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I made a few of my characters into bishops, who had no priest spells, and one had 18 piety while the others had 20+ piety, they learned the same spells until at level 10 my low piety character was missing one of the priest spells the other two bishops had.

I remember reading in the forums that piety affects how fast you learn spells (not sure if only priest spells or if mage spells learned are affected by only int) so I think that maybe not only level affects how fast you learn spells as a mage too.

**So far they have learned the same mage skills tough, regarless of one having 18 int and another having 24 int. So most likely mage spells are only affected by level (not sure tou, would have to keep leveling to be 100% sure)

Extra advice : you start with very few spell charges and spells but as you level your spellcasters will become increasingly more powerfull so just keep them on the party and you will be thankful they exist after you enter shiin mid levels, believe me. (and i'd recomend making a lord and fully equiping it because at higher levels monsters start targetting your back row characters too, and huge shield helps prevent that)

........... on further notice my 18 int 18 piety now has 1 extra priest spell compared to the other two, instead of the -1 spell it had until now lol.... and piety and int is still the same on all 3. On the other hand all 3 kept up learning mage spells at the same time, now they all but 1 of the mage spells. So i guess dice throws are more important when learning spells lol -_-

so random ~ _~

The easiest way to look at this is comparing a Samurai's spell list to a Mage. The Samurai gets two purely offensive spells per rank. Each spell rank has four spells, and the two learned by Samurai (or Lord, in the case of Priest magic) are the easy ones gained automatically on preset level-ups.

The third and fourth spells per rank are specific to Mage, Priest, and Bishop, and they don't always learn them at the levels preset for their "easy" spells. The percentage chance for learning those 3rd / 4th spells are based off INT / PIE (respectively), and increase exponentially as you level your character.

So while your Mage may not always learn Levitation with Flame Field, you <i>will</i> always learn Levitation as long as you level your Mage a few more times.