Yes. It actually makes sense. As far as I know, we don't have an explanation on how ES magic works. Is it magic words, hand gestures, what? If you are good enough with magic to learn a spell it shouldn't be a problem to cast but if you are learning beyond your abilities chances are you may fail.

what about this, you can attempt to cast any spell but only have a 100% chance to cast it if your skill level is 25,50,75 etc

Sorry, but that's a terrible idea. It would be better to have a maximum and minimum damage that a spell can do and have a higher chance of getting the minimum with a lower skill level. If that makes any sense... <_<

I'm all for the idea of spell failure coming back. Imo you should fail at magic unless you dedicate some time and effort into learning your stuff. In-game that means you should have a decent skill level before you can use your spells reliably.

In the dice world bad luck streaks are one of the most enjoyable aspects in the systems (that I've played). My favorite character of all times was known as "Hoblak the Jinx" for a reason. Lets just say that when he swings his sword, his *friends* take cover No, I'm not rolling 1-10 on a 1D100. That's for wimps... No, I'm doing it several times in a row for severity. The situations that follows are absurd, bizarre, and hilarious.

Dice rolls against cast success on spells is a start I guess, but I must say I would much rather have a fully fledged bad luck streak system built into everything, with crazy stuff resulting from it, rather than just success or not.

I have a quick suggestion for spell failure and spell success all in the same system.

Spells sold by the mages guild (or whatever magical retailer) are ideal spells that train you in certain effects. The basic fireball might be perfectly cast at level 20 destruction, and give you the knowledge of making fire and fire duration. Before you reach level 20, there is a chance of spell failure depending on how far away from the ideal level for it you are. Once you are past that level, you can cast it perfectly every time, and your casting speed will increase every level you reach beyond it, so you can cast that lower level spell like a machine gun by level 100.

Also once you're past the ideal level, you can make your own spells by playing with sliders in your spell book to try to increase the power of your spells, weighing them against your failure chance. So you're level 24 now and you try to up the damage of your level 20 fireball to the standard of a level 30 fireball. You've just opened up not only the chance of failure, but the chance of it exploding in your face. Once you gain more spell effects, like a constant stream of fire, fire that tracks to the target, fireballs with a huge burst radius, you can combine all these effects in your grimoire.

morrowinds magic system was so much better than oblivions minus the non regen magic and even that wasnt that bad since you could use potions. i miss the chance to screw up your spell which simulated casting magic in a chaotic and distracting environment. i also miss the magic stance which is used by most other RPGs.........why oblivion used the lame "wave my hand like im a princess in a disneyland parade" approach baffles me. are todays gamers really that lousy that they die from the one second it takes to switch stances. do they svck so bad that they have to be able to do everything all the time at any second and their magicka should regen almost instantly so they can do it again. what the hell happened to real gamers that were actually good at playing video games.

i challenged one of my buddies who played CoD on console, and bragged about how AWESOMETASTIC he was, to play one of the STALKER games on master level. its hilarious to watch him [censored] and swear at how the game cheats and its fixed against them. i then show them my character who is running around with a bulat-armored suit cause i havent even gotten an exo-suit yet and proceed to do just fine. it svcks when your used to insta healing by hiding behind a wall and npcs that take a full 5 seconds to actually shoot at you after they notice you and of course...NO AUTO AIM. it was even more fun to watch him die like a little pansy playing serious same HD on the hardest mode........think it was nightmare or whatever. i couldnt make too much fun of him for that though because i hadnt played a Massive Slaughter Shooter or MMS for years and i had to relearn some skills as well.

I agree......spell casting should not be 100% ....especially if you skill is low....i liked that about morrowind...could be frustrating,but made you learn that skill more so it would'nt happen as often...anyway liked it...not everyones cup of tea though

This

Immersive is alright, but go too far and everyone would rather tell you "go outside try it yourself" than support another "realistic mechanics"

I mean, there's a reason we play games: to escape reality. Going Sid Meier's Pirates! way: "We don't want players to have to pay the ultimate price (that is death), and as such can always try everything and go wild"

I can go further and say make it so realistic you only have 20 HP at max. One stab at your heart should kill you via 15 damage and 1 hp/sec damage for blood loss.

Or make potions take at least 3 hours to start heal your health, and using them too much causes overdose and poison you

Fantastical invulnerability is laughable, but too realistic? I'd keep it down on graphics only and keep it as far away from gameplay as possible, thanks.

