Charging Spells

The idea behind this is that spells are able to be "charged" by holding down the cast button.
For every arbitrary unit of charge (say 1-100), attributes of the spell would increase. Charged spells will therefore be more potent, cost more magicka, and expose the caster for a longer period of time compared to uncharged spells.

Example 1:
Fireball destruction spell
+3 units of damage
+1 unit of speed
+5 magicka cost

In the above example, those 4 modifiers gets applied to the base spell for every unit of charging.

Example 2:
Fireball destruction spell #2
+1 unit of damage
+2 units of AoE
+0.5 units of speed
+8 magicka cost

This spell will obviously have different uses than the one above.

Example 3:
Self-heal restoration spell
+5 units of healing
+5 magicka cost

Simple healing spell. More time + more magicka = higher potency.

Spells would be balanced in such a way that charging them will be moderately more effective than spamming the cast button.

How long it takes to charge a spell will be determined by their respective skill.



Thoughts and comments?

If this was applied, making or buying better ranked spells would be somewhat useless, but the idea is not bad

Good Idea. :goodjob:

"How long it takes to charge a spell will be determined by their respective skill" yes, and the potency of the spell aswell

This is not well thought out... you can already make spells that cost more magicka that are stronger. You seem to have forgotten that. Pointless argument.

The idea is good it was used in Fable 2 & 3 to good effect but of course that's a more action game. Better visual spell effect depictions would also be welcome, the fire spell looked good enough in Oblivion but what about the storm/lightning spells? Or the frost spells? It would be good to see visual effects in relation to whatever destructive element is being used. Also better visual representation for combined spells like Wizard's Fury i.e if I'm combining a lightning spell with a fire spell I should see a projectile with those combined elements - in Fable 3 you had a fireball surrounded by little bolts of lightning and there were various other depictions based on the spells you used, I especially liked vortex+lightning it looked like you were throwing a mini storm.

In red what you forgot



Must be acquired by reshearching and modding known spell, cost money and time

Add this kind of trade of and i m in !!!

"Buying" spells should really be applied to scrolls that you then learn the spell as hard memory from, I find it amusing that I buy a spell and apparently its intricates are burned into my mind.

I really wished charging was in there I want to be prepared for a fight

Ok so you can make a spell that does 4 dmg 10 magicka(examples only) and you can also make one that does 10 damage 18 magicka. How at all would you implement a charging system into current system? So when I charge the 4 dmg spell for x'seconds then it becomes as strong as the other spell you can make that requires no charge? Not well thought out... this would involve limiting the spells you can make.

You can Inflate spell power as long you have mana with a danger to burst yourself.
No need to further research
No need to waste money
No need to loose time, ingame outgame
No need to clogger your inventory with 3e454spells
Threat dealed by apropriate power not wasting mana because you only have a high cost spell in the quick tab to kill/finish a wounded goblin
In the meantime if you wish to start from a greater base you can still reshearch the same spell in greater scale
Should i go on ?

If you charge a spell, they have to bring back the spell ranges from Morrowind where a spells damaged varied. The base damage of all destruction spells with one second of charge should be equal to the starting cap, and the final cap. So a spell that does 10 to 20 fire damage would look like this:

10(starting cap) to 20 ( final cap).

The more higher and powerful the final cap, the longer it takes to charge. The higher the starting cap, that should be a multiplier for magicka use.

I really like this idea, it is kind of similar to what i had in mind myself. I do propose another addition, making the spells more skill dependant, once you have a higher skill level the charging goes faster (and ofcourse lower chance to fail and lower mana cost) but the main difference is that there is some kind of charge "meter" not necessarily visible on screen with added effects. Table below is an example for a spell you have mastered on your skill lvl

Lvl of charging speed of charge increase Chance of failure Chance of Backfire extra effects
very low very fast 0% 0%
low fast low 0%
medium medium low 0%
"optimal" slow low 0%
overcharged slow medium low screen starts shaking, low life drain effect to sustain the charge
superovercharged very slow high medium screen still shaking, life drain still in effect, spell might be stopped due to backfiring

The spell making altar would also be modified. Instead of altering the power of a spell you would modify the charging time and possible (negative) side effects and whether the effect is on touch or on target and duration etc.

yep thats a nice idea

Charging spells would be fun. It would make the magic combat a bit more interesting.
You could plan more... time more... etc
I like it. Although I do think this should only be implemented for destruction spells. That's where it's needed the most, imo. The other spells don't really need it I think.

Something interesting with this idea as well is that it can make you get rid of all the uhm... "greater" spells and such.
Instead of there being a lesser and greater spell of almost each kind, you could just charge a base spell more or less

Combine that, with spell failure, and we got ourselves a more comprehensive and varied magic system!

Also, failing a fully charged spell should have it blow up in your face, while a instant just frizzles.

Yes please... they could work on the top 4 lines by changing the way the spellcrafting/spellbook thing works(which it does need work but charging doesnt really solve the problem), but the example doesnt seem to warrant the need for implementing a charging mechanism for spells as you would likely take more health damage than the magicka saved is worth. A non mobile mage is a dead mage...

:facepalm:


i think it should be something like this


more charge= less chance of failure, particularly for novices attempting higher level spells

overcharge- chance of blowing up in your face

- more charge means more magika cost, but the cost should not scale as much as the damage depending on the players magic levels (10 dmg and 10 magika= 15 magika and 20 damage, but for a noob something like 15 damage and 20 magika)

I like this idea a lot. Increased spell failure sounds good as well. More powerful spells would just be able to charge faster, and have a higher maximum power.

doesn't grab me. nice idea but doesn't appeal to me at all and seems to go against how magic worked in morrowind and oblivion and it doesn't look like it matches up with the lore.