1. No, it's not. I don't remember it being spelt out explicitly in the rulebooks, but you should probably never give out 'description' boons/banes in combat. Why? Because a lot of 'buttons' already manipulate those boons and banes, and throwing in extra by yourself is gonna wreak havoc on the balance.
2. Speaking of balance, combat-wise, it's very decent (that is to say much better than DnD). But there's a wee bit ass-backwards design going on: SotDL is made with combat balance in mind, and everything else is just sort of bodged on, using the same leftover design parts with little care as to how it's gonna play out-of-combat.
3. It may be, but consider having a sort of cards. Builds on general will have around 10 'buttons' to operate, including passive stuff, and mages can have upwards to few dozens depending on the build. The number of options is bigger than in DnD. Print out spell/ability wordings, make casting trackers. Otherwise you'd run into analysis paralysis issues.
4. Remind magic users that Traditions scale either off either Intellect or Will. There's a handy table on p.111. Spells within a single tradition scale off the same attribute.
5. Base success chance at lvl0 is 55% (d20+0 vs. a TN=10). Attribute bonuses are scarce, so your players will be hitting around 80% success chance before boons/banes at lvl10. It's not an easy system.
6. Speaking of boons and banes out-of-combat. The math is such that +1(one boon)/-1(one bane) are the most impactful modifiers (±17.5%). Starting from ±2 and beyond it hits diminishing returns very hard. There's no meaningful difference between, say 3 or 4 boons. So, as a DM you should be actively aware that the meaningful stretch of the scale is basically -1, 0, +1.
7. If you don't like the amount of scat going on, you can perform an easy surgery on the system and just remove everything that insults your sensibilities. Because the system is so modular and linear, you won't be breaking much anything.
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