Any of these four were VERY useful for the other type of mage: Brilliance added more to the hungry mana-pool of the Nature Mage, Quickened Casting allowed faster use of slow-casting Iceballs and heals. Specialty or Skill points were earned one per level, maximum level was 100, and there were quite many specialties to play with, even inter-character class ones such as Natural Bond and Arcane Renewal for Nature Mages, and Brilliance and Quickened Casting for combat mages. Broken World set the maximum point level to 20, but allowed item bonuses to surpass that up until 30 points. A specialty could have an all-time maximum level of 20(even with item bonuses). You could put more than one points into specialty, which made it's effects more powerful. Specialties were also tiered, so some could only be obtained at a specific skill level. Specialties had dependency trees, so you could only put points into a speciality after you put some on it's requirements. To add some variety on top of that, Dungeon Siege 2 added the system of specialties to the mix, where specialties also affected how powerful certain spells, attacks, you, and even powers were, and governed special mechanics such as ricochetting, critical hits, arcing, ignition and freeze. Spells also benefitted from both magical weapons and armor with certain bonuses. Spells were bought at vendors, so they could be considered part of the "gear" the characters had. (In future I will refer to it as classic spellcasting for clarity) Mages also had access to useful buffs and curses, which they cast from their always regenerating (BIG POINT HERE IS THE REGENERATING) mana pool, where certain spells could be used for temporary improvements of regeneration. Mages used mana, warriors and archers didn't(which was a bit of a shame though: warriors could have had some nice special attacks while archers could have laid traps). In DS1 the difference was less visible, but it was there nevertheless. Combat is the offensive one(lots of damage types and curses), while nature is a bit more defensive (buffs, armor, more healing). For those who don't know what Nature and Combat mages are - it's obsidian forum after all, so I don't expect everyone to care about the previous games, though it is recommended as they are both great pieces of art - they are the two spellcasting lines of the original games. In terms of the combat system it was originally autoattacking for melee and ranged, and - mostly - autocasting offensive spells as nature and combat mages, occasionally switching to healing when the situation demanded it. DS2 took what was good in the first game, then added Systems like properly branching dialogues, pets, and even powers to shake up the combat system a bit, so that's unquestionably an improvement upon what they had. Later I completed Broken world and I enjoyed the heck out of it, it was so much more! Proper multiclassing and reagent recipes on a world that despite it's destruction-riddled theme looked gorgeous. It may not be a very outstanding editor by itself - though it is very good - but it led me into the neat structure of the game itself, though my first impressions were undoubtably influenced by my overally positive feel towards the game. In 2005 I played through Dungeon Siege 2, and became immersed in it's world editor. Ever since then I played DS1 campaign five times over, and many more times I played in multiplayer mode to explore the hidden reaches of the Utraean Peninsula, and had a jolly good time. It was the first game ever where I completed the campaign as a 9 year old kid. I'm a big fan of the Dungeon Siege series. WARNING: Insane big wall of text follows: