With everything we have been seeing with the new spell system, I am getting the impression that damaging spells will only be in elelmental forms now. It seems like there is a fire/frost/shock version of a flamethrower, trap, and fireball like spells.


My guess is absorb/damage/drain skill/attribute spells have been removed, since there are only 85 spells and absorb/drain skill spells would ocupy up to much of the 18 spells. Similarly it would at least seem that damage/drain attribute spells would be removed, since now elemental spells have the same effect (shock damages magicka, frost damages fatigue, and fire does extra health damage).


But that still leaves room for absorb health/magicka/fatigue spells, allthough I have my doubts, and it doesnt appear that touch spells exist anymore.

Well disintegrate armor and weapon are gone, so who knows.

We don't know what they mean by 85 Spells, maybe "Drain Skill" is just one of them rather than X different spells.

And while I believe that Drain Health/Magicka still exists, it doesn't need to be "In Touch" anymore.

Yeah it really depends on how they count a spell. Did they really mean spell effect and not spell? It is possible, but I doubt it. I really think the game is going to be short on spells, with tons of spells re-flavored 5 times into a trap or a stream, or a area attack etc each one a separate spell. All of which is cool until you realize that you lost a ton of cool spell effects when you got 23 different ways to burn someone. Now only if they had a system where you could learn a basic effect and then make your own spells with those effects, so you could run up the tab on how many fire spells there were in the game on your own. They could call it spell crafting or spell customization, or spell making or something, it would be really cool and revolutionary. :wink_smile:

Can someone tell me a useful way they actually used absorb attribute/skills ? They never seemed to work anyway or do what one would hope they would do. For example I remember enchanting my blade with absorb blade skill and I had like 48 blade skill at the time. I absorbed it and it was over 50 but it did not give me journeyman perks, so it seemed pretty useless?

Absorb health was the only one I ever found useful. What else was a good tactic? I'm referring to Oblivion.

Lots of ways. While it didnt give the perks, it dd give the statistical derivatives, and even more important, took them away from the enemy. Absorb was a good way to truly encumber your enemy, since the Alteration spell was so weak. Good way to mess with mages, or anything, also just ways to interact and manipulate AI etc.

Yeah it was more about taking their skill away than raising your skill. Bandit X charges you with an ax, well damn I could cast a shield spell or I could debuff his blunt skill so he does not kill me in one hit. I found it fun at least.

Absorb skill spells were useless unless through the spellmaking altar perhpas, much like many of the default Oblivion spells (such as burden). Absorb health/fatigue/magicka were usefull however. Absorb fatigue+hand to hand = quick knockouts.


I think here are only 85 spells period, not spell types or whatever. My guess is this is actually a good thing, provided the damage/effects of these spells scale with both level and skill in the respective school. Bethesda makes great games, and patches bugs, but unfortuneately they dont consider absolutely and completely worthless Vanilla Oblivion spells (like burden, which had ZERO effect on NPCs) a bug, and those they never fixed them via a patch.


The signifigance of losing the absorb/damage/drain spells means that in skyrim all magic damage will be elemental based. This isnt such a bad thing, it is just a interesting change.

Yeah it isn't game breakingly bad for all damage to be elemental if it is so, but I know I really liked pure magic damage attacks and absorb spells even absorb skill spells.

Also, while absorb was more costly than drain, or damage, its available at novice level for restoration users.

I think what they've done is take a step in that direction...which is the right direction. Perhaps not for this installment, but the next one could possibly have better and more unique spell combos. Use circle of protection couple with fire to create a fire-infused circle of protection around you that drives away enemies but burns them if they are inside the circle and try to leave it. OR use lightning plus summon frost atronoch to summon a frost atronoch that not only causes frost damage to drain the enemies stamina but also causes lightning damage to drain their magicka as well, on top of the physical damage taking away the enemy's health. Like I said, too complicated for Skyrim but a very good possibility for TES VI on next gen consoles. I'm a console gamer but that's not why I don't mention PC. It's because I don't worry too much about PC being able handle what the consoles can.