I don't see a point of making all your spells falter. I mean is it realistic that you know the spell and it magically doesn't work, no pun intended. Now it does make since to remove the restriction that you can't cast a spell because you are too low skill for it and instead make it where if your Journeyman and you try to cast a master skill spell that you have a really high chance for it to fail/backfire on you but if it does go off it would be extremely rewarding and so on. It's just more realistic that spells don't falter when they are within your skill range. As for melee combat, really how complicated is it to hit someone with a sword? The whole point of the skill level is that when you get higher levels then you learn how to strike someone in precise ways to maximize the damage to them, just like in real life. Now with Morrowind, I swing at a guy in front of me at point blank range and out of 20 swings 3 hit.....yeah... Now I love all of the ES games but what you said about how people hated morrowind because of the quirks is exactly why people that love Morrowind hate Oblivion, because you don't look past the few minor flaws in the game instead make them over glaring. I personally like Oblivion more than Morrowind but as I said, Morrowind is great and the great thing about ES games is they all have their strengths that the others don't. Arena had the difficulty threshold, Daggerfall had the epic lore editions to the series that started it all and showed just how big the ES universe could really be. Morrowind had the most epic main quest line but had a clunky combat system and the world seemed less than alive with shaky side quests and of course an older AI system with 14 of the 15 dialogue options had been the same option since the beginning of the game.

Oblivion had improvements the combat system, AI revamp which will obviously be even better in skyrim, Voice overs, a short, but good lore main quest but paled greatly in comparison to the main quest line of Morrowind but where it failed to even get close to Morrowind in the main quest line it surpassed it in the fact that all the side quests in the game added to the AI system and the gorgeous world made it feel more alive and easier to immerse myself in. The biggest flaws that were wrong with Oblivion was the Creature level scaling and fast traveling to every POI was a problem too. Teleporting always bothered me in Morrowind and being able to fast travel to major cities would replace the teleporting and yet not allow people to just ignore the landscape trying to get to the POI so they can fast travel to it whenever they want from that point forward.

Morrowind may be the favorite of some others but don't go around saying Oblivion was bad because you hated the quirks then try to defend Morrowind by saying the reason people hated the game was that it had quirks and they need to look past them. Morrowind is the favorite of most of the people on this forum and they say that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is the greatest game in the history of the universe. compared to it but if you remember back to the past when Morrowind first came out, everyone said that The Elder Scrolls Morrowind is the greatest game in the history of the universe. compared to Daggerfall but they changed their tune as time went by and finally realized to look past the few flaws and see the game as a whole. Every game has flaws and if you let them be the center of focus then of course the game is going to look bad. Personally Daggerfall and Oblivion are tied for my favorites and Morrowind and Arena are close behind but don't go bashing other games because you are too attached to Morrowind.

This frequently happening is nothing more than annoying in my opinion. I don't like it. This kind of thing is what makes Morrowind (at least in its early stages) feel so clunky to me. Don't get me wrong I liked the game, but I think this kind of thing was one of its bigger weaknesses.

^^^

Corrected it for you.

I think that's a good way to do it. Each spell should have a required skill level to be 100% chance to cast. I don't think skill levels 25/50/75/100 is the way to go though, the skill requirement could instead be any level from 0 to 100 depending on the spell.

Also, add spell magnitudes back... 1-10 fire damage etc.

And by removing the 25-skill-point milestones for "cast without fail," then one paves the way for a really interesting "perk" system more in line with what melee combat got: various special effects at those milestones instead of "you can cast the next level of spells, yay, big whoop- the Fighter next door can paralyze people, the thief across the street can jump off the surface of water, and you got a stinkin' spell upgrade!"

Just example ideas:

50 Destruction skill (Journeyman) perk, Fire damage spells have a chance to set the target ablaze for damage over time. (Possibly set amount based on Destruction skill, possibly percentage of the spell's damage...think about it)

75 Destruction skill (Expert) perk, Frost spells have a chance of freezing targets. (Even if only for a second- think 1-second paralysis spell effect to answer "what the hell use is a second?")

100 Destruction skill (Master) perk, Lightning spells have a chance of arcing to other targets. (Potential double bonus: suppose the devs in their genius have added some sort of arcing lightning spell that jumps from target to target, and a Master of Destruction still gets the perk for some potentially graphics-card-taxing lightshows with truly awesome destructive power.)


