So, I am about to make a magic system for a game I am working on, and the question is how should I go about doing it.

The two choices are predetermined spells, or user made spells.

Predetermined spells are what you see in most games, you just learn and use them.

The player made spells would be a system where players pick 2-6 "words", these words have effects tied to them, and based on the words used, a spell is made.
The first word is a target/shape of the spell, such as a line, projectile, cone or explosion.
The second word is an attribute, fire, healing, a shield, darkness and so on.

Those two are always needed, no exception.
The other 4 words are additional effects. These can range from increasing power, duration, area of effect, to adding status effects, to making spells do stuff like jump from one target to another and so on.


Now, here is the ups and downs of each system.

Predetermined spells...

Ups
Easier to make.
Allows for more unique spells, if it can be done in BYOND, it can be made into a spell.
Easier to balance.

Downs
Less spells, a lot less.
Once both systems are in place, adding new spells to this system would take longer to do.


Player Made spells

Ups
Lots and lots more spells.
Adds a lot more replayability to the game due to there always being new spells to try and play around with.
Probably easier to add new effects once the system is in place.

Downs
Harder to make.
Harder to balance.
Will probably result in a lot of min/maxing, players will probably use the same 2-3 spells because they are the strongest.
End result is more spells, but lots of boring spells. You will be shooting out fire, making fire explosions, or walls of fire. But not making chunks of fire rain down from the sky, or shooting someone with a homing laser, or teleporting someone into a volcano.


So, which system would you prefer?