Dispater
Explorer
Something I’ve noticed over the years is the ebb and flow of how much to rely on the dice — I always look back with a pained grimace at how mechanistically 3.5 developed in terms of creating rulesets for every possible situation (hence why I could never get into Pathfinder or 4e, both of which rulesets continued along that overly-programmed route) — and whether DMs ask players to roll for everything versus limiting their use to only those situations where chance truly alters the outcome of the game (I’ve compared it to Two-Face in old Silver Age Batman comics flipping his coin for literally every decision). Limiting where checks are made allows for player decision (not just DM fiat) to fill in the gaps, and such rules on magic — and the freedom to cast it — are a part of that.
I too yawn at the ridicullous amount of dice rolls some DMs enforce in their game. I think, for instance, a lot of mundane skills and ability checks (such as Percetion) should be more casual than every damn time you look at something. Only high stress situations such as combat should really force a dice roll. The d20 is (espescially for low level-characters) an extreme variable and can give really slapstick outcomes even when you are playing characters who are supposedly good at their job.
My point is here that I think magic is the wrong place to start if you want to reduce the amout of rolls, espescially if you play a game where you want to enforce the idea that magic is unreliable, dangerous or wild. The idea that chance and chaos rules magical outcomes rather than "i cast x" can be succesfuly derived from dice rolls, and add to the more unpredictable feel of magic.
An idea for spells with already added attack rolls is to make the roll for the spellcasting skill check also the same as the attack roll. So you just have to roll once for instance, beat the DC for casting the spell and hit the creature's AC.