Overpowered is just another word for awesome. When someone puts 100+ hours into this game, their character should be awesome. :stare:

the only power I want to see in magic is the power IN COMBAT and chameleon spells svcked bad cause it could never be balanced right

and as for lock picking I would love for some doors and chests to have MAGIC protection and only a high level thief can pick them.

so what i want my mage to do is destroy freeze and burn everything in sight as long as he has mana BUT never with overpowered abilities, the game should always have a challenge.

This would be an issue if the game really didn't allow high level warriors or thief/assasin types to survive in the game. If the only way to completel quests was by becoming a competent mage, then your comment would be valid.

As it is, that is not and has never been the case. The complaint here is that, at higher levels, wizards have more powers and capabilities than warriors, but this doesn't affect the gameplay for a player. It gets back to what I said earlier, for many who are complaining, the major problem they are having is the psychological strain of knowing that there are ways to create characters who are more powerful than theirs. . . but as long as those characters are not NPCs whom you have to fight, and are not going to come charging into your game for a PVP death match and turn you into a toasted bagel, what the hell does it matter?

No, I'm sorry, half of what you said is just BS. You did not have to be a battlemage to be a great theif or warrior. What you mean to say, but won't is that in order to be the most powerful type character the game offered, you had to be a battlemage. You could be a powerful mage and be toast in battles if your only mastery was over illusion and mysticism. It is all in how you chose to play.

Some people are more interesteed in being the most powerful possible mortal alive than they are about playing a certain character type. When being the most powerful imaginible character means playing outside of their preffered role, they start crying.

What you are essentially advocating is that ES make being a mage have fewer options and be ultimately less fullfilling, in order to make other playstyles more valuable.

ES developers have said ad infinitum that their desire is to allow players to role play characters AS THEY DESIRE, to be able to create the ultimate mage, thief or warrior, combination thereof, or to play as a limited figure of minor abilities, AS THEY SEE FIT, in any combination or style that the gameplay and lore allow for.

Many of you are essentially suggesting that either the game should not allow players to become Master Warlocks. . .. or that even the most powerful Warlocks in Elder Scrolls should be severely limited and unexeptional figures. Forget about Albus Dumbledore, or Gandalf or Raistlin, Allanon, Nightshade or Elminster. . . some of you seem to want to make sure that Ron Weasley or Neville Longbottom could completely pawn the most powerful Archmage that an Elder Scrolls game can offer.

As to limiting how many schools can be mastered. . . WHY? Are we to believe that it would be absolutely impossible for even the most brilliant mage to master more than one or two schools of magic? Morian Zenas was a master of ALL the schools, including schools not even available in the games. If a player wants to be a master o Alteration only, that is fine. It can be done, and players have done it. However, if you want to be an Archmage who feels completely worthy of the title, knowing you have mastered all the schools of magic taught in your organization, there is no reason a player who dedicates time and effort to that end should be unable to do exactly that. Funny thing, I don't hear anyone here saying that warriors should only be able to master blade, blunt or marksman. If you are good with a short sword, should you have to be a clutz with a claymore? .

I start to suspect that some of the complainers in chief here are people who love playing as either warriors or thieves exclusively, but have friends, relatives or general acquaintances who like playing as mages, and at some point the complainers must have had their mage playing associates tell them about "my mage can do all that stuff. He'd totally pawn your battle champion", and now they have a grudge and want to find a way rain on the parade of spell casters.

For heaven's sake, PLAY YOUR GAME YOUR WAY AND LET EVERYONE ELSE PLAY THEIR WAY! Stop peering over other people's shoulders trying to make sure that they don't have a character who is more powerful than yours. You will enjoy your own game a lot more if you stop worrying about what other people can do with theirs.

The important thing to remember about my point is balance between the different combat system no matter if it's a single player game or not. If one of the play styles is off-balanced, it wouldn't be fair for players who favor that style. Just because a game does not feature pvp does not mean for developers to not care about properly balancing classes and etc.

The absolute most powerful figures in TES Lore/History, were Mages. Hell, take a look at Zurin Arctus. The Numidium was a giant war golem that Tiber Septim used to conquer the other provinces, but Zurin Arctus was able to single handedly blow it to pieces, when ENTIRE ARMIES couldn't even scratch it.

Magic is suppose to be powerful, it fits the lore and style. And there would always be powerful melee artifacts that u could get to rival the strongest spells like trueflame.

Who uses 100 fire damage for 10 sec?

More like this...

* Soul Trap for 1 second
* Drain Health 100 pts for 1 second
* Absorb Health 3 pts for 1 second
* Frost Damage 3 pts for 1 second
* Weakness to Poison 86% for 1 second
* Weakness to Frost 100% for 1 second
* Weakness to Magic 100% for 4 seconds


The weakness stacks btw....

I think a Magician should be far more powerful in combat and should be able to use spells that help them traverse the countryside. The problem with magic (especially in Oblivion) was that it was easily exploitable. It wasn't overpowered, it was just poorly balanced.

