Ah yes, Finger of the Mountain. Getting it after level 9(MAYBE 14 if you have high magika) but after 14 became useless and extremely expensive to cast, for the small amount of damage it caused. FotM stats:
Level Obtained:15-19

Skill Level: Master

Magicka Cost: 715

Effect: Shock Damage (90) 5 ft on Target


Level Obtained:20-25

Skill Level: Master

Magicka Cost: 1386

Effect: Shock Damage 140pts in 5ft on Target


Level Obtained:26+

Skill Level: Master

Magicka Cost: 3551

Effect: Shock Damage 200pts in 10ft on Target

Your example with the goblin thing is ridiculous, have you ever tried doing it with a melee character without any magical effects? yeah though so.

In a word, wizard have always been OP because of the ridiculous effects they get, chameleon, invisibility, paralyze (not exploits) and weakness (stack, exploit).

Remove the OP effects and magic is not OP, keep the OP effects and it will be OP. Compared to warrior, thief.




Just btw, I'm pretty sure there are tales in ES about warriors who were so mighty they could swing the sword in through the air and set it afire because of the force behind the swing and thieves as skilled to be able to steal of all clothing from a person, right in from of their face while they are awake. So meh.

I have to agree with the op, Magic is no where near THAT powerful until you spent hundreds of hours training your character to max skills, then at that point you deserve the overpower. In the general scheme of things magic is pretty weak most of the time and nobody is going to kill anything in 1 hit for the first huge chunk of the game.

I appreciate that, if you did the right things, magic could become very powerful in Oblivion. But I don't think you should have to jump through loads of hoops piling on spell effects every time you want to kill something.

I had to pick all the non magic, non combat abilities as my main abilities and grind level magic up so I had destruction and illusion and summoning in the 70's and 80's and then I finally felt like a powerful wizard fireballing zombies and goblins since they were level 12 and my spells were level 30 it finally evened out and felt balanced.

Now there's some sense. Goblin warlords are the problem, not the spell power. Magic user players always want there already powerful class to be even more powerful. And it's usually the same argument. I can walk into a town, fry everyone no problem, but when I come to the most powerful enemies in the game, it's a bit of a challenge, so it doesn't feel like real magic. It is less challenging than with a warrior or a thief.
You want to feel powerful? Like a true wizard? The ones in the stories. Didn't notice Gandalf one shotting a troll with a fireball. Merlin didn't take out armies with bolts of lightning. In OB you could do some ridiculous stuff as a mage, but it's never enough for some. You see the same argument with recharging magic weapons. " I hated using soul gems, my sword needed recharging every fight." Yes it did, if you had 25 points of fire damage. The very best weapons run out quickly, why is that a problem?
Honestly, if you had high alchemy, high destruction, and plenty of shield and fortify magicka, and felt underpowered, well I have no sympathy.
As for fingers of the mountain, one it was what you got for betraying the guild, two it's magicka cost is so high because it is instantaneous, all other destruction being over one second, not the best example to prove the point.

[btw, always played mages, never used weakness stacking, put the difficulty up a bit every few levels, never had a problem myself]

And neither will any combat character. Unless ofcourse you're a master of sneak and you get that 6x damage.
It's about the same, unless you're using a weapon with a damage enchantment, you're gonna take a few swings to kill something. I'm replaying Oblivion and my lvl 19 guy takes a good while to kill a group of goblins. Maybe like 5-7swings with my dwarven or glass dagger to kill daedroth guards. (no stealth, debuff, or anything)

I feel it's about even between magic and combat, as it should be.

I really like youre writing style.
You tend to usually say just about the same as what I am thinking but where I have the tendency to get all worked up and sometimes even angry you seem to be able to keep a cool head.
Kudos, I always enjoy reading your posts.
They just make sense to me.

On the flip side I couldn't disagree more with your two opinions on how this game should be, gladly same goes for Bethesda :celebration:

From what they have said magic this time is more offense oriented then melee combat.

I think you should read some of the OP's posts about why magic (most of it anyway) wasn't exactly all that great in Oblivion. Your comparison using Gandalf and Merlin are rather moot. Both wizards are from different writers and different stories with authors that clearly had different views on magic. Aside from that fact, Gandalf possesses some spells that can destroy or significantly aid in destroying legions; he also killed the Balrog... As for Merlin, he was more of a prophet mentor or advisor.

And you know Bethesda Disagrees.......how?

Well - first - as MK just noted, how precisely is it that you claim to know what Beth's view on this matter is anyway?

Beyond that intriguing tidbit, what's your issue with this anyway? It's not as if we're discussing a game mechanic that forces people to grind or requires them to be overpowered. Rather, the issue (or at least the issue on which I commented) was that past games ALLOWED people to grind low level spells and ALLOWED them to make overpowered characters. So? In the vernacular - what's it to ya? Why is that an issue? Are you jealous of the fact that other people play OP characters? Is your warrior's masculinity threatened by the thought that there might be a mage out there somewhere who's more powerful than he is? Are you just spiteful and you can't tolerate the thought of somebody else playing a single player game in a way of which you don't approve?

Seriously - I just don't get the issue.