While spell combining on the fly is a kind of cool idea and fits some types of magic systems it is not that important to me. I'm more of a 2e D&D guy where the wizard spends 80,000GP putting together a library, another 20,000GP getting research tools together, then spends a crap ton more money and time designing a new spell. More inventor than a cool trick you put together on the fly like a super hero. Even without combining spells being possible under spell creation I want spell creation. I want to be able to have a feather spell that handles a small weight, but for a super long time, a feather spell that handles a huge weight but only for a short time, a version that can be cast on companions a version that effects everyone within X distance of me etc. I want to be able to name these spells as if my character invented them. When the spells are premade 85-100 or whatever it ends up being sounds depressingly small once I see how much is lost to various summon spells, or different versions of a fire spell which still don't do what I want etc. 85 spells just wont cover the variables I want to cover even assuming all spells are single effect spells.

Say wha? Got a link? O.o

If there's no degradation (no more repair), how could there be a way to degrade weapons and armor magically?

Improbably that (Armor Degradation Spell) is in. But could be, all the "degraded" items would be broken forever trough.

Well, there may be a spell that simply disintegrates weapons?

poison is the 4th magical element of nirn ! and 5th is flesh atronach

bizare because i can think up 9 unique magical elements and a new school of magic to replace mysticism with transmutation ^ ^

Yeah it would either be all or nothing. Im figuring its nothing. Which is another step in the wrong direction.

It could lower the damage of the weapon or defence of the armor, instead of breaking them~ like a temporary curse on the said weapon/armor ect~

You make a valid point. Let's hope that both spell crafting and spell combos make it into the next game. If it's based around the Altmer, perhaps they will focus even more on magic.

EDIT: Forum-wide comment --- See what ahglock and I did there? Civilized discussion about our differing opinions. Try it...it was easy!!!

Which wouldnt be a "disintegrate armor/weapon " spell then. It would be a "weaken weapon stats" spell.

You mean like a drain, where it lasts for X time then the sword/armor reverts back to normal? Possible I guess, but I suspect it is just out.

Pretty much~ many spells have been changed with how they work it seems~


Yup! And yeah, i didnt know that armor and weapons dont degrade anymore.... *which is super dumb if true, have yet to see any official responce though* so they probably did remove it...

Well I never understood the concept of an own school of Destruction. Elemental magic feels much more appropriate (for bad and good), whereas disintegrate spells would go into alteration (Matter/Physical magic, for good and bad), and drains (whichever are left) go into Restoration (Body magic, for good and bad). Mysticism would be the center of all magic, kind of magic pre school, which share some of the weaker spells of the schools. Daggerfall had some of this sharing, which made sense - not sure what happened.

Maybe when we change to different continent (or world), the lore could be changed to something better suited. The current one are to me, often plain weird and doesn't make much sense. In my understanding of "magic", which is adopted from various dice RPGs and TES, is Mysticism as pre-school, with Restoration/Body Magic, Alteration/Physical Magic, Illusion/Mind Magic, Conjuration Magic, and Elemental Magic around, with a special Divine Magic surrounding this star. Mix in chinese philosophical elements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Xing and add in Japanese Kū (aka Void/Ether/Mysticicm placeholder), with the Divine surrounding, and we have a 7 part esotericism. Pretty fitting

Oh well, somebody pull me out of my philosophical corner

Yea, I know what you mean. A lot of the magic spells tend to overlap. Interestingly enough, there was a gamebook that mentioned Destruction being a redundant school of Alteration. http://www.imperial-library.info/content/morrowind-response-beros-speech

I suppose the in-game explanation of the Destruction School is that the magick has become a science of its own. Yes, it alters reality and nature's elements, but because of the Tamriel's violent past, there have been many applications and curses and techniques. So many spells and famous battlemages that the destruction school deserves its own little chapter in a history book. That book probably gives a better argument than I can.

Then again, yea, I can definitely see lore changing from game to game. Just how there's no "mysticism" in Skyrim, I'd handwave it as the Nord's dislike for the arcane. Very elven. If the next game was ... like ... Summurset, I wouldn't be surprised if Destruction got broken down into something like ... schools of curses and elements. (lol names)