanded like an NPC would (Using Spirit, as is the Stat equivalent to Charisma in the game) and they can act impredictably on bad rolls.
What I’m searching for is for good Styles I might be forgetting, as the current ones are provisional. Is not like I want to create a comprehensive list or anything, I’d like to keep it under 8-10, but which ones would be definitely interesting to use so they have their own distinct flavors? Also, which ones would you pick if you were a mage?