It's worth keeping in mind that even Gandalf mostly avoids using overt magic except as an absolute last fucking resort.
He focuses almost all of his efforts on statecraft/politics and crafting long-term personal relationships, and that is the true nature of his power.
That's not interesting, mysterious, or unique.
That has been done to death.
Don't let anyone know what they're thinking about.
So maybe instead of giving your wizards shitloads of spells, most of what they have is contacts in strange places, both high and low.
Definitely not by giving them chromed capes
And more seriously - you can't just make that for the entire setting, not to mention settings. Things are interesting when they are NOT common. What's the point of giving unique traits to all wizards, when, duh, all wizards will be the same?
So either treat each of them as an idividual and or create some "basic set" and then strenghten it with individual elements.
Say you've got Magic Council and mages trained in official schools. Now make sure there is such institution as court mage and mage-resident, so every bigger feudal lord got his advisor and every more important city can pride itself by having mage.
Now make sure the whole thing is decentralised, so each mage is more or less working on his or her own, doing things as they suit them. Maybe one guy is just sitting in some rural area and doing research about peasants and their traditions. Maybe one chick is hell-bent on controlling local market for commodity X. Maybe another mage is a slacker that is taking a massive grant for astronomical and astrological research, which he spends on hookers and huge mansion, while doing no research at all. Maybe someone is planting carrots in his garden and trying different techniques to increase their yeld and growth? Maybe another is obsessed about perfect golems, believing he could sell them later to local guild as workers. And so on and forth.
Either you make them all individuals, or you will end up with samey characters each time.
Not trolling, not using bait. Literally everyone sucks at something, and everyone sucks at something when they first start it and/or don't try to get better at it.
I started literally this exact same thread four years ago and basically got no helpful answers, so instead I just read up on working in descriptive language, worked with my group to create an atmosphere that they could enjoy, generally worked my ass off to improve and it fixed pretty much the entire problem.
I STILL am constantly trying to improve my GM game when I can because nobody is ever perfect at anything and learning new tricks for GMing and listening to other's stories is a great way to learn things.
I'm betting one or more of you on this thread told a story or two I listened to and learned from and tried to apply the lesson when I GM even.
An RPG requires the rules to be explained to be playable as a game, so RPG wizardry must be comprehensible and hence non-mysterious under most circumstances, if players can be wizards
Magic in any kind of storytelling is usually an allegory for something - knowledge, virtue, power in general
If as usual magic is allegorical science then wizards are allegorical scientists, for example - and scientists are not really that mysterious, kind of the opposite for the most part, seeing as science is all about illuminating mysteries
What's something you and your group find legitimately mysterious in real life? Your magic is an allegory for that thing, and your wizard is someone who knows all about that thing and gains power from hoarding that knowledge
user he's just asking for cool wizard ideas.
Modern fantasy puts too much emphasis on fleshed-out, well-explained magic systems. This kinda takes a lot of the mystery since you know exactly what the wizard is capable of. Take the rules, the training wheels, all the clamps off of magic, and show it as dangerous and crazy as you possibly can.
Not the user, but there is NO recipe for instantly awesome NPCs. It's always complex and laborous to create NPCs that vary and in the same time are interesting.