I'd agree with that (in theory, and in practice) ~but in practice it does feel cheap to be in the last 30 seconds of a boss battle and have a spell failure that loses your life (worse if there were high odds against ~ like an 8% failure rate). In practice its just not fun when it counts; when it means you'll be replaying the last nine minutes over again (or that you got to the end and lost your PC :verymad: ). In practice that aspect just seems best [to me] if it is carefully tempered (tinkered with, perhaps totally cheated with) to almost never brutally hamstring your game on a random event, and perhaps include a double failure check that gives at least some odds for a beneficial accident as well as nothing, and then the chance for personal harm (and possibly an under the hood disabling of that chance certain key points in the game). :shrug:

**Now... IMO, have an HC mode where the risk is voluntarily understood, and accepted ~ideally as a trade off for some gameplay change (even if only just an achievement; though myself I don't value them); then such a disaster as I mentioned at the beginning becomes a tolerable, "Didn't think he could win but I was amazed at how close he came".

*** The Witcher 2 is supposed to have an "Insane" mode, with only one life for the entire game. (I don't know the details, of if there is some gameplay change for playing Insane ~beyond the greater difficulty).

It would appear that way [to me] in some, cases.

I agree here. Changes would have to be made to them to give them some sort of buff; maybe allow more powerful spells or something to balance it slightly, but it'd be a nice way to play a more powerful character with more risk and intensity in combat.

Thank yah.

How about that system suggested earlier where you balance spell power against failure rate?

Excellent suggestions, and there could be a research/ found knowledge aspect that could apply a positive (or negative) bonus to certain sliders and effects with that mage (be it stat based, skill based, tomes, objects, personal enchantments, curses, or even disease).

Mechanics-wise (besides leveled loot & opponents), my only dislike with TES is that PC's are partially classless ~any grunt infantry can pick up spellcraft, and a geek in a tower cracking books instead of skulls can pick up armor proficiency and skill with a hammer & mace. Trades were life choices and demanded commitments to achieve any skill or any kind of tutelage. In practice a mage guild should take years (perhaps decades) to rise the ranks and gain esteem.

**But the semi-class-less design is core to the series, and so... not something to lament; its just the game as intended.

This hardcoe mode is becoming more and more..... hardcoe.

Gonna cross this with the advantage/disadvantage thread and suggest a new trait:

100% spell efficiency (cast rate) at a % increase of the spell cost, like 20 or 30 percent.
Hmm?

Should anyone ever have 100% skill efficiency? (and in an arcane/occult art at that!?) :huh:

(Even an expert will have a bad day once in a while... there must always be some slight margin for error)

**** Personally, outside of an RTS, I prefer that relying on magic be a dicey affair in the best of times, unless the mage is a consummate practitioner (and even then, still slight risk).

What might be neat, and certainly fits... is to have spells start out with low percentages, and rise rapidly to 70% on a usage basis, and improve after that more slowly, and/or with training/leveling. ~it was loosely similar to how Oblivion did it (usage I mean).

Good point.
I was mainly thinking of a good way to bridge past all the complaints while using the current (suggested) systems that keep game play more real for the rest of us.

I like Huckleberry's idea about letting the higher level spells have a failure chance. As far as I can tell, ES magic has to do with a trained mental will(power), where the caster learns something like a thought-process in order to exert this will (i.e. to cast a spell). If a high level spell requires an extraordinary mental exertion like this, theoretically I should be able to try it and fail. Personally, I liked the feeling in Morrowind of getting into a sticky situation and gambling on a too-high-for-me-to-use spell to get me out. :toughninja: Exciting!

In fact fatigue could even bridge the chance of failure, implying the concentration required.

I agree with the idea of incorporating it into a hardcoe mode. Pleases both crowds. Personally, I liked spell failure, it balanced out magic and gave more incentive for raising it. Plus, it's cool to have a sort of 'last resort' spell, like Fvash said.

I don't really think it pleases both crowds. Shoving all those ideas into a hardcoe mode would pretty much be like having two games because they don't have the courage to firmly hold a good idea. Besides, every idea that isn't from Oblivion these days is getting thrown into this hardcoe mode idea. There's got to be enough agreement about something, it's not like this is congress.

Excellent idea. I really like that.

