I find it hard to see how you can stick with lore, when a whole school of magic just disappears :shrug: Does anybody have a reasonable explanation as to what happened to it? Even speculation would be appreciated

There were games before Morrowind, that is all.

Well as far as I have understood it, mysticism is not an actual magic school at all, in necromancy you use the art of mysticism, not the magic school of mysticism. However in past games it has been easily added as a magic school, but with the diminished amount of spell effects in mysticism, it's better to split it up into the actual schools of magic. My point of view of it though, from things I've randomly read about necromancy.

Mysticism was essentially the school of magic for stuff that...didn't fit anywhere else. It didn't make any sense, really. Conjuration lets you conjure things, Illusion lets you create illusions, Restoration restores things, Destruction destroys things, Alteration alters things.

What does mysticism let you do? Mystify people?

This explains it pretty well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtcMW3i6-gA

Cheers buddy, You were really helpful. :thumbsup:

Yes I do.
Mysticism isnt really removed as a school as such, it is preceived with a new understanding to be a fundament of all schools.
All schools of magic have roots in mysticism and mysticism isnt a school in itself as much as an underlying principle to wich all schools of magic adhere.

Thats why spells that used to be thought in the outdated sense as belonging to mysticism are now recognised as the foundations of the other schools, and are classed in the appropriate one.

No problem, but in all seriousness I have no idea why they chose to remove mysticism Thats Bethesda for you, one step forward two steps back. I guess the company doesn't think its possible to add things without removing others.

It is my understanding that the category "Mysticism" was dropped, and some of the skills in that category were moved to other magic categories.

From the Todd Howard http://theelderscrollsskyrim.com/bethesdas-todd-howard-podcast-interview/ at the 16:12 mark.

"So people see we’ve removed Mysticism, but that’s just a label right? Those spells go into other skills. And then it gets deeper within those skills."

Edit: Add - Most likely ninja'd lol. However, if there is a lore reason, I don't know that it has yet been stated.

I could live with that. It makes more sense than saying "we don't like mysicism, let's not use it anymore...who wanted to teleport or move things with their mind anyway..pfft so over rated".

Mysticism was never a very good school, in lore it was the least predictable of magics and even those who studied it could not understand its intricacies. In game it was as absolutely, numerically defined as any other school. Losing it is, sadly, no great loss, it was never done particularly well, and all of the spells under it have better homes elsewhere.

Um you do know the schools of magic change fairly often in the lore? The the mage guild going poof its easy to see a school falling out of favor with the two new guilds and its spells simply being taken by other more popular schools of magic. After all mysticism was waining even in ob times.

Gameplay wise they culled the easiest skills to ignore in each grouping leaving less easy drop skills.... This simply makes it harder to drop a skill in say combat and yet still be 100% warrior AND 20% mage... THIS makes it harder for a character to be made that is 100% mage and 20% warrior... you have to give up something meaty to get that other bit.

Unpredictable , yes.
And thats what made it so intriguing, so mysterious, so mystical.
I am reminded of the winding way in the marvel comics, where a witch gets more powerful or totally powerless on her way on the path, but ever striving for that distant goal.
Wich is an awesome way to attain power, way better for instance than AlmSiVi ′i grab it, its mine′ one. Storywise.
Mysticism was, well, mystical. Lore wise it had great potential.

I think the crutch I provided a few posts back may hold one of the best ways of dealing with this.

I'm not sure about the lore reasons behind it's removal, if there are any, but in terms of game design, it makes sense to remove mysticism, because the other schools tended to have a general theme they went with for their spells. Destruction had spells that damage your enemies, conjuration had summoning spells, illusion had spells that deal with minds and perception, like creating light, making your invisible, or making people like you, now, restoration slightly deviated from what it's name would imply by also having fortify spells, but I guess a school that is just used for healing seemed a little too limited, and it still has a reletively consistent theme for what it does. Yet mysticism was pretty much a place where Bethesda throws whatever schools they didn't put elsewhere. You might as well call it the "dump" school. Further, Skyrim already has a smaller skill list than Oblivion, and at least one skill that wasn't in the game has been added (Or rather, it has returned, since I'm referring to enchanting.) so some skill needed to go, and among magic skills, mysticism really seemed like the only choice.

