From what I understand, a spell will be assigned to one or either hand, meaning a Battlemage would carry a one handed weapon and keep his other hand free for spellcasting.

This feels terribly wrong.

My favorite type of character to play is a "Shadowknight." When you picture a Dark Knight, you picture someone wielding a hulking huge blade casting spells. For a Paladin, you picture either a sword and a shield, or someone wielding a big claymore. A Ranger, you would picture dual wielding casting nature magic.

I've never played an RPG where a combat/spellcaster had to keep a hand free to cast his spells.

Try some DnD, then.

It feels terribly right to me.
Mace in one hand, fire in the other.

Should be able to take one hand off your 2h weapon to cast, shouldn't be as inconvenient as having to un-equip your main weapon to cast any spells.

I really, really hope they allow us to bind different spells to keys to use quickly as well, I don't want to need to go into a spell selection screen several times during combat. Something as simple as quick spell slots, up to 10 at least IMO, that you can bind to any key in the key mapping screen.
Would be nice if they also allowed you to toggle "quick casting" so instead of equipping spells via your quick spell keys, you cast them directly with them so combat feels more fluid.

It sounds good to me. Gives you a reason not to walk around with a mace and shield as a Mage or something like that.

Now we just need unarmored back. :toughninja:

How about you go play Morrowind then.

I hated that feature of Morrowind. It's not quite the same in Skyrim, but I'm not too happy about it here, either. Before Morrowind, both TES I and TES II had a system that worked like Oblivion's. Morrowind's was pretty odd, based on my gaming experiences.

Just because the system is better than Morrowinds doesn't mean it's good. Your argument is the equivalent of a child with his hands over his ears screaming "I can't hear you!"

I don't believe that's what Spectre meant, I think he meant that Morrowind had a spell system where you could not use spells while wielding a 2h. Not that MW's system was superior.

Umm, I don't think he was making an arguement. I think he was just pointing out that Morrowind (an RPG) had a feature that your couldn't weild both magic and weapons at the same time, in response to the other guy's statement that he had never played an RPG with that feature before.

I think that adds some uniqueness to the game. If you want to play a battlemage, or use magic with a sword/mace/etc. you'd have to stick with a small, one handed one. As long as two handed weapons are superior to one handed weapons, I'll agree with having this type of magic system.

I just hope I can bind magic with the weapon I'm wielding. A glowing orange-red, flaming metal mace FTW.

Magic while wielding a 2h could easily be less effective in some way than when using a 1h weapon and magic without completely barring 2h users from using magic unless they constantly un-equip, and magic is very important in TES games.

Staves are 2h weapons, what kind of system doesn't let a wizard use magic when wielding a staff!

Almost every RPG I've played required a hand free for casting, or required spellcasters to not even use weapons because they're a;ready way powerful with their spells alone...but I've also never played any MMOs, so maybe they're different. I think it makes sense to need a free hand, since the usual image of casting a spell requires hand gestures of some sort.

I never liked TES having Wizards actually wield staves in both hands like weapons...in classic fantasy, a wizard's staff is a walking stick and/or a magical tool, not a melee weapon/ assault rifle. I think mages should be able to hold their staff in one hand like a walking stick and cast with the other hand.

most games unlike oblivion require free hands or at least one hand. oblivions system was obnoxious. casting magic should be more involved than simply waving your hand and a fireball shoots out. i wish TES would also bring back spell failure as well since in other games you could be interrupted midcast by an attacking enemy. im glad they are requiring that you not have two weapons or a shield/weapon combo in order to cast. im assuming that if you have a two hander that you could probably shift the weapon to one hand while casting but be unable to use it for a few seconds.......or just maybe twohanders just wont be able to use magic.

the desing of oblivon forced you to become a heavy armor wearing battlemage. there was no upside to using robes or light armor endgame and why wouldnt you use the biggest weapons since you could cast no matter what. it sounds like with skyrim they are trying to partially seperate magic from weapons. this is excellent in my view since it takes away one of the dumbed down aspects of oblivion.

Why wouldn't a battlemage type character be able to do the same thing with a spear or bastard sword or even a bow when it isn't strung?

I think that'd be fine. I was just ranting at the end about TES' treatment of staves. I guess I was just thinking that 2-handed weapons ought not to have spells cast "out" of them and have them be used almost at the same time...seems to cheap/powerful. Staves/greatswords/etc., when user is casting a spell, should be in one hand and unusable while they spell is cast and maybe a second or two after...