I'm late to this thread but I thought I might as well throw in my two cents.
So you want to play a mage.
1 - You want to use your magic from a distance to dominate the battlefield.
2 - You want to be able to adapt to the situation with smart spell choices.
Starting with point 1.
You're not going to do this with a Vancian mage. Even with the cantrip changes that tried to push to allow a wizard to be able to sometimes throw a high level spell without spending a spell slot (with no such consession made to sorcerer) the way vancian spellcasting is set up is simply not condusive to the encounter design of Arelith. It works on tabletop, it doesn't work on multiple encounter long dungeons that Arelith has.
This is why spellswords are so popular, since buffs have a larger impact than damage spells, and why summons are so prevalent, since a summon will also have a larger impact than a damage spell.
You can still have specific spells ready for specific encounters, but because most boss enemies at endgame are also going to have insanely high spell saves, this is simply not a good approach to take.
You want to be a blaster mage? Play warlock, Defiler Cleric or Hemomancer.
2- You want to be able to adapt to the situation with smart spell choices.
Because saving throws are so high for both players and endgame mobs, the odds that casting a one-use offensive spell and having it do nothing is fairly high. Since you have no way to refund that spell slot besides being a wizard and having prepared the cantrip buff that rerolls your spell, the odds that you waste an action and one of your valuable spell slots is fairly high.
This reverts back to point 1. There's a reason the current Meta is summons and buffs for PVE, saveless spells and effects for pvp. And its not just because of long dungeons, its also because if your spell doesn't do damage without a saving throw attached, then you're going to have a bad time.
This doesn't mean that spells shouldn't have counters, even ray spells have to deal with touch AC and Concealment. But when almost every spell is "Save for Half (No damage with evasion)" or "Save to Negate" then a majority of the spell list is worthless.
This topic isn't true just for vancian mages by the way, its also true for Warlock. Even the Warlock paths that do use some DC spells like Feylock with Mindfog, its not just because they can infinitely cast their spells, its because mindfog does something even on a successful save. You still get that 1 round daze and reduced saving throws.
But above all, its because warlock can afford to throw down that mindfog once they have infinite casts of it on every encounter, because there are so many encounters. While a vancian mage is going to at best be able to throw down 4. They'll be out of juice on the way to the dungeon.
Warlock is popular not just because of its class design, but because it gets to actually use its whole kit, all the time. Clerics get to be in a similar boat with the refund chance from specific cleric paths, but they end up being harder to play than a warlock because they will still run out of juice eventually.
I'm sure some people here have played Risenholm. I'm sure some people have have looked at their metamagic system. Risenholm has embraced the fact that for a mage to work in what is a normal NWN server, and not rely on the same old tactics we've been using for 20+ years, you need to give them a way to get their spells back during play.
You will continue to see more people playing Warlocks and other magic classes that have a way around the vancian system, or greatly benefit from the current meta (Spellsword), until this changes.
