Trying to get my head around what they did with alteration/mysticism.

Mysticism was always ill defined but it DID at least include:
- Enchantments, the creation of, trapping of souls, and tapping and getting more out of enchantments
- Clairvoyant knowledge and perception
- Telekinetics
- Tampering with the flow of magicka

Now, if they'd gotten rid of most of that spell list I'd have understood why they did it. But in Skyrim they first merged mysticism with Alteration (Which speaks of altering the truths of reality, and does little to explain why it includes fields like clairvoyance and detect life) citing it to being a redundant field, and then created a completely new magical field - enchanting.. Which has perks relating to the creation of and the tapping and maintainence of enchantments... pretty much the description of mysticism in some of the in game books.

Is there some interpretation of the lore that justifies giving the mysticism spells to alteration, and giving the enchantment stuff to a new field by a new name ort have the devs simply derped? - because, far as I can see if they didn't marry mysticism to alteration and instead added the enchanting perks to mysticism they would've had a field that was both canonically more accurate AND would have justified retaining the school...


Also Alteration now seems to be the swiss army knife school. I mean it always HAD a really good selection - shield, feather etc - but now it has detect life and absorb spell too. An alteration expert covers just about every defensive and utility skill in the game

Enchanting isn't new. It was in Morrowind, and probably Arena and Daggerfall before it.

Ah yeah you're right. Mysticism in Morrowind explictly states it relates to bypassing the physical world - and is mostly about tapping energies, remote detection and transposition/telekinesis - and enchanting is a seperate skill there too so; Oblivion's mysticism was sort've a pile of leftovers that didn't fit in elsewhere?

The schools seem to be the best way to teach people how magic works, but that's not to say it's how magic really works. Daggerfall had a neat way of showing that, where spells could draw upon multiple schools of magic. It would be nice to have an overhaul that gave the schools some direction at least. You're right about Oblivion's mysticism being a grab bag.

Yeah, ignore spell school continuity when it comes to lore.

I always liked this passage from http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Palla:



Like someone said, the schools are easier ways to teach people, or different views on how to approach certain bits of magic. I do like that other in-game story; can't remember the title for the life of me. It was about a battlemage defending the School of Destruction, explaining all the little nuances and stuff.

That said, I already like "Palla" as a story in itself. Halloween is right around the corner. Horror of Castle Xyr? Surfeit of Thieves?

Schools are pretty much just that - schools of thought. Methods of teaching.

In real life, if they started dividing science into some new classification system, and highschool students were taught Urgology, Atomology, and Viscerology, the laws of physics wouldn't suddenly change because they were being taught differently. Same thing in TES. Magicka is constant. It's just being taught slightly differently.

The schools are magic are for those just starting out to learn which spells do what in terms of manipulation.

• Restoration is the manipulation of the body and life
  
• Conjuration is the manipulation of space
  
• Illusion is the manipulation of light and sound
  
• Alteration is the manipulation of matter
  
• Destruction is manipulation of magic into something hostile
  
• And mysticism is a throw-away school for misc spells

A real magister knows it is all manipulation of the environment, and thus, can perform any school of magic with ease.

Response to Bero's Speech?


Except for when it's manipulation of the self. :spotted owl:

How is Conjuration manipulation of space?

You're taking one thing from one place, and bringing it over to this space instantaneous.

I dunno, I had to come up with something,

Here's a stupid post I made in one of the, at the time, seemingly endless threads in Skyrim general about how removing Mysticism was an affront to personal freedom, or some such :

Nice, I like it. Mysticism was once called The Old Way, wasn't it? Except now there's so many ways to access different aspects of magicka, that there's little left for academic exploration. Gleaning anything more out of it would just be hobby, like ham radio, doing everything from scratch. Reinventing the wheel

Game mechanics aside, of course. Skyrim being pro-Man (elven artaeum) and having a much more practical (rugged!) existence.

It's kinda not but his point is that they're schools of thought. Somewhere in the lore there's an instance of someone arguing that Destruction should be a subset of Alteration since all you're doing is altering things in a destructive matter. And that's completely true. However, the practical applications of each school are completely different. In warfare being able to hurl fireballs with fantastic raw power is far more useful than creating a highly efficient spell of water walking. Hence the academic and military divide. Maybe the College of Winterhold simply doesn't teach Mysticism as its own school, rejecting it as "pansy elf bullcrap" and focusing on the practicalities. And frankly some of it makes sense. I always thought telekinesis fit into alteration far better than it did Mysticism to begin with.

I do wish they had expanded upon Mysticism to give it a solid definition rather than simply scrapping it, but oh well.

Well, actually, water walking would be quite militarily useful. There are a fair few instances in the literature of Alteration's uses in war.

