OK, here's my deal with magery. It sucks because you can't move while casting, AND if you get hit while casting, you lose your spell. Between those two, there's no viable way to play a mage solo with ANY success, you NEED to play in teams, which really isn't very accomodating to people wanting to play this game.
If you throw on top of that the fact that even with 90+ int, it pretty much takes ALL of a mage's mana to polish off one opponent (of any type), then what you've got is one horrible class.
Plus, even in a mage on mage fight, all skill has been drained from PVP combat, because a simple interruption will break your spell, which means that it's STILL who can throw fire balls faster, only now if you manage to get the timing right and be the one interrupting the other guy's spells first, you win.
Here's my extremely simple proposal for making magic a BLAST to play, AND more balanced in the environment as it exists today. It's a REAL easy one, OSI, so think hard about it.
MAKE TELEPORT COST ONE MANA. That way you can leave in everything as you have it. Magery will be balanced, but it will throw in the a MAJOR element of strategy.
This is important, OSI - MOVEMENT IS EVERYTHING IN BATTLE. If you can't move, you can't manipulate the variables. You can't use corners to hide behind, you can't use monsters to attack the other guy, you can't run away, you can't have a moving battle, YOU ARE BORED.
Without movement, it's basically a "slug fest" and I guarantee if you do that to magery, your game will die a slow death.
On the other hand, if mages can teleport around the battle field, moving on and off the immediate targeting screen for other mages and/or archers, and still have enough manna to get in a kill, NOW it's a blast!
Don't believe me? Try it. Get together with another mage, and try and kill each other. Use teleport all over the place. It's a blast. The hang up is, you run out of mana WAY before anyone can even come close to dying.
If you change that, then mages will have the mobility to avoid fighters and be hard to target for archers, but will have a hard time inflicting damage quickly, because they'll be busy hopping around trying to keep from facing anything directly.
Think about this hard, the more you think about it, the more sense it makes. And I'm serious about the play-test suggestion. If you try it out, you'll see that it makes battle seriously fun.
Regards,
Hedron
P.S. You also need to make 8th level spells worth acquiring for anyone to bother gaining GM status in magery at the current rate of advancement. Either summoned creatures need to be seriously smarter, or you should replace them with something more worthwhile.