How do you guys feel about spell weaving? Weaving multiple spells together for a combination of unique effects? Or is it sort of pointless.

Magic

The magic in oblivion was extremely lacking. A large amount of things were in fact. The magic spells shouldn't be completely limited to 1-100 scales. Magic costs should not be as insane either. For a new wizard you should be able to cast maybe 1 fireball maybe 2 if they are gifted before becoming exausted or running out of magicka. A level 20 mage should be able to cast fireballs with no cost and be able to summon giant Chasms full of undead. Magic should be much more open in TES 5 or 6. The most powerful magic seen in Oblivion might be usable by lvl 10 if the stats are downpowered and new magic is added. Using examples theses are spells i would expect at each level from a fire mage up to level 20. 1) A small spark 2) A flaming touch 3) A Fireball 4) A Flaming Sword 5) A Flaming Shield 6) A flaming ray 7) 2 Fireballs at once Flaming vines 9) Flame attacks that attacks from 4 directions 10) Firestorm 11) Summon Demon 12) Flaming orb shield 13) summon Lava cannon 14)summon Lava pit 15) summon lesser devil 16)Summon fire Dome shield 17) Summon meteorite 1 Summon Lava Lake 19) Summon devil 20) Summon Volcano.

Spellmaking

Deciding the spell visuals should be part of making the spell. For example a Fire spell: Color(red,blue,purple, or multi-colored flames would be cool), shape(Fireball,Fire ray,Firebreath, Fire wall), size(tiny fire spark, medium,large, huge, enormous, gargantuan, colossal, gravitational), special effects (burn, explode, smoke, takes shape of dragon), Type(target, touch, self, AOE, AOE+ self, trap, Friendly, Enemy), Trap properties(Trigger, type, reaction), and many others... actually let me lay out my idea as it would appear:
Name:_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Spell Icon: [List of hundreds of icons organized in certain way]
Elemental
Tribal
Magical
Etc. [probably should be at least 50 categories]
Spell Effect 1:
Effect Type: [Certain effects also have other optional effects]
Fire damage
Optional effects [Catches fire, makes light, burns, explodes]
Shock damage
Frost damage
Etc.
Target: Touch/Target/Self/AOE/AOE+Self/Allies/Enemies/Touch any object [Additions, especially allies/enemies would be much more expensive than target/touch/self]
Time: Starts after 0-360/ Duration 0-360/ Advanced (temporary stop 1: 0-360, temporary stop 2: 0-360, temporary stop 3)
Area of effect: [Where the actual damage hits once landed, not what it looks like]
Shape of area: Ball, Circle, Square, cube, etc.
Rotation of area
Area outward: 0-100, Advanceed (Up:0-50, Down: 0-50, Left: 0-50, Right: 0-50, In other directions 0-50, or in certain pattern based off others: connect, make sphere based on average, etc.)
Effectiveness at range: Define Center: 0-100, Define Layer two [Half effect] 0-100, Define Outermost layer: 0-100 [quarter effect] 0-100.
Optional Effects Options:
Time: same
How it begins/ ends: Begins to burn slightly/burns immediately/ goes away gradually/suddenly stops
Special Effects: Damage: 0-100 [Explosions,etc.] Range:, [You get the point]
Visuals: [What I wrote above] Size, color, visual effects, shape
Trap Options: [let your imagination go]
Cost of effect 1: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ School: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Rank Required: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Spell Effect 2:
[insert same thing here]
Spell Effect 3:
Spell Effect 4:
Spell Effect 5:
[Continues up until spell effect 50]
Grand total of Effect: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Schools: [Lists all that are used] Rank required: [Lists ranks of all effects needed]

Wow. That's awesome, Grim. Quite a bit of customization there. Should the majority of these options be accessible via an "advanced" tab or button? I would love all those options, but it might be intimidating for more casual players. What do you think?

Have to say, casting a fire spell using "fire breath" would be so damn cool. Mages should be creative in the way they cast spells.

It should be a skill on its own. Otherwise it was pretty much an awesome spell creation system.

Not that when you open up spell settings, these would not all appear. You would likely have a list of spell effects in the spell on the right and the option to make a new one on the left. When you click on new one you would be given the following options:
Visuals (Visual effects)
Effects (Damage, duration, etc.)
These would then fold out to have all of those options.
You would choose the icon and name in the very top section.

BTW, I did not type all of that just now, I wrote that in a TES 5 wishlist forum elsewhere, and copy-pasted it here.

Nice. Thank you, Grim!

there are so many possibilities with magic, like with telekinesis you could pick up things and throw them at people, you could make lightning fall from the sky and hit someone. am I the only one who was annoyed to only be able to summon 1 creature at a time? seriously, if your the king of all necromancers you should be able to make at least 10 zombies rise from the earth and attack people. there should be more options other than "target, touch and self" its just annoying. imagine a flamethrower coming from your hand! (constant flame, not a fireball) and the color thing would be nice also, like blue or black fireballs!! and remember how on lord of the rings at the part where gandolf is fighting the balrog and he makes that invisible sphere shield around him to block the sword?, that would be cool to have.

