Illusion is the strongest school of the five when fully peaked. The master level spells are a joke. But the expert level ones when dual casted, will affect, in a small radius, almost any creature or NPC.

The very small and exhaustive list of unaffected creature or NPC are:
1. Dragons (including Alduin)
2. Graybeards
3. Children

My experiments with summoning hordes of various monsters, in master difficulty, to challenge my min-maxed dual-wield smith-enchant-alchemy Breton has lead me to the conclusion that fighting 50 ebony bow wielding drauger death overlords would be extremely difficult or mayhaps impossible without illusion spells.

At least you can create your own spells in epic level D&D :laugh:
And just having meta magic already expands the default list.

Just because it's powerful doesn't mean it's well designed though.

They whinged about magic being too spreadsheety, and then they design an entire magic school so you really need to consult a spreadsheet to know whether its spells will work on anything. Much worse for immersion than spellmaking every was. Seeing the words "Bandit War Chief is too powerful for calm" pop up is one of the most lame experiences in the game.

I was really looking forward to role-playing a pure mage character, but I ended up playing as an axe-wielding spellsword due to monotonous mage gameplay. Spells had so much potential to be fun, but they really failed in my opinion. I still love magic too much to simply ignore it though...so I always have that nice little fire spell in my left hand.

It is a crap design. It is an on/off effect. Either they leveled past your spells and it is pointless or you perked enough to handle them and the fight is an instant win. At least save or die effects in D&D the on off part is determined by the individual cast and not before the fight even starts. The ES is in desperate need of a save style system so things like calm are not an instant win.

I don't think a saving throw system would be that much better. I think they should make some spells channeled, and to get the spell off on high level enemies you'd have to succeed in channeling a spell for longer without getting interrupted by taking damage. Perks could reduce channeling time per level of the enemy.

That way you start a channel, and you have an idea how long it's going to take you to calm an enemy before you waste a ton of magicka for a spell that may do absolutely nothing.

That might work as it would require some skill/chance on the players part. But I think save system especially when the target gets to continually try to break free of the effect with more saves every round work really well. I first saw it in champions/hero system with their mental powers but D&D 3.5/pathfinder does it as well and it seems to be a good curb on things like charm spells while still keeping them effective.

Indeed.

The approach City of Heroes took, which I thought worked well, was that you could stack crowd control effects on a target, and eventually if you reached over its resistance threshold, it would fall under the influence of the effect. So instead of having a binary on/off, higher level monsters would have higher thresholds and the duration wouldn't last as long, so you would need to pump the effect into them more to maintain the effect. Too late at this point, but IMO probably a better approach to crowd control than the way it is handled in most games.

That sounds like a pretty good system, similar concept to channeling.

Gradiated effects would have been nice. Casting terror on higher level oponents yields increasing effects per cast; 1st stage - caution ( is not in your face right away) 2nd stage - anxiety ( wont come near you, will only attack from range) 3rd stage - Fear (will disengage and try to escape) 4th Stage - Terror (becomes a gibbering wreck thats locked on the spot begging for mercy).

The difference is there is no skill gap in channeling. Having an application based system allows you to twist different effects on multiple targets if you have the skill for it.



How would you handle "Rage" or "Calm", or worse, if we ever see it in a DLC, a "Command" effect? How does something sort of become your minion?

There would be different strengths/weaknesses to either. Channeling would require more on the fly estimation - you'd have to make judgement calls on the likelihood of whether you can finish the channel before getting interrupted.
Twisting different effects on multiple targets would require more aim and multitasking, but get much easier once you get pacify(AoE).

I wouldnt add a command spell to the game, that imo would be a bit to powerful in many instances. However for rage/calm its two spells that I would defo keep seperate as you dont want to many fluctuations in the spell itself (ie rage>calm>rage again) with a single cast. Probably something like;


Rage;
level 1 - Loathing ( will target companions/summons before player ) level 2 - Fury (will attack NPC's/creatures on sight) level 3 - Beserk (Will attack anyone and anything on sight)

Calm;
Level 1 - Calm ( player may "sheath" to stop combat with this single enemy ) level 2 - Apeasemant (will stop attacking player/npc's and auto sheath weaponry - dialog options possible XX seconds ) level 3 tranquility (will not attack under any circumstance and will utter calming phrases - no dialog option in tranquil state XXX seconds)

Or something of that nature.

This argument really grinds my gears. This thread isn't even about destruction alone, but about master spells in general being lesser than expert, with the (likely) exception of conjuration and the possible exception of restoration. Standing still for 5secs to cast a 95sec armour buff, not to mention using half a magicka bar for it; standing still for 5secs to cast a damage spell that has less average damage and is less efficient than the expert spells, and only marginally superior damage to the lower tier AoE spells again, at much lower efficiency; and a slower casting version of calm/frenzy with a lower effective level cap than the dual cast expert versions!

This +1 is the point of this thread. Destruction is pretty decent using only Adept spells + attacking with weapons. Illusion is great Dual casting Expert spells. Master is asinine, utterly, to use. Also to note: Finding the Master illusion spells is near impossible without a video guide. All of that running around for Master spells and it's a lvl 32 cap.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

it's the lack of progression. the feeling of ultimate baddass in Obliv. was putting on normal clothing at the end game and well, being a badass. magic became more effective, you were encumbered less, and you were faster significantly as well as quiter than even light armor.

there's no reason to ever take off armor in skyrim. if you do all you accomplish is to halt your skill levelling in armor categories. you don't get more stealthy, magic doesn't become more powerful or more effecient, there's no reason to do it at all. If you've even put a couple points into either armor category, wearing armor simply provides more benefits with increased stamina regen/reduced stagger. The benefits of wearing clothes is literally nonexistant.

It just doesn't feel right or satisfying to play as a mage because there's nowhere to graduate to. Just like the laughably brief mage-guild questline the trek to master of destruction starts when you master enchanting, and ends about 10 game hours later when you get destruction to 100 and move on to other skills. I personally think restoration is an even bigger issue, because that just sits at 60 (the point that I get it trained to, where it remains unused). Wards svck, I've said it, i'll probably say it again despite myself and this post is already too long to start listing reasons.

Shoot - I also wanted to agree with the poster who said the game has an over-relience on 'stunlock', which I've never been a fan of in any game. Certain actions having a 100% stunlock rate is rediculous imo.

I don't even want to write about spellcreation. don't. even. want. to. If it's something that's gone to never return I will be immensely saddened. That feeling of finally mastering a school of magic, and returning to your enchanter to make that final, uber-version of the spell you've been practicing all game long... it's just not the same anymore. It might be the reason I didn't spend as much time with vanilla Skyrim as I did with Morrowind and Oblivion. It took a lot of the complexity of the game away for me 'OP' or not.

get the conjuration spell to a 100 and then go for the special quest that upgrades some of your spells and lets you buy stronger ones.- You can end up with two summon at one time that can take down dragons by them selves-