So mages would have defensive spells, high defense from the staves, and high hitpoints? Nah, it's unreasonable.

Ah, good call.

I agree with the OP, but would also like to add the fact that staves are useless in Oblivion as a whole.
Why eliminate your physical damager such as a sword for a staff that only shoots magic, when you can shoot magic as a warrior anyway?
Also, the animations for the spells need to be unique or at least differentiated. I remember a few occasions having let loose a blast of fire and it was so immemorable and bland that I wasn't confused or surprised when it turned out to be fire bolt (memory is fuzzy sorry).
Then there is the thing about letting off that enemies explode spell at a frail enemy, then it just keeps running at you, nothing like a falling down effect.
(P.S. I hate the fact you can be a sword-wielding archmage who serves sithis as an assassin when you are the grey fox who is against killing and the divine crusading paradigm of Cyrodiil that is a do-gooder)

That is why the CoC is Sheogorath. He/she is insane and he/she does everything, regardless of morals. Daedric princes don't abide by the mortal morals of good and bad. :wacko:

But your not Sheogorath. You are the champion of Kvatch... wait... what?

Yeah ok that is a bit stupid.

You can also be the champion of the knights of the nine as well as have an infamy over over 200.

Realy they should have guild and rank limitations based on your characters stats like morrowind (Oh so much stuff that made morrowind great never made it in to Oblivion).

I think even morrowind was too easy. My charcters could always at leat join. I could have my Orc warrior in the mages guild...

Oh, and all the Oblivion Sheogorath explanations to everything are all stupid.

I think there should be no custom classes, you should pick one of the many classes availible and you are bound to those choices. Warriors, barbarians, and the like, classes can not join the mages guild and vice versa.

"But we dont want to limit the player to what he/she can do, we want people to be able to play the game how they want"

So that they can play half of one character and finish all the quests in 1 save and never play again?

Not only does it seem a bit more sensable but it will give new game play experiences for new characters and much reply value.

It would start to feel like DA:O very quickly.

Knight Class NPC: "Get back in your chambers, mage!"
Mage Class Character: "I just had to use the bathroom!"
Knight Class NPC: "BLOOD MAGICIAN NECROMANCER! ROUGE MAGE! APOSTATE! KILL! KILL! KILL!"
Mage Class Character: "Ahhhhhhh!"

It would be the stereotypical "Mages think they're always right, Fighters are reckless, Thieves are not to be trusted, Assassins are cool." Sort-of deal if they made NPCs identify you by your class. If the arch-mage is wearing peasant clothes, I can't tell him from the man in Weye anyway. It would make the game very linear since you couldn't be an Acrobat who dabbles in Magic. Besides, people are always able to learn new things, what I always hated was in a game where I couldn't use a weapon or do something because it was made for a different class. What's stopping my Fighter from picking up a dagger and stabbing the boss monster in the eye? Why, a little label: [Assassin Class]

This isn't like fast-travel where you're always tempted to use it. If you make a pure fighter character, make a new Mage character if you feel it'd be unfitting.

What would somebody with their main class as "Thief" so they could have speech-craft boosts, but otherwise they wanted to be a Knight do?

Gees dont go that far. Im just saying there should be restrictions based on what class you chose. Not a bunch of classes yelling at each other. What on earth gave u that idea. The NPCs dont have to identify you as anything other than The Hero Of Kvatch. Just guidelines on building my character so they dont all turn out to be battlemages.

And there could me mix classes, not like 4 classes, e.g. the battlemage class could be semi strong with magic, and strong with fighting, but not very stealthy, and be a poor liar. or The Assasin could be have strong skills with daggers and bows, sneak and speechcraft, but weak with heavier weapons, and not abble to use spells. etc.

The battlemage would have access to the fighters guild and the mages guild, but not the thieves guild or the dark brotherhood. The assasin could have access to the dark brotherhood, and the fighters guild but not the mages guild. etc.

You could do anything you wanted in the game, and everyone treats you the same, except you dont have the right skills to get into certain guilds. Maybe the mages guild would only accept characters who can cast magic, and the dark brotherhood may only accept people with a infamy of over 50, the knights of the nine may accept only characters with a high fame but a low infamy. etc.

To be the master of the mages guild you would have to have mastered one of the magic schools, or to be the master of the thieves guild you would need to have mastered the sneak skill. To be a master of the fighters guild you would need to have mastered a weapon type.

I can't say there are many single factors that would overwhelm all the others enough for me to not buy the game, but honestly I think that would do it. The same "protections" could be put up by just making it less easy to master all those skills you didn't take, as well as also making it less easy to *use* those other skills, things I feel need doing regardless of class options.

