Well I broke down and downloaded Inkscape to play with today... and wanted to beat myself for not doing it earlier. I haven't finished anything productive with it yet, but just a little piddling and following some youtube tutorials has shown me how handy this will be soon.

Seriously... less than an hour in to it and I had a working shield device and was already messing with lights and shadow on it... and that counts waiting on it to install. I think I can finally start working on faction and realm symbols for my campaign and finish several before tearing hair.