[Bruno]

My favorite kind of magic system is one that isn't. A system.

Or more accurately, one that isn't a separate system from the rest of the game.

The less-unlike doing other things in the game the magic is, the happier I am.

I love the idea of spells-as-skills because it takes the "I know how to do a thing" concept of skills and just expands on "a thing". Obviously, GURPS Magic isn't just more skills, because we have a whole big blob of text trying to explain it; but it's a subset of skills, not an entirely different creature. One of the reasons why I'd like less narrow spell-skills is that's more in common with the actual skill system. Of course, the actual skill system doesn't have much in the way of making-new-skill advice (and generally tries to stay away from it), so the Magic as Skills system having even less advice is at least consistent, if annoying. It also suggests there shouldn't be too many magic skills, since there (in principle) shouldn't be too many skills.

The Action Points article is seductively attractive to me because that is, in a way, bringing non-spell skills more in line with spells - spending from a pool of resources to do the thing, along with making your skill roll.

I like spells-as-powers because that again unifies it with another part of the game. Powers, unlike skills, have a whole LOT of heavy support for "make a new thing" kind of stuff. Unlike skills, there's less unified support for an existing catalogue of powers/spells, although every year the catalogue size gets better and better. However, each base advantage tends to actually "do" a unique thing in play so it's a little hard to say it's a gameplay system; it's really a creation system. I suppose you could say it's systematicly not systematic?

4th Edition D&D had other things to complain about in its powers/spells/actions/whatever the hell system, but there was a commitment to making the basic architecture of combat, special abilities, spells, psychic powers, "techniques", magic items, and anything else they could think of work pretty consistently. They started experimenting with things that were off that system-structure near the end of the lifespan of 4e, and frankly I didn't like them.

I don't really like "My special ability is special, so I have to have unique mechanics to emphasize how special it is" as a game design philosophy. I understand it, I get the appeal, and I know it has very broad appeal. But I personally don't like it.