Thanks guys, i've downloaded protools and i'm having a great time messing around with all the brush modes that work in a palette environment (as opposed to photoshop which is useless at it) I'm really hurting for pressure sensitivity though, and while i haven't quite found something like what i'm looking for, some of these tools (particularly blend, brightness and tint) prove my suspicion that the thing i'm looking for is definitely possible within palette constraints.

indigo: it's not the actual making of the index palette that kills me, like you said, that's cake; it's the fact that after that, to make a 10 value gradient, i have to set each layer by hand by picking out the corresponding value from the grid; i'm looking for a tool that works like the rgb brush, where i can quickly go through steps; this would be tremendously helpful, especially since i don't like very limited palettes; here's a drawing of mine to better show what i mean by going through steps: http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b66/homeworld4/blamekillycibo.jpg ; indexing this would give me pretty good results, but i'd like to get to that result by working in pixels (which would be a massive needless chore) alone and not having to paint an entire illustration beforehand; multishade is pretty close, but the lack of pressure sensitivity really hurts me, but i'll mess with it some more anyway!

ptoing: bummer, cycling through the palette is too far away from my goal, but i'll try grafx2 anyway and see if i can find something of use, thanks!