In anticipation of SKSE requiring an update prior to supporting Skyrim Special Edition, I'm possibly shelving development of http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1604640-wip-adventurers-inc/, and instead developing a destruction magic damage overhaul that I've had in mind since putting together some damage per second curves a long long time ago:

http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii167/bl3count/rangedcrafting.jpg~original

In the chart, NC stands for "no crafting" while SYN stands for synergy, meaning the damage bonus gained from smithing improvements and damage enchantments. Destruction fares ok at low levels, but plateaus at a skill level of about 70. Keep in mind this assumes you can finish the fight before your magicka runs out. If not, sustained DPS takes a major hit.

The goal will be to match up damage curves for short range spells like flames with melee damage curves, and ranged damage curves with archery curves:

http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii167/bl3count/rebalanceddamage.jpg~original

It can be done by replacing the reduced magicka perks with damage perks, adding damage enchantments, and tweaking spell damage and magicka costs. The goal is to keep all of the spell categories (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Destruction) useful at all levels.

Todd talked about "Spreadsheet Magic" once and how he didn't want the player to be doing it. What good is not having the player do it when the game dev doesn't do it either?

Here's that tally of Ways To Boost Damage that I talked about earlier...

Non-Destruction killing implements get the following methods to increase damage:

* Weapon material tier graduation (Iron -> Steel -> Orcish etc)

* Power attacks

* Smithing

* Direct weapon enchantment

* Indirect skill-boosting apparel enchantment

* Alchemy skill potions

* Basic skill increase of the weapon's associated skill (or "Kill Skill" as I call them)

* Root perk tree perk graduation (5 perks for up to 100% boost for all weapons covered by that kill skill)

* Critical hits (applicable for just bows and swords... but also broken in Vanilla IIRC) or bleed effects (just for axes)

* Sneak attack bonus (up to 4x for bows, 6x for onehanders, and 15x specifically for daggers and the un-perked 2x for archery and 3x for onehanders is nothing to sneeze at either)

Ways to boost Destruction damage:

* Higher tier spells (which has the drawback of increasingly inefficient damage/magicka cost ratios)

* Dual casting (which only boosts overall damage compared to double-barrel single cast by 10% for a 40% increase in cast cost)

* 6 perks to get a total of 50% increase across the board (compared to 5 for 100% for the mundane kill skills)

* Aaaand for the only one that isn't drawbacked or inferior to counterparts... Alchemy skill potions.

* NOT rote skill increase

* NOT direct enchant (nothing *to* directly enchant!)

* NOT indirect apparel enchant (instead we get paltry cast cost decreases unless you cover yourself head to toe and/or grind Enchanting)

* NOT sneak attacks

* NOT critical hits

* NOT smithing (just like with direct enchanting, nothing to craft on)

I omitted any boosts sourced from unique items (like the DB gauntlets' sneak attack boost or the Solstheim Dragon Priest masks) or special case effects (like silver on unnaturals). I may have missed something as well, as I am not making any pretense that it's comprehensive.

Will the exorbitant and inefficient damage/magicka ratios for Expert-and-above spells be addressed in your mod? The sheer hit that the Expert-level heavy missile spells do to the magicka bar makes them useless since the Apprentice missile spells are at the peak of the damage/magicka cost efficiency ratios (all other factors being equal), even comparing dual-cast Apprentice spell to single-cast Expert spell. Runes and AOE spells have justifications that they're AOE (and proximity explosive in Runes' case) for their drop in efficiency... but Expert Missile has no such excuse for the sheer drop in the efficiency.

Master spells are right out useless (or highly situationally useful for Lightning Storm's case) because of their downright abhorrent inefficiency, and for less quantitative reasons too: they root you in place and take a long time to build up to cast, depriving you of a key advantage that Destruction has as a ranged kill skill over Archery: mobility (at least until the Ranger perk gets involved) and making you highly vulnerable to melee people closing to http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SquishyWizard range. This aspect is what makes the Firestorm and Blizzard spells practically useless, since they do not have the projective reach of the Missile spells or Lightning Storm (which is kryptonite to dragons almost as badly as Dragonrend is simply because it's hitscan and far-reaching).

This should not be an insurmountable issue, the main thing probably is, how invasive should the fixes be?

Perks are easy, but there are already tons of perk overhauls (PerMa, Sperg, Ordinator just off the top of my head), do they go far enough to fix it? I'm using Ordinator right now, and while my stealthy Battlemage build is working ok in early-midgame (just hit 16), it defintiely feels like bathing the enemies in flame should be more effective than it is.

So how about scaling destruction with the base skill level? That has the potential to become super overpowered at high Destruction skill...but then again, thats kinda the point, right?

And should something be done to the spells themselves? Or are there mods that already do this? (actually not sure, I have Apocalypse installed but no other major magic changes)

@MadCat221 - The idea is to tweak spell damage so that the damage curves look more like the second chart than the first, by converting the "reduce magicka" perks into "increase damage" perks, and rebalancing base damage. If the boost is significant enough, it can match the damage gained through smithing, enchanting, and skill-based damage increases seen with melee and bows.

I'll probably keep damage:magicka ratios roughly constant across the spells, though I'd like to turn the "heavy missile" spells into high burst damage "sniper" spells. Their damage:magicka ratio will be lower, but they'll deal enough damage to take down a target in one or two shots, while the firebolt level spells will still be useful at high levels for fights requiring sustained DPS. I can't really mess with magicka regen rates without rebalancing magicka costs in all of the other spell trees, but I can lower destruction magicka costs enough to let you get through a battle, and maybe even kill a frost troll.

@Nephenee13 - It looks like Mysty's "Balanced Magic" does 90% of what I'm planning (though I'll only be looking at destruction, at least to start.) If I can work in stealth damage boosts, I will. It would make sense to heap a damage boost in with the Illusion tree's Quiet Casting perk.

I know that Ordinator has a perk that gives sneak attack damage to Destruction spells (in the Sneak tree, interestingly), so its definitely possible.

I'll be tracking this thread - because I definitely never get a very high-level mage. By the time a girl hits about 20 (from memory - haven't played one in a long time), she just doesn't have the killing ability a stealth archer has. So of course, the mage turns into a stealth archer at that point....

I've been doing hybrid classes, like two handed conjurers using destruction for ranged combat, but every time, the destruction ends up being almost completely discarded later in the game. Sneak attacks would help a lot, and none of the magic overhauls I've seen combine damage enchantments, perk overhauls, and sneak attacks, so there might be room for one more. Stealth archers border on broken when it comes to balance though.