[maximara]

Originally Posted by Anders

Remember, the default is that you know all colleges.

Actually, that varies with magery. Having only Magery 0 locks you out of the Meta spell college.

Originally Posted by Anders

Knowing a college with 40 spells seems to be more useful than knowing one with three spells.

You're confusing quantity with quality. AD&D 1-2 did this with cantrips. You could get 4 cantrips in place of one 1st level spell. The problem was they were so low powered as to be effectively useless.

Originally Posted by Anders

And yes, spells are of different value, but that's why the energy cost varies from spell to spell. They should still be roughly balanced (except Recover Energy, which is a strange holdover from an older system.

But you clearly state were are dealing with "alternate colleges". Compare the spells of the Slayer anime to those in GURPS Magic. Lina's fireball is on par with the old AD&D 1-2 which was ~33,000 cubic feet of flaming destruction and her Dragon Slave is effectively 'tactical nuke'. Giga slave is a 'I am so insanely desperate that I will risk destroying the world' spell.