Okay, so the thing about gravity magic is... you're simultaneously nerfing it too much [i]and[/i] making too much of a problem to implement? There's not a good reason for it to be so out of line with other magic to the point it's ridiculously exhausting for small AoEs, beyond "this is an obscure branch of magic so almost nobody has any skill with it" rather than something intrinsic to it. And being [i]categorically unable[/i] to exclude targets from it means it's just a friendly fire incident that becomes unusable, because you're also restricting the people who you want to take advantage of it. Being able to exercise more control so it can [i]do[/i] something (and operating on a scale of slightly more than spread arms so it's not trivial to get out of) would actually be [i]better.[/i] An easier way to limit a powerful gravity effect is just to have it take longer to cast the spell so it's not one post -> nobody in this area can move, it's more several posts -> the enemy can't move (or is at least severely slowed).

As for direct magic, if you mean... a person sized tornado? That sort of thing is fine without big buildup. Anything that would take apart buildings is not (and probably would be rather exhausting from what you seem to be aiming for).