If you can't remember which characters are running what.. may I suggest notepad? Your personal problems with having so many mage-templates only proves you have too many to memorize.
I was a non-mage on prodo and it was terrible not being able to get rid of certain spells just because someone was after a GGS gain by casting on me.
I shouldn't have to run a notepad doc to play. You sum it up in that "UNTIL such time as they implemented this change 'I didn't have any personal problems with my mage templates' I didn't NEED to memorize what they had"......NOW I DO. Are they insurmountable ... NO. Sure I can cast the spells every time I die, sure I can run a notepad, sure I can rearrange the whole way I put suits together etc etc etc.
The point you and most people are missing is that they could of effected the same 'change' (ie not allowing those without the skill, or in your case the problem of having someone cast on you for their ggs gain whatever) by
FIXING THE ISSUE with a 'skill check', not by nerfing one thing to fix another. There has been '0' 'zero' 'nil' 'zip' 'nada' complaints about these spells for the 6+ years I have been playing. It has been a NON SUBJECT. All of a sudden 'someone' decides to change it with no prior discussion to 'fix' something the easy way rather than 'fix' it correctly.
Tomorrow they will do it to one of your skill/spell/items, not because there is anything wrong with it, but because some other little 'dweeb' has found a way to exploit it, use it for an unintended purpose, knowingly use something illegally unattended etc etc
And this goes for everyone on the boards. I am just not happy to let them keep doing this over and over without voicing my opinion. It seems to me people are so happy to keep putting up with nerfs to various things for the sake of 'fixing' other problems. Could be this is why this game has gone so far down hill? It doesn't matter what 'change' is made to this game there will be people who like it and others who don't.
For every one of you who says 'this is ok' fine, I hope you didn't complain when the bos was nerfed, hope you didn't complain about changes to ore and wood nodes, hope you didn't complain when they nerfed hiding to combat tamer abuse in pvp, hope you didn't complain about anything else that was 'introduced' to fix a scripter, exploiter, duper that effected your game play even tho YOU were using it as it was intended, within the legal game system, had been using it for years, and log in one day to find it 'gone'. I like some of the 'above' changes, esp those to ore and wood, but look on these boards you will find a lot who don't. My complaint is that those changes were made to 'fix' cheats or people abusing things in some way with no prior warning, no discussion, nothing.
What gets me is the way everyone whether they 'like' something or not just thinks it is OK to have people changing the ground rules on established things that have not been an issue because they 'get some bright idea' or 'need to fix someone else's abuse of something'.
Perhaps tomorrow the 'change' will make your game play less enjoyable, add another level of grind to something you do, take away some part of your established gameplay that you find effective.
If so too bad........ I guess that is the 'attitude'?