I came to thinking back through the TES games, and how magic worked and was designed, and one of the key differences (though not the only difference) appeared to be built around how mana worked as a resource.
More specificaly to mind were the design differences between Morrowind and Oblivion.

Morrowind treated Mana like the health bar. A limited resource that could be depleated.
This lead to some interesting design considerations:

• Mana potions were more like health potions, valuable and life saving.
  
• More strategic/conservative spellcasting required
  
• Scroll creation was a key feature, required by serious casters to expand your options and limit mana use. These required resources and forward planning.
  
• Due to limitation on mana, spells were balanced with this in mind
  
• Early game difficulty for pure casters was higher
  
• Magicka absorbtion was a big plus, Atronach sign was a real caster option.

Mods were introduced by the community later that added mana regen to morrowind, but some saw this as harming game balance.

Oblivion took a page from the book of the mods that the community added to Morrowind and included a scaling regen on release.
Implications of this design decision were:

• Potions less necisary, treated more like boosters. Spell effect potions were less valuable also, often used as vendor trash by casters.
  
• More action oriented casting, high levels of willpower meant many spells could be recast over and over endlessly.
  
• Scroll creation was removed, likely deemed un-necisary with constant mana regen.
  
• Some high tier spells like invisibilty could effectively be on permanently. Utility spells were always available.
  
• early game dificulty for pure casters was quite low, fireball spam would kill early mobs easily.
  
• Magicka absorbtion was irrelevant, Atronach sign was gimp

My personal thoughts are that I miss some of the more slower paced strategy around the earlier system, but the freedom in the oblivion system was fun.
I would like to see a middle ground:
Somewhat slower natural regen, a return to scrolls as a resource to help manage mana, and a hardcoe mode that dramaticaly slowed natural mana regen so it took 5 minutes to refill an average mana pool from empty.

What does everyone else think?

Actually its Magicka, not Mana. But same thing really.


I think a balance would be good. Keep the system as is, but balance to avoid 'fireball spam' as you mention. Slower regen with stats and difficulty level effecting the rate.

Timed effect spells such as Invisibility/chameleon and various protect spells should drain magicka faster based on stats, spell strength and movement speed.

Early level spells should be more efficient and effective at low levels -to give mages an easier time early on-, but as skills increase the spells become obselete (The character believes such novice spells below them?). Thus encouraging you to move to the more effective, but also more draining abilities.

NPCs shouldn't be able to spam spells like they do. Magicka drain should be more noticable on characters other than the player character.

Bring back scrolls. Especially the unique ones that were useful early on. (Ordunsis unhinging for example). Make them common spells for the most part, but have rare high level, extremely expensive, powerful spells.

Prevent spell spamming by adding another factor. Perhaps spell use also exhausts the character. After all, funneling magic power through the body must take a toll.

A hardcoe mode would be good too.

I prefer the Oblivion style of magicka. IMO, the Morrowind style made mages quite frustrating and difficult to play compared to the other classes. However, if they may spells much more powerful, then the Morrowind style could help with balancing.

I voted for oblivion style regen. Playing as a pure mage in Morrowind, while not entirely possible, was definitely a chore :banghead: . I would like to see the regen slowed down a bit tho. At higher levels my high elf could gain his magicka back in the time it took to cast the next spell.

No they weren't. I have plenty of scrolls in Oblivion. Especially with the stronger spells, a scroll could be the difference between being just offensive/defensive, while you wait for your magicka to regen enough to cast the next powerful spell, or to be offensive and defensive in quick succession (or double defensive, or double offensive). Quite a few times I've needed to defer to scrolls to save my butt, or keep me from getting into a too-dangerous situation.

You left out spell absorption, a stable for Atronach characters.

Constant scaleable (willpower) regen + potions (Oblivion Style)

I NEVER use Atronach sign when playing Morrowind. It stunts your magicka so it'll never come back unless you have a potion or sleep. But I did like Oblivion's style of regen better.

scaleable like OB, but i would like to see it maybe half to 3/4 as fast as in OB

If I remember correctly, Oblivion regenerated your magicka in percentages, so having 100 magicka and 1000000 magicka regenerate would take exactly as long, correct me if i'm wrong!
If this is the case, it should be removed. Having magicka regenerate points per second instead of percentages per second would be much better. Rather slow too, as spells can be a bit over powered (yes i'm looking at you illusion).

i liked oblivions mana regeneration. enough said

Yeah, regen should definitely be slowed down a bit...

I must have done something wrong with Oblivion because it always seemed to me that foes had way more HP than I could reliably take down with spells. I probably just didn't learn the tricks needed to play as a caster. It's weird for me to see people advocate slower regeneration.

