why would you want to play a character that can't cast spells?
That is very subjective.
I have at least one player who never plays characters with spell casting abilities. His preferred character type is normally a knight, he loves the chivalry of it and the relative simplicity. He dislikes the way that most spell caster players get their kicks often from trying to twist the 'intended' use of the spell to create something that was never in the the spirit of the game. An example would be using waterlungs as an attack. He sees spell casters (players and characters equally I suspect) as kind of devious and often accuses them of slowing down the game as they [one of ours especially] can spend an inordinant amount of time diving into Spell Law just to find the 'perfect' spell.
He isn't 100% right but he isn't 100% wrong either.
Part of his ire comes from the number of times he has gone to great lengths to manoeuver into a position, often forgoing easy kills just to have the kill 'stolen' by a mage with a lightning bolt in the magic phase of the very round when he was about to engage in his heroic one on one battle with the top villain. His current character has also been fried a couple of times by the mage by firing lighning bolts into melee with our platemailed knight taking the brunt of the damage.
My personal feeling is that I am really reluctant to create more and more house rules to fix problems which normally exist between the couch and the character sheet rather than between the front and back covers of the rule books. I assume the rules have been playtested in a variety of settings with a variety of characters. Any changes I would make would have a play test sample size of one party. I do have house rules and every player gets a copy but it mostly consists of setting out clearly which of the many options presented in the rules I have chosen to employ. If there is a really good sounding suggestion on the boards here I explain to the players where and when it will come into play and the 'spirit' of the ruling so they know what I am trying to achieve and that normally tells them which way I am going to rule when a 50/50 situation arises.
My house rules doc also includes things which have never come up in my game but I have experienced as a player and I didn't like the GMs ruling and I would have done it differently. I detail the situation and how I interpret the rule(s). This is useful as I play in the same game as some of my players and we could be working under one rule on the Saturday morning and a diferent rule for the same situation in the afternoon.
Every ruling has implications. I have found that restricitng the speed at which spell lists are acquired has lead to the lower level spells that were often over looked in the rush for the fireballs now get looked at much more frequently.