Bukkit

My suggestion would be to use the enchanting system to create wands.
It would be similar to enchanting a sword. You use your levels to create a wand out of a stick.
This would delay the point in time a player can use the magic system.

Additionally the level used to enchant/create the wand could be used to determine which spells can be cast with it.
For example:
You can heal with a level 10 wand, but a fireball requires a level 30 wand.

I think this would go along fine with my other suggestion of using ingredients to cast spells rather than mana.

I hope this can be implemented server side without the need to modify the client.

sincerly Lasdem

I had an idea similar to this, where you would craft an enchanted blaze rod(power I, probably), then lay it on the ground, say a spell, and it'd drain your levels(if there's enough, of course). Then the wand would be enchanted to power II. It is possible to do this, however, I can't display the enchantments unless I use some tool.. and I don't know which to use.