Have you noticed that mages are getting weaker?

In Morrowind 3 you could recall and levitate....

In Oblivion you could use mysticism... and craft spells...

In Skyrim? No mysticism... no levitation... no intelligence... no willpower...no recall... and maybe no invisibility or spellmaking? Mages are becoming diluted and weak. No mage in his or her right mind would dare forget lore so... profound! What do you think and is there anything else that is being lost to those of with the gift?

I think they're really pressuring us to use the dual-wield sword+magic combo.

On topic: Yeah, though I rarely use magic I do think it is getting very underpowered over the years, especially now you have to equip spells, although now you can have more than one and combine them.

Mages were too powerful anyway. And Beth removed most of these things to improve the game, not nessecerely make the mages less powerful.

Spellmaking simply made mages incredibly overpowered and invincible, at least under the oblivion system.
The spells from the removed schools are still here so i don't mind it.
Based on some of what we saw in the E3 demo with shouts and different kinds of spells, being a pure mage looks more viable and interesting then ever, and i look forward to trying different types of spell combinations now that you dual-wield spells.

(EDIT) Also i don't know where you heard no invisibility, could you elaborate on this please? It was one of the primary spells i used as a stealth character when i couldn't sneak past someone but didnt want to fight.

Well mages can make their spells stronger by combining with both hands I think that's an UP for Mages

i don't play mages but i might if so i'd make a gandalf(woman version maybe just for laughs)

I could kill almost anything with a spell only requiring 50 destruction skill in Oblivion, so I hope mages are getting weaker. Personally I think magic was stronger in Oblivion than Morrowind though, due to the magicka regen plus weakness stacking/multiplying.

Magic is definitely getting more interesting though, if you've seen any of it in the Skyrim gameplay clips.

Regenerative magicka pretty much removed the possibility for them to be powerful in order to have some balance. Unfortunately their convenience factor is still way too high.

I believe the jury is still out.

Either there will be between 60 to 100 different perks for all the schools of magic, in which case, perhaps there might be 60-100 new reasons to play a pure mage character.

Or the entire spell acquisition system could be eliminated and reduced to perks that you get on level up (spells = perks), in which case, I would be disappointed.

Mages have been OP as hell in the last 2 games, looks like Skyrim is making an effort at giving them a nerf-bat to the jimmies. Also, Mysticism spells are still in, they just moved to other schools.

Just to note, although they did get rid of mysticism, it was just because they felt the name was redundant. The spells are still there, just recycled into different schools. As for mark and recall, the developers thought that being able to instantly flee from any dungeon retracted from the experience. And as for levitation, levitating into a celled-off city would essentially break the game. The celled-off cities were put in place to add more space in the limited amount of space they have. It's the difference between Vivec City and the Imperial City. Vivec, because in was uncelled, was limited in size, whereas the Imperial City, because in was celled off, was able to produce a grander scale. Mages aren't getting weaker, just more refined.

I never thought so, they were just more easily exploited than other builds except for maybe stealth characters.

the real exploit is using skills and spells collaboratively to make a warrior-mage-assassin which was pretty much unstoppable. so it wasnt really magery alone that was the cause of overkill.



I read it in a thread and it strikes fear into my bones. I love the invisibility spell... it has to the most enjoyable spell in the entire game. endless entertainment value. Id rather they just up the MP cost than scrap it. I dont know if it will be scrapped for sure. forum conjecture really unless someone knows something for sure?

maybe the sun -a hole in the sky to a realm of magics core- is being drained from everyone using magic

With the exeption of exploitable spells like levitation and ever-stacking weakness to magic I never felt mages were very powerfull. Might just be me though.

Cutting out features to 'improve the game'? Hmm.

Personally, I reckon that if mages are too powerful due to the variety of spells they can cast then instead of stripping out spells a developer ought to try some other way of balancing them. Imposing a stamina penalty for spell use, or a health penalty for practising magic skills instead of combat skills - oh, wait they took out attributes, which would be the obvious mechanism for doing that, didn't they :rolleyes:.

Some spells I understand their taking out, like levitation and teleportation, because their designers were finding it hard to create interesting and varied quests that remained interesting and challenging with those particular powers available. My instinct, though, would have been to find ways of imposing reasonable limits on the spells (e.g. making it impossible to cast spells or fight while levitating, preventing teleportation when enemies are near) and spending more effort on playtesting and tweaking quests to account for these abilities.

Then again, I've never developed a game so what do I know .

I'm sorry. I can't hear you over the sound of my mage duel-wielding magical boom booms.

you speak the truth!

I can see the cost of an invisibility spells use going up, but i find it unlikely they'd get rid of it, unless they believed that it broke certain parts of the game like levitate and mark and recall.

I agree mages should be powerful. But they should not have OP spells like invicibility, chamleon and paralyze

I don’t think they are getting weaker; they just won’t be godlike anymore. In past elder scrolls games you would exploit magic to make you invincible. This time I think it will be more controlled + you can combine spells and use them more efficiently as in the past.

Although true, you wont be able to cast truely epic spells like I hope a game would do some day. Oh well.... oh well....

I thot the spells in dragon age were pretty epic :\

I think the invisibility spell should remain in use though.

I mean you get melee finishing moves, and assassin killing moves in stealth - those a 1 hit KO stuff. you could only 1 hit KO stuff with weak enemies as a mage given the limited mana pool.

In OB, you had the choice, as a valid part of the game mechanics, to enchant to 100% chameleon, use items to give 100% resist weapons or reflect magic, and create massive damage through weakness stacking. In Morrowind, everyone knows the old fortify intelligence, fortify intelligence, fortify intelligence, do something else routine.
These are not cheats or exploits, these are part of the game mechanics, and to not use them, out of principle or need for challenge, is deliberately gimping your character below what the game allows.
I for one am really looking forward to playing a mage I don't have to impose player defined limits on in order to have a challenging game, it will be nice to have the game impose those limits.

i dont care if i can become a magical demigod with powers the likes of which noone has ever seen, but i want enemy mages to become one. not an untrained hedge wizerd but if a mage is trained i want him to be a force of nature, something to be afraid of, when i see an enemy mage i want to it to make me want to do this :bolt: i think it would be an interesting challange to fight somethign that could actually kill you and makes you think before you fight. i understand that not everyone would like my idea but i like a good challange or a good reason to sneak