Anyway, I believe that's why they have a scale of price/level for unlearn. You can use fire missiles untill you get better spells if you want and do a cheap buy-back at low level.
Personally if I knew it was a low-damage skill I would wait for those better spells and use a sword or whatever. That's what the D2 skill system was all about. You would never dump 20 points into ice blast what you had frozen orb at level 30. The problem I think is with DnD players, i.e. 'true' roleplayers or whatever they think they are. They follow a system that's incredibly restrictive i.e. a mage must use spells all the time, not wear armour and so on and its definatley not what <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beyond.gif" alt="" /> is all about.
You have to think outside of the box.
With respect, I've kicked apart many attempts to put me in a box in the past, including what may be an attempt of yours, above. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> I'm not into any system, (rant) much less the incredibly unimaginative, assembly-line D&D products that have foisted so much bad literature and rigid gaming systems on us in the name of fantasy. (/rant) Oh, it felt so good saying that. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />
According to the skills table, my 6 point fire missiles should actually do considerably more damage than 2 point-accuracy/1 point-damage slashing with a simple scimitar. But in fact, they're not. So the skill is not acting as it should. The solution isn't charging me to unlearn it, which in effect tells the player that "we're not responsible for skills which don't act as we say; pay up and try again." The solution is making the skills do exactly as they say from the start, and removing "unlearning" altogether, in my opinion.