Today I took another look at the Skyrim gameplay trailer, and noticed that the player appears to have used the same spell to release a short burst flame attack, and to generate a sort of extended flame-thrower effect. With that sort of on-the-cast variation, I'm wondering if anything has been stated about the degree of spell composition variation we will have available. I can't imagine how the devs would make some of my favorite custom-made spells in Morrowind and Oblivion work with this sort of on-the-fly spell effect modification. Have there been any comments about this from the devs?

I don't think there's been any confirmation that spell customisation will be included in Skyrim. There was a comment in an interview a while back that they were experimenting with it but weren't sure if it would make it into the final game. PC Gamer UK had a mention of being shown some of Bethesda's experiments along these lines, with a shield spell combined with a lightning spell to give a shield that shocked anything that attacked the player character. They mentioned that at that stage the graphics and animations involved were clearly placeholders.

Given that Bethesda have gone to a lot of effort to polish the graphical variety and complexity of the spells, I wouldn't be surprised if spell creation is very limited in Skyrim, if it's possible at all.

Still, fingers crossed, eh?

I'd say that everything we've seen so far strongly indicates that spellmaking is out, which is something I'm personally okay with. I strongly believe that spellmaking in prior titles was a huge liability that really only gave the player great freedom to utterly destroy any illusion of balance that might have existed, and very much prefer the new method of treating spells as basically equipment in and of themselves. This grants them specific roles and makes balancing them much easier, allowing for a greater degree of polish and also allowing individual effects to have more flexibility. It's perfectly understandable that some people are upset about the loss of customization but in my eyes it makes for more intense and fun casting and it's an acceptable sacrifice.

And PC Gamer UK is the culprit, I see. They said that Circle of Protection was a forcefield that pushed away enemies, and could be combined with Chain Lightning to shock those enemies it pushed away. This was a filthy lie. Circle of Protection seems to be a spell that replaces either Fear or Turn Undead, as it makes enemies run away rather than pushing them.

Thank you very much for your prompt replies!

What you are seeing is the use of the same spell in one of three ways. The flame attack spell you saw can also be used to create a trap effect which explodes when a creature walks over it. Supposedly most or all of the spells will have this multi-use functionality. There is also the possibility of combining two spells when cast at the same time (not confirmed as yet, it's something they are working on).

Spell creation is out.

Apparently many people believe that sin't the case. They say in the demo the spells are different ones, and that they don't have the 3functions per spell.

cba to check myself.



? You mean combine the SAME spell if it's used in both hands? That is confirmed.

Pretty sure they said they won't let you combine different spells. One reason being the added effects to spells based on element.