I think you should start Skyrim with every spell in the game already available in your inventory. It just doesn't make sense to "buy" spells. And obviously with this idea, you wouldn't be able to use all of them right away until you are skilled enough to use them.

Another idea instead of "buying" spells is that maybe there could be an NPC that could teach you spells.

Either one of these ideas would make it more realistic and fun, IMO.

The very idea of buying spells is to represent paying to learn the spell, it just takes a small matter of role playing. Having all spells already available leads to a game where you are 'unlocking' everything rather than learning. I don't like that personally.

Well, honestly. I do think the idea of "buying" spells is idneed that you pay gold for the NPC to learn you the spell. Having each spill from the get go makes no sense as your character wouldn't know these spells even existed. Personally I'm not very happy with the prospect of not having spellmaking. To me spells were all about experimentation and the spells other people tought you were merely a result of other peoples experimentation... it made magic feel like an actual power that could be crafted into whatever you want. with these preset-only spells i kinda takes away yet another aspect of customization from the game.

Not confirmed dude. Yet

You do know that you paid NPCs to teach you spells in oblivion right? You didnt buy them in a bookstore or anything...
And the rather stupid thing about knowing all spells is that it would make damn near any UI swamped with lots of crap that you'd never even use.

I know, I usually add a "if this is the case" in these kinda posts, I must've forgotten this time. But still, it doesn't look very promising

That's pretty much what "buying" spells is. You're paying someone money to teach you a spell, and that makes sense, just as you can pay someone money to learn how to do something in real life, there are people who make a living by teaching people things in Tamriel too, and spells are included.

And having all spells known from the start but needing to "unlock" them wouldn't make much sense, because spells aren't something you instinctively know but need to get enough skill to be able to use it. Spells need to be learned, like from someone else who has the knowledge. Certainly, there can be alternate ways to learn spells beyond "buying" them, like say, maybe some books could allow you to learn spells once read, as people might record the spells they know in a book, but having spells be known from the start but need to be "unlocked" wouldn't make much sense.



The way Todd Howard put it, it doesn't seem to be so much "not confirmed yet" as it is "We don't have it right now but we're not going to rule out the possibility that it will be added later, still, it probably won't be." and honestly, I'm glad it's gone if it is indeed removed from Skyrim, magic was incredibly boring in past Elder Scrolls games, each spell was pretty much a generic formula, it had a strength, a duration, and possibly a radius, it could be cast on self, on target, or one touch, and really, that's about all, there were different effects that could do different things, but spells with the same affect never felt that distinct, one shield spell was exactly the same as another, except it may be stronger or last longer, you might as well just call them "Shield" and "Slightly Better Shield", and when you made your own spells, you were just making the exact same spells as the default ones, only with slightly different effects. Oh my! That's so impressive! Honestly, I never felt like a mage devising impressive new spells when I created spells, I was just changing some numbers on a spreadsheet. And let's not even get to attack spells, as whereas charm and chameleon and such each have a fairly distinct effect, there was absolutely NOTHING seperating say, a lightning spell from a fire spell with the same stats, except that it had a different looking projectile and different creatures had resistences or weaknesses to it. And mostly, I blame this on spell making, lots of RPGs don't have spell making, in fact, I can't name any game besides the Elder Scrolls which had spell making, and their spells tended to be a lot more varied and unique than the ones in Morrowind and Oblivion. If removing spell making will allow Bethesda to make spells more unique, than I won't miss it at all.

When you buy a spell you are paying an NPC to teach it to you.

It would make no sense at all to start the game knowing all possible spells.

Hell no crazy b.... err no. Just no.

Like others have said, buying spells is basically learning spells. They just have not been bothered to tweak the wordings in the game.

I actually had a longer post with arguements and stuff, put I'll just sum it with me storngly disagreeing. With regards to the thread topic , I would actually like to see something that made it more apparently that they actually showed you how to do said spell or sometihng.. Maybe even add rare books in some places that contained information on some rare forgotten spell

Actually, I don't think it ever mentions buying or selling of spells in the game. People just saw the menu and assumed you bought them. But you kind of do buy them too. What happens when you pay for school? You 'buy' knowledge, or at least the opportunity to acquire some

Either learning the spells from an npc or learn them from books, that would be cool to have in your library aswell, old books about dark magic. :teehee:

I'd like to see a smaller amount of people who teach spells, one master specific to each school perhaps so it feels more like they really are passing on arcane secrets. And perhaps you could trace clues to find grimoires or certain quests lead you to fight an enemy mage who's grimoire you can claim afterwards and learn spells from them.

