Spell costs were fine, the problem was that they added a fast paced continuous magicka regeneration in oblivion due to whiners from morrowind and didn't take the time to test it and scale it properly. Play oblivion as an atronach sign and see how the spell was intended to work, where magicka is a finite resource.

As for chameleon, I'm pretty sure at 100% chameleon your still visible, chameleon just decreased the distance that a mob would notice you. 100% meant you could get quite close but you would still be seen from several metres away if you were not sneaking, it worked well in conjunction with sneak, but does not replace it. Chameleon did not give you bonus sneak attack damage, unless you were also sneaking, and lets face it, that was what you used sneak for, the damage.
If you hit something with or without chameleon, the mob became alert, but often the AI was too dumb to know which direction the attack came from and so they just stood there. That mechanic could use a tweak, afterall if you have an arrow sticking out of your left side, odds are the enemy was to your left. When the mob "heard" you but did not see you they already did move in your direction to try and find you, but I think they made sight and sound checks too heavily relied uppon, and failed to add in basic inteligence such as the direction the attack came from.

ITs got nothing to do with self control, get the hell over that argument.... its about what is real within the game world, as a simulator the game creates a representation of the world of Nirn (part there of), and creating a balanced game style is what fits within that category. You dont see them adding a Super Uber Awsome Axe of Death planted at your feet as soon as u exit the tutorial dungeon, "ohh if u dont wana break the game u can just ignore it" ... its a stupid argument, something which can unbalance the system should not be there, and if it is, it should be fixed to be more even. I never said to remove anything, just to make the invisibility spell a little harder to get around w/o being detected via other means, which makes complete sense to me... and as for chameleon, that sould be much harder to get 100% or close to... as then nothing anymore is a challange,.,,, if u gonna whinne about that then I say i wana role play a Nord with a 1 hit kill super punch who has laser eyes.... but dont stop me from role playing that! arg... And please dont try to patronise me.

Completely agree with the OP.


Don't mind the people bashing you, I notice players do this when you talk about taking their cheats away.

I agree with this, but being able to reach 100% chameleon in vanilla oblivion through enchants was just plain silly. Chameleon with all kinds of crazy enchants and [censored] should never pass 75% and even then there should be parameters for how effective it is.

ooh wait wait, how about NPC's can utilize Detect life? spirits, undead with certain qualities, deadra, the magical sort. and animals and other creatures can smell and hear you making the stealth mechanic all the more worthy to couple with spells? yeah?

instead of all the :flamethrower: and bliviongate: things being thrown around over here..

IMO it all comes down to how you want to play

I could have (and did on several occasions when I first started out) used invisibility and or chameleon to avoid detection and attack enemies without consequence.

However, I soon found it boring and only used it in certain situations (ie where I'm supposed to be sneaking around) but not for battle. Even when I did I typically only used an invisibility spell so when I did attack I was immediately visible and stayed visible even though I could have cast another invisibility spell.

But bottom line is it's whether or not you want to cheat the system :shrug:

Aye, being able to go completely udetected gets boring for me to.

However, I like the option of having it in order to bypass mundane encounters or when I have a specific goal or destination in mind. It's just like having another tool in the box. :shrug:

I don't use these spells, but I am firmly on the leave things alone side of the fence. I prefer to use stealth, mostly because of the cheesy visuals chameleon had in Oblivion. The way I see it, using these spells isn't any more game breaking than being able to jump 30 feet in the air or off of water. There are dozens of other things that need tweaking or out right fixing, I see no need to fix something that ain't broke.

You do know that 100% chameleon through item enchantments was Invulnerability right? And it was very easy to do.


Either make it have a 75% cap or fix the enemy AI so they can attack you if you hit them, no matter what % chameleon you have on.



We should not have to "just don't do it" for so many magical spell lines. And yes...Balance IS considered for even single-player games.

It's a single player game. If you don't want to use invisibility or chameleon then don't. Just sneak. Simple right? Me? I don't think either spell was overpowered. I think that the game engine was not well equipped enough to handle the chameleon and invisibility spells properly. Besides after everything is said and done, the modding community is always around to "fix" the "problems" that the community feel Bethesda left behind. So, don't worry about it. This is one of those things that you don't have to use if you don't want to and it would have absolutely no effect on you.

