Always thought it was kinda lame that the player always starts with those two spells and keeps them even if he chooses a pure fighter or thief character. When I choose any kind of magic user variation I get a bunch of other spells on exiting the sewer, which to me is also lame - an escaped prisoner should have to join the mages guild to learn magic, he shouldn't have any basic spells at all from the start.

With that in mind I made a mod by selecting all the spells that were marked as PC start spells and unchecked them, so a mage doesn't automatically acquire stuff like summon skeleton and detect life before exiting the sewers and going someplace to earn them. But Flare and Heal Minor Wounds are NOT checked as PC start spells, yet I get them anyway.

Is that hard coded in somehow, or is that in one of the game settings variables?

I was going to look into the Flare/HMW issue myself shortly. IIRC, Arthmoor's Alternative Beginnings does not award these two spells in all cases, so I was going to look at what he's done.

I've got to say though that I don't see anything in itself wrong with a mage or, for example, battlemage even, knowing some basic spells as a prisoner or non-guild member. The guild will sell spells to anyone, it's just that non-members get worse prices. And it's pretty clear from lore that the guild does not have a monopoly on spellcasting (one obvious example being the chapel healers, who are non-guild).

Another way to look at it is, how on Nirn can someone have, say, an Illusion level of 30 without knowing any Illusion spells at all? But I do agree that non-magic users don't need to be given those two from the start.

Supreme Magicka also removes the flare and healing spells at the start of the game (depending on an ini setting). So there is a way to do it. The spells are replaced by scrolls that have unlimited uses until you exit the tutorial dungeon.

That flag is bugged and doesn't work, but you can't remove all player spells anyway. You can have no weapon equipped, but you can't have no spell equipped.

Even if you remove all spells, the game will still equip any starting spell.

I just tested it: I removed all spells, and (even without any spell in my inventory) I'm still able to cast the default restore health spell.

I tried to equip a scroll and cast it. The scroll was destroyed then the game equipped the default "restore health" spell again.

There's now way to get rid of it, unless you alter the game code with some dll plugin.

The Flare spell is in the player's base record, but removing it is as simple as using a RemoveSpell command with it, nothing hard coded about it.

Indeed you can't "get rid" of DefaultPlayerSpell, since the game selects it when there's no spell available. But you can alter its effects to nullify it just fine. The way TRAP does it is by removing the restore health effect and giving it a dummy script effect in its place that simply does nothing. You can also turn it into a lesser power if you want to make sure it won't even train any of your casting skills.

You could simply remove all effects from it, but I don't think the game likes it. I haven't tested it but I recall problems if the game couldn't tell what is the school of a spell you cast.

Makes sense, changing those two spell effects is probably the best way to kludge around it. Morrowind had an enchanted healing ring you had to take out of a barrel at the start which gave you a magic inventory, Arena and Daggerfall had no spellbook at all for non mage classes. To me having the healing spell from the start kind of makes the healing potions redundant - I do cheat in many ways, but I also like to balance it so there's a challenge to it. If I want perks I have to earn them somehow, otherwise it just feels lame.

Hmmm, they threw me a dummy tack.

Flare is StandardFireDamageTarget1Novice, changed that from 6 points fire damage on target to restore fatigue 1 point on self. Still a spell but a useless one.

Then found;

StandardRestoreHealth1Novice - labeled as Heal Minor Wounds

Did the same to that, but when I tested in game it healed wounds same as before? Egad, Watson, here we have;

DefaultPlayerSpell - also labeled as Heal Minor Wounds, apparently that's the one the player gets. Change that to restore fatigue self 1 point and the player is dependent on healing potions until he buys a healing spell.

While I was at it I made a custom race based on the Breton, with the Breton's increased magika and resistance, but with all the skill bonuses changed to non magical stuff like blade, marksman, sneak etc. Then created a custom class with intelligence and willpower as the favored attributes and magic as the specialty, but no magic skills, all combat and stealth. That results in a base of 25 for all the combat and stealth skills plus the race bonuses, with 10 points for each of the starting magic skills. This guy will have to join the mages guild and work his way up, so I also edited the game settings to change iTrainingSkills from 5 to 90. Should make for some interesting gameplay, he can train up to 90 times per level and none of the magic skills will contribute to leveling up, but he will need to fight with sword and bow to earn enough money to pay for the training. Sorry, no gifts from Mama, you want magic you're gonna have to work for it.

This wouldn't have worked in the previous three games, as I recall you had to have minimum numbers in the favored attributes and skills or they wouldn't take you. Oblivion mages and fighters guilds ain't fussy, they'll take anybody.