Shemeska said:
And this is why any arcane caster I ever play has the 'spell thematics' feat, and literally every spell they cast has a unique appearance; nothing ends up being normal or cliche, even if mechanically it might act the same. Min-maxers might scream in terror at my 'waste' of a feat, but it makes the game and the character more interesting, by letting me have a feast on the flavor of it all.
I don't think you need to have to use a feat in order to justify having a unique appearance to your spells. In fact, I believe each spellcaster has their own unique appearance to their spells (if they desire), without any crunch assosiated, typically reflecting either a tradition/ingrained racial trait in which they were trained, or their own preferences (besides, Spell Thematics has it's own twinking uses anyways). It neatly explains why you have to make Spellcraft checks to identify every spell being cast or to prepare spells from another Wizard's spellbook, even though you might be capable of casting that exact same spell at the same exact level of power on your own. Each person has their own 'key' to their spells, so to speak, unique and customizable to a limited extent.
For example, an order of militaristic wizards trained by a organized kingdom might all have the same dramatic, flashy effects that acompany their spells, while a sorceress of a particular bloodline might have an insect theme running through all her spells, although she might not have a single insect-related spell in her actual repitoire.
Adressing the role of 'overused' spells, they are selected over and over again mostly because they are the most efficient and effective spells for the most situations. Magic Missile provides automatic hits without elemental resistances or evasion getting in the way, bypassing incorperality and cover. Fireball is the archtypical area of effect spell available that can deal decent damage at excellent range with good spread. Same goes for spells like Invisibility, Fly, and so on. The reason (or at least, a major reason) for this is that spell space for Wizards can get rather expensive, and Sorcerors must treasure each and every spell known like it's one of their children.
I recently learned this when designing a level 12 Transmuter: I spent an incredible amount of time packing his spellbook with tons of interesting and unusual spells (dipping frequently into the Spell Compendium), and it dug really deep into the pocketbook after a while, even after a purchase of a Bocob's Blessed Book to eliminate the ink costs. I had to give up a lot of the staples of high level spellcasters, like a staff for endurance, wands for utility, scrolls for rarely-used spells, and rods for metamagic. And even then, I wasn't able to get every spell I wanted for him. And this Transmuter was built for having the maximum number of spells possible, taking a Colligeate Wizard (Complete Arcane) to get extra spells each level.
Besides, people are comfortable with tactics that work and are familiar with. If it isn't broken, then don't fix it seems to be a reliable word of wisdom to me, anyways. Furthermore, such archtypical spells like Invisibility and Fireball are benchmarks from which designers work from; people usually won't make spells better than they are, and thus practically gaurantees that they'll be the spells of choice, unless group tactics or campaign/dm trends dictate otherwise (AKA specialized niches).
