Exactly. I agree so much I modded this into my game. The likelihood of each spellbook is guaranteed and the different elements come at alternating levels. So you don't see 5 element choices in one level and 0 the next.

Because all the non-school perks in the world aren't going to matter if you never get to move off Fire Rank 1. And lower-magic characters rely on gear so much more than perks it's not even funny. But really, why only magic? Well, because the game is just supposed to be about magic, so why not? It's not the successor to Master of Less-Magic, it isn't the de facto sequel to War of Less-Magic, and it's not called Fallen Warrior. Magic can use some lovin.

Agreed.  They fixed random techs because this annoyed the heck out of people in the tech tree.  The same annoyance applies to perk choices.  The "Path" system is essentially a weighting system that makes these random choices a little less random so you can specify character roles... but really, a perk tree (in other words, just letting us pick whatever we have the prereqs for) would just solve everything.  

The only problem with it is what if everyone kept picking the same choices over and over? Well, there's just not enough perk variability to avoid that right now anyways.  And, if people do that, that's a clue that maybe some of those perks are a bit too overpowered.  

I think a perk "tree" isn't quite the right way to tackle it, and I like the somewhat random nature of the non-magic perks. It's exciting to have that game where you get lucky and get a bunch of evoker levels, or double strike early on. I just don't think the magic system is benefitting from random rank upgrades.

At the same time, I'm all for random spell selection of the spells at a given rank, so go figure that out.

I'd like to see weighting for perks change based upon what you have taken before, which essentially comes down to a loose "tree" since you will be seeing the subsequent versions of traits more commonly once you have picked the parent.

Magic, on the other hand... This system is already a pretty weak magic system overall. I would hesitate to insert a likelihood that one of the truly 5 useful spells didn't happen at all. Now, if you are talking about having spells have "windows" that they can appear in either 2nd or 3rd level, I could get behind that. If you are talking about flat leaving things out, no. That would not be good at all.

In a word, no.  The spells are (or at least, should be) already balanced around the idea that you can acquire them at their earliest possible opportunity (which seems to be 2x-1, where x=spell rank).  The problem is, there's no guarantee that your archmage character will get ANY spell traits, let alone the trait they want, when they level.  Sean's idea sounds very interesting, though hopefully he added a couple traits to the mage path to make up for their decided lack of unique perks.  I also like the idea of having path of the mage simply upgrade all your spell levels at once in one perk: e.g., instead of choosing Fire 2, you get Magic 2, giving +1 to all your spell ranks.  How such a thing could be implemented, though, is beyond me.

yes to this idea but maybe limited to even, odd or divisible by 3 levels.

Upgrade magic option as described in the op shows up guaranteed on a schedule.  If you don't selected because of some rare trait pops up make it available at the next rank too, maybe.

I also think that after level 4, you should be guaranteed at least one trait from your chosen path.  In addition.  The RNG is a merciless god.