Or actually use detect life spells.

How hard is that for mages?

Remove the ability to enchant items with chameleon. Add rare items with chameleon, but make it so you can't stack past 50%.

Stealth characters(non-magic) only need a 50% buff to get by.
Stealth characters(magic) should be able to cast chameleon up to 100% (draining alot of mana). So if they had the 50% items they only need to cast an additional 50%.
Magic characters should keep invisibility (as is), as I like being able to walk past people (not crouch around like some troll). I mean I'm a Mage I should be able to avoid battles if I don't feel like fighting.

Or invisibility spells could have an added cooldown time. And yeah all you had to do to become invincible was to get a 15% percent chameleon sigil stone, use the duplication glitch, and then put it on all your clothes :/

nobodu forces you to use those spells, if you think they are two powerful, then don't buy the spells that someone else might consider fun.

end of the day, your copy of skyrim will be on your pc and not mine or atleast the elderscrolls say

This is what I want.

Instead of adding new restrictions to chameleon and invisibility, add enemies who will use spells to detect the player. Or, make it where enemies with high willpower are harder to deceive with illusions.

1. The problem is there is MANY spells that enable godmode...you have to say "just don't use it" a bit too many times. We don't "Think" they are powerful, they where basically cheats.

2. SP balance is not a myth. Devs do balance SP and they DO fix exploits. Noone wants a trivial, Oblivion is one of the all time "super easy" games.

3. I agree that nerfing svcks, I think another approach is to adjust enemy AI so that they attack you if you touch them..even with 100% Chameleon on. But how would they adjust enemy AI to fix 100% reflect/absorb spells/enchants?

it was easy to kill entire roomfuls of badguys just using the invisiblity spells and then sneak attacks. it finally stopped when i started using a mod that prevented invisilbity spells when you were spotted by an npc. that however didnt stop me from simply running out of their view and then casting invisie again and do some more sneak attacks. frankly they should either put timers on certain spells like heal, chameleon, invisie, and other spells that can be abused or simply remove them altogether from the game.

the big spells i would nerf or change or get rid of altogether are the illusions spells like chameleon invisie and charm, alteration spells like lockpick, restoration spells like heal and cure disease (at least make this a master spell so as to make cure disease potions entirely worthless) and one spell that needs to be improved alot is telekinesis. reflect damage and reflect spell need to be completely removed from the game. those are such big cheats its not even defendable.

im also sick of the "if you dont like it dont use it" mantra. its stupid that i have to mentally nerf my character in a game where npcs dont have to abide by those rules. i hope that skyrim has something really crappy in it that those people hate. the make the khajit all look like Thundercats. all the wizards robes are purple with daisy prints all over them or maybe one of the weapon sets has horrible animations. then im going to tell them "well if you dont like how the khajit look then just dont play as them.......its easy. or dont use robes or dont use any axes just use swords and hammers. i would LMAO watching them complain about it.

For people to immerse themselves in a game, they have to take on the nature of the character in the game. And like every human, their nature will involve first and foremost 'reaching your goals by the simplest and easiest method'. Therefore, they are going to use spells like invisibility and high chameleon to defeat their enemies. So, saying that 'there is no such thing as overpowered spells/items in a single-player game' isn't actually true, because in order to get both immersion and a challenging game, people are going to want to truly alter the system.

Some just don't seem to... oh well.

Nothing would be taken away, so the argument of making Skyrim a linear game by adding more immersion and realsism is invalid.

"Modders are there to solve the problem"- the worst argument ever.
Everyone doesn't play TES games on the PC, me being one of them.
This would allow bethesda to give out an empty world with only a white floor in it - hey let the modders fix it.

Similar god states that 100% chameleon gives players in Oblivion can be found with: 100% resist magic or 100% absorb spell or 100% reflect spell combined with 100% reflect damage. This however was so much harder to get compared to 100% chameleon or 3 second invisibility, that chameleon and invisibility become unbalanced. However, getting a 100% resist/absorb%reflect on anything is also unbalanced, so they would need to be capped at 80 % maybe, but it doesn't matter if we talk about those, as chameleon and invisibility are so much easier to get. Yes even at level 1 you can have 100% chameleon as enchanted. Yes at level 1 you can have the 3 seconds invisibility combo up, and only after a few hours of gameplay. Not over powered to be able to beat everything in the game with a spell you got at level 1? Hmm..

