I have a character I would like to use. It incorporates my love for nature--type magics and my love for my character not actually doing fighting. The basicconcept is, my character is a dryad. Through his life as a human, he grew closer and closer with nature, eventually being accepted as a dryad. To become one, he had to fuse with his spirit tree, becoming one with it. Dryads have enormous life-spans, infinite actually, but they are not invincible. A dryad can be killed, but won't die of natural causes.
Anywho, what the character actually does is he endows plants with sentience, and gets them to fight for him. He can use special spells like photosynthesize or growth to buff these allies. Usually, I'll have a group of allies with me at all times, as they take quite a lot of mana to animate.
As a bonus, any non-intelligent creature (like say, a wolf) will not be able to attack him unless I or one of my allies attacks first.
I am much less effective in less habitable climates (deserts, tundras, or indoors) but have certain skills to compensate.