Modular Spell / Psychic system - too fiddly?

[aimlessPolymath]

Right then, this is a bit hard to review for balance without any, well, spells/powers to work with from the different disciplines.
I'll do what I can.

I rather like the system of ranges, and might borrow part of it for my own.
Casting from HP (or VP, as the case might be) is always difficult to balance generally, due to the ability to go nova.

Boosting Effects looks very much like metamagic, with some degree of free shaping. Unfortunately, the boosts listed fall into two categories-
-Increased damage
-Hit more people
There isn't a lot of room for creativity there. Manifest Flame seems overly generic as an example- I'm not clear on the benefits of having it at a higher level vs. just Boosting it?

I actually actively dislike the degree of freedom of shaping the targetting to this degree, for reasons I'm not 100% clear on- it seems that most of the options for area modification are redundant, and PC's will just always pick the "best one" in the situation- nobody will ever pick Lightning Bolt over Fireball, essentially, unless they expect creatures with fire resistance ahead. This is mostly a gut feeling, though- take it or leave it.

Edit: One other thing that can happen (and does IRL when the wizard knows various spells) is PCs taking several minutes trying different positions to see if they can hit their enemies but not their allies. The exponentially larger number of areas here might slow down play.