EDIT: Also, for all the people suggesting it just be stuffed into hardcoe mode, it doesn't quite work like that. It'd need to be balanced a certain way to fit. I mean, if you just took the same spells and all of the same traits related to each individual spell and simply added spell failure, you've just completely gimped the mage in hardcoe. In Morrowind there was spell failure, but the balance there was that you didn't have [censored] weak spells like Oblivion. You could do some truly amazing stuff with spell creation in Morrowind, but you just might not reliably be able to cast them. I think Shade's idea fits best and it shouldn't just be a hardcoe addition. Not every discrepancy between what two parties want can be divided between normal and hardcoe mode. The core game needs to be the same, we can't have a disc with two entirely different games on it. hardcoe is more like a flavor of the same game everyone else is playing, but it still needs to be that same game.

I want hardcoe but I don't want spell faulters!
I don't like it!
If spell faulters are implemented, make it optional by its own.

I'd like to see failed spells return for Skyrim, on the condition that there's a really cool backlash/fizzle effect (perhaps one for each spell school; a puff of black mist from the caster's hands for Destruction, a muddled scattering of misty eldritch symbols for Alteration, etc), and that a caster's magicka-related skills can eventually be raised high enough for all but the most apocalyptic spells to have a 100% success rate.

Spell failures were an enjoyable part of developing new/low-level characters in Morrowind... but I loved Oblivion's changes to how spells were cast (vastly superior anims, no mode-switching).

Some good points:



I think the things mentioned in the above quotes would be more pleasing and rewarding than Oblivion's system without fail and new spells available every 25 levels.

Also this:

Spell failure should be a function of fatigue player attributes and spell level just like any other form of combat, the percent of your failure rate would be calculated by a forumula based off of these 3 factors

P - S / (how ever many thirds of the fatigue bar are gone)

Nope. Failing to cast a spell or dailing to hit an enemy is just annoying.
Especially failing to hit an enemy. How the hell am I supposed to train my Long Blade skill if it's 10 and I miss the enemy 9/10 of the times I attack?


This.

Yeah, that problem in Morrowind meant that you actually raised your skill faster between level 40-60 than you would between 1-40 because you'd be missing all the time. That didn't make sense.

And forget leveling your block skill if you didn't have much already, sheesh.

What they could do is have it so that say easy mode there was no spell faultering and as you increased the difficulty level faultering, just like everything else, would be more likely to happen depending on how high you want to set the difficulty level...

I miss the sound of spell faulters.

For spell failure, it's your fault for casting a critical spell that you didn't master well enough to lower the failure rate to acceptable levels (5% or less) and instead went for the big bang attack you just bought at 96% fail rate

Spell failure doesn't need to be an outright "fail" as in MW, and definitely shouldn't have as high of a starting difficulty. A "marginal failure" could just produce a noticably lessened effect, whereas a "total failure" would fizzle out and do nothing, as in MW. A "catastrophic failure" might only be possible by pushing the spell parameters to your absolute limits and getting the worst possible outcome. For most applications where you're using a "novice" spell, there should be almost no chance of a "total" failure, although "marginal" results might happen frequently.

I'd like to see it implemented where you would just need to learn the "base" spell, which you could cast reliably without failure by a skill level of 25. If you wanted to "push" the sliders for stronger effect, longer duration, more area, etc., then there would be an increase in difficulty and a chance of failure until you reached the point where those changes were within your safe limits. You as a player would have the OPTION of either casting the basic spell, with NO FAILURES after skill 25, or "risking" higher settings. By skill level 30, you'd have the option to adjust it for slightly more powerful results (without failure) than you did at 25. Of course, you might also choose to push the sliders up slightly further, and live with occasional "partial failures", or way up toward the high end (a maximum of 25 points above your current skill level) and take a serious risk of having it fizzle completely, or cause you serious injury.

In MW, the only way you could get started as a "non-Mage" character was to pay for training, learn a spell and then keep casting it with a 15% chance of success until you got better, or have an even wimpier version made that you could attempt with a slightly less-frustrating 30% chance of success. The FACT of failure wasn't the problem, but the MANAGEMENT of failure was very limited and tedious. If you could cast a weak (but not useless) "training" version with a 50%+ chance, until your skill hit 25, that would allow you to get rolling.