Honestly, I don't much care, it's not like the spells formerly in mysticism are gone, they've just been moved into other schools, sure, removing mysticism means less skills, but in exchange, we get perks that allow players to further specialize within a skill, and let's face it, specialization and customization is what skills are for. The number of skills is not important, what's important is how much room to define your character those skills give you, and the addition of perks may mean that Skyrim's smaller skillist actually grants more customization than past games.



You're talking lore here, but skills are not a matter of lore, they're a matter of gameplay, and in gameplay terms, mysticism was exactly the same as other skills, just with a less consistent spell list, and trying to reflect how it is in lore isn't something you can do effectively within the gameplay mechanics, because to have any school of magic be truly mystirious and unpredictable, you need it to not be bound by rules the player can easily see, and the gameplay mechanics don't allow for that.

At the end of the day, we're talking about a game here, not a novel, in a novel, you only need to worry about whether your world and story is good, but in a game, you need the gameplay to work, and while I won't say mysticism didn't work, it was pretty redundent as a skill.

Didn't you know they still have those spells? They're just reassigned to different schools.

I know Im talking about lore.
Because thats the whole point of the thread.
Gameplay mechanis is all well and fine but we do need a lore reasoning.

If it is a question of lore, should we not also demand the return of thaurmaturgy?

*flails at zen with a thesaurus*
I have things hanging by a silk thread here..
;)

From what I can tell the magic schools are just definitions mortals have put in place to make learning easier, and it was the Mages Guild that decided what went where. You can quite easily redistribute what is considered what with the removal of the Mages Guild (it's fallen apart in the last 200 years).

So while spell x was considered school y, now it's considered to be in school z. Make sense? It's just a pre determined system created by mortals, and thus can be changed. As far as magic itself is concerned it's just magic.

Mysticism was gotten rid of becuase of the low amount of useful skills that it had. I'm actually glad it's gone although the spells that it had will probably be moved to other classes. I actually wouldn't mind if most of the mysticism spells didn't come back. The only one that I would want to come back is Soul Trap and that's probably going to be placed with Enchanting.

Oh yes, absolutely, mysticism was my favourite school in theory - but in practice it simply had nothing going for it. You can't do that kind of magic in a system where everything is strongly defined, with at best a split between failure and success. Can't be done, you need unpredictability for it.

Mysticism only had 6 spell effects in Oblivion. One of them - Telekinesis - makes more sense as an Alteration spell, given that Alteration includes things like Levitate. I'd imagine the other effects were pulled into Alteration and Illusion.

Mysticism was to Magic what Protists are to Biology: you put there that stuff that don't fit in other categories. Now, they are trying to fit the different spells in the other Magic Schools. I'm fine with it.

Well thats Oblivion Mysticism spell effects
Detect Life, Soul Trap, Dispel, Spell Absorption, Reflect Damage, Telekinesis, Reflect Spell

Thats Morrowind Mysticism spell effects
Absorb Attribute, Absorb Fatigue, Absorb Health, Absorb Magicka, Absorb Skill, Demoralize Humanoid, Mark, Recall, Detect Animal, Detect Enchantment, Reflect, Detect Key, Soultrap, Dispel, Spell Absorption, Almsivi Intervention, Divine Intervention, Telekinesis

Thats Daggerfall Mysticism spells
Banish Daedra, Detect, Far Silence, Fenrik's Door Jam, Holy Touch, Holy Word, Null Magicka, Open, Recall, Silence, Soul Trap, Spell Reflection, Tongues, Wizard Lock, Wizard Rend

So number of spell effects was reduced in Oblivion some of them even without any reason like Mark & Recall, Divine Intervention, as well as most of them was moved to another schools also why hostile absorbs become part of Restoration School?
Only reflect damage was added as new feature in Oblivion.
And after so much simplifications Todd say Mysticism was useless?
Oh well devs by self make it useless and now even more delete this school and move rest of spell effects to other schools, what spell effect left in game we don't even know.

It's like how geography, history, and sociology are all under the banner of "social studies" for elementary school in the USA. They are just labels. There is no actual thing called mysticism. It's just a category.

It would be like reclassifying various mathematical techniques. The techniques would still be there just under different categories.