Seems like a definite powerup to mages, across the board. Mostly the built-in shield. Mages can now use that in situations where they might not otherwise have used a shield wand. Ranking, mob killing, walking down eastern road, "getting your barrier wand", etc.

I mean, maybe that's okay. I'm just saying. One final idea I had:

"Make wands work like non-a/s/b preps, e.g. stoneskin."

That is to say, make them all limited and get rid of specially coded "per-player" locations. Reduce the total number of locations to some relatively small number, similar to what exists for stoneskin, but set the item limits so that a decent number of each wand type can be in circulation at a given time.

Add custom code so that no mage can carry more than X wands of a given type. If he already has X aura wands in his inventory and tries to pick another one up then it just falls to the ground. This prevents certain powerful mages from stockpiling large amounts of wands and thereby keeping them out of other players' hands.

For each one of the remaining locations, make sure its wand is a unique item. So maybe mob A has "sleek amber with blue flecks" and mob B has "sleek amber with red flecks", each item having its own separate limit. Or give them totally unique names like the current limited wands have.