Only thing: Would the new offensive scrolls being scrolls - and thus in a limited quantity - not limit their use to Too Awesome To Use levels? Hm... Maybe not. I might save those for bosses.
There will be some of this, for sure, but the mitigating factors -- I believe -- are the following:
1. There's a constant inflow of gem dust that you get "for free" as you get raw gems, making some of the cheaper spell scrolls (ie those not requiring a rare commodity) really something you can keep yourself in a constant low-level supply of even with using them occasionally.
2. You always get the scrolls in multiples, rather than just one of them. So if you have 5 of them, I think the psychological barrier of using one of the five is a lot lower than if you have just one and know you can't get more.
3. Everything in the game depreciates in a predictable fashion. Useful now = starts getting less useful in 20 levels = useless in 30 levels. So while there might be incentives to hoard things until close to the level cap, there is a definite turning point where an experienced player at the game is going to know their stuff is about to start getting worse, so they may as well use it because they're going to lose it anyhow one way or the other.
This third one in particular is different from many RPGs, because there the biggest stuff remains viable forever, and the smaller stuff you find singly and are never sure exactly how good it is (I'm looking at you, "red fang" from FF6, plus all that stuff Shadow can throw in general). So you wind up saving it until you "really" need it, then forgetting about it or never really feeling dire enough to use it, and then realizing it's not useless because its output of damage is now so low (which you have no in-game way to tell without actually using it).
Anyway, I'm as susceptible as anyone to that particular effect, so it's something I'll definitely be watching out for!
Either way, 100+ planned spells total is preposterous.
It's a nice start, anyway. Really that's less than it sounds like, all told. A game like, again, FF6 has at least 100 spells in it, plus hundreds of items/equipment, etc. 100 spells is a lot for an adventure game, but I want a lot more customization and personalization and choice for the game. If you look at, say, a fighting game like Street Fighter III, I'd bet you there's several hundred attacks in that game all told, between all the characters. That sort of variety is important for tactical depth, both in terms of being able to have a loadout that is kind of unique to you (your character in a fighting game, but what you choose to craft here), and in terms of being able to choose what to activate out of that loadout at any given time during your fight.
For the record I really stink at fighting games, although I did get pretty good at One Must Fall on the PC back in the day. But I like their ethos of having lots of tactical options for players that are able to actually master them. The game system here doesn't rely on button combos, but that sort of thinking of "okay, here's a smart way to dismantle this opponent" is something I want to move the game toward increasingly. Kind of like how you have to tailor your strategy for specific planets in AI War, I guess.
