Would just like to say that spells should allow mages to be more creative. I remember someone here once suggested "fire breath" as an option for fire spells. How awesome would that be.

A traveling wall of fire would be really cool. I agree for the most part. There should be more variation and more unique abilities for players to play with. Fire should behave like fire, ice like ice, shock like shock, etc. With a more fantastic twist, of course.

fire breath was actually in a mod.........basically just a flamethrower. it was either midas magic or supreme magicka i cant remember.

Yeah, but I'd like to see it properly and artistically animated in Skyrim, not just a flamethrower, But e.g., character visibly inhales, shoulders raised, builds up in chest then unleashes napalm death like a dragon.

yeah that would be nice. on a related note it would be nice to actually see my body when i look down. got spoiled by warband and dark messiah.

More spell effect ideas:
Ethrealness
Sun Damage
Stunt Magicka
Damage Attribute
Sanctuary
Clone
Resurrection
Smoke

You know what I want. Shadowmagic. That is all. Shadowmagic.

:turtle:

That reminds me. I had this crazy spell idea the other day, where a player can possess their own shadow to attack nearby enemies independently of your character.

How are you thinking that would work? Would your character just remain idle while you control the shadow-spirit thing?

Not exactly. Once the spell is cast, the player shadow carries out a given routine like any other spell, but much more like a follower NPC would assist you in battle. So, hypothetically while the spell is active, the player can still perform standard attacks while his/her shadow distorts to carry out attacks of it's own. Hope that makes sense.

I'd say they have to make magic feel genuinely powerful and potentially terrifying. I mean, they have to keep its gameplay role balanced, but that doesn't mean it has to have weak, boring effects like Oblivion. Make magic less "oh, everyone can do that" and more "oh my gods wtf he's a mage, he just destroyed the village in a shower of fire!!!1!" I would also like to see more effects like putting out fires with ice, or freezing lakes to walk on. Fire could do the reverse and melt ice - pretty easy to imagine uses for that in Skyrim!

Ok some fiddly bits I thought up.

Id like it if how many summons you can control at one time and thier total level were controlled by your major skills your 2 main stats AND how many slots were NOT covered in armor and how many hands didnt have a weapon or armor in them.

Id also like not holding something other then wand rod or stave would increase the number of rings wearable in that hand.. along again with if intel or willpower were important stats and what skills you picked as major skills.

Id like if the ability to carry magical items were dependant on int nor strength for carry capacity.

Id like it if a certain amoiunt of our magical OOMPH as in attack power majjicka and defense ability came simply from the amount and relative power of all the magical items we were wearing weilding and carrying.

I REALY would like a total rework on summons and more importantly how reflect magic works. Summons should last until dead and reflect should be a small percentage of damage reflected back not the entire shebang.

Healing enchantments should exist.. but they should be VERY slow as in needing to stack a whole shop full of em just to get 1 per sec regen rate.

Spells should either move alot faster or be self targetting so they follow the enemies around awhile. length of time able to do so dependant on skill and stats and geneal magicyness.

Raiden FTW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gatj64gM7k&feature=related thats it, they should make it like this video
Just imagine a battle between a Daedra Mage and an Altmer that looks like that, atleast on the magic animations, outstanding

How is destroying a village anywhere near balanced? Like all the other skills, they are just a toolset, not a solution. Make yourself an addon if you want to burn down villages, but please keep the original game within reason.

Some spell ideas:
Turn to stone (freeze anim and change textures, fairly easy) for limited time.
Turn to ice (freeze anim and change textures, fairly easy) for limited time.
The above two are similar to paralyze, but based on elements and nature rather than mind control (different schools).
Disguise (temporary effect where you get to set your facegen sliders, morphs back when done).
Hover which is cheap levitate, as it can replace a good jump skill to pass a chasm, but no altitude control over a couple of feet.
Acute hearing, where all actor based sounds are boosted for distance.
Eyes of the (some animal). Maybe some are more into the IR spectrum (heat), with different colorings. Faceted texture for a Eyes of the fly spell?

First and foremost, I want the Construction Set to give us the ability to create new spells and new skills to where we can assign them different attribute modifiers, custom animations if needed, and their own calculations. Basically, the things that were once hard-coded onto the disk, I'd like to see not hard- coded so that we could actually implement all these things that people are wanting.


