I hear all this noise about 'magic is sooo overpowered." In a word, or two . . . BULL MANURE!


What magic attempts to do is allow, at VERY high levels, for a character who is highly skilled and proficient and wizardry to actually come across as. . . wait for it . . . a POWERFUL SORCERER! :sorcerer: :flamed: / :sorcerer: bliviongate:

There are lore tales in ES of mighty warlocks who could set entire castles aflame, who have long term bound Daedric servants, and who can turn aside the wrath of a small army. If you reach the ranks of full on mastery in numerous fields, then you should at least be capable of becoming such a warlock.

As it is, short of either using exploits for increased magicka, or else turning the game waaaaay down on the difficulty scale, even the mightiest mage NEVER becomes anything approaching overpowered. Any wizard worth his salt should at least be able to kill a handfull of Goblin Warlords in a single, highpowered blast, even if that blast drains power for a short time.

Having said that, who here has EVER managed to kill more than even ONE Goblin Warlord at a time (particularly in scaling crazy Oblivion, particularly AFTER you had passed level 25) with a single spell, without having used ANY exploits and without having turned the difficulty slider below default?

I had a spell which caused 100 points shock damage per second for three seconds and paralyzed for three seconds. . . IT TOOK FIVE SHOTS OF THAT THING TO DOWN ONE DAMNED GOBLIN WARLORD! :ahhh: HOW THE *@$# IS THAT OVERPOWERED?! If anything it is dreadfully underpowered, and horrendously embarassing for a master wizard to have to struggle to kill a few goblin warlords.

Consider also, that while Warrior types can take down pretty much ANYTHING with a sword, there are creatures and beings like liches and Xivalai who can charm themselves TO REFLECT 100 OR MORE POINTS OF MAGIC DAMAGE! Any mage who cannot cast at least two simultaneous spells, both of at least 100 points damage is SUNK when dealing with these creatures. The warrior has no such obstacle. I have NEVER encountered a creature that had 100% shield against weapons.

As far as I can tell, anyone griping that mages in ES have been extremely overpowered without cheats and exploits, must have a desire to see the game only allow for pitiful, hamstrung magicians.

A Master Wizard who cannot shield himself from unfriendly eyes, or cast an explosive flame that can kill a half dozen of any but the more powerful enemy types, really isn't worthy of the title Master Wizard. Petty hedge mage might fit such a person better. Incompotent also comes to mind. :mage:

That's a point.

While there is a certain truth to that I wouldn't say mages are underpowered either.
If you don't know what you're doing you're going to get yourself killed and you will be underpowered.

If you're smart, and by smart I don't mean using exploits, you can be relatively powerful provided you make the right moves not only in battle but at the spell altar as well (again I don't mean by use of exploits).

However that was in Oblivion and this is Skyrim and as such I do believe that mages need a boost in offensive power and also need more mage type weapons (other than a staff or two there really wasn't that many worth having in Oblivion and you couldn't even make your own really). Scrolls are handy to have as well and need to be more abundant. Though I believe there should be a restriction to use them such as requiring the same amount of skill to cast them as if they were a spell in your inventory but without the magicka requirement or limit them by rank in the mages guild (ie you can't purchase them unless you're [insert rank here] in the guild).

Magic svcked if you didn't exploit it imo. Nothing beats stacked weaknesses and weak damage.

Well, technically this is a 2 shot combo, but if you Command/Frenzy/Rally, then Invis, the Goblins will take care of themselves.

Yes thats one of the reasons I can understand people being worried about no spell maker.. traditionaly betheada has realy stupid ideas as to what makes for useful spells.. well stupid isnt the word .. gobsmackingly hypermoronic to the point of utter blithering insanity... ya thats about right...

And this is exploit how? Weakens to magic was added to the game for a reason, the developers knew how it work.
They patched the option to use weakness to magic on self to increase power of buff and healing spell and did nothing with the stacking.

Might as well say that the fatman in fallout 3 was an exploit.

Ah yes the wizard, one who studies his books all day in hopes of erasing the universe with a sneeze. Unfortunately, once he leaves his dusty tomes, he realizes that while he might destroy existence with a sneeze, everyone else can destroy him with a sneeze. Such is the sad irony of the wizard. In conclusion, yes, I'd like more bang for my magika.

It wasn't Magic that was overpowered, it was spell creation. Being able to put so many effects into a single spell was just way too much. And also being able to create token spells for the sake of grinding was also major fail. No balance = bad design.

Magic is much better now, it's even more powerful than in OB at the cost of multi-effect and token spells. I'm hoping Bethesda has put some checks in place to avoid grinding like preventing skill gain without target hit detection and whatever else they can come up with to prevent such grinding of skills.

Just command creature is seriously powerful, cast on goblin warlord and it attack the closest goblin in the pack, now as a fun bonus unlike frenzy commanded creatures or npc might continue to fight as they have become hostile to each other.