Or, we can stick with coin-op-game never-fail spellcasting. :sick:

I'd like to see spell failure like in Morrowind, just done differently. Kinda like how you're describing it. I always play as a pure mage and that would make it very fun. But perhaps make that optional during setup as it might frustrate a lot of other players.

the only people that would be frustrated by spell failure are people that svck at playing the game. why are we designing a game around them....let them go play hello kitty shopping adventure. if you constantly try and cast spells that only have a 30% chance of success and you keep dying cause you spells dont work then whose fault is that. when i played morrowind there were two situations where i cast a spell with less than 70% chance of success.....one was a battle that i was sure to win and just wanted to see the spell in action.....the other was on those occasions where i was on my last healing potion and i had nothing to lose and my other spells werent cutting it. spell failure at least let me attempt to cast those high level spells even if it was risky. oblivions system said NO NO NO. not till you go from 49 to 50. thats just stupid.

spell failure is a representation of stress and distraction in real life similar to how spells can be interrupted in the DnD games. it annoyed me that short of being knocked down with a warhammer i was able to mindlessly cast spell after spell in oblivion in the middle of combat with no penalties whatsoever and no risk. who wants to play a game without some risk in it?

I thought about this recently.

I figure I am against it unless there is some cool way it is worked in.

If there is some scaling system or something, similar to ones suggested, it could very well be good stuff.

Agreed.

Something to add on this though... If not an aspect of the base game (gameplay as intended), it should not just be an optional toggle; a "do or don't" sort of thing.
In this case I think that it should come with a benefit of some kind; I dunno what (greater XP rewards, or something like the WW perk in FO:NV ~but only in-as-much as it adds content not available in the base game; *like higher power spells and weapons). I'm not really sure what exactly... Anything they do might be mod/hack-able to enable it without HC mode, but IMO there should be some alternative reason for taking on the additional risk.

I can't put to words just how annoying those "Max HP on level" or "Guaranteed Spell learning" mods are (in any stat based game), so having it just as a simple toggle that only adds jeopardy does not make it more fun gameplay IMO.; just as the first two remove risk at no cost, the latter adds risk at no gain. Both are annoying [to me anyway].

**What I'm saying is... That I think it should be optional (with a benefit), or that it should not be optional.

If Bethesda decides to keep the perk system from Oblivion, I think your idea would be preferable over the old magic skill perks.

I think it would be good if really powerful spells took more time to cast and the enemy could interrupt your casting it by stunning you or with a Mysticism or Illusion interrupt spell. Is your foe about to cast a storm? Knock him down to intercept it!

I think people miss the point of spell failure

Casting a spell that is relative to your power level or under has a high chance of success in most cases 100% however in Morrowind you can attempt to cast spells that are over powered, and thats more heroic than not being allowed to cast them at all until you have the right skill level (in effect until you would get the 100% in Morrowind only in Morrowind you can try and cast them before that), so its not meant to be that all spells can fail just spells that are more powerful than you can currently handle. I would even like to see spells like that backfire but I know no one else is going to agree with that.

So in fact by removing spell failure they are restricting your options how is having no chance to cast better game play then being allowed some chance? Just because players never fail? You can do that in Morrowind by effective spell management and if you want try to cast higher level spells.



I think thats a bit more extreme than spell failures and not really comparable having your head hacked off and a spell fail to go off are not really in the same ball park

Although I found the spell failure rates in Morrowind too harsh, the biggest complain was that the failure rant went up far too much when fatigue was low and that moving around Morrowind was slooow, so fatigue was often low too.

Spell failure rates can be done much much better than how they were in Morrowind and be a big part of the gameplay without getting too frustrating. Any starting adventurer might be only able to cast at 5% fail rate the most simple destruction spell but as soon as you get to the 25-50 range you should be able to use very reliably the basic useful spells of the school. Then from there you can build a lot of interesting ideas around spell failure.

For example, when you make a class you choose a specialisation between 3 : fighter, thief or magic. Selecting one of those could give you some perks. In this case, classes that do not specialise in Magic could never get the spell failure rate under 5%. Magic specialised players get a cap that depends on their Willpower stat : less than 50 Willpower = minimum 5% failure up to 100 Willpower = 0% failure cap.

Heavy armor would cause you higher failure rates instead of lowering the spell power. And you could get enchantments that counter that effect (maybe good old Feather on an armor piece would reduce spellcasting impact?)

Lore-wise and difficulty-wise it would make sense (the magic failure has to do with the way magic is cast), but maybe it would do better in the hardcoe mode since it did tend to be frustrating if you didn't know how to work the system.

"We" aren't- but many of us see plenty of evidence to suggest that Bethesda has been doing so for quite some time.




I don't think it's so much miss the point, as "don't even think that far." For many it appears to be as simple as wanting more of that "streamlining" that seems to be so popular. No failures allowed because it's "not fun." Nothing that makes internal game mechanics make sense, because that's "not fun." No restrictions on anything, anytime, anywhere because that's "not fun." :shrug:

It would allow for the return of noise spells (those that impeeded a casters' ability to cast) and I would approve of it as long is it is handled a little better than in morrowind. Also lets try to remember that all we have are opinions here folks no rights or wrongs.