The 'schools of thought' approach is good, but it doesn't fully explain things. For instance, 'manipulation of light and sound', for Illusion, omits the mental aspects of the school - command, calm, and frenzy spells. We also know that Conjuration masters develop telepathic abilities, which implies that they use telepathy to control their summons. And that doesn't fall out nice and neat. To some extent there are ideological approaches characteristic to each school (alteration: earthbone influencing, conjuration/necromancy/enchantment: soul control/manipulation, illusion: mind manipulation, restoration/destruction: matter manipulation, mysticism: manipulation of interconnectivity) but they all also contain spells that violate those methodologies.

To my mind, there's really no better explanation for what the schools are than their names. They're declarations of purpose, and they include all the spells useful to accomplishing that purpose. And, obviously, there are lots of spells that fit lots of purposes, and keep getting switched.

I'm excited for the College of Winterhold. I really wish I didn't have to wait until a month after the release to get my copy.

For [censored]s sake, don't be so nitpicky. Okay, I neglected to be ultra descriptive and all that jazz. My main point was magic is about manipulation of something, using examples as to why spells go into certain schools, and because of that, it's all connected in some way. Splitting the schools is just for simplification purposes in lore, and game mechanics for the gameplay.

As for your alternative as to why spells are split into schools, it is basically what I said, only much more simple.

If you only have time to teach a raw hedge wizard auxiliary one type of magic you're definitely going to with destruction over alteration for the purposes of combat.

Actually, I'd have to disagree with you on this one. Teach them destruction, and you'll only ever get to teach them one kind of magic. Teach them alteration, and they (+ the soldiers they're protecting) will live to learn another day. I'd say that either Alteration or Restoration would be the most militarily-useful schools of magic.

You fill the ranks with soldiers, not medics. Destruction seems to be fairly easy to grasp.

Yikes, man. I didn't, like, attack you.



You fill the ranks with soldiers, not wizards. Most of the Legion isn't going to use much magic. It's more ultimately effective to train mages to keep the foot soldiers alive - and buffed - than to train lots of mages to blow things up. Destruction may be easier, but someone who's not really that good at it yet or isn't very magically powerful isn't going to cause much damage. It's more efficient to use that person to heal your super highly trained Legionnaires, or to have them cast a spell that shields those soldiers, or lets them breathe water and infiltrate through a castle's sewers or something like that. The people who have really really high natural aptitude for Destruction and low aptitude for anything else get to throw the fireballs.

I guess this is just comparative advantage, actually.

There ought to be two kinds of spells (no spell schools): ritual and psychic (intelligence and will). Ritual magic can be cast by anyone with the right ingredients, amulets, trinkets, etc. However, if the ritual spell is incanted improperly, or by someone of low intellect (gone), the result can be disastrous.

Psychic spells are the result the PC is "imagining" (equip the spell, to represent the caster's occupation with the thought). These spells gauge the caster's will (gone) for their effect/s. They're always successful, and these spells you only need to learn once. Ritual spells require new procedures for the better effects.

Also, spells are state secrets; they should be guarded very closely. By the fourth era, there should be no spells in the market place. All wizards must register newly discovered effects and efficient procedures, with the nearest Guild. Failure to do so can result in stigmatization. Tell me what you think.

How about..... no


We don't need them to dumb down the spell system anymore then they already have.

Honestly, this is just a matter of taste, but I despise it. This is an approach I've seen before (wizard / sorceror from DnD) and never really liked. Plus, it'd be a big retcon. Spells have never worked this way before. Finally, it'd be inconvenient for a game. Nobody is going to sit down watch their character preform a ritual.

As for the Magstopo, in the 3rd era, that was in place as much as it ever could be, with the Mages Guild. You can no more take magic away from the people than you could take away their arms.

The ritual takes no time at all, just check your inventory for the right ingredients (like alchemy) or the enchanted trinket. Casting the spell then takes the ingredients or drains mana from the enchantment. This is already done. A ritual spell is spoken from the grimoire, so the wizard could be effectively neutralized with silence. A psychic spell is a thought and can't be silenced, except in a place with wards (which can be circumvented).

You aren't taking magic away, you're taking a spell away. There's a difference. For example, the Temple of the One invoked wards against spells, but was there magic in that place? A silence spell won't take magic away from someone, it prevents them from speaking. Drain Magicka and mana bars still contradicts their cosmology's rules. I think the ritual/psychic system final syncs lore with gameplay.

?

Your mana bar breaks no more lore than your stamina or health bar. It represents the aetherial energy you've absorbed from sun, moon, and starlight. Drain magicka steals this energy from others. When you cast a spell, you use the raw creative power of magicka to create an effect, such as a fireball or the creation of a magical shield. I think the PGE 3E explains this in the intro.