it's kind of a...It's a real wildcard one thing that we've done a lot. There are pluses and minuses to it. Uuum we'd like to find...we have some ideas that we really like and how to solve that and I don't know where that's going to go. But the thing that we don't like about the previous systems that we've done is that it becomes very spread sheety where it takes the magic out of magic if you know what I mean.

Is there any way you could expound on that? Do you speak Italian? More references might be a good thing.

Todd Howard: There are factions, but we don't want to talk about them rigth[sic] now. There are many kind of weapons which have different effects on different enemies. You can't create nor combine spells but using the same spell on both the hands you can cast a powerful version of it. The duels will be very tactical as you can use magic or phisical[sic] shields. You will be able to purchase an house. More than one, as a matter of facts.

I'm not sure I understand completely (I didn't really use enchant when I played Morrowind), having higher enchant 'reduced charge when using a cast on hit or use magical item' means that if say you had a sword with 100 charge and your enchant was at 0, when you hit someone it would take 10 charge away, but if you enchant was say 50 it would take 5 charge? Is that what you mean? Also I don't fully understand 'increased the recharging from soul gems'.

I'm divided. I think the system will be more streamlined and robust, but streamlined is the opposite of what I want. Fooling around with different combos and effects made the mage feel more scholarly. You were actually doing spell research and coming up with something new.

My issue with TES in general isn't that I think it'll be a bad game, just that it won't feel like a TES game. It's getting too action/adventure for my tastes. But, hopefully someone will mod in spellmaking of some sort.

About 14 minutes into the GI podcast Howard talks about spell craft

He says [snip]

Is this the translated Italian text? or a direct quote from Todd.

Complex spells that turn me into a battleship Battery? imo the use of different spell effects sound more complex then having only a set amount of spells (he says spells never spell effects) that *grow* with you, its as if I can run around tossing spells and doging others with my hands out, if they are going to make it so you can't equip weapons whiles spell casting why not bring back the spell ready stance? so we have one less thing to hotkey.

Also, you can set magic traps using runes

"There's a bigger emphasis on how the magic physically acts okay? So just a spell like fire, there are different spells for how the fire moves like putting it down like a...a rune that explodes when you walk over it or fire you can spray that lingers on the ground...."

It sounds like they thought quite a bit about how to use magic in a lot of different ways. It's a lot more interesting than what previous games offered (mostly you just cast a spell and that's it) but now there are several different things you can do with magic.

I'd love to see this in conjunction with spell creation. It would add a lot of tactics that you could use against enemies. For example if I was going to be fighting some mages and I kinda knew the area already I could set a bunch of silence runes in the area and disable them that way so they have to fight physically rather than with the skills they are good at.

GI: Another common question throughout... you know the thousand plus questions was... crafting. Are you going to be able to craft spell potions and other items?

Todd: We do have a lot of crafting. So we do have crafting within each discipline now. We do have smithing, enchanting is back as a skill. And alchemy we're sort of treating as a, it doesn't matter that much anymore but it is in our stealth category. Though we have sort of a blended skill list, so alchemy is like the most magical of the stealth skills. And then we have lots of other things which are not skill based that you can craft that we're messing with like cooking and things like that. That's something else that we are going to talk more about later. Its all in the game now and its going to go through a few changes. I don't want to get too specific but there is a lot of that and more emphasis on it this time around.

GI: You know I know one thing that when I was down to see you guys at the studio that you were still kind of exploring with stuff related to how spells would interact with each other and that kind of thing, and I would suspect that the results of your experimentation on that stuff would effect whether you would have anything that is like spell crafting right?

Todd: Yeah spell crafting is kind of a real wildcard. Something that we have done a lot, and there are pluses and minuses to it. We'd like to find, we have some ideas that we really like and how to solve that and I don't know where that's going to go. But the thing that we don't like about the previous systems that we've done is that it becomes very spread-sheety, where it takes the magic out of magic. You know what I mean? So I mean, you got to see the game, your listeners haven't but, there is a bigger emphasis on how the magic physically acts, ok. So just a spell like Fire, there are different spells for how the fire moves like putting it down like a rune that explodes when you walk over it or fire that you can spray that lingers on the ground like your spraying a wall, and you can spray the cielings if its there. And fire that travels like a flamethrower out of your hand or a fireball that you charge up and throw and explodes at a distance. So you know our main goal is to make magic feel like this arcane powerful thing and once it goes into a spreadsheet in the game where you can say, "I want something at this distance and this power" it removes the illusion of how this stuff actually works. We have some ideas of ways around that, but we don't know where those are going to go yet. We do have the benefit of [pause], we are really really happy with how the magic plays in the game, both visually and mechanically, and then being able to do it with both hands, but there are opportunities there for combination and things you can do without getting into the spreadsheet aspect of it. Which I do know some people like, but it does take away from the impact of the spells that you're finding and mechanically how they work, if that makes sense.

GI: Yeah it actually ties back to something you were talking about earlier, which was you know you've got the one handed skill tree you've got these different perks for maces and axes and swords and so on. Within the magic system is it kind of similar is it by school that you are perking up or is it individually like, "I've got fire spells and I'm going to perk the fire spells"?

Todd: Well there's the skill destruction so that covers a category of spells, and within destruction there are perks for fire based spells. So people see, 'ok well you've removed Mysticism' but that's just a label right? Those spells go into other skills and then it gets deeper within those skills. The easiest thing for us, going back to our previous conversation, is to just to add more skills that's actually a lot easier. Because in the old games it was just a skill and a number, there wasn't really, we didn't feel there was progression. What we really want is, you really feel you are getting better in this particular skill. And perks, perks are the main way we do that now. I think the game right now has like 280 perks if you include the ranks. So it's a lot.

GI: Yeah that's crazy.

Todd: Even a character that raises all their skills to 100 and they've played and are like level 50, they only get to pick 50 perks out of that 2[80], they are very different characters. There is a lot of power in the perks as opposed to the raw number of the skill, there is still some power in the raw number of the skill just not as much as there used to be, that stuff is moved into the perks.

I'd love to see this in conjunction with spell creation. It would add a lot of tactics that you could use against enemies. For example if I was going to be fighting some mages and I kinda knew the area already I could set a bunch of silence runes in the area and disable them that way so they have to fight physically rather than with the skills they are good at.