So what happens to spellswords, nightblades, scouts and other hybrids?
Really theres better ways of stopping people becoming good at everything than a D&D-style class system

Bit off-topic though
I'd prefer a return to staves that were useable in combat. Not too worried about magic staves, thats a wizard-stereotype, and my mages rarely fit it

Depending on how they implement law-and-order, there could be one major benefit to staves -- like small knives, they're items whose purpose is easily justified as a common tool, rather than a weapon. If cities imposed restrictions on carrying weaponry, staves would be one item that mages could smuggle in as a weapon (especially if there were many normal staves for each magical one). Ok, arms control isn't much fun for adventurers -- but it's somewhat realistic. Of course, even in a restrictive society, some people would still be able to use martial weapons (aside from guards and soldiers, Fighter's Guild members and nobles would probably have special exemptions -- it could be a major gameplay perk for joining those groups).

Well, this is heavily off topic, I think, but I could not resist to react.
Stripping the player of the possibility to make a custome class would be a terrible thing and a very bad decision. The freedom of shaping one's fate, making your own class, your own spells, no class, skill and attribute restrictions, these are things that make TES really unique and very interresting to play. Sure, I do not like the way Oblivion handled guilds. I did not like the fact taht I could be a master in all of them at the same time, but imposing silly restrictions on character, like "Only mages can join Mages' guild" is really off for me. Make some guilds exclusive,meaning, that joining one prevents you form joining some others (think the Great Houses in Morrowind), some guild conflicts that make it difficult to join some guilds at the same time (Think House Telvanni and Mages' Guild in Morrowind) and of course place skill and attribute requirements for advancment. Like this, you leave a lot of freedom, while making the characters specific.


On topic.
Staves should be really reworked in TES V. In Oblivion, I never ever used a staff as it seemed like a useless think to do. They should make staves into melee weapons again, and yes, make some of them really centred on mages. Not all the staves are a conduit to spell casting, but some rare ones should be.
Oh and please, if I have a staff equipped and am not in combat mode, I do NOT wish to sheath the staff on my back. Staves do not usually come with sheaths. I would like to actually use the staff as a walking stick when I'm not using it to bash people's heads with it.

Seriously, your not going to become master of the Mages guild if you cant even cast magic.

The mages guild quests in Oblivion didnt even require you to cast magic. It was just the fighters guild all over again.

They influenced you to use magic a lot though, they gave you a staff, mage's robes, sleeping quarters with a bunch of mages, some free spells, lots of enemies that have a weakness to fire, lots of enemies that can't be hurt by normal weapons.

I mean, they can't just scream "No swords!", what about Spellswords, Knights, Sorcerers, Battlemages, Witch-hunters, and such?

I completely understand what you're saying, I became the Archmage on my first account using only my trusty bow. If they give the majority of enemies "reflect damage" in the next game around 20-30%, that'll influence people even more to use magic. However, being a mage has a lot of advantages, including the use of Alchemy to cure paralysis, poison, illnesses, and other things.

They can't just act like: "You aren't skilled enough in Destruction.", if you're a Healer. What I think might work is if in the next game you had to do something spell-related to pass. For instance, like how the Thieves Guild had us running around collecting money, what if you had to cast X amount of spells effectively? They don't have to be super-spells, but enough so that our skill in that will go up.

And they could give us a number of tasks we could choose to do; or they could be randomly generated. Like healing wounded soldiers, ghost-busting, teaching lower-level members how to cast a spell by showing them, reading books, creating potions and poisons, assisting somebody in a task like using telekinesis on a heavy object, giving somebody water-breathing, finding a lost kid in a cave (Light, Detect Life, Night Eye), getting an animal back to its cage without hurting it (Command Creature).

You name it, there's probably a small task you could do with it.

Or, they could do it like they did in Morrowind... A simple Intelligence/Willpower requriement as well as a magic skill requirementin order to advance would solve the problem.

There was still no requirement to actually use magic in either the MG or Telvanni. Sure, you had to meet some pretty easy skill requirements and ridiculously low attribute requirements and for Telvanni know a few spells, but given the economy and trainers any character could do that

Some quests required for advancement that were doable only with magic would be a good idea

Just like any modern professional organization, you mean?
Most of the time you simply take a (very expensive) test and are then credentialed.
At least with the MW system, you had to know magic to join the magic groups.

In Daggerfall they had quests that required specific mage's guild spells. If you couldn't cast the spell, you just didn't take the job. Some of those were hard to cast, like Banish Daedra.

