this is mostly in regards to things like casting spells, magic damage reduction, swimming, running and jumping etc. basically in oblivion the penalties for having a full armored mage were next to nonexistant from a gameplay perspective. what i want is slower running and swimming movement, significantly slower casting speeds and other penalties when wearing all heavy armor. if you are using a sword and shield or a two handed weapon then you cannot cast a spell while they are equipped. even on hard levels the game was so freaking easy with a battlemage characters it wasnt even fun to play.

Other than this I like it. The penalties shouldn't be enough to remove the usefulness of battlemages entirely, but I think a few hindrances would be reasonable.

Edit: A third option for Other would help this topic.

I second this =)

i liked morrowinds casting stance although i realize im in the small minority there. i think at a minimum you need to have one hand free at the very least to cast spells. you cant even use two handed weapons or use both a shield and sword if you want to use a simple torch which is just a stick on fire........yet somehow you are able to cast powerful spells with less effort than holding a torch. this makes absolutely no sense to me. for penalties i was think of making a 25% or more reduction in the power of the magic or the casting speed of the magic. this would mean that mages wearing just robes would have a significant enough offensive advantage to make them viable but not entirely neuter a mage that decides to turtle up.

i added a third option.

The speed reduction wouldn't be bad, but 25% power loss is kind of high. A 100 point spell that costs a lot of magic, but only gets you 75 points of effect is not an attractive option. Maybe spells could be slower, and be 10% less effective? 15% maybe? Or maybe even 25% as you have said depending on how easy it is to make hybrid characters (getting enough magic to cast while being physically powerful and stuff). I'm just thinking of battlemages that take the mage to avoid getting roasted by enemy spells. That doesn't give much magic, and it would be really costly to spend it on weak spells.

And with a torch you are holding a physical object in your hand, which prevents other objects from being held. Magic is fired from fingers and hands and takes up no space until it materializes a bit in front of the caster's hand.


You are right to want penalties, though. Otherwise battlemages would rule the world.

yeah the speed thing does seem better. it makes sense since you not as limber in heavy plate armor as you would be in leather armor.

magic may not appear until you cast it, but it should have a semblance of some kind of concentration. its just silly to spam fireballs in the middle of combat while you swinging and blocking. it makes magic essentially just a gun and doesnt have any downside. if i pick sneak and lockpick as majors i have just neutered myself because i could have picked illusion and alteration and done the exact same thing and had extra spells as well. i mage shouldnt be capable of everything..........where are are the downsides and the reasons NOT to pick magic skills.

oops. below

I'm not sure why people are so opposed to this. This is a good idea in my opinion. It makes a lot of sense to need at least one hand free to use magic. It's not making battlemages useless at all; you just have to use a one-handed weapon to cast spells.

But without a shield, are they really ready to fight at melee range? Battlemages don't usually have a warriors health.


You can't swing while casting in Oblivion. You can swing soon after though. Also, magic use for characters that don't specialize in magic is never as effective as a full mage's spells. The spells that can be cast are usually weaker, and there is rarely enough magic to cast more than a few spells in one fight, and that little bit of magic regenerates slowly. Not to mention that the cost of picking a birthsign with a large magic bonus has terrible penalties for melee characters. Weakness to magic is a big deal when spells pass through armor.

And sneak and lockpick give different attribute bonuses than illusion and alteration. The agility increase makes marksman more powerful, as well as making the other skills governed by agility more effective. It pays off for stealthy characters.

The downside to picking magic skills for characters not based in magic is the loss of attribute modifiers and the difficulty of balancing magic to melee/ranged use while leveling. Too much magic use and they are an underpowered mage. Too little magic use and they have wasted major skill slots, which leaves them with few useful skills.

And pure mages are squishy. They have little health and, without armor, little reliable defense. Shield spells are only so effective when you have 100 health.

if they add penalties to casting spell while wearing armor or with something in your hand
it should damage the item, depending on how powerful the spell is and what you skill with said item would be
i doubt they would do some sort of equitation like that
but maybe something more simple like
higher damage the spell more damage to the item, if it was a disintegrate spell it would double the original penalty

Yes please. I want this game to punish me. I want to fear death by any more than one roadside bandit.

Yes, TES3 and TES4 where easymode. It's so easy to become a god character in a few hours, the games almost become trivial and boring.


Among what you said, here are more specific restrictions, or more like exploit fixes and getting rid of terrible game mechanics.

1. Damage absorption should never be allowed to go past 50% via adding up enchanted items.

2. Passive Damage reflection enchantments should never go above 50%. With short duration spells it shouldn't go over 75%, godmode is stupid.

3. Passive Chameleon enchantments should never be allowed to go over 50%. With short duration spells active it should never go above 75%, thats what limited time Invisibility is for.

4. Heavy armor should have bigger restrictions on stealth and stealth damage.

5. Heavy armor should have restrictions on Magic depending on the range of the spell. (short range and auras see less restrictions, to make battle-mage viable)

6. Minor skills should be harder to level up. On the flip side your Major skills have a much higher cap than 100 for you, are slightly easier to level up, and are more effective. (makes your choices matter, and prevents God chars)

7. General spells with god effects (75% reflection/chameleon) should never last more than 10-20 seconds, and should cost very large % of magicka.

i agree with this person in those regards. i remember being suprised at how once i got my heavy armor skill up it didn't weigh a damn thing. and i was indeed as fast as any light armor users. on th eother hand talking about enemyh diffciulty i do not want it to be teh same. I hated how in oblivion at level 5 the goblins wuld die in a few hits. now that you are level 47 or 48 u fight a goblin and he hits u and paralyzes u. then 3 of his buddies come up with poison daggers and continue to reparalyze you. while the shaman hits u with spells. and then i die. i thot that was bs. i can fight out in the open but not in caves. I thot that was a bit rough. i mean seriously i had a better chance taking on 3 ogres. everything else was leveled fine but a few low level enemies. please level correctly this time. goblins shuld always be weak.

Armor should have an effect on casting, but not a drastic one, and nothing that can't be overcome with a little extra skill.

In MW, casting had a chance of failure. I liked the concept, a lot, but it was brutally hard at low level, too much so for most players.

If they'd relax the failure rates, but have it so that armor affects them, you'd be able to cast easily enough without it, but wearing it would require somewhat more magical skill in order to be able to cast the spell with the same chance of success. It would hae no effect on spells that you were more than proficent enough to cast without a problem, but would continue to make the "cutting edge" stuff a bit more "dicey". The aspiring Battlemage would have the choice of either wearing less armor, sticking to weaker or easier spells, or living (hopefully) with the possibility of an occasional misfire on the most powerful stuff in his arsenal.

Another way to handle it would be to tie magicka regeneration to armor, where the thicker and tougher the armor you wear, the less you regenerate magicka.

Either way, unarmored caster would have a slight advantage in casting; an armored caster would have an advantage in survivability against conventional weapons. Both would be "viable" options, instead of one being "inherently better".

cant say since the game isn't even out yet