I would get more spells. Even if that means to drop some gear that you purchased (you can always get gear later after you are paid, or sell the spoils of a fight).
It is "cheaper" to get those spells at character creation.
Sure some of my outlandish suggestions were not efficient, but this is spot on. Mages are not meant to just shoot stuff with magic. That is cool and all, but if you want to destroy someone, use a rocket launcher as your main weapon. Mages are in essence, utility and great amount of power (no pun intended). The spells are there to round out your capability. If all a mage could do was stunbolt, they would be pretty danged boring. But they can do sooo much more. They can rip the truth from someone, erase someone's thoughts, cleanse pollutants from the water, shape the earth to their will, force the president to press that big red button to nuke everyone (just an example).
And that is just the tip of the iceberg. The moment you see a "combat mage" as a stunbolt slinger, you may get bored after one session.. but if you used Gecko Crawl (forgot the name of the spell) and climbed up 50 meters in one round to the top of a building, next pass Lightning Bolt that guy who is getting away in his beat up van, then cat leap? down taking only 1 physical damage from 50 meters up, all in one full combat round... that is pretty danged exciting.
Move on to the guy you captured and need information from... turns out he had no information to give. But your samurai got trigger happy and shot him dead. You can sanitize the area, and basically do a cleanup so you and your crew are not tied to the murder.
Sorry, I am pretty passionate about mages and how much versatility they can have without being pigeonholed into buff machines or Magic Missile into the Darkness all the time.