In regards to all spells, once it is learned, you should be able to alter its magnitude, size and duration depending on how well your skill is. You shouldn't have to go back and make an entirely new spell that only has a bigger radius even though you already know what spell. That is very lame and just takes up more space in your grimoire. Now learning the difference between casting it on yourself, at touch and at distance and whether its area around the caster or area at a distance is different. TESII: Daggerfall had that pretty well. You should have to make a new spell for something that covers a different area and functions differently in that sense since you're not increasing the properties like size, but actually changing how the spell works; thus a new spell.




Destruction
-Actually see the elemental effects and affects of ice, fire, electricity. When you hit someone with a frost spell, they should turn frozen. You should be able to adjust the intensity of the spell (magnitude) by holding a button(s).

-Having environmental affects from your spells. i.e. casting a small frost spell on a flower and seeing it freeze and not move. The grass moves in the games due to the wind. If I cast a frost spell on the ground, I want to see that patch of grass freeze and have the ability to stomp on it and watch the grass crunch and crumble on the ground.

-Force spells, as in gravity and energy, not the Force from Starwars. This would be where, if you were good enough, could control the energy in your hands and condense it so tightly that you would create tiny little atomic explosions. And the better you became, the bigger you could create and control them. The biggest thing is control, because you wouldn't want to direct the explosion towards you. Basically, you're smashing atoms together by crushing the energy.



Restoration
-Cure disease spells should be subdivided into curing certain groups or classifications of diseases. It makes it too easy to just cast cure disease and you can cure everything. Same with cure poison and cure paralyzation. (off topic, but if you're paralyzed, you should not be able to open up your inventory and drink a potion to cure it)

Spells that can restore life to flora. These would be very hard spells to learn as they're for masters, but dead flowers, trees, fields, would be restored to life by using restorative magic. People and animals are different because their souls leave their bodies to the Dreamsleeve so you're restoring the dead tissue and giving the body life again, but it has no soul. Although, it would depend on how soon the soul left after when the person was official dead (brain death I think is the last thing to happen?). So for the video game, say within 5 in-game minutes, a master at this type of restoration magic would have the ability to revive the person/animal using magic, bringing him/her back to life. It wouldn't be that hard to do in the game. Just using time calculations and setting the NPC/creature back to "living" instead of "dead".



Conjuration
I don't quite understand this school, but you're taking something from a daedric realm in oblivion and keeping it in the Mundus for a set time until it is transfered back to Oblivion, correct? And that is why when you summon bound armor/weapons, they're just lesser-daedra in the form of a weapon, until their time on the mortal plane has run out and they're sent back. Okay, so with that in mind, another level of conjuration should be implemented. The player should actually be able to conjure any mundane items from the Mundus. i.e. a fork, a chair, a napkin, a house, a thimble, etc.... And they should not derive from Oblivion, but from the magical essences that emanate into Mundus, lore-wise. So you're standing around and you can make a teapot appear in your hands right then and there. Now is that Alteration (altering the world's perception of what is actually there) or is that Conjuration (conjuring an item from some other place in the mortal realm into your presence). If conjuration is taking something from somewhere, then actually making something out of what is there in front of you would probably be Alteration. Someone clarify this for me.




Illusion
-Remote viewing (seeing what another animal or person sees)
-Able to turn yourself into other NPCs or animals, visually speaking, not physiologically and anatomically. Or into vegetables or mundane objects if good enough in the spell.
-spell that creates images with smoke and color. Just an aesthetic spell for entertainment. But that would be a fun way to entertain folks.
-The sound spell needs to be taken to a whole new level for masters and supermasters of Illusion. The ability to create actual music in a person or persons head(s). Creating a frequency in the targets mind is the very basic one. Creating actually harmonies and sounds is extremely advanced but should be doable. Not sure how that would work in a video game, though.



Alteration
-spells to level out terrain or raise it or shape it. very difficult
-turn snow into dirt, or water into fire. very difficult, though
-turn someone else into another person/animals
-turn water into wine or other beverages
-cause rain to fall upwards or sideways, i.e. control the rain
-control the weather; all types of weather. You could bring storm clouds together and cause lighting/thunderstorms. You could bring in the fog to shroud yourself from enemies. You could cause earthquakes, volcanos to erupt, tidal waves, water- tornados, avalanches. Extremely difficult spells.
-Spells that can make flowing lava come to life in the form of a serpent and command it to attack people.
-Ability to manipulate gravity on a target(s). (extremely difficult) Not sure how that would work lore-wise or in-game wise but it is interesting.
-Turning the ground into quicksand.
-Controlling trees and bringing them to life to where you could control them as if controlling a puppet. i.e making them grab and kill your enemies, so to speak.
-Life spell. You can give life to anything you cast it on. Tables and chairs would be able to walk around. Utensils would move and bounce around. Kinda like that stuff you see in Disney's Sword in the Stone.
-Turn NPC/animals into other elements, like stone, rock, earth, snow...