I think it really depends on how the rest of the game is structured. Sure MW's limited Magicka regen could be a problem, sure things were hard early game but:

1) in MW it mattered little if you spent an extra 2 or 3 (4, 5 or 6) levels killing Mudcrabs while 'practising' your skills.
2) MW enchantment was far more flexible + 13 clothing slots to accommodate these enchantments = many ways to play the game.
3) MW alchemy was way, way, way more scalable and powerful. Some abused this then complained, I tinkered to find the correct balance for a given char = many ways to play the game.
4) Scrolls

Magicka regen is a good idea, but it should regenerate over minutes not seconds, maybe not at all during combat?

Well what i ment was the ability to CREATE scrolls was removed. scrolls that you find have little impact on gameplay for mages, they were often weak and limited. in MW a pure caster could harvest soulgems for the use of creating a stock of staple offensive scrolls so that you had fireballs aplenty without the need for mana.

Regeneration of dependant upon the Willpower attribute, Oblivion style. Going back to Morrowind after playing a mage in Oblivion was a real hassle; had to install a mod to make it workable for me.

Stacking weakness spells was the key

If you did it right it didn't take much magicka to do and was highly effective against damn near everything (except one mage in the arena who had 100% magicka resistance)

The thing about it was is that you could even use this same weakness stacking effect on weapons so if you used magick and a weapon with the weakness effects on it then you could take down many enemies fairly quickly with a one two blow.

Even if magicka regeneration was slowed or even completely halted if you used your spells and enchanted weapons correctly you were able to do a massive amount of damage in battle.

That being said it's more the stacking effects that need to be addressed (or for me not to exploit it but let's face it, so long as it's there I'm using it) because I didn't have to worry too much about my magicka regenerating because I also had a weapon to rely upon.

I never realy bothered with stacking to the point many did, even without the application of resistance debuffs, in oblivion it was very easy as a mage.

Drain health max effect for 1 second could halve or quarter a health pool, combined with a decent elemental attack that the enemy was weak against allowed for many 1-shot kills in the mid levels, or finishing blows in high levels.
End-game mobs were cake with a spell that combined a high grade dot with a small hot and invis for the duration. You could safely wear down any non-caster mobs while being invisible.
For a healing caster just spam absorb magicka with a small dot and laugh at them.

These kinds of tactics could be played in Morrowind, but they were not spamable unless you had prepared a pile of potions or scrolls. In oblivion, any hybrid or pure mage could spam away indefinately. I would argue that while it did add a faster pace to magic play, it also made mages feel less tactical and much easier than a pure warrior or thief.

Well, not only did Morrowind have non-regenerating magicka, but it also had it so that spells had a chance to fail, and at lower levels they almost always failed. These things combined made trying to be use spells far too much of a hassle for me to even bother with. But constantly regenerating magicka in Oblivion made things a bit too easy for my tastes. I think I would like it if Skyrim had non-regenerating magicka, but didn't have the dice-roll spell system Morrowind had. I want the challenge of only having a limited amount of magicka, without the hassle of wasting it on failed spell after failed spell after failed spell.

I think a system similar to Dragon Age's would be nice. In battle, your magicka either does not regenerate or regenerates very slowly, but outside of battle it goes up quickly. This would give potions much more value in battle, but you can at least heal yourself when you are not fighting. Some might say that makes sleeping worthless, but then again, having any kind of constant regeneration makes sleeping worthless.

Or.... maybe, just maybe we could be given the option of having magicka regeneration or not through a settings menu.

I like it the way supreme magica does it by reducing your regeneration during combat.
But if the regeneration was tied to your eating/sleeping habits it would be cool.

I agree with this. But still have something to say. The Morrowind system svcked hard!

I like a slow magicka regen. It's a nice middle ground between having to sleep after every battle and the ridiculous spell spamming. As for scrolls, I don't think they should have been removed, but if they're going to be included then they need to be WEAK, not Uber Fireball Doom 1-hit-kills or InstaHeal 9000.

I liked Oblivion's style more, it kept combat more dynamic.


And I don't mind to have perfectly balanced magic system. I would actually like to see magic little overpowered. It is single player game after all. Who cares
if stuff is not perfectly balanced.

I always used magicka regen in Morrowind, but I don't think fast regen is good.
Spell use should always come at a cost, and if magicka comes too fast then spell use is free, and becomes broken.
Very slow regen is the way to go, IMO. So that you feel the constraints of the max magicka and the affects of smart usage of spells. Draining your magicka on one fight should leave you vulnerable.
Regen is more of a convenience factor so that you can survive as a mage over long periods. However, natural regen should never be a factor during a single battle.