Swell question. Maybe there will be a subset of spells (or at least spell types) that are available in most or all schools, perhaps with differing special effects. Kind of similar to the way the different civ tech trees in Twilight of the Arnor all share basic functions like production and weapons. Or how all the D&D magic user classes needed to have the Read and Write Magic spells.

I'm going for the classic.  In life magic, you heal.  In death magic, you steal health from the enemy to give to your guy.

I definitely hope they steal a page from the Dominions book and make lots of spells dependent on more than one school.  That enhances replayability infinitely more than a "more or less single path" tech tree for magic.

Adding "alignment" as an axis to your spell research tree does sound cool--I'd love to have a difference between "needfire" (extra damage to demons & undead) and "balefire" (causes rotting burns to survivors), but if you aren't careful, you just end up slapping some fairly generic alignment modifications on a basic boilerplate of spells, which doesn't do much for the replayability.

Balefire. Now there's some seriously unbalancing magic, if you're talking Wheel of Time--that balefire actually burns backwards in time, destroying a person's recent actions as well as the person.

On the other hand, it would definitely qualify for "most annoying spell ever." 

Neither Life nor Death are inherently evil. Death is simply the absense of life. Not un-life.

Isn't it more how it is used than the magic itself that is evil ? I mean some spells might inherently be bad, stuff like soul sucking.. and possibly raising the dead. But in the end, why limit one school of magic to one side ? A few spells, sure, but whole schools seems a bit dull and restrictive.

Well some things will be inherently bad me thinks.. Stuff like sucking out souls to nourish yourself and stuff like that.. Otherwise kindly tell me how that can be good

Now that sounds weak actually, you are still sucking out the souls of some living creature and sending it into oblivion, not exactly a good thing, no matter the circumstances, and while undead could be argued depending on several circumstances, consorting with demons isn't exactly a terribly good thing and would probably come back to haunt your arse, on the other hands using angels and unicorns for evil wouldn't be good either, although on the other hand, would they do it if what they were doing was bad ? Probably not.

As it is, you don't really provide anything convincing to your arguments, just raise a bunch of situations that don't really prove anything.

I mean sure you can do something bad for good, but it's still going to be bad in a sense.

Imagine if some guy was walking down the street with his wife. Suddenly a magic portal opens and a some guy with a sword pops out and tries to stab her. He pulls out a gun and shoots the swordsman in the face. By the word of law he is now guilty of murder. To save the life of a member of his family he has commited an evil act by taking the life of another. There is no way you can sugar coat the situation. How then do you define this man's alignment on a moral scale? If he simply let his wife die then he would be considered an evil person. But only by comitting an evil act can he protect her.

That the killing was done in self defense is irrelevant. If you were walking down the street and were about to be hit by an out of control car, does that give you the right to incinerate the car and everyone inside it with a fireball just to preserve your own life?

In Elemental you are the leader of a whole civilization. Every life in that civilization is dependant on you for survival. Can a good leader commit mass murder to ensure the safety of his people? How is that any different from an evil leader harnessing every resource under his power to preserve the lives of HIS people?

Morality simply can't be measured on a scale of good and evil. We can only do what we think is right and let others be the judge.

Yes well, not all of us a defence attorneys, its just an example. Anyway maybe I should have explained better. In the example above the swordsman popping out of the portal represents a threat to the mans wife from his perspective. He doesn't know who the swordsman is or what his motive is, or even if he is actually targetting his wife. The moment before he pulls the trigger is spent making a conscious descision. "do I or do I not pull the trigger on this gun and end the life of another?"

It is possible that the swordsman is completetly innocent. He could be attacking an invisible enemy partially concealed behind the wife in an attempt to save them both. He could have been in a distant battle and the portal opened up in front of him right as he was in the act of striking an enemy.

My point is, during that moment before he makes his descision that man is by no definition good or evil.  None of the  possible outcomes can lead to an entirely good or evil result. So no matter what the extended circumstances are, the results of his descision are the measure by which we decide his character.

We have to decide for ourselves what we consider good and evil. What we choose is what will define us as people, and how we measure in the eyes of others. And either way, arguing about morality is like arguing on the number of colours you can't make with the spectrum of light.

Well that quickly became interesting, although it seems some people might have missed the point, i am not saying killing is inherently bad or anything like that, i was just trying to get some discussion going on the whole Moral Relatavism bit which many of you seem to subscribe to rather heavily.

In the end it all comes down to how you actually view the world and such, and as long as that is there.. you will have people killing people Because opposing ideas will conflict even when both sides could be considered "good"