Well, I was thinking, wouldn't it be cool if we got some more elements to use in our spells instead of just fire, ice and lighting?
I know that those 3 are classical mage elements, but some people like me would like to make more druid-like spellcasters.
So, wouldn't it be cool if we had wind, water, earth and plant magic?
Now, I don't know a lot about current magic system so I can't give lot of examples for spells, but here is something based on what I know.

Normal cast version:
- Plant: Wooden spikes will get out from casters hand witch will stab enemies in front of the caster (has limited range) and will return back to the caster. While enemies are impaled, they can't move or attacks, but also caster can't use the hand he used for the spell for that duration. Caster movement should be slowed a bit for the duration based on how many enemies he has impaled.
- Water: Will cast a bolt of water that will knock out enemy and will deal some damage.
- Wind: Casts a wind current that will rise single enemy unit into the air and will toss him into random direction (will take damage based on impact).
- Earth: Creates several rock in casters hand and will cast them as a shotgun blast.

Spray version:
- Plant: Same as normal version only it will cast wooden spikes from all over the caster body and will stab all enemies around him.
- Water: Will cast a stream of water that will try to wash away enemies in front of you. Best to use near water so you can wash your enemies in to the lake and drown them.
- Wind: Similar as water, only it rises them into the air and pushes them away from the caster while dealing damage upon the impact.
- Earth: Could create some sort of avalanche.

Rune version:
- Plant: Entangles enemies with wines that step on making them unable to move and will drain their fatigue (because of the struggle with the wines).
- Water: Makes a geyser on the location that will toss enemies into air and damage them (both water impact and fall).
- Wind: Creates a tornado that will rise enemies into the air and will toss them around (deals damage only when they make an impact with objects).
- Earth: Will create an earthquake that will rise rock and earth witch will make enemies movement hard.

In case all of these elements can't be implemented for some reason, here is a version of a single nature type spell that will cast a certain of elements above based on how it's cast.
Speciality of this branch of spell is mainly disable, dislocating enemies and fatigue drain, but will deal much less damage than fire, frost and shock spells.

Nature:
- Normal: Will cast a bolt of water that will knock out enemy and will deal some damage to health and fatigue.
- Spray: Will create an avalanche that will deal some damage to enemies, but will also push them back and will drain some fatigue.
- Rune: Entangles enemies with wines that step on making them unable to move and will drain their fatigue (because of the struggle with the wines).
- Area (suggested): Creates a tornado on the location that will rise enemies into the air and will smack them around (deals damage to enemies if impact with objects if strong enough) and will drain some fatigue.

OK, these are ideas I came up with on the spot.
Anyway, tell me what do you think about them.


Here is also idea on mixing some spells from two hands to gain new effects in case ideas above are not that good.

Fire + Frost = Water
Gives you an ability to cast tidal waves, water streams, geyser and such.
Trademark of this would be disable (this is aspect from frost; even though it doesn't freeze them, it will disable them by knocking them out and tossing them around) and would deal great damage (this is aspect of fire; the damage would be greater compared to that of it's components)

Fire + Shock = Light
Would allow you to cast spells of pure light and use them to scorch your enemies, health, magicka (and maybe even fatigue) and would burn them by great bunch.
This is because of the two great damaging spells are joined together.

Frost + Shock = Poison
You could create clouds of poison with this spell witch would deal damage overtime, but would deal damage to both fatique and health, while also slowing the affected enemies.
Slow and damage to HP are aspects of frost and further improving damage is aspect of shock.
Fatigue damage is also aspect of shock, but changed from magicka to fatigue so there is some difference between light element and poison element and therefore giving it more options to use your spells.


Now, for the second part of the thread.
Wouldn't it be cool if we could have more way of using all the elements we have.
For example, if we had area type of casting spells where you cold cast a rain of fire or a blizzard, or maybe even a lighting storm on the location of the caster.


Anyway, tell me what do you think of these ideas and tell me some of yours.

I'd love to have more variety of spells providing they actually do different things, and aren't just variations on a theme. Take damage dealing spells as an example, TES lets you do damage to health directly and has a few elemental varieties as well, with enemies sometimes having differing elemental resistances. I don't see a need to have more variations of direct damage like this, there are countless different ways you could do this but if the end effect is the same I don't think it really adds much - and if enemies need to have a dozen different resistances I think that would be needlessly complicated.

If a new spell effect adds something actually new, and isn't just a visual change, I think that's great. Otherwise . . . well the differences may be cool but I question if they add much beyond an initial wow factor.

