Spontaneous is always (and meant to be) less powerful than formulaic. It's neat with its flexibility, but severely lacking in power. If you can only do spontaneuous magic, that means no Rituals, as well as no truly high level spells (which are Rituals), plus no access to advanced ranges and such. To make your Magus powerful in spontaneous I suggest a few things. First take Diedne Magic, then take a Minor magical focus. From there take Skilled Parens and Educated (though your spells and extra spells will generally be wasted). This will give you more XP to spend. Also take Virtues that increase study totals and Affinities, including maybe Affinities for Penetration (you'll need all the help you can get), and taking Special Circumstances (Spontaneous spells). Make sure your Arcane skills are good, you're not going to pull off high spells, so you want to make sure that they at least have a chance to work. When assigning Arts make sure you have a score in every one, otherwise you won't get much from your Virtues (doubling 0 is still 0). A major Flaw of No Formulaic Magic does not exist, with your GM's approval perhaps you could take it (though it's not very balanced, not being able to cast Formulaic spells is a heck of a flaw). As a GM, if one of my players wanted to take such a Flaw, I'd probably allow them to take 2 Major Hermetic Virtues instead of one as compensation (Diedne and Mythic Blood, or Major Focus comes to mind). If you took Poor Formulaic Magic (Minor) and Unstructured Caster (Major), that simulates well enough I suppose that you don't use Formulaic magic though. Spend a lot of time in the lab raising your Arts, as well as collecting Arcane Connections. Make a Talisman, especially of a Staff or Wand, and attune it with all the fixings, and choose its material well. You need to squeeze every bonus you can out of it. If a Flaw of No Formulaic Magic were allowed, it should probably have a balancing factor, since you lose those starting 120 levels of spells. Perhaps more XP for Arts for example. Understand that for quite a while this Magus will be under powered compared to others. And even when you start getting your Arts into the 20s, the main thing you'll accomplish is impressive Spontaneous spells, but will still likely be outperformed by others casting Formulaic. However, your Arts will likely be higher, because you don't need to spend time inventing/learning spells, and far more flexible. You should also make magic items to compensate for no spells, as those flaws don't apply to enchanting. A Verditius with this combo could be useful, though might not make as much sense. Sorry if this sounds too min-maxing, but I myself find the concept of a Spontaneous expert appealing. To make it viable requires some min-maxing IMO.
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