Now that would be one way to do it although in both MW and Oblivion potions and/or enchantments could substitute for almost any spell

I'd also like to see training unable to get you to 100 skill (like in DF) and much slower increase rates for miscellaneous skills. Then your choices of majors would really matter since you couldn't expect to be good at everything regardless of class, custom or otherwise

edit: And to keep the post vaguely on topic. Its about time mages had something besides staves to wave around. My witches want wands

I think scrolls should be removed, end enchantments could be situationally disallowed by the quest.

I'm ok with having wands, I think they had them in DF. Especially if they're being used as amplifiers, but I think any object the mage wants to use for that would be alright. The Mages guild can have a preference for staves because of tradition, but that shouldn't limit the player.

The Suggestions thread had another baby!

This wouldn't happen if posters practiced http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YFC0O393DQ&feature=related.

The magical utility of staves could be pretty well covered with a combination of things that have been mentioned, starting with item customization. I remember back when I fiddled with the toolset that came with Neverwinter Nights, the item creation screen let you swap and combine various item components; there was a number of blade models, hilt models, and cross guard models, and you could decide which combination to use to make a sword. While this was pretty basic, similar could be done to alter or enhance items in TES. Say you start with the standard staff shape, and could add grips in the middle if you want to fight with it, or a blade on the end to enhance combat ability, or something more decorative like the http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/1476/239832-w7_large.jpg http://www.planetdungeonsiege.com/dungeoneers/modellibrary/equipment/thumbs/smite.jpg that tends to get shoved on the ends of fantasy staves.

If you add the concept of different materials being easier to enchant than others, you could have something like a skull enhancing necromancy or glowing gems like whatever welkynd stones are made off. While a master enchanter could just use the staff, by simple statistics most mages will not be enchanters, and most who are will not be masters. Since it's easy to carry around Blank on a Stick, it would be easy for a mage to use a staff with these attachments to use as a focus. However, decorative attachments would likely ruin the item's effectiveness as a weapon, and it would require a skilled enchanter to make an item that doubles as both a magical focus and a weapon, which makes sense.

Environmental realism effects could also encourage it. If something like heavy plate hinders your movement, other items could be beneficial, like a staff reducing/removing movement penalties over rough terrain or due to leg injury. Since a staff is large and relatively easy to raise defensively compared to a shield that needs strength and training, and can help compensate for low physical skills/stats, scholarly types would probably often carry one. You could have your magical staff that makes sense for certain characters to use, without it being foisted on them as a cliche "just because," and without it being forced on other character types who don't want one.

As a random, semi-related thought, another thing that's been brought up is bringing advantages/disadvantages back to character creation, and some that I've seen have been pretty big, like magic immunity. Another option is "old," which (if they are also implemented) could function as a "permanent injury." Basically, default health would become a state of minor injury, such as leg wounds hindering movement, arm wounds lowering attack speed, etc. You could probably take increasing stages of it that hit another body part, with maximum elderly crippling all areas. An old character with bad legs would have all the more reason to carry a staff to take advantage of the easier movement. People wanting to play the character type of the old, scholarly, powerful wizard could have age disadvantages and spend advantage points on magical boosts, and have every reason to carry a magic staff as that character type would, without having the game build around an obligation for them to exist.

Welkynd stones are made from the sky. :] I think they mean "Sky Child" Stones. Except one guy found them growing in a cave. There are also like... 4 different types of Welkynd stones, but I won't get into that.

Those are all actually phenomenal ideas though. I wouldn't want to play as an old character (it's never appealed to me, I don't have anything against old people), but being injured and being able to use a staff to counter and injury would be fun. I think it's almost guaranteed that we'll have injuries in the next game.

I really like the item customization idea too. It wouldn't cost too much time to add a "dye" option in there either.

These guys use magic. They ould quite easily get the levels.


In Morrowind the feature they used was you'd need one skill at 30, and two at 15, or something like that. That means that the healer, who likely has skills, other than restoration, could be a healer, and yet use other forms of healer-ey skills (Alchemy, Alteration - Shield) to a lesser extent to advance.

I do think, though, that some guilds shouldn't care about skills. It annoyed me that my Scout in the Tribunal temple had to stay a low rank, because his only related skill was alchemy.

It should only be skill specific guilds, such as the Fighter's guild, or the Mage's guild that force you to have levels. The Temple is hardly a Healer's Guild.

I understand your point from a realism point of view, but from a gameplay point of view, I feel that there should be skill requirements in guild.