A few ideas rolling through the noggin:

Dodge/Parry/Evade

Wouldn't these be the most important skills for a thief, assassin, or ninja - and also useful to any melee class? Monks as well now that I think about it. Sure, backstabbing is great, and those of you who can perfect it and limit the damage you receive (without using triggers) are to be commended, but a smart person would just lure your sneaky butt into a corner where you couldn't escape and wail on you until you weren't recognizable anymore. So then, wouldn't it be nice if you had the innate ability to simply evade an incoming attack? Shouldn't you be able to do that anyway? Since those classes are all about stealth and mobility, even when cornered they shouldn't just turn into a paper-mache statue with daggers.

Counter and Counter-Spell

Counter is the physical aspect, whereas Counter-Spell is the magical aspect of this skill. Instead of just being able to dodge an attack, how about having the ability to turn the attack back at the attacker? Maybe it simply deflects their attack and puts them off-balance, giving you an extra attack that prompt? Maybe it's an ability that you actually type in, like kick or bash, that gives you an extra attack therein giving you an advantage? And the same goes for Counter-Spell, where you would have the chance to re-route the spell cast at you back at the caster, perhaps disintegrating them for once? Or Counter-Spell could be more of a Spell-Reflection skill, but that's really a different name for the same thing.

Disarm

Obvious, this one, but handy. Removes the wielded item into the inventory of the wielder so that they can't use it for a time. It goes in the inventory so that you can't just pick it up off the ground and run away with it without killing the npc (for item loading purposes) but if you have a good thief nearby, who knows?

Fire Wall\Ice Wall\Stone wall\whatever Wall

If you can wizlock a door so only a wizard can unlock it, why can't you create a wall of some substance in any adjoining room to prevent others from going through without an effective counter spell of some sort? Of course in the case of a fire wall, you COULD just walk through it, but it would be like taking a hit from a fire shield. That's not fun, unless you have your own fireshield or ice shield. A wall of ice or stone isn't much different, but either could be climbed or even jumped over, or flown over I suppose. But still, it could effectively slow down someone pursuing you, or serve as an effective way to funnel enemies somewhere else making them easier to bottleneck.

More will come...

I'll just note one of the assingable racial qualities amongst the choices when we all first roll a character.
Two words,
High Awareness - might just look this one up.
And with that information at hand,
We might all just speculate these things are very well factored in.
As for the emergence of passive skill sthat activate themselves in battle, I'm not too sure about those.
This sorta thing has always seemed balanced with the
variety of combat land hit styles already in usage and the
varying degree of deflection calculated in the background.

Dunno just adding some spice to the recipie.

Auto counters etc might work. I think parry would be good for some classes to help protect them, would be based on luck and whatever. I don't see autospells having much place in dl though. I know a game that does that, just gives you the upper hand even more when it's really not needed. Good idea though. I like disarm idea. The firewall, maybe it just be a magical barrier that an illusionist can place down so that mobs or other people cannot walk through it or track past it. Good idea.

-c 'magical barrier' west-
You concentrate and create a magical wall between you a nearby room.
- west - You walk into an unseen barrier and cannot go that way at this moment.

I think that'd work as an illusionist skill. Last indetermined amount of time.

I think the barrier could work as both an illusionist spell and a mage spell, but moreso a mage spell, because illusionists are all about creating "illusions", and this is an actual barrier. And I apologize if a lot of my skills and spells seem to be pvp related. I guess I'm just in a mood.

It could work as an illusionist spell. I'd suggest changing it from a barrier, into a loop, so that going [direction] would just loop you back into the room you were to begin with.

It'd also make the illusionist's spells 'detect illusion' and 'dispel illusion' more useful than they appear to be now... (I haven't tinkered much with my Illusionist, but so far, I've yet to find a practical application for the previous spells.)