I believe that Magic users should be 'gifted" characters, and as such magic should be quite powerful in many senses. Magic should be something that people are gifted with, and utilize it as such... it shouldn't be some bland "second option," why the heck would anybody choose to spend time practicing magic when any tom dike or harry could pick up a warhammer and do far more damage. That was the problem with Magic in daggerfall and morrowind. While in theory it may be "powerful" it was just way easier to get a massive sword or axe and bash people to pudding; at least from the combat point of view. And the magic in oblivion was just icnredibly boring to use, in my opinion.

There is balancing, and then there is combing over character types and tuning them with Obsessive Compelsive attention to detail to ensure that each one is essentially little more than a different skin and animation for the others.

Two things about ES, because no one is ever forced to play as a pure character, there really is no such thing as something a warrior can do that a mage cannot or vice versa, because a player can always choose to expand there skills.

It comes down, then, to playstyle of prefference. Some people might not want to ever use a spell, and some might not ever want to use a sword. Some might prefer the Conan type warrior, to the Melnibonean warrior-sorcerers like Elric. Perhaps the pure warrior should have a "smash open lock" option. . . but then, there are quests that allow for skeleton keys, so even in that regard there are ways for any player type to be as effective at lock opening as a warlock who has mastered alteration and can open very hard locks.


When it comes to things like invisibility and charm, resistance to fire and other elements, warriors and theives can use enchanted items. As I mentioned before, Bilbo is not a wizard by any stretch of the imagination, but the invisibilty he gets from putting on that enchanted ring is as effective as any invisibility that Gandalf or a Dumbledore manage through their wizardic arts. Likewise, a mage, through restoration and shield spells, makes up for not being a living tank like some warriors become.

For the most part, if you REALLY consider all of the vast options and features the games have allowed and offered, there really are ways for most play styles to accomplish things more readily associated with other character types, without sacrificing the players mode of prefference.

There is absolutely no justification to essentially neuter mages, or any other character type, just so that people who favour a different character style can feel more special.

And for the person who said, "what about console players who can't mod stuff out?" You don't have to mod anything out. You can simply opt not to use certain features. It is really easy to do. If you want to play a pure warrior and not use invisibility spells, don't go the the mages guild and don't start training up on illusion. Simple. But the issue you raise about console players is a good one, but I wonder if you have thought about it as it applies to people who are interested in different playingstyles than the one you like. If mages really were forcibly handicapped the way you suggest, what would players who really love playing powerful mages do in order to achieve that? Console users don't have the "supreme magicka" option. Just how many conditions would you FORCE on other players, just so that you don't have to be bothered with using any restraint in which OPTIONS you CHOOSE to utilize?

This right here above me, is the crux of the solution, im surprised there is a debate like this going on...but then again I shouldnt be lol

I wonder how many of the people who complain about overpowered mages ever played a pure mage at level 50?
Sure I could use invisibility all day, and if I made a damage spell combined with a weakness to magic effect I could kill things in 5 casts, but traditional spells (100 pts fire damage) couldn't kill anything on a moderate difficulty setting.

You could do some amazing exploits, but thats not because magic was overpowered. Magic was infact severely underpowered to the point where it forces you to use those exploits. I hated having to go invisible after hitting an enemy with a 65pts dmg for 30 seconds spell in order to kill anything. The only thing that was easy to kill at level 50 was mannimarco.

Magicka was most definitely NOT overpowered in Oblivion. The spells hardly did any damage to your average creature. Forget about trying to kill something with a lot of health. Magic is supposed to be a viable alternative to melee combat, not something you just have to use when you get a few breaks in the fighting. It was most certainly NOT something you could use to kill big creatures with, and it most certainly DOES need to be buffed up in Skyrim.

That's what I've been saying but some people here swear that magic in Oblivion was "balanced". Then you have those few who try to sound smart by saying things such as "it's only a single player game, there's no pvp so people whining about magic being underpowered need to stop complaining". Magic became more balanced and was actually worthwhile to play as a pure mage in Oblivion because of mods such Fearsome Magicka, Supreme Magicka, and Midas. I sure hope Skyrim's magic system will be much better than Oblivion's.

I agree. I played Oblivion both on the 360 and much later on the PC and I had tons dozens of mods running on it including (I think it was called) FFM or whatever the big mod was that combined the four major world overhauls. My favorites were the magic mods though. Some made it too powerful I though, but there were one or two (and I loved Midas Magic) that really made the magic feel effective. Then my hard drive crashed and I lost the game and all my mods and couldn't bring myself to all the work it took to get those dozens of mods working together again so I decided to just wait for the next one. Bethesda listens to the community for sure, I just hope they're listening more to the ones who say magic needs more kick than the ones who say it doesn't.

