The hand cast spells have been confirmed to be ranged from everything from flame throwers to fire balls to explosions on the ground. But how will our staffs work if they are enchanted with a fire spell? Can we manipulate the course of magic and turn the staffs fire enchantment into fire balls, flame throwers and more, or will it have a fixed effect as everything has in Oblivion?

In a way I hope they are fixed. A pure mage or spellsword type will, I assume, need to use a lot of their perks to have the ability to manipulate spells, and miss out on a lot of health to gain more magicka, so really should have access to better and more varied powers than a high health, low magicka warrior who happens to be carrying a staff.

I'm hoping Staffs act as a "magical conduit" making it easier to cast spells, reducing Magicka usage, and giving them a damage/effect boost. Higher quality staffs would have more of an effect, but the rules would be the same, it boosts your personal magics, it doesn't have it's own spells. Equipping a staff to hand then still allows you to swap spells onto that hand on the fly just as if you weren't holding it. It should be a passive item that aids magic users. Warriors wouldn't get much use at all as their spells would be naturally weak, the staff wouldn't boost it all that much (if it was percentage based).

If you look at the gameplay trailer, you can see the spell coming out of the staff, I sure hope that if the staffs have a spell enchanted to them like in OB, we should be able to manipulate it. Perhaps the magic boost you are talking about could be used the other way too? Depending on your total magicka base and magic skill, the effect of the staff could be manipulated and be more effective, working as a free spell pool of it's own, instead of draining your magicka pool. But even then, I'd want to see us manipulating the spell effect like it has been confirmed that we can do to hand cast spells.

What happens when we enchant a sword with fire? That's what I want to know.

Surely the sword won't turn into a flame thrower

I posted this in a similar thread:

I would really like some staffs and spells with more mystical properties, rather than the typical elemental magic.

Ex. - A "dark staff" that fires a "dark" sphere of energy that rips through space-time. Or a "staff of light" that generates like an AOE shockwave of light around the player that throws enemies back, inflicting additional damage when the enemy is thrown into an obstacle like a wall or a tree.

God, no, sounds like something from a jrpg. Assume it is still x fire damage for y seconds, if it ain't broke....

I like the idea of staff giving you a totally new 'element' of magic to cast, but on what it should depend how strong those spells are?

You can't enchant your hands, but you can with staff.

What is this.. I don't even...?

Good question. Normally I would say Mysticism, but it's been removed for Skyrim so probably Alteration.

I think staffs should, since they represent the holy grail of an Elder Mage's iconic weaponry, do something more interesting whenever their spells are used from them. I think they should flash brightly, and little tendrils of electricity should spark and pop off of them into the soil in addition to whatever spell you are casting. It would more interesting to see the magic flying about when casting a spell from one. Just my own preference. Leave wands for the newbs. I think new players should only be able to use wands, rods, and staves. And at some point, when you have earned the right to leave fledgling magickry behind, the Mage's Guild will perform an Ascension upon you, giving you a new title commiserate with your new Adept rank, and then unlock the use of Staffs as a sort of reward in waiting. Something to aspire to. And that's why staffs should also reflect a higher connection to magic, and be more powerful, and thus also display that power in some way. Not 100% of the time, but only when spells are cast. You raise your staff, it begins to spark, or circlets of energy begin to pulse from it, and THEN a spell is released from it. Maybe it whispers as if orally casting spells or speaking a dead language or maybe the Dragon tongue, or makes some cool spell sound effects, or something, to add to the sense that they are special. Not some dry stick like you had before, but a living, breathing conduit for magic in your hand. So you can respect staffs all the more when you finally get one.

I haven't always seen this in literature of the movies, it's more of a personal desire in regards to staffs.

I just hope that we get to use them a few more times before needing to recharge them. I could understand melee weapons running out, but staffs?

The ability to temporarily enchant an item, essentially storing some magicka in it for later use would be nice. While it is enchanted it wears out twice as fast and the charges diminish over time automatically. Once the charges are depleted the item reverts back to the unenchanted item and it has been damaged by at least a minimum amount of damage depending on the size of the charge put in it. Of course this could be something limited to staffs or something that they are a lot better at than other items.

The flaw before was enchanted gear was far more powerful in the hands of a warrior or rogue then a mage. This is akin to making rhe mage the one who gains most from smithing and the warrior the one that gains most from alchemy.

Enchanting is something mages do because they gain so much from it that others dont just as smithing is something warriors do because they gain the most from it and alchemy is what rogues do because they gain so very much from it... OR at least thats how it should be.

I agree, that's been one of my disapointments with the TES games, the lack of varied magic schools or at least offer more variation of the elements. What about a telekenisis spell that grabs nearby objects, debri, and they swirl around together in front of you then you hurl this mass of objects at the enemy ?

A water spell that can use nearby water sources to gather up and shoot water, same with snow where you would see the snow forming into snow boulders that then get thrown or rolled down slopes at creatures. For summoning what about creatures that form in cool ways, like skeletons suddenly being summoned from grave yards or below the ground and they climb out of the ground to appear.

I guess the best way to explain what I meant, is magic that is clearly more "supernatural" and fantastical. That's why I gave those examples. Every spell in the Destruction and Alteration specialization seems to be derived from some natural occurrence or mastery over natural forces.
What I am suggesting are spells that cannot be explained by nature, but only by one's understanding of magic. Ex. "A sphere of dark energy that rips through the fabric of space-time" Think of something similar to the projectile that fires from the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-05vLkgP2o&fmt=22 in Mass Effect 2, but moving at a higher speed. I am not suggesting that it be an actual black hole, just a mysterious "sphere of dark energy", with a large black center and like a glowing bluish/purple profile. Anyone here with PS skills that can mock something up? The "staff of light" would be very similar to Gandalf when he faced http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44kBN340vd4&feature=player_detailpage#t=155s, it would create a "light" AOE shockwave, throwing enemies back. With enemies taking additional blunt damage if they are thrown into a tree or wall, for example.

ok I think I know what you mean, that would be totally cool to see. What about a soul spell of sorts that maybe you could use the trapped soul gems and affix it to the end of a staff and it then becomes a spell that unleashes undead souls, for instance one version of that kind of damage would be seeing a ghost like aura or stream of ghost like beings flowing towards the enemy and engulfing them causing them to shreik and go mad. Maybe it causes them to kill themselves in different ways or the spirit mist chokes them or the mist flows into their mouths turning them white before killing them....and then tears the soul from them adding that to your soul pool.

Might be cool with a spell like that to have the ability to collect these souls in your staff, not to be confused with the soul gem but some magical reseviour in your staff that after you've collected, say 5, you can unleash some sort of special or critical soul attack.

Is that more along the lines you are talking about ?

That would be cool too

So archmage suggest unique spell effects and usage with staffs compared to the hand cast spells. As long as the most basic stuff can be on both it could work, basic stuff like frost damage, fire damage, shock etc etc etc. At the same time I'd want the staffs to actually have telekinesis that works on enemies, similar to the stuff seen in Sarumans tower in LoTR when Saruman grabs Gandalfs and his won staff at the same time. Telekinetic upwards and backwards puch at the same time as you cast a shock spell from the other hand would look so epic and still work in gameplay without being too poweful, staffs only have a fixed amount of magicka fixed to them so you couldn't spam the puch combo and damage in the same way as if it was a hand cast spell too.

Yes. More exotic. Like the examples I provided. This can also apply to spells without a staff. Just another example, spells that can be cast on specific parts of the body, such as the player's fists during melee combat.