>Point 1: If a class is balanced on the fact that its access
>to wands takes some effort then making those wands more
>readily available unbalances the class.

The thing is that the effort of wands is almost mitigated if you know where to find them.

What would keep the classes balanced and eliminate the exploration tedium is if mages had a trio of "create _type_ wand" spells that each create one wand of aura, shield or barrier. The wands have a few charges (4ish), can only be used by the caster, decay after a period of time, and can only be created every so often. For example you might have 15/30/45 tick timers for aura/shield/barrier. That way you still have to manage your use of a/b/s, which keeps the important balance aspect (i.e. mages aren't guaranteed to have abs at all times) but alleviates the explore tedium.