This isn't in the mod section because it can't be made into a mod with current technology. But in lore terms, say you have a spell that helps your heart pump. Like, say you're suffering from bradycardia. You cast a spell on yourself or the target to help get their heart going to normal speed. Well, couldn't you just increase the magnitude of it and cast it on someone who had a normal heart rate and cause them to have tachycardia? Or even more intensive, have a heart attack and die?


There could also be a spell that is actual paralysis, which could be cured, of course. But this would not be the Illusion spell that makes your mind think you're paralyzed. This would cause you to be paralyzed permanently, as how real paralysis is in real life. Look at Superman, the real life actor; I forget his name. Or Steven Hawking.

Magic is simply the manipulation of change and creation. So you could use magic to cause a physical jolt or twist in the target's veterbral column, particularly in the cervical vertebrae and not the other two ( http://healthbase.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/anatomy-of-spine.jpg ) which would then cause them to be actually paralyzed.

The usual Cure Paralysis spell, which has been in all the ES games, really can't be used by the player when paralyzed by the Illusion spell "Paralysis". Yes, I know there's a mod to fix it but that's not the issue of discussion here. However, a friend of the player could cast Cure Paralysis on the victim. Either that, or the player would just have to wait until the spell duration ran out. That's with the Illusion paralysis spell.
However, with an actual paralysis spell, I'm thinking it would be Alteration since it actually does change your physical structure and not just trick your mind. So this spell would have no time duration. Either Alteration or Mysticism because telekinesis is Mysticism and really, you could move anything with it if the player knew it well enough.
I mean, look at your atrioventricular valves in your heart, well, all the valves in your heart http://www.biosbcc.net/doohan/sample/images/heart/0284%27heart.jpg

...you could use telekinesis to keep them closed and prevent blood from flowing in. And closing them would be like moving a piece of bologna (balony?). That's what always got me about The Force in StarWars. Just close the opponent's bicuspid & tricuspid valves! lol

This is just lore speculation. We probably won't be able to have a fully functioning human body with full physiological effects being computer generated until 2100 A.D. And I'll be dead by then.

What are your guys' thoughts?

I reckon you've just shot about the largest possible hole in arbitrary nature of the schools of magic and the idea that the schools of magic, or the spell effects in game, have anything to do with what might be possible by actually using magic. All that in a single post, well done.

Iterating what proweler said, the magic system is extremely arbitrary, and you pretty much just put down the whole "a wizard did it" or something like that with magicka.

http://www.imperial-library.info/obbooks/response_bero_speech.shtml

I'm a little unclear on your usage of the word "arbitrary". I kinda know what it means but I can't quite define it. So I looked it up. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/arbitrary

But I still don't fully get what Hellmouth or Proweler are meaning when they say that magic in ES games is arbitrary. Boy, I feel dumb.

In TES IV, Absorb spells are Restoration spells, whereas they were Mysticism spells in TES III. So yeah, spells considered Restoration can kill. And like others have said, the schools are largely arbitrary. I suspect the Mages Guild to be the leading force in classifying different magical effects and organizing the schools of magic.

But thankfully they're gone, and now it's the College of Whispers that's most likely going to be the leading group for categorization of magicka spells.

But they'll whisper it very, very quietly and nobody will be able to understand what they even said...so in TES V things will be dumbed down farther for the FPS audience, with just one magic school "magic."

Haha, "magic". I was thinking also that each game had less and less skill categories. i.e. DF had primary, major, minor, misc. MW had Maj, Min, Misc. OB had Maj and Min. Probably TESV will just have "Skills". But that's irrelevant to this topic. Pardon me.

I have the feeling that Tes V will be more Morrowind-esque then Oblivion-esque

By arbitrary they mean that magic in Tes is pretty much only limited by the caster, or in this case the lore buff. So yes, you could do all that kind of stuff with magic, but I think the Mages Guild would categorize that as destructive magic since it is attacking another person. While it follows the same basic principle of restoration magic, the whole concept of restoration is that it is healing and not harming someone. So, all in all, everything you said is possible, but I don't think it would be categorized as restoration. But keep in mind that the categories are arbitrary themselves, and dependent on the sometimes hazy ruling of the Mages Guild, in the metaphysical sense it is all the same magic.

Other skills aside, only one school since Daggerfall has been removed, Thaumaturgy, and Morrowind introduced a new school, the school of Conjuration, and Oblivion had all the same schools that Morrowind had.

[/nitpicky]

Edit: Oh, it looks like Vanus Galerion himself http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Black_Arts_On_Trial the schools of magicka

I have a feeling that Oblivion is Morrowind-esque and therefore, TES V will be Morrowind-esque and Oblivion-esque.

Not surprised. I can see the Telvanni not really caring about labels or making up their own, and the psijjics smoke too much wisdom herbs to classify magic.

But remember, Galerion did leave the Mages Guild for being too much of a bureaucracy and elitist. Wouldn't surprise me if more modern mages kept screwing with labels.

From the book, it appears so. Not only was the debate regarding whether or not to make Necromancy a school, but it's mentioned that the schools have been changed many times over the years.

