I have a mixed opinion on this. If spells hit hard, I am fine with a non-regenerating pool. If they hit weakish, it should regenerate the speed of which should depend on how strong/weak the spells are. I'd be fine with magic only regening out of fights, but not needing to actually rest for it to regen. My theory on that is fights should be on a more real time instead of accelerated time system, so a fight should be over in seconds/minutes.(for the player and character) When traveling from town to town while it may only take me the player 5 minutes, it probably took the characters hours/days. So in theory you regen magicka it just happens to be to slow to notice during the speed of combat.

I can't really vote on this. Whenever I made a mage, I chose to atronach birthsign, just to hav enough magicka to not run out after a single weak spell.
I don't care for the regen rate. I just think we should get a bigger pool of magicka. The costs get ridiculous when you have moderately strong spells

Well in TES Magicka flow in all so Magicka Regeneration can stay in game since make mages more playable for newcomers, but must have certain limitations and improvements.
Willpower must have more impact then intelligent on regeneration rates, Magicka regeneration rate must be different for in combat, while waiting and when sleeping, certain races and birthsigns can have better impact on this settings, since classes is out return of class advantages and disadvantages has little chances at last they can be added by mods like thats done for Oblivion
So special training can be achieved trough perk system as reward in for quests and trough guild rank advancement
SM Combat Regen
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29095
Race Balancing Project 10.52
http://theelderscrolls.info/?go=dlfile&fileid=215
nGCD
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=14065
Class Advantages
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35300

Well the problem is mages have no armor few hps and now cant backpedal... so if they run out of magicka in a fight even a potion realy isnt likely to be fast enough to keep em away from death.

Tell me, what part of lore describes the event changing the whole set of stars from the repetitive/tiled stars of Daggerfall to what they look like today?

"For some reason" is probably the desire to stay connected with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_alchemy alchemy, where celestial bodies had a major impact.

If you want a game where using magic is only a practical option for mages then there's always World of Warcraft.

I like magic, yes, but I do not enjoy being overencumbered every time I pick up anything expensive, nor do I enjoy dying all the time because I need to shove all my modifiers into magic attributes.

Quite honestly, the magic regen is fine as it is. I efficient levelled so I could have willpower and intelligence at 100 because I still found it too slow.

You have to take into consideration that some who favour melee or archery for dealing damage favour magic for healing it, rather than say "well, you aren't going to focus on magic so you should be forced to use potions to heal". And I'm saying this as someone who acknowledges that normally a potion would be more effective for me.

Personally, I like to mix the three. The class system in Oblivion and Morrowind before it are the best implemented class systems I've seen. This game doesn't need to turn into another game where everything is virtually class-specific and warriors must ALWAYS use melee, archers must ALWAYS use archery and mages must ALWAYS use magic. That may be fun for those who like going all out specialists in one field, but not for everyone.

And I always ask myself this question:

Is it ruining my playing experience?

If it doesn't then I don't oppose it.

If you personally find it too easy to kill stuff with magic then put up the difficulty slider. I have a character who has 100 in every attribute other than personality and luck and has a spell which can one-hit almost anything (and doesn't require me to wear any enchanted armour unless I wish to cast more than once per minute) and I still don't risk the highest end of the difficulty slider.

I may as well also point out that all reducing the regen speed on magicka would do is make magicka regen potions more commonly sought after. It changes nothing.

Although if we got much bigger magicka pools so that I could still cast that instant death spell but now I'd have to do so knowing that such power comes with a price, it'd probably be more fun, but overall I think that magicka is fine as it is.

I dont think the stars as depicted in-game have ever matched with them in lore.
In Oblivion you couldnt see the constellations either.

I think the formula might need a little rework, but not too much. If you burn Magicka like you did in oblivion, then ya... it needs to recover fairly fast. If you make willpower your priority, you may not be able to use those high power spells, but you make up for it by being able to cast more frequently. If you want that massive reserve of energy, focus on your intelligence.
What I really want is a rework on the Atronach, maybe a partial stunt instead of a complete one, and change for fortification from a set number to a higher growth rate. And rework Spell Absorption so it's not a chance of absorbing it, but always taking a percentage of a spells energy. 50% absorption meaning 50% of a spells cost goes back into your mana pool.