You mean like the Shield spell in Morrowind?

How about a spell to give a one-time enchantment to a normal weapon? [An alternate to poison] Then you can charge a weapon before going into battle to get a jump on the first hit. Would be quite effective for thief/rogue type. Also, enchanting of arrow/s.

To me, allowing stacking potion and spell effects is pretty weak and aimed at the players who are lazy and want no challenge. That is what the difficulty slider is for. From what I read on the forums people want to be invincible and then complain how simple/easy the game is. I do not get it, but then I do not have to buy TES 5 either so it is all good.

After spells reach a certain threshold of power they should have a chance of exploding in your face, if only to prevent overpowered spells from being viably made.

Sure that could be a possibility. I was thinking more along the lines of pooling ones mana for super tough boss fights. Make a spell scroll using not only unique symbols, but make it put some of the player's mana into it as well (as much as the spell would cost normally).

The only thing I missed about Morrowind spells compared to Oblivion was if you got an absorb skill like health it would unlock all absorbs for spell making and enchanting where Oblivion didn't for me on the xbox.

That's actually a pretty good idea. I like it.

People act like 'spellmaking only in the mages guild makes no sense' but in reality it makes more sense than allowing any old person to access it, the mages guild imo, would try to regulate and control all mages in tamriel or whatever region they have chapters in, and judging by our reliance on spell alters to make the spells an enchanted piece of equipment is needed to create spells. Assuming that these are hard to make it's not a stretch to think the mages guild would go out of it's way to acquire most if not all of thse spellmaking alters and only offer them to mages that join their guild, in an attempt to monoplize magicka so to speak.

it's the opposite for me lol, when it's multiplayer, like WoW, I wanna be over-powerful, ect. or any other game. when it's single player I want a nice, fun, challanging experience.

Bump.

I'd like more than three destruction "elements" to be available like water, wind, earth, etc the effectiveness of which is altered by the environment (fire spells are less effective in the rain where water spells gain power)

I'd like more options than projectile, on touch and on self ways of casting magic too. for example limited range streams (like a flame thrower), homing projectiles

I'd also like to see summoning revamped, where you get a capture spell that can only be used on enemies with low heath, once you have captured a particular monster only then are you allowed to summon it.

I'd like to not see a maximum on range or damage etc

plus the negative effects lowering requirements would be nice

so say we could I dunno like make a powerful spell that completely saps us of our health (leave you with one) and our stats but is really powerful

uh basically I'd like no solid maximum but rather be limited simply by ability

There is a necromancy thread, lets let that get worked out there first for a bit.

Otherwise there are plenty of Spell related topics to cover under one thread. Here is a short list:

• Creation
  
• Spell tracking
  
• Spell Schools
  
• New, Improved, or Additional effects (ie. conductivity of electricity)
  
• Mysticism
  
• Transmogrify (like Calvin and Hobbes)
  
• Animation

* If there is an ongoing conversation do not expect all the gears to change immediately for a new topic.

So there is a bit to condense, just onto this one thread if possible. But I think it would be a good place to get final conclusions of some of this stuff.


Current discussions of the topics:

• http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1151665-magic-spells/
  
• http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1151646-necromancy-as-a-skill/
  
• http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1151314-magicka-physics/
  
• http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1152221-conjuration/
  
• http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1152263-improved-magic-system/

I want destruction spells to only be elemental, and really well done. Spells like Drain Skill: Mercantile are lame and never should have been put into the games. Or drain fatigue? Surely there's a better school for drain fatigue than Destruction. Making someone sleepy should be an illusion skill. Disintegrate weapon is a destruction skill? Really? Why isn't that Alteration? If there is going to be an alteration skill next game...

I'll take more powerful animations for more powerful spells, please.

I think they should spend a rather large amount of time reworking the magic system. In Oblivion, I felt so limited with my magic. They not only kept you from doing certain spells until you had trained that specific magic type to a certain level, but made it difficult to level up these said skills. On top of this, if your magicka max wasn't high enough... well lets just say you better be born under the sign of the mage...

I want to see all the effects in the game, be found in spell form ie: sun damage. And I want to be able to spell make my own spells using all effects in the game. I do think that the current schools are fine, as in we don't need additional schools. But I agree that some of the spells need to be re-assigned and re-jigged. EG: Restoration shouldn't have any combative spells, ie absorb health. That should be mysticism imo. I'm ok if some spells seem like they could be in another class, after all magic isn't clearly defined.

I'd like to see the return of some of the effects from previous games, like levitate, blind (with good AI this would be a great spell) mark/recall/divine and lock (again with good AI it's useful).