LOL. I have already thought of all of this. The old skill concept for magic is no longer being used, but I am using the skill concept for ACTUAL skills like alchemy.

I included the ideas about counter-spells already, they use a special diagram for negate that cancels everything out. And spells will backfire if you aren't good enough, spell creation isn't a skill really,it is affected by a few different skills. Using my example; the hand stands for creation and that is under the summoning skill, the circle stands for a radius and that is summoning as well, and the fire is under the elemental skill. With all of this there is a chance of failure depending on skill for each component, but you won't actually fail at creating the spell on the paper, you will fail when casting it and get fried. I'm also using focus and recharge for when you use them: focus being like magic-points that regenerate quickly and recharge being how quickly the spell can be used again, a cool-down period, and the recharge time being determined by the skills that influence each component. As a player, you won't need to know all of this, and you won't have any chance to know about it. I am trying really hard to make it non-technical so it doesn't scare people away.