Perhaps but a good number of players who are a part of the old fanbase actually do play on the consoles so unless Bethesda does something about it they will be stuck with the limited amount of spells that the game features right now. Granted I and most TES fans I personally know play on the PC but a few of them do play on the PS3 and 360 so they won't be able to rely on mods.

It's amazing how much time and effort Beth put into voice acting, dialogue, and level design, only to completely put no effort into magic. My level 30 pure mage isn't really having any problems fighting enemies, even without summons, but custom spells was the bread and butter of the series. Thankfully, I've never been one who wanted to make some uber 1-shot kill every spell (maxed out characters are lame). But I always enjoyed making some spells with interesting effects like "frenzy + invisibility" for fighting groups, or summoning all the different undead types in Morrowind simultaneously.

I am one of they who play on console.

I'm not attacking you, you're just the only one who put it in a list like this. What it comes down to is opinion. For some people those things are useless and you wanting them in the game is utterly nonsense. While for you, it might be game breaking that you can't roleplay as you want. Bethesda doesn't have to implement any of this, simply because it's not broken. You won't die from a disease because you don't have a cure disease spell. THere's shrines everywhere, and it's easy to find potions, so it's not up to them to "fix" it as nothing is really broken. All of them are sort of the way. It's all coming back to "I want you to fix this, becuase it's my opinion." And they have no reason to cater to it. This is, however, Elder Scrolls and you can bet your life there will be mods that implement all of this and more, as was the case in the other games. Does no one remember how many complaints there were when Morrowind came out about how lame it was compared to Daggerfall? How lame Oblivion was when compared to Morrowind? It's just a circular complaint system here. And since Morrowind all those complaints are addressed fully and better than Bethesda probably would in mods. MIDAS magic made Oblivion's magic system about a million times better. That's just how it is. All these opinion verse opinion threads are sort of pointless. Just wait and see what happens.

Edit: For consoles, it's never been different. You've always had to take what you were given, and that's all. Totally svcks. I can't even imagine Dragon Age without mods. I had my magic system there modded, beucase I thought it was lame.

Fair points on some of the spells in my list but here are my counter arguments about said points.
Summon Clannfear: Why is this pointless ? Having only around one summon for each skill level is far too little and even ignoring game mechanics Daedra are a large part of lore and as it is there is nothing that says there shouldn't be summonable daedra from past games, especially with the mages guild having fallen apart leaving only the College of Winterhold to monitor the use of magic in Skyrim and even they don't really seem to care about much beyond their own issues. And by comparison why are the other summons not pointless while the old summons are ?

Cure Disease + Restore Fatigue + Feather on self + Water Walking: Why do I suddenly have to resort to leveling a crafting skill to be able to get spell effects I've always liked ? And heck if we could just use potions for everything why even have the current 5 on-self shield spells and Water Breathing in the Alteration tree ?

Healing on summons: Fair enough, but the dual summons are for 100 skill in Conjuration (unless you have the mana to cast them without the perk) and so are the immensely powerful summons. What about when you are under 100 in skill and decide to heal a summon of yours ? My currently strongest summon is the Frost Atronach and it takes nearly all my mana to cast it, if it dies fast then I have to wait until my mana is nearly full again to cast it, it would be pretty nice to be able to cast a few cheap heals to allow weaker summons to at least survive a little bit longer.

Fire/Frost/Shock shield: fair enough, I guess there are wards, but why were they put in the Restoration tree all of a sudden ? In the last two games those were in Alteration and my character that only uses a little bit of Restoration along with a lot of Alteration can't really use wards because it drains all my mana way before they can be of any use as I don't have much skill nor perks in Restoration.

Also in general, even if it's possible to do something another way or even if it feels to some that it is not needed more options should always be welcomed, you shouldn't have to fall back on using something else to accomplish your goals. Imagine if in the next TES game they decided to scrap most effects from Alchemy and place them back in spells, people would ask "Why can't I brew a Cure Disease potion ?" and they'd get the answer "Just use the spell or a temple".

I want my spellmaking back ;(

Again, I'm not arguing, and I agree that we should have both options available, but we've never really had full options, and mods always fixed it.

Spell crafting would be a nice additIon; however, I would be happy for the time being with the ability to combine overcharge spells of different types. Sort of make the pc a walking crafting table. Limited but doable.

