One of the major obstacles I find I need to overcome is the system's generic setting. Perhaps it stems from having so many co-creators, perhaps it's just the end result of trying to appeal to everyone, but a lot of flavour and colour has been lost. This particularly jars with regard to magic. In the first place, magic loses its otherworldly mystique when every player knows the ins and outs of every spell effect. Compounding the problem, we have the dull, utilitarian spell names - 'Fly', 'Cause Light Wounds', 'Lightning Bolt'. Here's some ideas to help:
It's a lot of work, but an individual set of priest spells for each faith really makes a difference to the feel of playing a 'cleric' character. I've integrated spells from plenty of other sources (e.g. the wizard spell lists), and renamed wherever necessary. You'll need to put your own work in as appropriate for your own pantheon, but as an example, here's the set for Azmobaana, nasty Chaotic Evil deity from Pangea:
Hopefully, names like Black Sun Rune, Devourer Touch and Ward Off Weak will immediately give the flavour of this evil cult, and further confound players who have (intentionally or otherwise) memorised the usual spell list. They should also suggest unique and appropriate special effects; Cause Light Wounds cast as Devourer Touch might be delivered as a vicious bite, for example.
Wizard spells also suffer from being pretty bland, on the whole. Seen one Fireball, seen 'em all. I allow (and encourage) wizards to describe their own special effects, which can be as diverse as the characters themselves. The archetype in Pangea has been good old Magic Missile, which has been described as a set of arrows, as little 'photon torpedoes', zooming musical notes (cast by a bard), and (most memorably) as a herd of miniature flying pigs, complete with squeals and resultant tiny trotter-marks in the target. Don't blame me, blame my players.
Once a wizard has decided on a look and feel, they should stick to it. I've awarded a few extra XP to wizard characters with a themed set of spells. Not only does this idea prevent default identification of a cast spell, it allows the perceptive to recognise wizardry they've encountered before. In Pangea we've also seen 'inherited' spell effects, where the first few castings of a borrowed or stolen spell conform to the theme of the originating wizard, until the new caster has had time to make the spell their own. There can even be families, associations or apprentice wizards who cast spells with the same set of standard effects, again that may be possible for others to recognise.
I've always viewed wizards as an insular and antisocial lot, on the whole, and I don't see why they should agree on nomenclature. What one mage calls Cone of Cold, another might refer to as Winter's Fury, or The Terrible Breath Of Frosts.
Better and more evocative spell names can be poached from many sources; other games, good fantasy fiction, and so on. The game Ars Magica has the kind of elaborate and arcane names that appeal to me (its take on magic is generally excellent and colourful) - Ball of Abysmal Flame is far more worrying than boring old Fireball, for instance.
Jack Vance's fantasies name many baroque and esoteric spells - Galvanic Thrust (a kind of Lightning Bolt) and the Spell of Forlorn Encystment (Imprisonment), to mention just two. Many of the extravagant spell names from original D&D show the influence of Jack Vance (and occasionally poke fun at Gygax's players - Leomund's Lamentable Belaborment is a dig at Lenard Lakofka's verbiage).
Again, what we end up with is more mysterious and less familiar magic, and much more gaming colour, which is always good.
2nd Edition has an oddly truncated and piecemeal system for spell 'components'; Verbal, Somatic and Material, which has always felt to me like the beginnings of a good idea. 3rd Edition adds in a few more, including an XP cost for casting certain powerful magics. As usual, what I've ended up with is a mixture of the above with some ideas from Ars Magica and my own:
There exists a spell called Enchant a Focus, given below, which allows a wizard to create a permanent object that takes the place of most Material Components for their spells. The enchantment takes time and expense, and (importantly), is a strictly one-way deal - once a wizard has chosen to use a focus, they can't then abandon it. There are a few basic consequences:
A chosen focus is usually highly individual to the caster, but it is always a valuable and well-crafted object. Typical foci include staves, daggers and knives, gloves, hats, cloaks, phials, lanterns and so on. Usually they're portable and not too bulky, but a non-travelling wizard might prefer an object more difficult to steal, like a cauldron or throne. In any case, the value of the object must be at least 100gp for each casting level used through it. A wizard's focus object is unique, and multiple copies of a foci cannot be created (there may be exceptions for certain magical societies - see below).
The time taken to create a focus is at least 1 month for each casting level used through it, during which time the wizard must work continuously with the object, carving and embellishing it with mystic symbols, valuable metals and gems and rare substances - the focus will always have the wizard's personal mark or rune upon it, which may be recognisable by those in the know.
This spell must be repeated if a wizard gains another casting level after choosing to use a focus - in this case the cost and time required is 100gp and 1 month.
If a focus is lost or destroyed, the wizard can create another one by re-casting this spell and taking the time and expense required.
Certain magical societies, guilds or circles of wizards may use objects that are so similar that they can use each other's foci. This may become known by their enemies and used as a point of weakness.