Mysticism
Probably would be used in conjuction with some of the spells I listed prior to this.
Telepathy - not necessarily reading ones thoughts, but just the ability to communicate with the person via the mind.
-Ability to slow down time or speed up time
-control gravity or the rotation of the planet


Necromancy
-I just think it'd be cool to animate dead fat pregnant women who are walking rotting zombies with their innards and snarling babies' heads poking out of their guts.
This school doesn't offer much of diversity other than animating the dead, as that is all that it does, reanimate something that was once living.



I realize that most of these spells are only good for story writing and movies and most likely couldn't be implemented into modern day games with our current technology. But it's a nice list, I think.

You just killed every last one of my ideas in the first paragraph there buddy. Good thoughts and ideas though. I've added my thoughts onto the list you have made, as well as names for the effects you have mentioned.

Anyone other than me feel that the mana system needs to be improved? It was very difficult to be a pure mage in oblivion past lvl 10 or so because you would just run out of mana completely after a few spells and the enemies wouldnt be dead.

lol, thanks iTz 4thHoRSeMaN. On "natural disasters" like controlling the weather and creating hurricanes, it could be both destruction and alteration. You're altering the world's view of how the weather is functioning. But you're also destroying the environment with it. Then again, if you just use this spell to move the stormy clouds away, that is alteration. If you causes an avalanche to occur, that is both alteration/destruction because it's altering the energy that's holding the snow together. But it's also destroying things in its path as it tumbles down.

Thanks for putting names to them. I'm not good with naming.
And thanks for the Ethrealness spell idea. that's one thing I forgot to add in. The ability to walk through walls. Kinda like making yourself like those undead skeleton spirits in The Return of the King. It's like you'd make your body's image remain in the Mundus while your physical body stepped aside into the 4th or 5th dimension; like shifting into the 3rd dimension from the 2nd dimension. Or like on a graph (0,1), (1,1). Same y axis (world) but different x axis (you).

haha, it's supposed to be disturbing.

Oh, another spell is doubling yourself. Kinda like that one mortal kombat character, if anybody can think of whom I'm talking about. Although your doppleganger wouldn't be nearly as strong as you. But you get the idea.



Yes, it needs improvement. Everything does. But I found it super easy to exploit magic in TESIV. I went and made super powerful electrocution spells and could kill all enemies pretty much with one or two hits of it. The arena tournaments they had were utterly unfair! Here I am casting electrical spells at enemies with weapons at a distance. I mean, what good is a sword against sorcery (as Conan the barbarian once asked)? So I felt the magic system was made too easy to exploit in Oblivion.

I fergetted about that, so I'll add it in now. Probably under Illusion, huh?

Yeah, I'd say Illusion. You're not literally doubling yourself. But then if it were an illusion, it couldn't fight or touch anything. It be just like a hologram. If one was good enough, he/she could use mysticism or alteration to change and apply different properties to it to make it function like a person in the mortal realm. But that's probably getting to complicated, even for lore.

Being able to delete an unused spell.

As long as you feel like a witch/mage whatever I'll be happy, I played a magic base character in Oblivion and i didnt enjoy it much as i'd like to

Deffy speaks wisely.



I would love to see improvements in the magic system (such as electrical conductivity as was mentioned in the OP), but it largely comes down to the limitations of the game engine. I just hope they push it to get the most out of it that they can.


What is most important though is the ability to perform all aspects of magery without being a member of the Mages' Guild (I would also like grammatical consistency in guild titles!). That is, primarily, spellcrafting and enchanting. Enchant also needs to be restored as a distinct skill, but this time with a working formula behind it. Oblivion oversimplified every aspect of enchanting, when it wouldn't be a particularly difficult facet of magic to really flesh out into one of the game's great strengths..

yeah to add you didnt feel powerful when you level up even the expensive spells you bought and made looked the same and felt the same, i didn't see what the point was getting new spells when you can not level up and use the same weak spells to complete the game D:

would you level up a sword? (Dawn/Duskfang excluded)

[I realize this came from the MW perspective where weapon stats were consistent]