My summon flame atronach spell fails while i am using become ethereal, it seems like my destruction spells work fine but they are only apprentice level spells. on another character I had a blizzard scroll fail while ethereal.

Anyone encounter anything like this? If this continues then it will completely ruin how I intend to play my mage.

do you have spell absorbtion active? sounds like the similar glitch where when you cast on self spells it reabsorbs it instead of casts, could be because become ethereal prevents anything from effecting you for it's duration, but it should end just before the cast.

Thats what I was thinking, and I have no spell absorption active.

You know what, it really svcks that they haven't fixed that with a patch. bush league if you ask me!

well it sounds actually difficult to be able to program it that way. "this destruction spell is friendly, dont fail, only when cast by you." but i would think if you wait to just barely after become ethereal times out you shouldn't have a problem with the casting.

yes its normal becoming etheral trigers god mode so you have to wait it stops until you can cast a spell. If you cast any spell(some works but not all) when ethereal, magicka will be deduce but the spell wont work so you have to cast it twice...
So be careful ethereal is useful to flee and falling down mountains but for spellcasters it can be annoying, just cast any of novice low cost spell(or strike anyone with a weapon) to exit ethereal mode then conjure your atronach it works great.
Try it and feed back

I was planning on using Ethereal to prep my master spells, waiting til I come out may risk getting hit with a power attack.

I thought it was supposed to be used by mages to cast master spells, guess master spells are back to being nigh useless.

master spells take time to load so arent very effective for short range or slim places... also not very effective against fast ennemies. I must agree with you they are fun to test but not really useful (in my opinion of course)