I totally agree with the intentions behind this; I think the reason that the default sovereigns have all of the books is so that whatever shards they find will be useful to them.  Probably not the best way to handle this, though - I want to have to scrap and extend myself for my shard's kickbuttedness (and all shards should always be useful).  For multiplayer, you'd need to have a way to ensure a relatively close shard of your type (which is probably not easy to ensure).

I also think that there need to be some changes in this area.  Elemental is the spiritual successor to MoM.  One of the great features of MoM was that you had to choose between having a lot of low level spells from many traditions (Life, Death, Earth, etc.) vs being able to only cast from two traditions at a higher level.  This made the game highly re-playable because you could try out a bunch of different spell-book combos for custom characters.  I know we shouldn't be to slavish in copying MoM but Elemental's Sovereign generation system is capable of generating far few types of characters than MoM.

I am 60% sold on EWOM at this point, it is getting better; but what we are doing now feels more like beta testing than when we were beta testers. They are listening much better now then they did then, so there might be some hope that the spell books get some love. Then again, they are on a budget so maybe not. Lets just make sure we voice our oppinions so they can think about it, and if nothing changes it is their own choice.

allowing PCs to choose not to take spellbooks when the default sovs always take them is really inconsistent. either not taking a spellbook is too potentially gamebreaking, in which case everyone should always have them all and the option should be removed, or it's a useful strategy, in which case the AI should not take some as well.

i'm more inclined towards the former. in fact i think that starting inventory should be completely removed from character creation. with spellbooks it's completely stupid not to take them all (unless you like re-generating maps over again, which is an exploit and should not be encouraged), and with inventory it's almost always a waste of points in comparison to abilities that last for the entire game.

i don't think it's worth the extra customization when you think of the potential trap for new players. if you want to keep starting inventory, it needs to be completely rethought.

my two cents.