1. Spellmaking. I didn't expect it to be in the game, but I really think it should have been. It's not that tough to implement. A modder might be able to make a system for it?

2. Ease Burden spells. I was shocked to see these disappear.

I think it's ok to make another topic with the same OP once it reaches the limit.

Proof that spellmaking should't be gone is the college and mages like Farengar. I know its another province and i know Nords are more warriors than mages, but without the spellmaking or many good spells the world feels more primitive and desolate than Cyrodiil. I doubt that there is this much difference in Skyrim, as Bruma or Cyrodiil had influences in almost every town from the local people and houses. That gave a feeling of pritty open borders on every direction.

Edit: Btw, spellmaking kinda made all the spells valid too, as spells just didn't appear to come out of the blue, you knew that to make a spell you used a spellmaking altar.

I noticed that most of the smaller spells are still there but they're potions and now work for the Alchemy section.

Makes no sense to remove spellmaking.

It wouldnt be so bad if there were:

1. More spells
2. Spells Scaled

No reason that once you get to a certain level spells stop increasing in strength.

You hit master level, then what? You're supposed to have the SAME spell for the next 50 levels? Suddenly you're unable
to study spells any longer?

Mobs in this game always increase in Health and Damage every level. Why would you
have spells in this game that dont do the same?

So in essence if you hit level 200 and mobs have 20,000 health, you'd still be hitting them for 150 damage spells
while they hit you for 10,000 damage melee attacks. That makes no sense.

Spells were extremely powerful and inbalanced in oblivion, making all other kind of combat obsolote, like the spells that dealt 100 damage in fire ice and shock with paralyze all at once. Howewer it could have been easily fixed: just make it so that your skill determines the power of the spells you could make, like at 75 destruction you can only make spells with a power or cost of 75 and make it so that you need a master level perk in order to use two effects. You know, in a similar way as smithing and enchanting works.

Interestingly enough, the variety of spells range and shape are part of the reason I'm defending Skyrim's combat as these do create significant differences. Pretty much every spell used to be either a bolt or "on touch" with the option of a spherical AoE for either. Skyrim has a much bigger variety. And Skyrim also makes maces, axes, swords more significantly unique than they were previously via perks - bleed, armor pen, and crits.

Granted, there are visual/RP reasons for having different weapons obviously even if they hadn't done this, and I won't say I'm against having more weapon variety like spears and such, but I'm usually going to prefer they make each weapon function differently and with smooth/fluid animations and mechanics in combat over just having tons of weapons. If I can have both, great, but that's just my preference when I can't.



Balance was a good reason to remove them, as well as just getting rid of junk effects.
If they felt they could've included spellmaking while retaining balanced magic, I'd be all for it. Unfortunately, they couldn't manage either in Skyrim, but I'd still prefer they work on getting the balance right before they make that infinitely harder for themselves with the countless variables spell making adds to the problem.

A spell such as this in Oblivion would take 99999999 mana in the first place -.-



No no i don't say that Skyrim hasn't made improvements and made other things feel more unique, animations are more fluid (great improvement there imo) and graphics/effects are better.
Then imagine a Skyrim with spell making made for Skyrim. Not a Skyrim with a spell making made for Oblivion. With what the guy above said - that power/mana cost of created spells - would depend on you skill so that things are more balanced(spell costs already scales with your skill -it's too subtle though). You would have bolt with adjustable aoe, spray with adjustable range, paralyzing etc runes and so on - list is endless. And if you think about it, it wouldn't kill their uniqueness - it would boost it.

PS: About the Oblivion formula - i'll make a rough example - in reference to its balance
An 100yards aoe fireball dealing 1 damage had the same mana cost with a 100 damage firebold with 0 aoe.
The numbers are random but you get the point. The formula was well balanced.

Yeah lol, i got a version of Finger of the mountain im unable to cast cause my breed/class will never have enough mana... so 1 big bolt or many small ones, does it matter?

The removal of spell casting failure in the move from Morrowind to Oblivion was part of the reason spells were a bit more unbalanced in Oblivion. Spell casting failure made it so that you couldn't make really powerful spells too early on, or else you'd risk failing that spell a great deal of the time. Sometimes you'd make those sorts of spells because you needed that strength and were prepared to deal with the consequence of failure.