Well if you had to manage with the default spells in Oblivion you would have serious problems. If you specialize in Illusion it would be totally game breaking as none of the mind control spells affected high level enemies, no not the spell efficiency, simply the lack of frenzy or command up to level 25 spells.
Wonder that they forgot to add in Skyrim

Plenty of spells in Oblivion was cheap enough to use for power training, destruction was the only who really needed it as you could cast weakness on self.

This is true.

I've been playing a modded version of Oblvion with FCOM and Duke Patricks and at the highest difficulty the game is damn hard, I have to use all the spell chain exploits just to survive and I still get my ass handed to me. After 350 hours I've only made it up to level 7.

I would say that super powerful magic capable of one-shotting enemies, super powerful archery capable of one-shotting enemies, etc. is fine by me as long as the enemies can also one-shot the player with archery or magic, as I frequently experience in the heavily modded version of Oblivion.

Same applies to paralyze, damage fatigue/speed, encumber, slow time, alchemical poisons, etc. As long as there are some enemies that know how to cast spells intelligently to attack the player, powerful spells are OK, perhaps excluding some of the custom spells.

Way too much for what? Your delicate sensibilities?


Why? Did somebody hold a gun to your head and force you to grind? Or do you feel that you're being cheated if someone else chooses to grind in his own single player game?


Is it? Pray tell - where did you get ahold of an advance copy of the game?


Really now? Again, I have to wonder where you got ahold of that advance copy of the game. You can PM me the information if you'd rather not say it publicly.



Well... first.... again - why? Since I would have to assume that you neither had a gun held to your head and were forced to grind, nor were you in any way cheated by the fact that somebody else chose to grind, what difference does it make?

Beyond that - "target hit detection" already exists in Oblivion. There are a couple of glitchy bits to it, like casting Open on an unlocked door or casting Restore Health or Restore Fatigue or such when they're full, but all spells require a target before they count. And it really doesn't do anything to prevent the grinding that's got you all in a froth, does it?

If they really want to make it so that grinding low level spells isn't rewarding, far and away the easiest and best way to do it, and the best way to do it for magic in general anyway, is to weight the experience gained from casting spells based on the level requirement/magicka requirement of the spell and the level/skill of the caster. Set it so that a low level mage DOES get experience for casting low level spells (unless your goal is simply to make it impossible for anyone to play a mage ever, which is a possibility that I can't fully dismiss), but a high level mage gets little if any experience for casting the same spells. In order to gain any notable amount of experience, s/he's going to have to cast more challenging spells. That would reflect the undeniable reality that practicing the most simple of things provides diminishing returns, and would serve to make the grinding that you're fretting about much less beneficial, so you need never concern yourself again with how other people play a single player game.

If you make one spell thats weakness to magicaka, fire, frost, shock 100% for 3 seconds in 20 feet, and then a second spell shock, fire, frost and damage health 100 damage for 1 (or more) seconds in 50 feet on target you can literally kill any group of monsters anywhere. My mages always become gods by the time they are level 20 - 25 where my warriors become gods at like level 35- 40, THATS why mages are overpowered. But i dont think they're overpowered, thats the way magic is supposed to be.

^Biggest load of crock I've read yet about magic being overpowered in Oblivion. A fire, frost, or shock spell with 100 damage and 50ft radius costs nearly 1k of mana to cast... and that's if a character has destruction level 100. With destruction being rather difficult to level up, I doubt your character at level 20 have destruction at level 100.

I agree 100%.


Magicka in TES isn't very magickal. Running backwards pelting something with 67 lightning bolts doesn't exactly feel like magic at all. It's like I have a pea shooter which looks like magic. Magic should be impressive and effective at high levels. In Oblivion, I never felt all that potent, even when I'd mastered magic skills. I don't like spells in games anyway. Spell effects are kind of silly. It's typically too localized to the mage -- meaning, I feel like magic should effect the area around me as well. The thunderstorm dragon shout is a huge step in the right direction. That's exactly the sort of thing magic should be doing. Big, impressive effects.

Not if it is 10 dmg per second for 10 seconds duration.

this is a quite common spell to create.

and if you set it up with Weakness to Magicka then a second Weakness to Magica + Weakness to Fire, frost or Shock, you can exponentially increase the damage because Weakness to Magicka stacks on itself and also enhances other weakness effects.

In fact if you cycle a couple times with the first two weakness spells before hitting the enemy with 10dmg/10sec spell, you can do tens of thousands of damage. if you do three cycles of the first two weakness spells the damage modifier ends up being something in the range of 1,089 x the base damage.

I haven't tried with 50ft radius, but even if the third spell is lower base damage such as 5dmg/second for 10 seconds, the end result is still extremely overpowered.