I think for less powerful spells there should be no penalty, but there should be absolutely powerful spells that do drain the mage's magicka. But that's the problem. There aren't any SUPERNATURAL like powerful spells, and their SHOULD be.

Wizards should have the ability to be cautious with their magic, but all the disadvantages of being a wizard should be countered with truly powerful magic that can only be used at the cost of making the wizard temporarily helpless.

Simply, no.

To elaborate, I can stand there and swing a Claymore all day so I should be able to do the same with spells.

That's good reasoning, if weapons and magic are equally as powerful, but what if magic was more powerful than a sword? (like it SHOULD be- this is fantasy we're talking about here...)

I think the better balance would be to make magic more powerful, but that it should take more out of the character, while melee weapons shouldn't be as powerful as magic, but have far less "use" penalties.

Eh, but then you can run into unbalancing melee. A slash to the throat should = dead, as does an arrow in the face. And eating a fireball should probably kill you too. Magic could be stronger and require more forethought, but melee and ranged would be right up there with it.

For sure, particularly depending on where you strike. But with magic, you should be able to deal heavy damage to MANY enemies at once, for example, but at a cost.

Yeh sure. Maybe like doubling over to catch your breath or something, or blacking out or seeing spots of light for a short while, or having the color fade from the world when your pushing yourself too far(running out of mana). Standard cooldowns would work too I guess.

this

At lower levels, magicka did regenerate slow enough and at higher levels, a fully-realized mage could actually, well, use magic as a primary weapon. I think playing a magic-caster should actually be a viable choice.

Fast magicka regeneration still limits your casting rate. You have to wait for the really big spells, etc. Maybe because I didn't know you can stack multiple weakness multipliers in Oblivion it didn't seem overpowering to me, but I never felt magic regen was too fast in Oblivion.

I particularly don't like the idea of having to chug thousands and thousands of potions all the time just to fight. In my opinion magicka regeneration should be fast enough that management is an in battle kind of thing, and not a "cast a couple spells and run away for several minutes or chug potions" kind of thing.

Only during sleep, Morrowind had that right. Mages should be much more powerful than average fighters, but very limited in how much they can cast. Limit the amount of carryable potions to a realistic amount too, add the chance of overdosing them, make consuming them an animation that can be interrupted and have a chance with each hit/fall damage taken that one or more potions might break.

Herp a Derp

It all depends on your skill level

There were both good and bad aspects to MW's system, and good and bad points to OB's as well.

Morrowind provided a deeper "pool", so you could toss a few powerful spells in a row without having to "stall" until it regenerated. Unfortunately, with NO regeneration, you were more or less "done" when the pool ran dry, unless you brought potions along. I liked the "strategic" aspect of conserving your magicka for "important" moments, but the total lack of natural regen was the pits.

I modded in a very gradual magicka regeneration, about 10% of OB's rate or less, which worked very well because of the deeper reservoir. It was there when it mattered, but you had to keep it in mind and not "waste" it.

Oblivion used a shallow puddle instead of a "pool", but had a solid stream feeding it. You could only throw one or two "good" spells, or a handful of "irritants", and then had to buy time until it recharged, which happened relatively quickly. It took the "thought" out of playing a magic-user, and just turned your wizard into a "barbarian with spells instead of a sword". Rather than watching your fatigue bar from time to time, you had to keep an occasional eye on your magicka level instead. Ihad one character with a couple of spells which he could technically cast, but without sufficient magicka to do so.

Giving a deeper "pool" than OB, but with a GRADUAL regen, would be the best of both, in my opinion. The regen rate for enchantments in MW was excellent: gradual enough that you had to be cautious about using them, but fast enough that you didn't have to constantly recharge them with soulgems if you weren't using them continuously.

Slower regen, YES, but balance that with more reserves, PLEASE.

I think there should be a dramatic concept added to Bethesda's spellcasting system: that of Prepared Spells....