I'm not saying we need spell failure, but it did help balance things out. Having magicka costs being the only balancing factor is a quick way to have an unbalanced game (either in favor of the player, or, in Skyrim's case, badly against the player).

The point I'm making is that I prefer the improvements they made without spell making, over spell making without these improvements.

They didn't leave out spell making just to make people angry or disappointed, they left it out because they were working on, IMO, more important improvements. Trying to implement spell making was not their top priority, and I agree with that. Spell making certainly, in time, could be done with reasonable limits to prevent it from being imbalanced. They apparently didn't have that kind of time, as evident by the balance issues the game's magic has even without the complications of a spell making system.

I just commented on how much it would cost so that people won't think you could create such spells and unbalance the game.
Magicka cost would the the standard balancing factor and in Skyrim since it's mechanics are like that, skill could also be a defining factor to balance it perfectly.



None dislikes the improvements ofc and we do not argue here about spell making vs improvements, we argue about spellmaking as an additional feature and if you read Todd's interview, they dismissed it early on. It was not even about the time they had.

PS: Can hardly keep my eyes open - going to sleep - you 're lucky i was sleepy sir!

Technically we're arguing about the amount of spells in the game or at least that's what the OP's main concern was, not spell making specifically. But good night, all the last words will be mine!

I personally like how simple the spell system is now. I'm actually really beginning to dig the hell out of it. The smithing dependency of the Melee types and the enchanting/alchemy dependency of the Magic types does need to be worked on a bit, but I don't know how they should be worked on. probably a way for our characters to have a bit more variety in their build? but I am actually not thinking much needs to be changed.

yup, i agree with OP. i am pretty sure someone will come up with a mod for spells

Yep TES is totally ruined now just because you can't make your own spells :rolleyes:

During the hype and demos I got the idea that spells level with the character, i.e. Flames would have Novice/Apprentice/Adept/Expert/Master versions. It seemed to make perfect sense, that each element would have spray, bolt, rune, AoE, and nuke types, although for example the spray effect would have 5 power levels, the nuke effect would be master only. Looking at the game design you have to ask "why didn't they do it like that?". They went to the trouble of programming each effect only for them to become obsolete very quickly (except as pointed out the Master spells are just DERP beyond reasoning).

I find Conjuration to be the most powerful group of spells. I think it is the only effective 'power play' option a mage has. You cannot be a destruction mage only, you need conjuration at high levels.

Alteration is good for the perks and has a few useful spells, but it doesn't make sense having the Detect spells as Alteration because Detect is a stealth character spell (also Waterbreathing and Telekinesis once again have no useful purpose).

Restoration is ok for the Wards which are useful for a non-Breton mage versus dragons. A mage doesn't often have the chance to think, "oh should I heal now?". A mage is pretty much either alive or dead from a snow bear/cat surprise (unless you're an armour wearing traitor). There are so many healing potions in the game, not to mention Alchemy. There is absolutely no need to master Restoration as the anti-undead spell focus is just "who cares". I wouldn't need much convincing to say that Restoration is completely unnecessary.

Illusion is a roleplaying choice for a stealth character. The level caps are usually behind what you need Illusion for: a special option to deal with enemies more powerful than you can physically handle. Buffing and Rally spells don't make sense as a stealth character should be without companions. Creative game design would have enabled the summoning of phantom decoys like a Wisp Mother, but no...

Enchanting is immensely powerful but a mage is supposed to wear robes. Yes I can see that robes svck compared to a full set of enchanted armour. You would probably benefit more from perking Enchanting to kit out your Housecarl slave tank than you would from using any of Alteration, Restoration or Illusion as a mage.

X + Y*Lv formula for spellpower and / or duration
custom made spells
We want them back ; ;

I can see how a a single spell doing all damage types simultaneously could become a single all purpose combat spell. And how that can be viewed as a more shallow type of magic (player only need one damage dealing spell), then having different damage dealing spells for different enemy types.

However it would be very easy to restrict that. By ether a flat rate say max two, three with a perk, effects on one spell. Making spells with two effects a two handed spell.

