I always figured that was game mechanics for spriggans making a nearby bear come and attack you.

same as summoning Dwemer constructs; came mechanics.

True. And those are pure destructive powers. But when you "damage luck", what are you really doing? Is it changing the course of things to come by making their outcomes less fortunate? That sounds like something very ethereal. Damaging intelligence? So making you dumber? Sounds like an Illusion spell that makes your mind think that your not as intelligent. A lot of these spells that affect the body should really fall under Restoration or Illusion. "Damage Fatigue" for example. That shouldn't be under destruction, despite the name of the spell. It's making you less energetic/more tired. If I remember correctly from anatomy and physiology, the mitochondria were the energy factories that produced ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate), which were energy compartments, so to speak. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. So perhaps damaging your stamina is slowing down the production cycle in the mitochondrion. I forget how many ATPs it produces per second but it's a lot; 35 per cycle?. But obviously the developers didn't think this in depth about the spells when they were thinking of them back in the TESII: Daggerfall days. Someone assist me on the physiology here because I'm rusty, especially in the Kreb's Cycle.

And Destruction magic, the way it is currently set up in TES games, should probably be called Elemental magic (or some cooler sounding name, since elemental sounds kinda dumb). There are lots of other things you can do with the elements than just throw a ball or ring of it.

Fire spells can be used to melt wax, metals, burn wood, heat food, create steam, and even entertainment performances. You could also use fire spells to produce a very mild heat to keep the frost off of your crops and plants during the winter times. You could also use fire spells to warm up animals and people.

Frost spells can be used to keep food cold (medieval refrigeration). You could harness enough frost in one spot to create a big chunk of ice and keep it in a box above/below another box where you'd store your food, kinda like how a modern day refrigerator is set up. Frost spells could be used to put out fires on houses (medieval firemen). You could use frost with fire spells to create flows of water to water crops. I guess creating a block of ice and then melting it with fire. People would endlessly have water supply, enough to quench the thirst of people everywhere and enough to water crops, dry fields, and bathe in.

Poison spells.... there should be many different kinds of poisons. I'm sure the arcane masters, the High Elves, could/should/would have figured out how to create poison spells to just target the animals and insects that would be eating their crops on their farms. Or poison spells to cause tons of different affects, like asphyxiation, inner-organ deterioration, organ-system shutdowns, over-excessive cellular reproduction, sudden death, slow painful death, etc....

Air has not been used as a Destructive magic but it certainly is one of the elements. When writing my fanfic, I pretend wind has always been used. It's not in the games because there were no physics in TESI or TESII. And TESIII just had simple animations for the shop signs to flap back & forth during storms. But wind spells could be very powerful and destructive. Lame that they don't even mention its usage in the lore anywhere.

There is also the ground and earth type of elements but I think creating earth quakes and tornadoes and tsunamis and stuff would be more of Mysticism/Alteration.


Restoration has never been elaborated on as far as the potential it could have, not even in the freakin lore! Restoration could be use very offensively if one knew what to do and how to do it. The spell "Rally", which makes the target go into an attack frenzy, seems like it'd be more of an illusion/restorative spell. It gives them a boost of adrenaline and sends them attacking. Thus, the increase in adrenaline falls under Restoration. The attacking part falls under Illusion because it's tricking the brain into thinking it should attack anyone/anything. Man, Bethesda really doesn't put a lot of critical thinking into categorizing these spells. They need to get some employees who actually know something about physiology and anatomy.

Increasing target's heart beat so that it gives the target a heart attack. That's a very destructive way to use Restoration. I'm thinking right now of whether it would fall under Restoration or Illusion. Would the brain be tricked into thinking that it needs to send signals to the heart telling it to pump faster? If so, that's Illusion. Or would it be actually causing the heart to pump faster, which would be Restoration? The same type of spell could be used for individuals who suffer from bradycardia to get their BP up to normal. And vice versa for those who suffer from tachycardia.

Restoration could also have spells that would slow down the CO2 gas exchange process in red blood cells, causing you to not get enough oxygen and then suffocate. Although not enough is known about Nirn and it's inhabitants to deduce whether they actually breathe oxygen. Of course these spells wouldn't work in the games because NPCs are just nif files made up of triangles and UV points. They have no real arteries, organs, tissue or anything that would remotely simulate internal organs, much less blood flow and pulse and respiration. Maybe by the year 2030 A.D. we'll have that kind of technology.

I really hope in TESV, the developers tell us more about the physiology and anatomy of the different races. It'd help out tremendously in the lore department.



