this is about as broad as i can make it. oblivion lacked consequences for your choices short of wholesale slaughtering of an entire guild it didnt matter who you joined cause everyone would take you and didnt care what your skills were. this was especially annoying with the mages guild and the thieves guild who both should have the resources to know if you the leader of the dark brotherhood. this has been covered ad nausuem but what i havent seen a specific poll on although its been mentioned in a couple of magic related threads was differing magic pathways.

i would like skill sets which precluded other skill sets. if you a necromancer you would get access to powerful necro spells but you wouldnt be able to use "good" or "light" spells such as healing or.......well light spells. a necromancer would instead have nightvision instead of light and leech instead of healing. its cliche but you get my point. this has been done in other games and frankly is more fun than the oblivion "have it all now" system.

I mentioned it to other threads myself, i agree completely, check the "magic the gathering" system how much advanced it is, if they would take atleast some elements from it, it would make things a lot more interesting, here s the page with the five colors http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Multiverse/Colors.aspx of course you cannot be all colors, because some colors oppose the others, black magic and white magic cannot go together for instance, but you have many variations of multiple combinations, like earth, water and black magic or fire, earth and white magic

If I have 100 destruction skill as a battle-mage, I should get the same spells as a mage with 100 destruction. The great thing about TES is freedom.

Edit: Also, I love your biased poll [/sarcasm]

And why can't I learn any spell? Do books or teachers of different subjects become the very embodiment of profane once I chose a career?

Apparently, Sean. If I'm a biologist, I can't learn a darn thing about physics.

doesnt it look weird when the anti-necromancy and anti-daedra mages guild is constantly summoning ......skeletons and daedra. one of the mods i used for oblivion replaced the spell lists for the various mages so that when i was going into a necromancers lair i was fighting actual necromancer summons. not atronachs and scamps all the time. they were actually necromancers. im not saying you have to seperate fire from frost just make them elemental mages versus holy mages versus necromancers. midas magic has some awesome holy spells such as spirit hammer and you could summon an angel warrior to fight for you. it actually made playing mages fun and you felt like you were part of an organization instead of just some random mage with every spell in the book.

The defining point of any career is the choice to pursue it, not the ability. Just because someone in the mages guild isn't a necromancer doesn't mean he doesn't know how to make your corpse dance.

Yeah but dude, my character Vedaa studies necromancy but her forte is Alteration, Illusion and Mysticism. That doesn't make her evil anymore than someone who studies Destruction or Restoration. And any spellcaster should be able to have access to any spell. The question is, is he or she proficient enough in the arcane to be able to cast it properly. Just like a "biologist" can study "physics" but that doesn't necessarily mean that he'll make a great physicist. So no, I disagree with your OP question.

Necromancy isn't evil. If I'm a necromancer, I shouldn't be insta-KoS by everyone.

It shouldn't be hard coded that if you use some spells you can't use others. But I could see different magic guilds with opposing philosophies. If you join one guild you may be denied entry into another which would prevent you from learning certain spells exclusive to that guild.

Edit: Now that I think of it, this was somewhat implemented in Oblivion, where the Dark Brotherhood had some pretty cool spells that you couldn't learn anywhere else. Of course since there was no penalty for joining the Dark Brotherhood...

that sounds good. you only get the best spells when you have proven yourself to that particular school.

no. i think there should be total freedom as far as spells inside major skills you chose. I can see some of this working if guilds give you a choice of 3 unique spells and you can only chose 1.

If you chose 7 magic school as your major skills you should be able to do anything with them. The downside is you won't have room for skills such as light armor, heavy armor, blocking, repair, sneak, etc.


However I do think there should be a bigger restriction on what you can do with minor skills and spells associated with them.

i cant agree witht his man. I think there should be some advantages based on class.shuld be able to be in almost every guild unless its a political faction like telvanni and redoran and wut not...

I honestly think it shouldn't matter. Also, I think joining factions should have consequences. Say a Nightblade in the Thieves' Guild only teaches fellow TG members certain spells and you're in the Fighters' Guild, you shouldn't be able ot learn them.

"Magic paths"? Aren't there already "schools of magic" that are basically the same thing? Other than that, I agree that guild membership and rank advancement restrictions should come back. MW had a good system where the guild member was actually required to be good to a certain level with guild related skills.

I can live with this.

Magic in TES doesn't have morality though, and isn't mutually exclusive. I don't see the point in throwing out years worth of magical versatility because other games never had such versatility.

Homogenizing TES won't help.

Since when was Elder Scrolls a class based RPG?

I completly agree with you. BUT you have freedom , and that means you don't have to use all of the spells and join all of the guilds. If I make a paladin character, I will use healing and fire spells, and nothing else. I will join the Knights of the Nine and Fighters Guild
(Maybe Mages Guild too, but for sure I won't join any evil guilds).
So roleplay a little , give yourself some restrictions.

No. Maybe make it harder to find people to teach you certain effects if you are not a certain class, but there's no reason one class can learn something and another class can't. Magic is not class based in ES. It is skill based. And even realistically, if magic were to exist, why would joining some faction make me unable to cast a spell. So I join the necromancers guild and what, some magical otherworldly force intrudes and stops me everytime I try to cast a light spell?

I think what would make sense is a penalty to levelling minor skills. So, you level up your majors at the normal rate, but it takes twice the amount of effort to level a minor skill at the equivalent level. (Note: there shouldn't be caps on minors, just they should be harder to advance)

The faction argument is a strange one. Being restricted by what faction you are in makes sense, but how to restrict yourself to certain factions in the first place? obviously two rivaling magic guilds/schools/colleges (Such as the college of whisperers, though the second guild i forget.) wouldnt let a person join each, either one or the other. Guilds like the Dark Brotherhood could involve quests to kill members of your own faction, which could end up in your leaving that faction. Or perhaps the speaker demands full dedication when you join the brotherhood, and that means you must leave your past life behind, including factions. Thieves guild not so much, they might encourage you to work at the mages guild or fighters guild. Good cover story.


:blink:


the idea i've always like for magic is restrications on skill gain, not restrictions on spell gain. For example: If we have two opposing schools of Magicka, say -- Destruction and restoration. If we pick both of these schools as major skills it should take twice aslong to level it up because they take opposite disciplines to control and create the spells, one is aggression, the other compassion. It's like when your so used to writing with your left hand, then you try with your right. It doesnt go quite to plan.

However, if you only pick Destruction as a major skill and restoration becomes a minnor skill, only restoration will take longer to level.

I also wouldnt mind lower level caps on minor skills. Like 50-75. I shouldnt be able to get a minor skill as powerful as a major skill.

To be honest I don't mind the way it is now. I already kind of naturally slip into certain specialties anyway. If I'm a fire Mage I limit myself to Fire based destruction, and Flame Atronachs. If I'm a Necromancer I stick to undead and dark clothing. You can already do as you describe, so why limit it?

Opposing factions should be implemented though. Powerful spells in certain schools could be limited to the upper echelons of certain factions. Much like you can't get every Power playing the Shivering Isles, you must choose Mania or Dementia throughout the plot.

Maybe so, but I think the poster was getting at the fact that as a Biologist, you'd probably have a good understanding of another science (physics), but no where close to your understanding of Biology...