I think some very powerful spells should not be allowed to be cast in battle in real-time. I feel they should be prepared in advance. Some could be prepared 1-2 hours prior to you being able to use it. Upon casting the spell, which can only be prepared, a timer begins to count down. The spell points are slowly siphoned off of your maximum until the spell's magicka costs are reached. So if you have 100 Magicka but the spell cost 25, then your Maximum Magicka after preparing that spell will be 75 until the spell is actually cast and discharges (releases) that magicka back into your full pool.

Some spells of an even greater kind should take 6-8 hours in game, and some should take 24 hours in game. That would make the use of those spells extremely rare, and when they are used, they should be quite dramatic and awesome to behold. Make them worth the wait. And you know, this is only for a small few Greater Spells, not every spell, anyway. Most spells (90%) could be real-time cast spells and the rest could be Prepared spells.

In this way, the magicka would simulate being slower to regenerate for certain key spells, while allowing for the majority of spells to be cast frequently enough to make the game still fluid enough and fun enough not to lose the joy in it for those who use magick exclusively and need to use it fairly rapidly such as when looting dungeons.

Using this system, I dare say some more evolved battles later in the game would require some strategy as to how to prepare for the battle requiring days in advance to really "prepare" for the battle. That could really require some strategic thinking and planning, and not just run off half-cocked into the thick of battle like a meathead warrior. Mages do have to be tactical, and this would add to that immersion of that role, I think.

I'd argue making aim so important for spells makes it more FPS-like than magic-like too. If magic is to be strategic, I don't think it should be played like a glorified FPS. Luckily it sounds like they are addressing that with Skyrim with the runes/flamethrower/etc. There was a topic about adding some auto-aim to magic and you'd think people were talking about some FPS the way the responses glorified the importance of aim. I won't be upset if aim is a factor, but I'll admit the support of aim surprised me.

So you're saying you don't want playing a mage to be possible/practical?

I can't really compare Oblivion regen since all my characters were sign of the Atronach, but I think the challenge is to make low-level casters viable while restricting non-magic-focussed characters use of spells.

Yes and No, I think both Magicka and Fatigue should actually regenerate quicker then in oblivion but the more you regenerate, the slower the regeneration becomes.

To use Oblivion as an example, you should as a base start at about 1.10 the magicka regeneration you'd have in oblivion, after about 5 seconds worth of total regeneration it should drop to a multiplier of 1.05, then after another 5 seconds down to 1.00... capping at a minimum of half (0.50) the magicka regeneration that oblivion had. To counter this, you recover 0.05 magicka regeneration, the time you take to recover it at being (300-(willpower*2))/10 seconds. Yet it's a formula, to simplify it, at 0 willpower, you would get a 0.5 recovery every 30 seconds, at 100 willpower a 0.5 recovery every 10 seconds.

That might not be the clearest/neatest thing to explain. But I think having regeneration fall/reduce rather then just one constant static rate would better simulate the character getting tired/exhausted. A stronger character would take a much longer time to get tired/exhausted or be harder to exhaust.

Actually to supplement this idea, slower regen, with only slightly larger reserves. However, a player should be able to 'store' additional magicka above their normal reserves. Actions like drawing power from a magickal well would give you raw magicka, instead of a temporary fortify magicka effect. The caveat to this raw magicka is that once it is expended, it is gone for good. This would be a good way to increase the amount of energy for a battle, but would also encourage tactical conservation, as this 'bonus' magicka would not regenerate. This could be a backup reserve for when your personal magicka runs out. Absorb magicka spells could be more useful if you could store the unused energy for a future fight.

I always liked the idea perpetrated in the Eragon books with precious stones being able to store magickal energy. So, having a high quality ring or amulet with a stone, a mage would be able to store more additional magicka, while lower quality jewelry would hold less additional energy. Also, if you knew you weren't goning to be in a fight anytime soon, you could store your magicka away for future use.

All this could be implemented as a perk, instead of a default ability. Perhaps ability to store magicka could be related to Willpower, with lower levels only storing part of what they are absorbing.