>Theme, not balance.

Ventriloquate may not be on-theme for a mage exactly, but I don't know that it's really off-theme either. It feels pretty much theme-neutral, like Fast Healing or Pen. I've never been a big user of it, but I always practice it and usually get an entertaining moment or two out of it. Seeing that sacrificed on the altar of theme is a little disappointing.

This, and the removal of dopple (via Entropy removal) are two of the saddest (trivial) events in my cf history. Dopple was the single funnest ability cf has ever seen (for my money) and ventriloquate was fun for similar reasons.

I do see why bards should have such an ability though.