Lavahawk, if you haven't already, you really should try out the mods Fearsome Magicka, Supreme Magicka, and StarX Vampires. These mods combined really made magic at higher levels forces to be reckoned with. You won't see low level enemies casting the powerful new spells the mods offer though. Fearsome Magicka adds a few really cool spells into Oblivion from which I believe has influenced the creation of some of the spells I've seen in the Skyrim trailer. However, the many vampires are especially and frighteningly difficult with these mods enabled... Vampires can detect your invisibility if your level is too low and they render it useless... and I literally mean useless because you won't be able to use it while they're still alive and are nearby you. What's more? Powerful and high leveled vampires know spells that can knock your character around like a rag doll. Now this is how vampires should have been in Oblivion.

Magic should clearly be powerful. It's magic. What's the use if some brute swinging around an axe is just as crafty? It's a different style of play. Nothing stops a stealth character from also using illusion magic either. Mine did.

Funny I thought the magic in Oblivion was a fast improvement over the way they did in Morrowind. Granted it was missing some fan favs like levitation and teleportation, but destruction magic was far more practical to use, it didn't have the overly long charge up time that it had in Morrowind. Which, to take a page out of Yahtzee's book, could be a problem when monsters are trying to rush you to hump your face off.

That said I don't think that the magic was that overpowered, in my experience warrior skills still trumped magic skills, the reason? Because you could still swing a sword more often then you could cast a spell, even with the fatigue mechanic and realtime regenerating mana. And that's important when you playing a single party member or having to deal with lousy AI allies you can't control.

I currently have a nord warrior/mage character that replaced my Altmer Mage/Warrior, simply because I found that the nord was having an easy go of it with higher combat skills even if she couldn't cast spells as often.

The only time I've seen a possible reversal was when I was playing Daggerfall, as my Battlemage could spam absurdly powerful spells by the end of the game.

Meh.

Invisibility - Wtf ?!? That spell is fine. Only opponents need a chance to HEAR you and to dispel the Invis with counterspells.

Chameleon - Cham 99 does nothing, Cham 100 is perfect invis - theres something wrong about this effect.

Charm - Spell is fine.

Paralyze - Shouldnt cause people to fall over, just freeze them in place

Open Lock: Spell is perfectly fine. IMHO a lock should be
- lockpicked by the thief
- forced by the warrior
- unlocked through spell by the mage

Also:

All opponents should have saving chances against all spells (including damage)

Many opponents should have effects like magic resistance, spell reflection, or absorbtion.

Practical or easy?

Does it matter, so long as he enjoyed his game?

In Oblivion, the only time you were really overpowered . .. is when you SHOULD have been. And even then it was damned hard to bring down a Goblin Warlord and the like, which was ridiculous.

At level 25, you should be overwhelming to the average enemy, and a match for most. At level 30-35, you should be overwhelming to most enemies, and a match for virtually any. At levels 35 - 50, you should indeed be a virtual demigod, and only gatherings of strong/powerful opponents, or individual fights with the most dreadful and rare foes in the game should pose a real threat to you. And even in most of those, you should still have the advantage.

If in becoming a master wizard, the only thing in the game you become more powerful than are the weaker enemies and your former self, then you really haven't accomplished much.

I have no problem with any of those spells, because then I wouldn't be able to play a thief at all... Illusion compliments, not replaces, stealth.

Invisibility: Enemies can still hear you. Hopefully, it's not as overpowered this time around, with the improvements in AI. Useful for when you really, really need to get through somewhere without being noticed.

Chameleon: This spell is either worthless or game-breaking because of the way the game handles it... At low %, it's worthless. At high %, it's a game breaker. Hopefully it will be more dynamic this time around (Invisibility decreases with movement, and combat should practically break it before fading out again). It's a good concept, but it's poorly implemented and it could draw from places that have done it far better.

Open Lock: How the heck is a spell that requires 100 Alteration to do what a single lockpick can do with 5 Security a game-breaker :huh:

Oblivion was never balanced for pure archetype characters. The best is always a mix. Although why anyone would complain about magicka regeneration for mages when you could have 4-5 magicka restoration potions rolling to give you virtually infinite magicka for a minute is beyond me. People who say warriors were OP on the hardest difficulty.... seriously? Without using alchemy and magic I would break 2 weapons while killing a creature (especially at high levels). My magic users never had any such issues, especially since conjured minions and charmed ones did not suffer from the damage penalties imposed on the protagonist. Thieves were the worst until they hit 100 sneak... then they could repeatedly attack them without retaliation and the attacks would bypass the damage penalty imposed by the difficulty.

Magic in Oblivion (which included alchemy) was just way too useful for any character to not use it... unless you are role-playing a complete mentally handicapped person who never heard of or seen magic throughout the entire game.

leave it alone man.... they already took out enough.

Frankly, I always thought that if people used something like paralyze in 10 ft for 1-5 seconds constantly they'd simply get bored and stop. But hey, if they don't more power to them. Games like these are meant to let players play how they want, if player are limited them that seems rather counter-intuitive.

I do agree that magic -can- be the most powerful of all the specializations (Combat, magic, stealth), but if a person likes being strong as heck then good for them.
I've learned that trying to make someone adopt your opinion doesn't really work well most of the time; the best you can do is go by your own code and let things play out naturally...that's my take anyway.