» Fri Feb 12, 2010 6:36 pm
I think the problem most people are having a time realizing is that magick is intended to be more restrictive. Not everyone can use magick, otherwise there'd be city mages on the walls instead of archers. If EVERYONE and their brother could use magick swords and suchlike would be obsolete.
Alchemy is the common man's magick - brewing a salve to rub on wounds (I tend to think most potions aren't liquids to drink, but that they can be ointments and stuff too) or to resist cold a bit better. In a sense, it's not really magick but medicine, with a twist of magery here and there from special ingredients.
But honest to god fire-flinging mages are supposed to be rare. The Mages Guild is intended to take those who can use magick, and train them to use it responsibly. But you can't make someone who's not born with the ability have it. At least, these are my takes on such things. It's kinda supported ingame (at least in Oblivion, as referenced in my first post) so that's the stance I will defend.
So right now the best way for a magickally uninclined person to attack a mage from a distance is either a spell scroll or the much more practical arrow. So, what if archery does evolve into ballistics? It has to happen sometime, down the line (at least in the future-to-come) so why not now?