I just want Mark, Recall, and Levitate back.

Everything else I could care less about.

As far as spell making goes (as I mentioned before somewhere) I don't know why they removed the ability to combine spells by dual casting. I KNOW I saw a pre-release video showing this as a feature, where you could combine two spells into a totally different spell by casting two different spells at the same time, similar to Fable 3. Clearly this is not in the final game, and because of it's redaction, it makes no sense why the other type of spellmaking was removed.

Which makes me wonder if I should make a similar count for Morrowind spells and see the difference between Morrowind & Oblivion spells and Morrowind & Skyrim spells. I'm sure there are less spells in Oblivion than in Morrowind however there were still so many spells in Oblivion that it didn't matter too much, you could still do pretty much anything.

I'm kinda surprised though that no one has mentioned what kind of spells they'd like back from Oblivion in Skyrim, I made my own list but what do you guys wish was there ?

3 master level destruction spells... W T F
It wouldn't be so bad if early spells in the game were still useful later, but because they don't scale at all the actual pool of spells you have available to cast at higher levels is very meager indeed. This game would benefit SO MUCH from spell making it isn't even funny.

It wouldnt' be half as bad if most of the master spells were worth using, rather than being useless.

My first character was a Mage. You know, Skyrim freshly installed, waiting for all the wonders and beauty to behold.
After level 20 I wondered where to buy all my spells, because all the NPCs I found sold the same ones. So I did something I didn't want to do - I looked it up in a wiki. I was shocked, furious, and started a warrior.

What angers me the most is that most spell effects ARE STILL IN THE GAME. They are just somewhere else. Either in Thu'um, Guardian Stones, Alchemy, or Enchanting. But they specifically decided not to give them to mages. Creating a potion depends on your skill, the magnitude of each individual flask can differ. Yet they decided not to include an interface that lets you do the same for spells.
There were no technical limitations, they were not running out of time or manpower. They sat down and made the decision to rip magic apart. Just for the hell of it.
This makes me angry to no end. This senseless withholding of gameplay options for no reason but to dumb things down.

/e
Didn't they say about Skyim's magic "It's the best magic we ever had"?
This almost makes me cry now.

If this were not an open world game you might have a point, but saying why do you need cure disease there is a potion for that would be like saying remove every physical skill but 3 Two handed weapons, heavy armor, and sneak and then say why did you need multiple ways to fight, one way is good enough doing damage and mitigating damage is all the same thing, wanting one handed weapons or light armor is just an opinion after all.

I know what you mean, the exact same thing happened to me. After playing with the same spells for quite a few levels I decided to look on the wiki. Ouch. I was actually a little excited when Skyrim came out because I thought that with spell making removed they were going to have a really complete and awesome list of spells... :sadvaultboy:

I am actually.

Cant believe what they did to Conjuring.

On the bright side; the disappointing magic system in Skyrim provides Bethesda with a clear goal for the next game. Maybe it will be set in the Summerset Isle.

Personally, I think the problem sort of begins with the need to map magic to one of your hands. This has the effect of making certain builds needlessly cumbersome. The first character I ever rolled was going to use two handed weapons and destruction magic. Of course that proved to be too inconvenient and I re-rolled after just a few hours. In my pure mage build, I had a lot of fun early on but, as someone else mentioned, you quickly find yourself repeating the same tactics ad-nauseum. Recently, I rolled a third character that focuses on stealth, dual wielding, archery and light armor and I am having more fun than I ever had when relying on magic.

The system is too limiting and essentially forces you to use magic as though it's a weapon (equipping and un-equipping it). They need a more fluid system and they definitely need a far greater diversity of spells. Destruction is painfully disappointing and the inability to utilize the alteration and illusion spells on allies just frustrates the crap out of me.

The only spell I really miss is Open.

Yes, I would be glad if we would have more spells.

But they are already more varied than the cookie cutter spells of the past.
Dodging magic balls, that's the true depth right there!


