The first spell I attempted to construct with this system was a cold damage-dealing version of burning hands, and it's just not possible to get that as a 1st level spell under these rules.
I get that the recurring damage and staggering effect make corrosive bolt and frost fingers more costly, respectively, but I'm wondering if those types of effects shouldn't have their own effect words in the long run to allow for elemental diversification in spell construction.
I'm going to playtest this, but my gut reaction is that I can probably have a lot more fun adapting UniSystem's magic system from the Buffy/Angel RPGs if I want to give my players more room for creativity.
I would honestly like to see an elemental word that simply handles damage and separate words for other effects. I'm honestly very unhappy with what was in the words of power currently -- it's very much what I did not want -- basically all it amounts to is the spells that were already in the book with metamagic built in.