Stretching the symbolism a bit, just how many powers/abilities

>>49885711

Time and stillness. Those with the theme of ice are all about order and stagnation so they use their ice power to impose their will upon things.

How do you keep the castle in shape? Cover it in ice? How do you keep the one you loved from rotting? Encase them in ice. How do you stop those pesky chaotic sorts and their fire of chaos? Ice.

Slowing/stasis (movement, processes), preservation, fixing in shape (as opposed to shapeshifting), mirror images, emotional distancing, ruthless logic...

Well, if you're willing to stretch it hard ENOUGH, there's nothing you can't pull off.

Ice>Stillness>Time>Causality>Future

Bang, your ice mage can see the future!

Water splits apart rock by filling cracks, freezing and expanding. Glaciers move slowly but reshape the landscape.

So powers having to do with strength through patience and perseverance.

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>>49885711
>Stretching the symbolism a bit
>a bit

The biggest ice-related power stretching I've ever seen must be Akame ga Kill, where the main villain can freeze time. Make no mistake, she can LITERALLY freeze time. She doesn't freeze those around her so it appears as if time stands still, she freezes the metaphysical concept of time itself.

>>49885711
Life stealing, literally stealing the fire of life away from others.

Camoflage/making everything look uniform like a blanket of snow.

Sleep, which is the natural aspect of winter; the time for nature to go dormant.

>>49885711
The heat death of the universe leaves a lot to be done. For most living things, Heat = Life, so Ice can very quickly be transposed into the position of "dissipating the vital energy of living things". So...Death Magic?

>>49885711
Shapeshifting, maybe not by itself - but if you're dealing with WINTER, rather than just ice, shapeshifting into some animals stereotypically associated with it (basically every woodland animal colored white...) may not be out of the question. White wolves? White foxes? White owls?

It's kinda more of a villain thing, but hey, whatever works.

>>49885859
>White wolves? White foxes? White owls?

Walruses.

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>>49885913

>>49885711
Emotion control tending towards suppression? You take away people's anger and love and whatever.

>>49885711
Nullification. Not instant nullification, but more like a slow freezing of people's magic powers.

>>49885740
I've never considered the symbolism of ice in regards to time, and now I have to go replay Cryostasis with that in mind.

By reversing entropy, infinite acceleration and energy become viable. FTL spaceships galore.

In fact, if you're already fucking up physics, make them invisible FTL spaceships, since fuck, you've reversed entropy, no reason they should show up on thermal scanners.

Darkness and light. Long winter nights. Frozen starshine in snowflakes. Reflections in the ice. White glow against shadows in the forest.

>shapeshifting
Can't help you there, no real way of stretching the symbolism that far.
>prophecy
Hypothermia is a good way of inducing delirium, which to ancient peoples WAS prophecy. Submerge yourself in ice cold waters or stand around naked in a blizzard and at some point you WILL start hearing the gods babbling at you (right before all your digits fall off).
>healing
Cold is stasis. It freezes things in their current condition. People rarely die instantly, and if they don't - just freeze their wounds. No more deterioration, no bleeding, no infections to deal with. Make them ice limbs if they lose their own.
>illusions
Ice is reflective.

>>49885711
Energy extraction and dispersion.

I'm guessing right.

Death. Anything to do with necromancy.

Prophecy/divination could easily work - one of the oldest scrying techniques is to scry with a bowl of water - just make it a bowl of ice instead and bam. Especially cool if you go for something along the lines of "all frozen surfaces are connected" (kind of like the mirror world in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell), so the character can look into one frozen surface and see out through another. You could extend that further to allow them to use these frozen surfaces as a means of teleportation.

Summoning entities made of frost and ice is a given.

As others have said, anything to do with entropy, cold, stasis, etc. There's also a degree of weather control implicit.

It really depends on whether you're emphasizing the concept of "cold" as a lack of thermal energy, or the concept of "ice" as a substance comprised of frozen water. Of course you could work both in, it depends on how you can justify it in the setting.

Good inspiration would be the Mab character in the Dresden Files, and the White Witch in the Narnia books (there's a visually really cool example of using a frozen surface as a portal in the Prince Caspian movie).

>>49885711

Freezing time obviously.

While it is natural to associate ice with stillness, winter can be anything but still.

Winter is harsh, winter is unforgiving. If you make one mistake, you're dead. If you're caught in raging blizzard without shelter, you'll die. Only the toughest animals can survive the winter.

So to my mind, winter is closely associated with rage and violence, but not the kind of rage that we associate with fire, or with berserkers and barbarians. Winter is the calculating kind of anger, it is a deliberate and constant threat, and all it takes is one mistake for winter to overwhelm you.