And why they've not removed, but moved some effects into other skills?
So mages are not the "we can do it too, except better" class. Why would you need to learn lockpicking when you could just make an Open-lock enchantment. Why would you drink any potion, when you can just get the exact same buffs from casting a single spell? Who cares about the Khajiit nightvision if everybody could learn the exact same bloody spell, and it would take even longer.
Who cares about birthsigns when you could just make a better spell that can be cast multiple times and does the same things much better? Why would you ever learn shouts, if you can just cast the same thing in the form of spells?

HEY, HEY. This is not Oblivion.

Your quest here is not to become UBER LEET and descend into the fiery planes of Oblivion slaughtering Daedra with your crazy magic skills without being hit and laughing manically.


Skyrim is a journey, as the dragonborn. Learning who you are, discovering your MAGIKA-COST FREE power inside yourself. That can disarm, subdue, disorient, damage enemies; whatever you require in the situation.
See my point? You don't need masses of spells, you don't need masses of weapons, you have shouts, the game is built around the dragonborn and the voice. It's not as free roam as previous games in the series. There's a much bigger emphasis on guided questline, you must do certain things, gain certain abilities.

Ergo, you're complaining about something silly. If you want lots of crazy spells, buy Oblivion, make your own, slaughter countless Daedra, enjoy.
If you want more of a story, where you imemrse yourself into the character, and learn to master the skills you choose to level ON top of your birth right of the voice. Then Play Skyrim, enjoy the variety you have in shouts, enjoy using them in different ways for different situations. You'll realise you don't need any more spells than what you have, and the game is very much anjoyable and balanced.

Rant over.

dumb...just the dumbest rant ever -_-

in skyrim we dont even have 100 effects if you count shouts. besieds the game is not meant to be a shouting simulater it is a TES game, do what you want, be who you want, sadly that was lost on skyrim. if you choose to be a water walking mage, never mind that can happen anymore, what about a mage that is a master at using levi-nope, a mage that actually likes to deal heavy damage? forget about it! mages are pathetic in skyrim, even you have to see that

Lockpicking is desireable over Alteration because of perks. You can also balance it by letting thieves attempt higher level locks, whereas mages would need the specific expert skill to unlock expert locks.
Alchemy is preferable over spells because you can use them mid-combat without changing spells in your hand, and you can use several at once. Also, you have access to a lot of effects from several skills by concentrating on just one: Alchemy. You can make potions with effects from destruction, illusion, restoration and alteration without having to skill or invest perks in those skills. All those are inherent benefits to Alchemy.
The benefit to Khajiit night vision is that you don't need magicka to use it and you don't have to equip it in your hands.
I don't know which birthsign you mean, but in any case, then the birthsign is undesirable and needs to be adjusted. Most aren't that restrictive.
Shouts shouldn't even be a necessary character ability.

I already bought Oblivion, and Morrowind, and I legally downloaded Daggerfall and Arena. But I can play 5 games at a time and even more, so I can't see why I need to buy Oblivion if I don't like something about Skyrim.

Also hasn't it long been the very idea of The Elder Scrolls that you can "be whoever you want to be and do whatever you want to do" ? Why are we suddenly only one character, and why must we only accept that as our role. Also having all of those spells I mentioned in the OP for Oblivion doesn't make you "UBER LEET and descend into the fiery planes of Oblivion slaughtering Daedra with your crazy magic skills without being hit and laughing manically." as you so called it, not any more than you want it to, heck with those spells you could even be weaker than in Skyrim but with more choice. That is the crux of it, having enough choice to feel satisfied about it. How is it so bad that I'd like to use my Alteration skill to shield my summons now that the shield spells are useless for me as I have 600+ armor rating ? Now the only Alteration spells that have to do with combat that I even gain a sliver of benefit from is Equilibrium and 2 different ranks of Paralyze, and I have none of these spells yet so in combat I have 0 use for my Alteration skill as it stands... so how do you propose I even level up my Alteration in any normal way where I am not grinding the skill ?

Also what is this talk of balance, this is a single player game. If someone wants to be a god in his game he or she should be perfectly capable of that (and you are if you use the 3 crafting skills of Skyrim) and if you want to be weak you should have the choice to do that too.

The very reason I started this is because of how stuck I am with my Alteration skill, and in my mind that shows how broken the skill is due to it being so limited in Skyrim.

Am I supposed to answer these questions? They're more suited to the developers... I'm just sharing things in the thread that the majority of people are somewhat overlooking. ;D