I hate it too, a mage with herois strength, arrgh. Once i got 3 abysiian mages with precision as their hall of fame skill, they slaughtered ih the home and garden. It would be good mages would have bigger percentage getting magic related ability than fighting related, and vice versa.
Magic behaviour is not needed in my opinion, now it's more precious nad maybe little bit harder to script the exact spells. Maybe Dom III could have behaviours
Of course it could be ease way to script your mages without having to read every spell.