Completely agree, without the spell maker I mages will feel more like playing an Orc with a warhammer, me big strong Orc hitting enemy, me doing power strike crunching skulls, me switches to batleaxe fighting dragon so I do bleeding damage. I'm a Altmer I throw fireballs on enemies, I use both hands then fighting tough enemies and frost cone then fighting fire elementals because they have weakness to frost.

Worse case mages are unplayable, however it's not gamebreaking as pure mages was unplayable in Morrowind and it was not a bad game.

And 85 spells, how can anybody get that to work, then thinking of the different spells. It would require that they cut 3/4 or more of the spells in Oblivion. Yes spells now have more uses, but how do you use heal on both yourself and other? Yes you can automatically level scale spells, so your fireball does more damage at higher destruction skill but the area of effect will be fixed. You want a larger area effect, hope you find it among the 85 spells.
Wonder how many monsters you can summon? I guess 10.

Depends on how you define "effect" is Fortify Strength an effect, or is Fortify Atribute an effect?

Well better to leave spell making in CS and not completely hardcode spells, how modders can make new spell mods if we cant edit magic system?
If you blame spell making only because of boring spell effect thats not good idea since thats spreadsheety statistic of spell can be easy added to awesome spell effects via scripts, even animation can be unique.
Spell making must be in CS and not

I hopo the game itself will give the possibility to create spells, with increasing mana cost and money or objects to sacrifice to get the spell done.
The CS idea is ok but awful, I'd stop playing the game right away because I'd feel like I'm breaking it.

I've just found A Good Way: maybe EVERY spell is customizable right away. I'll explain.
Say we have the Fire Damage. I go in the spell menu (remember we are speaking of wizards, an alive wizard thinks before the battle, often for long times. Otherwise he/she WAS a wizard) and I'm able to
- choose WHAT action does WHICH effect (double tap for flamethrower, single tap for fireball, or double tap for fireball and single tap for touch and so on)
- choose THE WAY IT SHOULD BE DONE. I want a 10 feet fireball and a 5 feet touch. OR I want a 50 feet fireball and a 10 feet flamethrower.

That way It wouldn't break the game, it would be challenging for pure wizards.

The problem is that it casts away (nice word play I suppose) the possibility of creating highly customized tactical spells like most of us were doing in OB. I love my "Jedi jump" (renamed differently in other roles) spell, which gave me the ability to run and jump like a cheetah for 10 seconds, while swingin' my lightsaber/claymore in order to quickly kill a bunch of opponents. And I love my 40 feet 5 damage Absorb health, an easy way to heal myself while dealing small damage.

Wait when were 2 mages guilds confirmed? I'd like to know where and read up on them.

Confirmed is too strong a word. The Infernal City novel states that the Mages Guild fell apart, and then the new Emperor replaced it with two new groups: the Synod and the College of Whispers.

It's a reasonable assumption that these groups will be in Skyrim, but it's not confirmed.

I'd be very surprised if the two guilds sold different spells and your choice of spell schools would impact your choice of guild that much. No. Most likely it will be like before, you'll be able to buy them from various vendors.
There was a spell tome DLC for Oblivion, so we might see that in vanilla Skyrim.

Just wanted to point this out, saying that they have 85 spell effects may not actually mean we have less. Unless you actually want to keep all 20 or so summon spells from Oblivion as separate effects, rather than a single summon effect that you can point to the relevant creatures. They might consolidate similar effects like that into a single effect with multiple options

I hated spell making because you always end up with 8 useful spells in the end anyways!!

and all the rest are just a load of inventory clutter, OB and MW spell system was a joke, fire did not burn, ice did not freeze and basically their was NO nice animations for any of the spell effects anyway, it was all ball of this ball of that combined with a ball of this it svcked

soooo if the Beth team wants to spend time making amazing 85 unique spectacular spell effects (fire, lightning beams, magic missiles, rain of fire ...etc) and cut spell making I'm all for it.

HOWEVER I would love to see spell making WITH such a new system BUT if its not possible I will not shed any tears, because I DON"T want to see OB or MW magic system EVER AGAIN EVERRRRRRR like not in a million zillion years.

Then play game on console if mods are game breaker for you,
I will say sometimes need to break flawed diamond to polish cut brilliant out of them, Oblivion even hard to play without mods thats fix it flawed mechanic and dull graphic, but after significant modding game become awesome RPG, like rogue like in game mechanic and with outstanding graphic.
No spell making in game, I will be OK with this if I still can add and edit spells in CS.


Oh well did you even know in AD&D player can end up with 8 useful spells in the end also?
Use spell delete and clean your spell book out of cluttering spells or clean your memory with Selective Amnesia spell from Mysticism school, all spectacular spell effects can be done with scripts and nifscope, just look at Midas Magic for example.
Hardcoded spells svck more then editable spreadsheet magic.

I think you should learn spells from having a teacher like you actually practice it in the since of greater level spells like required perks or from books and such and buying.