That is true, but to be fair, magic can often be pretty arbitrary in fiction, if you don't set limitations on it, it can easily become an all purpose deus ex machina, but when limitations are made, they often come off as being pretty arbitrary. But in the Elder Scrolls' case, the different schools of magic are mostly there for categorization purposes, and probably really only exist for the sake of gameplay, so that magic can easily be divided into different skills.

But yes, realistically (and yes, I know how ridiculous it sounds to use that word when talking about magic.) I'd think a lot of spell types could have uses other than what they're intended to. For example, I see no reason why telekinesis couldn't be used to attack, and I don't just mean using it to throw things at people, I could easily imagine a powerful mage using telekinesis to throw enemies, or maybe using it to twist or tear parts off, telekinesis seems like a pretty effective defensive spell, and I could see restoration spells having lethal applications to. But given the arbitrary nature of the schools, if such applications were exploited, I wouldn't be surprised if they were categorized as destruction instead of the original school.

But you don't know how human body in TES works neither you know how the particular spell works and I think it is possible to imagine a way in which restoration could be use only to heal. For example restoration could be defined as a way to manipulate someone life force and the technique you use to heal someone could be different from manipulating the life force to hurt someone.

I actually would like to see the schools catagorized by how they do stuff and not what they do. Kinda like in dnd where you could have shield (an abjuration) or mage armor (a conjuration) having nearly the same effect, but falling under different schools. Hopefully the college of whispers will get this right in TES V (I've not read The Infernal City so I don't know how likely this is.)

Oh, and @ OP, wouldn't the spell to fix their spine still be a restoration spell, as it would just be a localized healing spell on their back. Unless you're arguing that restoration and alteration should be merged.

Keep in mind that the schools are mostly a gameplay construct and the way spells are distributed among them isn't a function of anything but game balance.

In the Elder Scrolls you can pick any set of skills and it will be a character. Generally a balanced character has to pick some thing for offence, defence and some utility. As such grouping spells by their functionality rather then their supposed mechanisms works much better for balancing game play as it prevents one magic skill being used for all three.

For DnD grouping magic schools by the supposed working works just fine as the people using them are already restricted to using magic. It's okay if every magic school contains some form of defence since the caster already is unable to use heavy armour for protection.

There is some of that; elemental shields (Alteration) had the same effect as resist spells (Restoration) plus more. Jump (alteration) gave the same effect as Fortify Acrobatics (Restoration) and Swift Swim was similar to Fortify Speed in water. We also have Absorb spells (Mysticism in Morrowind, Restoration in Oblivion) that either cause what is effectively a Fortify-Drain effect (for attributes and skills), or a Restore-Damage (for health, magicka, and fatigue) effect. And then we have Turn Undead (Conjuration) which works similarly to Demoralize Creature (Illusion), except only for undead.

Oh god. I forgot about that giant piece of cheese. First mod I download will erase all mention of this "whispers" business, if Bethesda is dumb enough to have that be the in-game name. Mage's Guild works just fine and doesn't sound like something out of Eragon.

My second mod will change all mentions of "College of Whispers" to "College of Burps and Farts" and will be labeled as a mod that includes rideable dragons and gigantic, unrealistically bus-sized swords.

The reason mages don't simply do this is quite possibly because, well, it's ye olde medieval times. No one really understands how the body works, except the necromancers, and they're all living in dank caves being killed on sight because ye olde beaurocratic mages are holding back progress. My point being, unless the mage was a skilled surgeon, and even then, considering it's ye olde medieval times and a surgeon cutting up corpses would probably be branded a naecromancer and have battlemages after him.

The reason no one can close up a heart's valves is because, A. They can't see it and don't have the training or knowledge to know where it is. B. They don't even know the heart has valves.

Like I'll repeat again, these were ye olde medieval times, people were ignorant about almost everything concerning the body. All problems were based on fell creatures seen by peasants in an ergot-deluded state.

They may not know everything about how the body works, but I'd think if a mage could move a table with telekinesis, he would know that snapping someone's neck would likely kill them.

The real reason they can't have something like this in the game is because Telekinesis would be the instant win for whatever you're trying to do. Especially for assassins. I guess another question is why don't mages use mind powers to throw poisoned darts into people from miles away.

Magic in the TES universe is limited to what you can see. You cant see the heart of your enemy (if you do then something is wrong....) and therefore you cannot use magic on it.
This theory explains a lot IMO. I guess it leaves some questions unanswered but what doesnt?

It could also be that to do magic you have to UNDERSTAND it. I read a book in Oblivion called "Water-Breathing" which was about a guy who wanted to learn about breathing water.
Here it is:
http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/brewater.shtml
Okay, so it was Morrowind then.
But still the thing continues.

The requirements needed to do magic according to me and perhaps some more:
1. You have to see the thing that you are doing magic on. Maybe you just have to touch it. Or maybe you just have to know that it is there. Exactly THERE.
2. You have to understand what you do. Not sure what it means that you have to "understand" it tho.
3. You have to have "magicka". Magicka is a really weird thing which everyone in Nirn got in some extent. With practice you can get more. By curses and other spells you can have less. It is like the force (and that thing they counted it in... Cloroins?) in Star Wars, almost. What Magicka really is I am not sure about. Is it just some statistic made by mages to count how much you can conjure? Or is it actually something that exists?

So many if´s. Hopefully we will get to know more about it in TES V.

Considering we have magic, those are not really obstacles. Just divine what is inside some body.