I never thought about it like that. Are Lesser Daedra actual living creatures then? I thought they were more like extremely low versions of et'Ada spirits that embodied the form of a monster, armor, weapon or artifact, which spilled no blood and were banished back to their corresponding plane/dimension in Oblivion once you defeated the avatar monster or the time duration on the artifact was up (artifacts leave their owners after some time has passed).

Let us say I want to create out of thin air, a spoon, as you suggested. I'm not talking about making one teleport from somewhere and into your hands, like how Mark & Recall work. But rather, create one right there in the palm of your hands. Sounds kind of beyond the physics and scope of the Mundus. I'd say Mysticism is an appropriate college of magic under which to place Creation spells like that. Likewise, I guess you could summon a Lesser Daedra in the form of a spoon, and then have it disappear after 10 seconds. Kind of a waste of magic but I don't see why an experienced Conjurer couldn't do it. Although you could argue that you're altering the physical properties of the molecules that are in the immediate area of the caster and turning them into that of a spoon. But we don't even know if there are molecules in TES. Although I read that somebody split an atom with a sword. It was from http://www.imperial-library.info/content/lord-vivecs-sword-meeting-cyrus-restless. But I doubt general mages study things on a molecular level.

Don'tForgetThis, do you think that a spell that allowed target (self or opponent(s)) to walk through anything, kinda like translucence, would fall under Mysticism too? Remember the ghost skeleton warriors at the end of "The Return of the King" and how they could kill people and attack them but nobody could do the same to them? I think that would be an awesome spell to be able to do. It sounds like you would be taking your physical body and shifting it through the fabric of the Mundus into a pocket realm while still keeping the visual part of your body still in the Mortal Plane. I guess it'd be like having one foot in the Mundus and the other foot in a pocket realm.

And was Galerion the Mystic really the first one to invent the classes and schools of magic into categories?
I really hate the way Bethesda keeps moving spells around and getting rid of schools of magic from the game series. But when you think about it, it's kinda like how real life is. Rules change, ideas ane concepts are forgotten and lost or just done away with. I guess one could look at it like once the Empire fell after TESIV, the Mages Guild was reinvented into the Synod/College of Whispers and they threw Mysticism out the window, deeming it superfluous(not necessary). That's my spin on it. I'm still am upset that my top Major skill is gone. I hope I'll be able to mod it back in via the Creation Kit.

Yeah, it doesn't surprise me at all that with the dissolution of the Mage's Guild, magical classifications would change. They are ultimately arbitrary, after all.

I'd interpret the removal of Mysticism due to the inability to study it in on any quantifiable level, as such it was naturally less popular and rewarding.

A.) Well about that i'd say it would be a combination of Mysticism and Alteration.

B.) yes

You mean because Mysticism was so perplexing and esoteric that the masses just said "bah, none of us even really use this school any ways. Let's just erase it from existence."?

Maybe he means that the lack of academic structures kept it from being studied and used as prevalently.

They didn't erase it, just kind of shifted what they understood into other schools.

More like: The magical school of mysticism is poorly defined and redundant. So everyone agreed to get rid of it and merge mysticism's spell effects into other schools. Remeber, the schools are more akin to classifcations than anything.

Probably, but summoning a native creature of Nirn is no less plausible than Dremora summoning Scamps in the Deadlands.

this is true.

Can't we already summon creatures from Nirn? bears and the like?

Necromancy always seemed like it was just conjuration to me, maybe with some mysticism/enchanting. It's all souls and undead summoning.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/morrowind-preparation-corpse

which is what i said. When mages summon a corpes it is conjuration not necromancy and they are just moving it from a storage facility to them.

I find summoning undead in the games to be nothing more than EZ necromancy, rather than actually summoning some skeleton from somewhere else. Ghosts and other etherial beings, yeah that's definitely summoning from another plane. Bony and fleshy undead, EZ necromancy.

I believe he's trying to make a distinction between necromancy and conjuration Hellmouth.
The summoning is not the necromancy in any sense, but the binding of a soul to corpse is.
Conjuring a skeleton warrior, would not be necromancy.
It's certainly not treated as such in-game.

I know that. But for in-game mechanics, it's pretty much what I just said, even though it shouldn't, hence EZ-necromancy.

But then why would the mages guild allow you to do "EZ necromancy?" they are merely allowing you to summon creatures necromanced before the ban.

According to the spell descriptors in Morrowind, conjured undead are summoned from the Outer Realms.

I hear sitcom haha