[llamabeast]

I don't know what you mean about spells with a "-" after the fatigue, I haven't seen that. In any case, fatigue works the same for all spells it costs the amount listed if you're the level required to cast it, half for 1 level above, etc as Max described.

There's no easy way of finding out what the + adds, short of looking it up in a modding spreadsheet or something (I haven't looked at the spreadsheet Max linked to). I just generally think of it as "ooh, and this spell would be even better if it was a higher level caster". Sometimes you can guess what it'd be. For example Falling Fires has AOE 3+. I'm pretty sure the + will be 1 per level.

Touch spells are very hard to use, and in fact people have generally concluded there's no use trying to use them offensively. They're a useful backup for your mages to protect themselves from assassins and no more. They're not much use because (a) they're hard to get them to cast (once in melee mages only have a certain probability of casting anything, because of the distracting environment), and (b) it's just not safe, and your mage would almost always be better off standing back a bit and using ranged spells.

The exceptions are the large AOE ones like Flame Eruption (if I've remembered the name right). There was a thread recently on how to get some use out of them. You'll probably find it in the first few pages of the forum.