I've always played a mage, and even without mods like fair magicka regen or wakim's game improvements, once I got a few more levels and more equipment and custom spells, nothing could stop me. But with spells like leveled magicka and WGI, mages are nigh unstoppable, with their endless magicka and supremely powerful spells. What I think might be interesting and put a new strategic aspect into the game would be casting times. The more powerful a spell is (determined by a combination of its duration/aoe/magnitude/number of effects) it migh take longer to cast. This would be for all types of spells, buff or utility or offensive. Of course I'm thinking WGI would be used with this, since spells would only get appreciably longer to cast once a certain number was passed (like over 100 damage or over 30 seconds or something.)

Anyone else think this might be a good idea?

This way, that super buff or regeneration spell you always cast in fights you might want to cast before going into a dungeon or other area where you know there'll be hostiles, since it would take too long to put up in the middle of combat. Or if you plan on unleashing a huge spell of mega destruction, you might need to find a safe place to cast it from, or incapacitate enemies some other way before casting. And this way it might actually at least *look* like it takes some effort to unlock that door with a level 100 magical lock. Or if you have a mega summoning spell that summons multiple powerful allies, you'd want to cast it before enemies are sighted or when they're still far away. What do you think?

I also think this would be interesting with the Miscast mod. Would you really want to try that ultra new spell that only has a 20% success chance in the middle of a fight unless you were really desperate? Stuff like that.

I think that would make spellcasting really interesting and challenging, I'd download it. Either way, I wouldn't worry if other people like the idea or not, mod what you want to mod.

However, as for the more important issues of possibility, I can't say I know. Stranger things have been done but you'd need to be a very skilled scripter to attempt this. I like to consider myself a decent scripter but I have no idea how you would do this.

If you could just somehow slow down the casting animation...wouldn't need to be a different animation or graphics, just slower, or have it repeat or something. *shrugs* I don't really know much about scripting.

I like the idea because it could add more strategies to playing a mage, like using a 5-10 second relatively short cast time paralyze spell in order to have time to spend on casting your all mighty dragon's wrath fire ball from hell spell!

Instead of slowing the animation down. Why not have a "cool down" time for more powerful spells. Frostbite would have relatively no cool down time, but God's Frost would have a 10 second cool off time. I think that could be scripted. At least with MWSE. I think that this is a cool idea.

That's also an interesting idea, although it wouldn't really serve the strategic function I was thinking of. I think cool-down would be GREAT for enchantments though....no more machine gun enchanted items!

chiming in!

If you have a casting time delay, and a miscast possibility; why not do a combination where it REALLY puts in some strategic play and cause your character to have a miscast/casting penalty/chance of suffering a scripted explodespell for damage or effect or whatever IF you get hit while casting.

Something like this fior example
If you get hit while in the middle of casting a spell you have a chance of these situations happening:
spell fizzing (lose the magic points, no spell cast)
spell goes off, you are target
spell goes off, area effect, you are target (ExpoleSpell script?)
casting possible, but harder (like you were under the effect of the "sound" spell
casting goes off regularly

Then, by implementing something liek this the time delay means you could have serious problems if you have someone running up to hit you. Add in the potential for this to affect companions and enemies then you REALLY have some strategy to consider.

ST the complicator