For some reason my spells do less than they should. For instance my 8 point heal spell heals me for 6. I have a 5 point heal over 5 seconds that heals me for 20 total. Anyone know why this is? It isn't magic resist and it isn't lowered stats. I tested both of those already.

are you wearing any armor? that effect how effective spells are.

Are you wearing armour, particularly a variety you have a low skill in?

EDIT: That'll teach me to dither before posting

What da mage said is correct, in Oblivion, wearing armor causes a penalty to the effectiveness of spells. The penalty, as I understant it, increases with the weight of your armor, and a higher armor skill reduces it. Somewhere in your character menu, I'm pretty sure it's in your spell section, though I don't recall exactly since it's been a little while since I played Oblivion, you should see "spell effectiveness" or something along those lines. This, as it's name would imply, modifies the effectiveness of your spells, spell effectiveness is at 50%, for example, your spells will have half the effectiveness they would normally have, if you wear any piece of armor, it will go below 100%, I believe the highest it can reach with armor is 95%, which makes the penalty neglegable, but present. I'd say extra armor is worth a sacrifice of having spells 5% less effective than they should be.

If you're not wearing armor at all, then I don't know what's going on.

Only real problem with magic effectiveness is that the frenzy, command and turn undead spells has max level 25, with spell effectiveness 100% the level 25 spell works for all enemies regardless of level, with effectiveness less than 100 it would not affect enemies over level 25.

It was in fact the armor. Thanx for the info guys. Haven't played in a really long time. :facepalm:

I did not know that. Good to know though, I was planning to make a new character soon and it might affect her

I agree that the armor penalty to spell casting efficiency (that skill can reduce to 95%) is only a big deal if casting mind control spells on foes around level +25. There are some things you can do here:

Put those effects on weapons. All the mind control effects except calm can be enchanted onto weapons at the enchanting altar. A blade of demoralize at max magnitude, for example, doesn't care at all if you are wearing armor.

Limit your character to level 20 like I do. There are no level 25 foes in her game, so her clunky leaather boots don't cause a problem.

If on PC, consider a simple mod, such as Lazy Altmer's 'Spells be Effective', which simply eliminates all armor penalties to spell casting.


Now, one other area where 100% spell effectiveness counts is with a chameleon spell. Casting a 100% chameleon spell at 95% effectiveness will net you 95% chameleon of course. Simple solutions here also if you want to wear armor without that mod - Simply strip off your armor to cast the spell, or augment the missing 5% via gear or potion.