I've seen a lot of complaints abound pertaining to destruction magics 'power'. Ranging from things like "It's not powerful enough to stand on it's own" to "Spellmaking ruined it's utility." While these may, or may not, be true, it is of little consequence empirically, I believe.

I've found myself greatly enjoying my mages, really. It took a while to get past the slaughterhouse mindset (Step 1: Put sparkles in both hands. Step 2: Throw sparkles in machine-gun rapid fire. Step 3: Collect loot.). Once I started mixing and matching, things became a lot more interesting! Putting, say, raise dead in one hand and firebolt in the other (then switching off to paralyze as needed), strategy came into play. It was fantastic.

On the other hand, a lot of really cool effects become 'out-dated' pretty quickly. My only *real* problem with destruction magic is that there's a veritable lack of 'tactic' to me. As my skill increases, and my enemies get stronger, weaker spells simply don't stand up anymore. This is quite like melee, you say? It is. An iron dagger will be hard-pressed to stay 'relevant' the entire game. The difference, to me, however, is in how things are organized.

In this case, I'd say that each 'kind' of spell is like a 'kind' of weapon. Daggers, swords, etc, are like frost, lightning, fire. The biggest hindrance, however, is that while an iron dagger won't be good forever, you can upgrade it for a new *dagger*. Destruction doesn't give me that. I get a new spell, but it's like trading in your iron dagger for a steel broadsword.

Basically speaking, once you reach a certain level, your nifty flamethrower, while cool, isn't really useful outside of extreme circumstances. Can it be useful? Yes. It is going to be useful often? I don't think so, anyway.

So, at the root of this, I think destructions overall power is just fine, but that it's variation is lacking. At the maximum level, I can coast along just fine, but I'm basically spamming one or two, *maybe* three if I'm feeling adventurous, damaging spells.

If I could get mods, I totally would. What I'd love to see, however, in the next TES (or as an official mod, but I won't pretend it'll happen), is that all spells do a certain baseline damage in a linear, but slight, incline. The weakest spell (or starter spell) does 10 Damage, assuing no perks and base skill. The best does, say, 15. The main difference should be in their effects and tactical advantage.

This way, basically, perks and skill increases will increase the damage and usefulness of all spells in a relatively straightforward way. As it is now, there's a HUGE gap between what your standard flamethrower does and what a fireball does. While this might make sense, I'd argue that they're two different effects, and there's no reason they have to do wildly different damage.

Ideas? How do you handle tactical destruction magic? Mix and match? Double-dipping on various destruction effects?