agreed. Overall its great and deserves its 95% MC average, just maybe one or two Skills need slight tweaks due to being kinda restrictive in builds. (destruction/lockpicking could use some nice help from Creation Kit)

Nordic mythology orbits around giants, beasts, warriors and their massive mauls, hammers and swords. There are mischievous gods such as Loki that serve as archetypes for the thief and assassin classes. Mage presence, however, is hardly felt in norse myths. Perhaps that is why Bethesda chose to tone down magic, to encourage the player to play a certain way. So what if Skyrim is not a mage-oriented RPG? There is a popular misconception that quantity always equals quality, but that's hardly the case when it comes to role playing: Skyrim is obviously about a sword wielding nord who learns the way of the voice. Just look at the posters for god's sake, or at the wallpaper of this very site. There is little room for interpretation or ambiguity: Skyrim is a warrior/ thief RPG. Should Bethesda have chosen to go 'catch-all' with this title, the credibility and authenticity of the game would have been greatly diminished and, in a way, that is a game-killer right there. There will be plenty of RPGs where mages will be the dominant class (and there already are literally dozens), but this is not one of them. You will have to live with it, get out of your spell-tome ridden shell and learn how to tense a bow and decapitate your enemies.

Because Oblivion was all about sweet talking - the Imperial way.

But really, this is a pitiful excuse for a lackluster magic system. "Deal with it" should never be the answer for 1/3 of your fanbase.

op i think skyrim is amazing im currently playing a assasin (archery, one hand, alchemy ect) im lvl 22 n so far have no problems with the game BUT i can see where your coming from.

i think mages have drawn the short straw abit this time round. i think theyve gone in the right direction with dual welding spells and a different spell in each hand, but there are certainly imo a few spells from ob and mw that could of made it. or spell creation but onli once you get to a high enough level. i heard the mage in the dark brotherhood sayin how he was workin on a new spell so i thought if he can do it why not us...

You have a short memory my friend.

the list of spells that used necro ( Morrowind ) :

Destruction :

Damage Attribute
Damage Fatigue
Damage Health
Damage Magicka
Disintegrate Armor
Disintegrate Weapon
Drain Attribute
Drain Fatigue
Drain Health
Drain Magicka
Drain Skill
Poison
Weakness to Common Disease
Weakness to Fire
Weakness to Frost
Weakness to Magicka
Weakness to Poison
Weakness to Shock

Mysticism :

Absorb Attribute
Absorb Fatigue
Absorb Health
Demoralize Humanoid

So do not tell me that there is no big gap in the schools of magic and for some classes like necro.

The one thing that absolutely pissed me off is how they pretty much went. Lets add this! And than gave it like an hours thought put it in without doing anything else. A lot of stuff feels tacked on rather being implemented.

When I said TES I meant Skyrim Should have been more clear.

What I was trying to say is necromancer enemies in Skyrim use shock spells in addition to resurrect dead. Obviously in morrowind generic necromancers had a million different spells, but we couldn't actually resurrect a body of our own in that game so the whole necromancer role-play in morrowind didn't exist at all. Meaning, I'd rather have what we have now than what we had in morrowind.

Well, honestly in the case of your Mage getting the same gear as your Thief when you're playing the Dark Brotherhood quest line... that makes sense to me. Considering that the whole idea of the Dark Brotherhood is for them to sneak around and punish people who are unaware of their existence. In Oblivion did you get heavy armor if you were a Dark Brotherhood servant who had a Warrior class? Did you get Mage garb if you were a Mage class? If you want good mage gear, join the college. If you want good fighting gear, join the Companions. If you want good thief gear, join the Dark Brotherhood or the Thieves guild, or both. It's a whole lot easier in the normal course of the game (in my personal play through) to find decent mage and warrior gear. Thief gear was really hard for me, so even the fact that two of the factions were more catered toward thief classes in their gear output, didn't upset me because I realized that there was still a kind of balance there.

