The range for effectiveness of spells is far too large once spell skills become higher.

Example: At 30 life magic, my heal spell can mend anywhere between 3-30 hit points which is far too big of a range. The same goes with protection spells, at 30 water magic, a shield spell will grant protection in a range from 3-30, forcing the player to continually recast the spell until the desired amount of protection is randomly chosen.

Another problem is in the different spells. Water shield will grant protection between 3 anywhere up to 100 based on skill, and water armor will grant 6-100 which means that spells scale FAR too well with skill, making any of the greater spells obsolete due to higher willpower costs. It is much more effective to cast Minor Healing than it is to cast Renew Health.

My proposal to solve all issues would be this: Make spells give a set amount of health/protection/damage based on skill, but cap it once the skill reaches a certain level.

Lets take the healing line of spells and create the perfect system with them using a 10 level difference cap:

Skill Level------------Minor Healing--------Renew Health------------Moderate Heal
----------------------------(+3)-------------------(+4)----------------------(+5)
Life 1--------------------3 healed-----------(Need Life 10)------------(Need Life 20)
Life 5--------------------6 healed-----------(Need Life 10)------------(Need Life 20)
Life 10-------------------9 healed-------------13 healed--------------(Need Life 20)
Life 15-------------------9 healed-------------17 healed--------------(Need Life 20)
Life 20-------------------9 healed-------------21 healed----------------26 healed
Life 25-------------------9 healed-------------21 healed----------------31 healed
Life 30-------------------9 healed-------------21 healed----------------36 healed
Life 35-------------------9 healed-------------21 healed----------------36 healed
Life 40-------------------9 healed-------------21 healed----------------36 healed

A similar system would apply for the protection line of spells and also for the damage dealing spells. Skill increases should also be capped in a similar fashion. So Minor Healing will only raise Life up to skill level 10, Renew Health will raise it to 20, so on and so forth.