Though when I thing about it, if players need to customize spells for them to be useful something is wrong with the spells in the first place. Should spells not be so useful that we would feel no need to alter them in the first place.

Something like a system where the damage (or effect numeric effect like armor) and casting cost scaled up with the character level, and the casting cost scaled down with the skill level. In such a way that the damage per magicka used would stay the same over the levels for a fixed skill level.
That would remove the need to have different versions of the same for different power levels. A spell that summoned a Deadra could start by summoning a weaker version say starting with a Scamp ending up with a more power full version of the Deadra Lord at the highest levels. Bound weapons could follow the same progression as looted weapons.
While a spells like detect life could work at longer and longer range.

That leaves spells like invisibility, water breathing. Such utility spells cold have a fixed cost and duration a just as the do now, and be the utility spells that players could start using if they after leveling a character up suddenly decided they needed to pick up a new school.

As for why we do not have spell crafting, I believe it is a graphic issue. Take the runes for example. Each of the 3 runes differ, not only in color, but also in design. If players could make runes of healing, turn undead, banish deadra, rage, or whatever, they would have to include a new design for each one. The same goes for cone spells. Simply changing the color of frostbite or flames would not do, so for say a cone of paralysis would they would have to add a hole new spell effect.

Lastly a spell like open, could use the same mini game as lockpicking, but just with a “bound lockpick” where braking the pick would cost the same as recasting the spell, and using the alteration skill instead of the lockpicking skill, and non of the lock picking perks. That way for “thief” the real lockpicking skill would be more desirable, while mages could still open locks with magic.

Even Dragon Age II had more and better spells.

I wonder if modders can add in a new spellmaking-like system, at some point, after the construction set is released.

In the previous games Restoration also contained effects to absors attributes, fortify your own, or increase your resistances. Not that all of these options have been gutted, its remaining function to heal the player is better replaced by the abundant potions, which pretty much leaves Conjuration and Illusion as the only somewhat useful spell-casting skills.

I fully expected the variety of spells to increase with spell-making removed, especially because offering higher level versions of existing spells would have been logical and really easy to implement. Goes to show in which direction the series is meant to progress.

I'm personally fine with the removal of spellmaking, echoing earlier posts about how 'dry' it seemed in Oblivion.

However I do think there should have been a lot more unique spells in game for each school, and hopefully with some extra content there will be.

I'm a little bit saddened every time potions are mentioned, it doesn't justify a spell being gone that there is an alchemy version of it. They are all only "on-self" or applied through weapons to enemies only (unless you want to poison your allies...) and not everyone wants to be an alchemist. I should be able to do everything alchemy can do with magic as the greatest boon of alchemy has always been that it packed magic into a single school while with magic if you both wanted good healing and damage you'd need to level both destruction and restoration as with alchemy you'd get a bit worse damage and healing but you'd still get both through poisons and potions.

Also like I've hinted at many spells don't come in an alchemy variant. Someone made a thread here about playing as a Pyromancer, when it came to companions everyone was saying "Get a dunmer companion"... in Oblivion or Morrowind it would have been "Get a on-target/on-touch fire shield or fire resistance spell to throw at your companion", along with mentions of the companion being dunmer and having enchanted fire resistance gear.

Not to mention that you did not have to just pause the game and do a few clicks in the UI.
And about that Pyromancer - more like Incinerate-master actually - (he will realise it at later levels even when he gets his master spells) :rofl:
I agree that all of these effects could be still on magic - it's not like alchemy would become obsolete if they were.

Also i mention spell making instead "of number of spells" since it's essentially the same thing (except the part you mentioned where effects were transferred into potions) and i believe that if we had this feature, not only would it help immersion and add something fun and creative to the game but we wouldn't even have to open a topic about the number of spells in this game.

Anyway i'm saddened every time a random guy pops in and states "i don't mind them subtracting features from the game" thinking about Oblivion's textures, graphics and effects without realising that we could have it with some variations of effects or some extra effects with the graphics of Skyrim. And we are talking about a feature which offers a lot to the game and is what made Arena and the subsequent games unique. I am terrified to think how TES will end up if everyone thought the same way.