And if you are wearing wrist irons, and various items enchanted with fortify magicka sigil stones plus fortify magicka spell in effect you can easily get over 1000 magicka, depending on your race and birthsign.

Not to diminish the value of knowing how to optimize arrangements of magic, but if you are a Master of Destruction magic and you have to go through ALL of the above mentioned measures AND have a 1970s Pimp plus a 1980s rappers' amount of jewlery on, all with maximum enchantments, just to kill a few goblin chieftans, then what a dissapointing thing it must be to be a Master Wizard.

:toughninja:

Whoa! I was going to dispute some of the comments made by Big Wyrm, but what could I say that you have not already adressed?

To the Grinding issue, I will say, as I have before to those who essentially seem to want a game where only battle experience points count towards anything (which is actually very unrealistic and immersion breaking, especially in a game where so many spells really have little to nothing to do with combat), that REPITITIVE SPELL CASTING IS THE INGAME EQUIVALENT OF INTENSIVE STUDY. ALSO, A VERY BRILLIANT MIND WILL BE ABLE TO WRING EXPERIENCE AND UNDERSTANDING OUT OF THE REPEATED USE OF A SPELL THAT A LESSER MIND MIGHT NOT.

I am not doing caps for you Gpstr, but for any others who might overlook that point, and who think that no experience should be gained by repetitive non-combat use of a spell.

A truly gifted mind would study the nuances and details of every spell he or she cast, and would in turn be able to draw conclusions about the spell, the school to which the spell belongs, and magic in general. He or she would be able to hypothosize about obvious and unobtrusive implications related to it, as well as theorizing about related spells, more intense versions of the spell, ways to maximize the effect of the spell while minimizing the amount of energy used to cast it, ways to harness more energy while expending less effort, etc. etc. etc. I agree that mages should gain more casting experience for the casting of more powerful spells, but in the hands and mind of a true savant, even a minor spell can yield A LOT of information. Albus Dumbledore found 12 previously unknown magical appliations for dragons's blood. . . I bet he could come to grasp a great understanding of alteration and destruction magics given no more than a simple shield charm and blazing spear spell. Give him a few months of studying a summon scamp spell, he could probably find a way to bind a Valkynaz of the Dremora and get him to mate with a leader of the Golden saints bliviongate: :hubbahubba: :celebration:

Not saying every mage you play will have the brilliance of an Einstien or a Dumbledore, nor the serene will of Yoda, and certainly not the Divine presence of Gandalf. You might want to play as the village idiot. But if you or anyone else DOES want to play the gifted, brilliant magician, that option is supposed to be there. And such a warlock would certainly not have to struggle to kill a few savage trolls.

Can you imagine? :sorcerer: "I am the mightiest wizard in all of Skyrim! The Mightiest Wizard in Skyrim since the beginning of the last Era! And. . . wait a minute. . . :blush2: Awwwwww sh**! Here, hold my hat. I've gotta get out of here. There's a small group of Goblin Clan Warlords comming back from a raid, and I can't afford to be here when they arrive." :yuck: :drag: :ermm: :bolt:

But weakness to magic on self shouldn't have been patched... Sure you could chain cast it so that your fortify health 15 points spell fortified your health by over 9000 hit points. But you could also chain cast it offensively so that your 1-point fire damage spell killed anything in the game. They could have made that a very good gameplay mechanic for any RPG player, rather than making magic users weaker (I always thought that weakness to magic on self was your wizard focusing really hard on his magic and expelling outbound distractions - hence a hostile spell would disrupt his concentration and render his "willpower" useless. As it is, weakness to magic is now terribly gamey; it would be better named weakness to only hostile magical effects because this is a game). I personally would not mind if casting a resist magicka spell meant that it was harder for a magic user to heal - it would make sense, rather than the magic user manipulating his resistance to magic but still able to weave his own spells with the same efficiency..

In all honesty, to the RPG player what difference does it make if some action gamer is able to complete the main quest by heavily exploiting a game mechanic and being lucky that no one does magical damage? You could just make it that any effect dissipates when you're weakness to magicka dissipates, or that the important enemies in the main quest of Skyrim had dispel effects on their claws and the magical based attacks they appear to have

Thing is, Skyrim may lack Spell creation entirely. In which case, other than mergeing two spells and whatever perks allow, you really have no way of attaining spells that the game doesn't offer ready made. If the power of the spells is no greater than that of the top tier vendor/ spell merchant spells in Oblivion. . . its turn down the difficulty slider or kiss your buns goodbye.

I don't really see why people complain about magic.
This is a single player game and it's usually the player who casts the extremely powerfull spells.
If you dont like powerfull spells you shouldn't cast/make them.

I completely agree with you on that one.

You mean like the way Fingers of the Mountain was originally handled in Oblivion?

Mages should have spells like 100dmg/3sec. No one cares about that. But then spells like paralyze and invicibility are... how do i say this... op.