For the record, I'd say that EVERY character in Oblivion and Morrowind (at least) has the potential to be OP. Played well (in a metagaming sense), virtually every character, regardless of archetype, is going to end up OP. I personally don't enjoy playing OP characters, so I don't indulge in the sorts of tactics that make characters OP. But I recognize that there are other players - apparently quite a few of them, in fact - who DO enjoy playing OP characters. I don't care. Why do you?

In Morrowind magic was ridiculously underpowered. In Oblivion, I felt it may have been on par with using a sword, or even a bit more powerful.

I wish that magic was inherently more powerful, it just required either more time or effort to raise it high enough to get super powerful.

The reason people say magic is overpowered isn't because it has high damage, but because you can become nigh-on invincible. For example, on my breton mage I defeated Mankar Camoran by sitting still with about 25% reflect spell, continually healing myself and never coming close to half magicka. Eventually, he killed himself.

Fix your word choice and you might see why people get disappointed with any potential TES magic changes.
I hope Beth doesn't feel the need to continue to tweak the magic system for players who don't like role playing mages in an RPG.
Oh, and give me jump/levitate/teleport back. More magical effects please!
But Oblivion goblins aren't the best example because of level scaling and all around evil - they are overpowered.

There are people who think magic in TES is 'overpowered'? In Oblivion you can have one spell equipped at a time, if I recall =/ I'm pretty sure I always struggled to play a mage when theres two bandits stabbing me in the head and I'm flicking matches at them.

You might call that exploits or OP

I call that tactics and fuxing thinking for once. that could be remidied by better AI. but the all flaunted A.I people thinks exist in OB is as dumb as bricks

Two words, Level Scaling. Skyrim is going to be similar to Fallout 3 meaning the HP's are probably not going to go up at all, or go up a little bit but not as much as Oblivion. That means that if Magic is overpowering you will kill things in 1 hit and that's not what we need the game to do. Level Scaling is the only reason that Destruction Magic wasn't overpowering in Oblivion, if Level Scaling wasn't there Electrocution would be killing things in 2 hits not the 4 or 5 and 2 magic potions that it usually takes to kill a powerful enemy in Oblivion.

Very nice - I think you have just harnessed what I think is the main issue with most games - I say please make me go through what you have explained in a game to really understand magic and its effects - [censored] that would be an awesome game

i agree that the system really needs to be beefed up. ive read "The Sword of Truth" saga and god i wish i could pull off some stuff like their wizards did. i mean 1 wizard, not even a master ranked one but a basic just left his apprenticehip wizard, could change the tide of a major battle drastically. i would like to feel that powerful playing my mage. i am hoping that the spells you learn will grow more powerful as you level that school.

Conjure a minion and all you have to do is sit back and cast a heal on it now and then... How is that underpowered?

Combine 3 seconds of invisibility with weakness to magic, weakness to element, and elemental damage so the enemy can not retaliate. How is that underpowered?

Combine 1 second paralysis with said weaknesses and elemental damage. Is it still underpowered?

Command the enemy and sit back eating popcorn while enemies kill each other. That must be insanely underpowered compared to a warrior or rogue's crowd controlling abilities, am I right?

Absorb Health is probably the most efficient spell in the game, if you are taking damage, and renders most if not all enemies impotent. Hardly overpowered?

Mysticism spells cost way too much magicka to be very effective, but combined with damage reflect gear and magic absorb they can make you invincible all the same. This is probably the only balanced magic school.

Alteration allows a character to easily gain 85% armor, so why bother wearing armor at all on any character. Especially since clothing does not degrade. Alteration is underpowered as a result?

Did I miss anything? Magic was hardly underpowered and at higher levels warriors become pathetic punching bags compared mages. I seriously wonder why they bother making armies of troops if they can not use magic since it seems pretty inefficient. Now that alchemy is considered a stealth skill those sneakers can easily kill anything with poison (if Skyrim alchemy is at all like Oblivion).

Pure mage was hands down, absolutely no question, better than pure anything else in Oblivion(not as much in Morrowind though). However, magic used to support a rogue or warrior style character could make those just as powerful.

I personally think it makes more sense that magic be a tool you're expected to use for all characters - it makes no sense not to use it in a world where it's so versatile and powerful.
I don't think it's as overpowered or game breaking as people think as long as you assume you're supposed to make some use of it as a support to the more basic focus of your character.


That said, a number of spell effects were obviously overpowered to the point of being considered exploits.

lol @ the people in this thread who want:

1. To be a powerful sorcerer.
2. To not have to go through the motions to figure out the system to be a powerful sorcerer.

Steps to become a powerful sorcerer in Oblivion:
1. Level up your destruction skill.
2. Go get a few +50 magicka sigil stones and put them on your gear.
3. Level up your willpower/int
4. Make a spell that does a bunch of damage.
5. If you really want to get some resist debuff spells in your book.

Boom, you now have higher burst damage than any melee could hope for.

If you're not willing to do any of that you're roleplaying a [censored] magic user and deserve your ineptitude.

Fallout 3 didnt increase Hp?..um...ok...the game is notorious for bullet sponges...I rather that aspect of Fo3's level scaling not to make it into skyrim...