As for the OP:
I understand where you're coming from in terms of the limited spell selection, but to be honest I haven't really had that problem. I can cast fire and lightning as a dual-cast, or lightning and ice, or ice and fire (which I find funny). All of which are pretty effective, or I can just choose to dual-cast one of the base elements. Then there's the varying types of element spells to cast, there's the basic stream, the bolts/balls, the runes and the storms. So let's do this math looking just at the fire spells:

8 spells
- each spell can be both one handed or dual cast (16 possibilities)
- you can mix each spell with any of the other spells of the same element (7+6+5+4+3+2+1 = 28 possibilities)
- you can mix each spell with all of the spells in the other destruction trees (8 per tree = 16 possibilities)

So with just the 8 fire spells and their other combinations with destruction spells, you have a staggering (to me it's staggering) 60 possible spells. I think if I did the additional math right you lose 8 spell combinations from frost leaving you with 52, and then another 8 from lightning which leaves you with 44. Which puts you at 156 possible destruction spell combinations. (If somebody thinks my math is off feel free to point it out.)
That's not including what you can do with illusion, conjuration and alteration (I don't use restoration because they basically only have one use)

This system may not provide a staggering difference in spell effects, and I'm not super psyched that over the years we've lost such wonderful spells as open lock, disarm trap, levitation, all of the spells involving your attributes and many more which I can't actually think of. However, I stand to my conviction that while it may not be quite as diverse as I would like it, what they gave us options for with spell casting (along with pretty much every other option I've encountered) is this INSANE amount of gameplay customization. That which will only be exponentially increased once they release the newest Elder Scrolls Construction Set.

But you are free to have a personal vision of necro that shoots fireballs.

Only saw the history of the series many other players would appreciate to find the gamplay especially necromancy which weakened and steals the characteristics to damage.

This is where there are a large loss of gameplay in Skyrim ......... a lack of choice.

the difference between pure mages and pure warriors/thieves is that the mage can benefit from more skills at the same time and gets larger benefits per perk point.
a warrior/thief usually utilizes 2-3 skills per fight , their primary weapon, one type of armor and maybe sneak/alchemy/block or whatever. the mage on the other hand can cast frenzy on enemies, summon minions, weapons, buff/heal himself and his group (a follower and 2 minions) and use destruction spells as fillers. 4 points in destruction gets you very close to the maximum damage of fire bolts, restoration does not need more than 3 points to give you incredibly effective 'fast heals'. i don't know about illusion since i don't use it myself but it did not seem to require a lot as well. merely conjuration requires a lot of perks. and once you get high levels of fortify destruction, you can spam dual casting fire balls for 132 aoe dmg each anyway. afaik a warrior / assassin can easily spend 10 or more perk points in each of his skills.

the real problems are exploitable professions and potions, not being able to change your mind on your play style an hour into the game because you already chose 5 perks ('choosing class by play style' my a**, oblivion did this better), perks and stats that do not work at all (block related stuff), and other weird stuff like light armor having the same protective potential as heavy armor etc....

Destruction can be underwhelming at high levels without wearing enchanted items to reduce magicka cost.

Sneaking is WAY overpowered.

Illusion appears to be roflstomp mode, if used right (and if you're an arch-mage, maybe you should kick serious ass).

I've had 106 hours of playtime so far, and I have yet to feel bored. I made a Duel-Wielding Axe Nord. I finally got my Blacksmith to 100, my speech is getting there. My One-handed and light armor are also pretty high. My friends tell me Archery is much better here than in Oblivion, and the Magic part of it is also pretty cool (From what I seen). From what I can tell, it's all about mix-play. You have to take aspects from the different abilities available to you. So if you raise a Zombie, that would be the melee, you would be the range with Fear or Destruction spells, and you can heal your Companions you pick up along the way. Not to mention the gear is what helps you specialize.

Me, I use Duel-Wielding and Light armor, plus Restoration for my companion and Blacksmith and Enchanting to further boost My Companion and my gear.