I am NOT saying that you shouldn't be able to become unnoticed again after the NPCs have heard you, not at all! But they shouldn't forget you, especially if they've got an arrow sticking out of their stomach. In Oblivion they would just say "I've better cut down on the ale"... Yes ale gets you arrows in your stomach and gets hoody characters appear with bows in front of you, only to disappear again. Instead of just standing there, they should react to what just happened - In a realistic way, making the game world more believable and to me, more fun to play in. Some here say, however, that they should stay dumb because they like to watch how they react.. And they don't react in any way at all. Very fun indeed.

And indeed Single Player games balance exists as booheads said, just look at Fallout New Vegas for a single player game that has been balanced. But ofocurse, no game can be balanced to 100%, always leaving something a bit better than other things. But fixing over powered things helps the balancing very much.

remove chameleon spell.

its OP and stupid.

and btw they should put a cap on magic resistance (75%) and reflect should become a "reflect 100% one spell only" until you cast it again, also absorb should have a new mechanic and the shield spells.

balance=fun

Maybe the problem is the power of stacking? What if nothing can be more than 40%, stacking first would add 20% (60%), again adds 10% (70%), again adds 5% (75%), again adds 2.5% (77.5%) etc? Limit value being 80%, which is still a lot, but at great cost so few will go that far. Or skill determines limit value, and first stack is half of that. So If I'm at 80 skill I end up with same percentages. If I'm at 40 skill, I end up with 20% on first, 10% on second etc, totaling at 40%. Means that unique items can have constant effects that will outpower those of a player for a very very long time, as it reflects the skills of the enchanter. Spellmaking and enchanting becomes additional skills one would master in order to create these monster effects with a maximum cap at 80%.

So it's not impossible to achieve very powerful stuff, but you have to sacrifice other useful powerful stuff to get ever closer to the ultimate powerful stuff I mean, how would a player mage tackle an NPC with 100% reflect?

The simple thing would be to prevent Chameleon from being used with Enchanting. I still think they need to either get rid of Invisibility or make it a Master Illusion Skill and make Illusion harder to level up like Restoration.

A think both sides have a point. One of my characters in Oblivion prefers to deal with large groups by mind-controlling and frenzying a bunch of enemies, turning invisible, and only showing himself when he catches one person alone to fight them, and then turn invisible again. So I wouldn't like it if spells were removed for being too powerful or nerfed to the point where certain tactics wouldn't be usable, but it also isn't very fun if I can't use something because it makes the game too easy. Saying "just don't use it" doesn't work if someone wants to use it.

The best way to make things less overpowered without limiting anyone's roleplaying would be to give the enemies more abilities. I have the choice to play whatever character I want, but not how people react to me. A lot of the powerful spells already have counters; they just need to make NPCs able to know when to apply them.

For invisibility/chameleon: detect life should work. If they see doors opening with no one around, or take damage, or you're stomping around in heavy armor, they could cast that. Give out a few potions of detect life in random lists, so players can't always think they'd be safe around a non-mage, and maybe some elite guards would have rings of constant life detect. If all else fails they can just start throwing wide-area fireballs around so there's no safe place to stand. Make it so if you get hit your invisibility is broken for a few seconds, and maybe some creatures like undead would be immune to it.

For magic resist/absorb/reflect: Give mages a versatile spell list and the smarts to switch to ice if their fire isn't working. Or make a bound weapon, buff their strength, and conjure bunch of daedra if no magic is working. Maybe make dispel have a duration and let it dispel a constant effect enchantment until its duration expires. Fighters with magic weapons could be carrying a secondary unenchanted weapon to switch to if they're killing themselves with their own shockblade due to reflect.

Yes they were too overpowered, took out all the point in playing o oldskool thief

Also the skeleton key...? seriously?!

Sorry i double posted, sorry

dont mind me