That was part of my overall point, yes, but you're taking it out of context.
To be precise, I don't think that your examples were just like Rob's. Rather, Rob's were facetious, but seemed more to emulate Feats from Affinities and whatnot. I think these are rather more attractive than "sharpen blade," just due to their flashiness. I'm not saying I would dissallow sharpen blade, just something like "storming blade" (or whatever a serious cognate to his silly examples might be).
Think of it this way, if it doesn't sound like it would usually be used passively, then it's not much like most common magic. Feats that sound very active don't seem to make sense to me as common magic abilities. Make any more sense? What I'm saying is that common magic has that "common" feel to it. At least it does to me. So, basically I wouldn't allow the flashier concepts.
This adds into the overall argument. I admitted that you could cobble these together purely in terms of finding augments. But that still doesn't mean that Common Magic + Initiate Magic > Devotee Magic in terms of overall attractiveness.
To comment on your other questioning of the restrictions on magic, yeah, if he has time to sharpen his sword magically before the fight (and do other things of the sort), he may have a further advantage. But it's conditionals like this that make this so abstract. What if the devotee has other abilities that pertain that the initiate doesn't have. You end up with the "all else being equal" argument. But in play all else isn't equal. This variance, again is enough, from what I've seen, to put off min-maxers trying for this level of marginal increase.
In fact, thinking way back, at one point there was this effect where nobody wanted to be anything but devotees and shamans, etc. It seemed that the thought process was something like, "Well, there's no downside, so why not go for the most extreme character I can come up with." It was only after learning about the breadth that the lower "level" magic characters had that I saw people easing up on taking characters like this. I dunno, perhaps any slight advantage for Initiates is there to offset the pure kewlness factor of being a devotee?
Mike
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