ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

From Aether Avatar description:

While active, you can only cast arcane or aether spells (...)

Aegis tree description:

Command the arcane forces into healing and protection

Even the Aegis tree spell icons are purple, which seems to be the "arcane" color. Therefore it would be intuitive that these spells should be available in AA form. But they aren't... which has cost one of my archmages a life before he learned that the hard way.

Arcane or aether, meaning spells from arcane and aether trees. That could be clearer I suppose.

supermini wrote:Arcane or aether, meaning spells from arcane and aether trees. That could be clearer I suppose.

And how exactly do you explain it? Lore-wise, I mean, not by some arbitrary class/generic trees names?

"Yeah, you can channel some arcane powered spells during AA and some you can't - just because."

I guess you could try to explain that Aether Avatar is an offensive stance and Aegis spells are defensive, so Arcane Reconstruction or Aegis wouldn't channel - but shouldn't Disruption shield be disabled then too? It just isn't consistent lore-wise and that's what I'm trying to point out here.

"Arcane" in the game has two meanings - one is a technical, limited meaning that has to do with raw magic, like Arcane damage and the Arcane tree. The other is looser and is just used instead of "magic" - there's a bunch of stuff "powered by arcane forces", for example, that has nothing to do with the Arcane or Aether trees and in fact is a lot more closely aligned to Chronomancy, Corruptions, or Celestial magic. The aegis tree isn't running on raw magic, or at least it's doing way to much transformative manipulation to be usable in such a focused state as Aether Avatar.