Also, I don't think I am allowed to say why, but you should consider becoming a Vampire to boost your necromantic feel.


All a matter of opinion.

I still think the game wants you to be a multiclass character and dabble in different things. It's not meant to have pure mages, warriors or thieves.

He is clearly not refering to the whole game being flawed, and as a person like yourself who plays sword and board, it will be difficult for you to understand the gripes us pure mage roleplayers are having issues with.

TES games have always been big into magic and the lore surrouding it. However, Skyrim mages have really gotten the shaft in many areas. It is not just destruction magic, all the schools are really lacking. 50 percent of the spell effects from Oblivion and Morrowind were completely removed. Our arsenal is quite pathetic. You won't understand this unless you really enjoy playing the mage gameplay. Which in Skyrim, it is really weak.

You can argue your opinion on what necromancers use for offense all day, the point is, there is a serious lack of spell effects in Skyrim. Not just offense either. You can no longer silence enemy casters, you can no longer reflect spells back at casters, you can no longer open locks with magic (Yes, a mage has to use a friggen lockpick, how ridiculous), you can no longer walk on water, teleport, levitate, the amount of summons you have compared to Oblivion is pathetic, curses have always been a big part of TES games, otherwise known as DEBUFFS, they don't exist in Skyrim. The list can go on all day, the point is mages got the shaft and that is pure laziness considerring a huge chunk of TES fans play mages.

I agree with you. The pure lack of spells is not acceptable. Here's to hoping that the DLC will provide a large chunk of spells we should have gotten in the first place.

What amplifies this problem is the fact that the few unique spells we did get (spray/glyph/wall/cloack) all end up getting phased out and useless at mid-high levels due to the lack of new spell ranks and/or scaling.

So because magic is not the end-all, most uberpowerful thing in the game, it svcks and there's no choice?

Sounds more like a bigger consequence to me.
Can't magically pick locks? It seems playing a thief will be actually unique this time.

There are many different reasons why those weren't implemented. Levitation doesn't work because of cities being separate walls, lock spell removed to actually make lock-pick a skill to focus on, water walk is not actually a useful spell to begin with so why bother with it? The debuffs were always pointless to me, why not just damage the opponent instead of draining them and having them recover from it after a while? We have teleport, it's called fast travel.

They took a different approach in Skyrim than in morrowind and oblivion. You can't sincerely say you can't role-play a mage because you can't walk on water. That's just absurd.

Actually the game is awesome. Get over it.

Noone wants it to one shot things. I just wanted scaling/ranks so that we can use the fun glyph/sprays/cloaks at top end levels. They sounded really cool before Skyrim came out, and guess what.... they actually WERE cool when you played with them!

Easily fixed through mods ofcourse, but as the OP said, thats not something we should have required to wait for.

Okay, but you didn't address some of the good points he made.

Reflect spells, silence spells, lack of conjurations. It's kinda strange for a mage to be using a lockpick, don't you think?

wards, and there's enough conjuration.

And yes, that's why they hire thieves as companions to do it for them.
Otherwise everybody else would just learn enough alteration to open every door in the game.

first of all, the game is awesome, best I've played in years.

my mage only uses 2 directly offensive spells, fireball or chain lightning, every other spell in the destruction school is now redundant because it doesn't scale, simple.
(im aware i haven't unlocked the highest tier spells then, but when that happens the precedent is that the spells im currently using will become redundant)

i do use the other schools, my conjuration is high as well, again, the fact that there are only a handful of these isn't exactly thrilling..

i made a nord 2 handed warrior type as well, he is roughly the same level, and in my opinion is far more interesting to play

the lack of spells is a valid criticism, its not going to effect my recommendation of this game to others however

edit- clarification

I can't help but feel they excluded so much magic because they want to add in new spells for later DLC, for the same reason they probably excluded simple things like hair cutting. [censored] but probably to be proven true.