LOL. Sorry, when I read that I just cracked up. Not meaning to offend, mind you. I'm sure in the heat of typing a reply I've done similar. It just caught me the right way and made me chuckle. Thank you. :icecream:

To the OP, I agree with others. Starting with all the spells and unlocking them seems a bad way to go. I already want a way to delete spells from my inventory, don't add more. I guess you could also give players every type of armor and weapon to start with and let them unlock the ability to use them as their skill goes up. It just doesn't work. Although that is something you just go and buy from a merchant.

Normally I would say that a PC should have some spells available if they were learned in their past; but TES characters don't usually have a past.

I dislike the "tiered ladder" approach for spells, because it informs the player of all the spells, and allows them to shape the PC's choices toward the spells they want. In a system where the PC learns from what's available at the moment, they can discover new spells and abilities from situations like finding a scroll in a shop, or while adventuring, or be taught by an NPC.

No way.

Whatever the method of conveyance, we should still have to pay for each one.

As others have said, it would be ridiculous and a terrible gameplay decision to give the player every spell from the beginning.

And your argument against buying spells seems to be in the vein of "I misunderstand something, so it's stupid and doesn't make sense."

fast reply! wanananananana...............

My idea for spellcasting is kind of old school.

I think there should be this mystic word dictionary, where you get just oodles and oodles of what seems to be meaningless words. But when strung together in a "spell crafting" menu, creates a spell scroll like we would know in Oblivion which can be casted like normal, except that it doesn't disappear. Combining different words or adding words adds more effects, and can even spiral out of control. Overworking a summoning spell could just spell disaster for the inexperienced mage.

Going to a spell shop, you don't buy the magick itself, you buy the knowledge to cast it - the predefined/already tested and works set of words. Maybe they come upon scrolls you keep in your inventory that when you put them in a chest that spell is removed from your list. Make having a tome object viable - condense your spell scrolls into a tome so that you can carry loads of different spells around, or remove the ones you don't use, or create new ones.

So a book about basic spellcrafting would introduce you to a few easy-to-make-spells-with words. To get you started with something that won't end up in you getting swallowed by a demon. Then, as you get more powerful, you can buy more advanced dictionaries to create new spells.


I think having the tome/scroll idea is good because Oblivion's spell menu tended to get cluttered. Being able to remove spells you don't use, but still keep them around in a re-obtainable form (go to your bookshelf) and check your spare tomes or lecterns. Being able to build your own Pokemon dec- *Cough* I mean, spell tome means each mage you create has his own flavour.

It would also be a big plus if the spell words weren't sharable. That way each character still has to experiment and not bypass the painstaking learning process. And instead of having so many different schools of magick, condense them into a single skill and name it something catchy like "Magecraft". That'll free more skill slots for climbing and spears and laying prone. >.>

I didn't like this idea at first, then I did, towards the end I didn't anymore lol.

Because it would take some serious time to actually build a viable spellbook? Making the thus far over-powered (in my honest opinion, mages have the easiest time of all combat classes) mage have to actually work for something? What blasphemy.

It would be nice if the learning process was more obvious though - it does certainly feel as though you are literally buying the spell. Maybe some kind of mystic touching of the hands to the forehead and bam! you know how to enchant. That was one of the good things about the the Morrowind magic system - you could fail to cast a spell, this definitely created a sense that you were almost learning to cast the spell better as you went along, by practicing it, which makes sense.

Might be that you learn spells on levelup by choosing perks. Although there might be additional tricks to be learned, I have a hard time imagining around 10 unique perks for each school of magic (but of course I can be wrong). And it fits well with "perks allows you to do new stuff". Also a golden explanation on leveling taking more time (progresses game time): Rather than the silly one hour nap, you actually spend time studying the perk you learn.

While I don't like the reliance on NPC services for things like spell acquisition, I don't think automatically knowing all spells is a good solution at all - at least not while casting requirements are the same as, or similar to previous TES games.

I'd much rather learn spells from scrolls - which could be bought, stolen, or discovered in dungeon depths like any other item. The more obscure and powerful the spell, the rarer the scroll.

And every weapon too, it just makes no sense to buy them! I actually think we shouldn't have a single spell when we start out. We could learn them by "buying" them from NPCs in the very begining, very weak spells etc. If I'm making a full melee char, I don't want to have a fire ball spell and a healing spell in my inventory. :/