In folklore, aspects of winter are often beautiful and calm on the outside, but it is nothing but a flimsy facade, they are perfectly ready and eager to bring vengeance upon you for any perceived slight or insult.

>>49885979
So, Revelation Space?

>>49886048
So the Lich King?

One of which there must always be?

>>49885711
>Cold, Temperature reduction.
>Stillness; absolute zero temperature translated to lack of motion.
>Makes objects brittle enough to shatter.
>Physical Combat Style based around falling avalanches.
>Seeing visions and divination using icy mirrors.
>Power over winter weather phenomena and creatures of the arctic.
>Crystal Laser Reflections through Ice.

I play an ice-using character in a magical girls game set in the same setting as the nanoha animes; aside from general cold powers, she has foresight and foreknowledge, and her powers over cold extend into entropy; she taps into the absolute stillness at the end of existence in order to cease randomness and movement.

>>49885711
If we go with cold, cold is the absence of energy, while heat is the excess.
Considering the universe is bound to end with a freeze, there is some future shenanigans going on in there.
Enthropy, of course, so death in a different way.
The colder something is the more its molecules are huddled together.
Higher density and solidity as a consequence of the former

So far we've got:
>Debuffing
>Spell/power cancelling
>Energy absorption
>Death in a non-spiritual or biological way.
>Control over density
>Ability to buff defense and other things where hardness is important

So a very silent and calm person with a nihilistic outlook that wants to accelerate the heat death of the plane, that slows or no-sells their opponent's powers and abillities, probably absorbing the power of the land to fuel his own powers, averse to the idea of a balance that is not theirs (No balance between cold and heat, only enthropy), a very defensive combat style based on creating quick defenses and fucking with the equipment of his opponent, hardier than he looks. All of this with the smug assurance that no matter what, things are going to go his way one way or another in the end.

All in all, not a very fun person to fight against, and you probably never going to get the full satisfaction of stopping his plans, since they can't be actually stopped, only delayed. But this is an extreme case, they should be tempered with some human traits to make this work.

Winter can be linked to famine and starvation, and if you stretched the symbolism a bit more that would just become the power to deprive things of something. Like food, or water, or air, or gravity.

>>49887059
>or gravity.
That escalated quickly

>>49885711
>Shapeshifting
Capturing the "stillness" of a being, emulating it perfectly, but the image itself can't be altered. So its expression can't change, and cutting it would show an icy interior underneath.

There's hibernation, so there's freezing someone to put them into stasis. And there's seasonal migration, so making people move subconsciously or avoid a place.

You can also associate winter with depression, so you could slowly whittle down someone's will causing them to loosely commit to actions, until they become absolutely apathetic to everything.

Making weapons and armor from ice?

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How about passion, chaos and emotion?

>>49885930
>>49887724

I once gave my players an ice-themed enemy, and rather than making "chilly" her personality, I made her "chipper and brittle." She was very prim and proper, gave lots of smiles that didn't reach her eyes, and had an enthusiasm for making other people happy and keeping everything organized. And when her facade of normalcy was shattered, which was really easy to do, she went fucking berserk.

>>49887027
Didn't they recently say that we may've been wrong the whole time about the heat death thing and that the Big Crunch is the more likely End of the Universe scenario?

>>49888408
When has that ever been true?

>>49888408
Who, exactly, is "they"? There's always some cosmologist somewhere suggesting that things might not be as we think they are, or some study suggesting that FTL is possible. Doesn't mean the consensus has changed.

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Surprised this guy hasn't come up yet.

Indifference, nihilism, obession, and long standing hatred.

Rejecting the outcome of the world and freezing everything to preserve what you have left regardless of your humanity. The world does not care about your sorrow so why should you care about the sorrow of others? Passion is to be nipped in the bud. Great works smashed and ambitions shattered like icicles both in persuit of my own goals and to feed my desires to express my hatred to everything.

After a while you seemingly forget why you became this way and become a literal embodiment of hatred.

How has no-one said "Darkness" yet? Cold and long nights go hand in hand.

>>49890341
They even get a show in Discovery channel from time to time. Well, you know what i mean

>>49885711
Controlling cold is basically controlling/moving heat. So you get fire powers.

Double Cross did it.

>>49885711
Man, Aion had good character designs.

>>49885711

There's a simple way of looking outside of the box when it comes to some elements users, I think one of the easiest of those is ice.

Ice
>Cold
>Temperature
>Absence of heat

Suddenly when you think about it as the absence of heat, it invites more options.

Diminishing heat within objects: Cooling weapons, engines, could be used in smithing of items. Draining the heat from flesh, draining heat from a source, absorbing the heat energy from explosions and flame based weapons.

That's a short list I guess, I'm about to go get wasted, so, good luck broski!