My own personal taste on how Magic should be implemented is probably a lot different than how others view it. If it was up to me I would revamp the whole system to work a bit differently than it currently does.

"Magic" would have a core value that gets manipulated much like "The Force" in Star Wars. A mage would be born with the ability to manipulate tangible physical properties at will. The core value would start out small being able to do things like Telekinesis (moving objects with ones mind). It would progress into making something hotter or colder. A young mage would need to focus his abilities on a small single location to even start a fire or to make something visibly cold.

Greater mages would be able to manipulate the temperature of their surroundings to a much greater degree causing fires or even throwing a fireball. The energy it would take to produce these effects would come from living things around him, or a sort of "life force". Energy can be taken from living plants (so if mage were to cast a large fire spell at somebody else the plants in his immediate area might start to die in real time), this energy can be taken and stored up within oneself if necessary.

Having an "Earth" elemental to me sounds like a mage would need to take a chunk out of the ground with his mind and hurl it at someone. Or, a more advanced technique would be to use some of his stored life force power and put it into a plant to manipulate how it works and making it grow or even changing its properties to grow into some other specie (think of the moving vine that followed you in Diablo 2's Druid).

Wind elements would be the easiest property to control, with water close behind. The natural fluidity of these elements make for great barriers. Perhaps mixing these two up into mists to confuse the enemy as to where he is or where to go, since they can't see.

Lightening would be on the more arcane side of things and would be risky and deadly, difficult to control and unwieldy. Lightening would often hit multiple enemies. I would think this spell to be advanced too (at the risk the lesser mage who has less "control" could die by his own device).

Using telekinesis to stop things in mid flight with your mind, or "pushing" time and space in front of you to slow something down that is coming towards you.

Anyways these are my thoughts on more spell effects. I am not as interested in having "more" without a better explained magic system as they have it. In my mind the power of a mage should be the power of control using a single value, and that power of control moves naturally into areas like temperature or manipulating real objects.

Manifesting large amounts of energy should also have a source, to me I don't like seeing a mage create large objects or a lot of power without any discernible source.

Water: You can drown them the lake or stream and then freeze the top of the lake/stream and they die.
:celebration:
Wind: Creaye wind blades that can dismember your enemies or blast holes in your enemy. :foodndrink:

Wind: Suffocation: svck the wind right out of their lungs to slowly suffocate them from afar, a bit like force choke for wind users. Also send wind into their lungs to burst them open.

Water would be good for restoration properties and helps in drainign and sapping fluids from the enemy.

The source of magicka is the Sun and stars. They are actually holes in the Mundus, leading the the Aetherius (the realm of pure potential: magicka). These holes were made when Arkay left halfway through the making of the Mundus (the Sun being where he exited).

Well that is a powerful source indeed. Stars have a considerable amount of power.

It would be nice to see something work like how I mentioned, taking energy from living things. It would be a "black art" to take energy from other intelligent creatures or something like that. There are a lot of interesting possibilities and it could all tie into the idea that you can trap a soul too.

Don't know if there will be more elements but I know there will be much more uses of spells.
I think the way that Todd explained it is that the spells start off as just elements, such as fire. Once there, you use perks to decide how you want your spell to do.
For example, you could give your fire spells a perk that make a wall of fire or something.

I like the idea of options.

There is only four elements in Mundus. Earth, Water, Air and Light. Fire is a weak and corrupt form of light but is recognized by modern mages as one of the elements even though the Ayleids know that light is the true element. So there really isn't any new "elements" that could be added to magic. We can have different spell effects but there aren't more elements.



Actually, the stars were made by the lesser etada who fled to Aetherius following Magnus, who fled and ripped a huge whole in Oblivion which is now the sun. The stars are smaller holes in Oblivion from the retreating etada. Arkay and the other divines are somewhat bound to Nirn and lost their divinity in creating it.

Yeah, but even if difference is purely visual (even though ti would be perfect if they had their own actual purpose), it would still make it cool since you will be able to get into your character more.
For example, lets say that wind and fire magic do exact same thing, but I don't like fire magic and love wind magic, I can use wind spells and enjoy them to the fullest.
About resistances, you are right, too many resistances would make things only too complicated, but adding one or two more resistance or making some sort of different resistance types that will fit all elements into current number resistance types could do the trick.
Some spells could even deal physical damage for example since knocking enemies into objects with wind magic would actually fit physical damage better.



By new elements I mean elements that are not used in current magic system.