Sorry I've been misunderstood: If I want to create a custom spell, then another custom spell and so on, like I did in OB, I'd have to always exit the game and open the CS, thus creating substantially a new mod for every combination of effects I desire. Also it wouldn't have the system of costs in terms of magicka and money of creating spells in the OB style and it would require constant external editing. This is breaking the game IMHO.

Only 85 spells? that is incredibly little, as the previous elder scrolls have had more than 100 spell effects, maybe around 60 if all the different fortify, restore, damage and drain things are put into one, but still, that's the amount of effects. that would mean that the possible combination of spell effects and different costs in Skyrim will be limited, if there is only 85 spells. Very little and unlikely.

Getting them could be buyable from stores, but also perk related.

Well constant editing not need if you are not modder, look for good mod by experienced modder thats expand magic system in well done way or create/tweak an spell thats better suit to your character then vanila ones, nothing thats breaking the game IMHO.

You still are right, but I believe that merging useful effects would be an awesomely important feature. For example in OB in order to match the strenght of Dremoras and to keep alive being a pure mage I created a series of touch spells, which costs less, with a powerful shield activated for a short time and a minor absorb health+cure. That helped me a lot with the hordes of Dremoras I faced (using a 2x enemies mod).

It's not the creation of new effects that I (and many others) want to be added, but the possibility of merging more effects in a single spell. Doing that with the CS doesn't feel right - especially since it was present in OB.

Also, 85 spells are too few. We role-play, we do it hard, we want tons of spells - in that sens 85 effects are quite intriguing.

As long as there is a long duration paralysis spell out there I will be happy. So much fun with that spell.

I agree. I did enjoy the sheer flexibility of the spellmaking system, but if the price is a magic system like you described, losing that level of customisation is a small price to pay. The only aspect of spellmaking I'll really miss is the ability to name your own spells.


Instead of relying solely on buying spells, I'd make scrolls serve two functions instead of one. Any spell scroll would give the option of either casting the spell from the scroll (perhaps with other requirements - that's for another thread), or learning the spell from the scroll (again assuming any requirements to learn the spell were met). Both options could still "use up" the scroll as before.

I much prefer the idea of stumbling across a rare, powerful or even outlawed spell in the depths of a dungeon, rather than some condescending high elf from the Mages Guild "selling" me it.

Merging effects creating scrolls requires just the same structure of merging effects to create spells - so if they will insert either of these I'm sure there will be the other one too.

Let me see, my pure Oblivion mage at level 30 used some spell requlary.
50 in fire damage on target+ weakness to fire+ weakness to magic in 3 sec.
Two sub variants one who added silence one who reduced damage but let the weakness be area effect, very nice then fighting groups.
I had the three similar who was shock based.

Large area area effect frenzy level 25+ invisibility on self.
Comand creature level 25 for 8 secons.
Comand humanoid level 25 for 8 secons.
Weakness to poision+ weakness to magic
Summon clanfear.
Summon scamp+ heal+ invisibility.

Invisibility
Chameleon 100 in 15 seconds.
Heal self
Heal on touch
Water walking on touch for horse.

Summon clanfear and invisibility was the only bought spells.
All the other was self made; only the two healing spells could be bought.

Yes I had far more like 8 restore attribute spells and fortify acrobatic 100 for 5 sec
But this is spells I would use regularly.

My pure Morrowind mage had far more.

Because you don’t use a feature does not make it useless: I don’t think they should drop heavy armor even if I rarely use it.

One of the many unbalanced things in Oblivion. others include 100% chameleon, 3 second invisibility spam spell, weakness to magic and then paralyzis etc. I hope paralyzis will be balanced this time around.

Oblivion had a couple of hundred spells http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Spells
Oblivion has around 85 spell effects, this also include disabled effects like lock, potion effects like restore magic and disease effects like sun damage.
Fortify or drain skill/ attribute and damage and restore attribute is four effects.
More surprisingly summon, bind weapon and bind armor is three effects, they are separated in the spellmaker as they have different cost and requirements.

You could summon 20 monsters, 6 armors and 5 weapons that are 31 spells more than 1/3 of 85, wonder who is axed. As the oblivion gates is closed I guess the daedras has to go, no more clanfear for you. :violin:

Yeah Oblivion had 62 spell effects in total, my guess was quite accurate But the number of different spells is crazy. 85 spells is very little, but at least they can be used in different ways.

I would love it if it were more natural, like learning it from books or other mages. Maybe studying the book or listening to the teacher explain it helps.

Maybe you could find ancient or forgotten spells if you quest in the right places.

I always found it funny how the mages guild would teach a new recruit how to set things on fire with their bare hands, for slick! Or how to summon daedra on their first day in the guild...

Spells should be rare and not every single member of a guild should be an arch mage, why don′t we see bandit wizards who cast like 10 different spells ? Why only like 2 or 3 when every mages guild trainer knows like 30 spells...

And when you are a powerful mage you should be able to teach those that approach you and wish to learn from you spells, for a fee ofc, unless you are feeling generous.

I'd like to be able to learn spells from books. It'd be pretty cool if you had to practice the spell a bit before it was added to your repetoire. Each Mages Guild hall could have a special room for practicing in.