Yes magicka was overpowered in Oblivion but mostly if you're using spell stacking effects (also important was enchanting weapons)

Outside of that magicka isn't all that great (though there are a few exceptions like conjuration).

If you weren't using the spell stacking effects then you basically had the same problem you did as a warrior: Enemies were damage sponges.

Warriors have it a bit easier in this regard as they can still attack when they run out of fatigue (though there are some drawbacks)

However, once a mage uses all of their magicka that's pretty much it then it's potion time.

It's not so much a problem with magicka on a whole but more a problem with level scaling, health (read as enemies as damage sponges), and a limited amount of magicka to deal with those damage sponges. Now imagine if magicka didn't regenerate over time (ie daggerfall or morrowind) then you really have a problem with damage sponges.

It's not so much that I want to be able to dominate my enemies I just don't want to be stuck fighting a damage sponge with no magicka left becauase they are damage sponges. Balance the enemies, balance the level scaling, balance the amount of magicka a player can have and you have a better system for magicka. If magicka is my weapon of choice don't gimp it with a low magicka pool and damage sponges. Balance it out so the system actually works.

I think it is, over powered because you can do everyhting with magic, and better than the actualy skills for something. Take lockpicking and alteration magic as an example, when your alteration hits 75, you can open all locks with a spell, instantly and just like that. In addition you can do lots and lots of other spell effects too. Alteration is therefore a millions times bigger than lockpick skill.

Spells should cost more, take longer time to cast the more they cost. No need for cooldown, as the time for casting it will be enough to balance that.

Yup, simply give the player 10000 health and a 10000 damage health spell that costs 0 magicka right from the start. Everyone can decide on his own then whether he wants to defeat an enemy or not. It's a single player game after all, you don't have to fight back if you don't want to. All challenge and sense for achievement will be gone, but that's just a minor issue of course.

Seriously, the main problem I have with Oblivion's spell system are overpowered enchantments and spell stacking.

It's far too easy to get 100% (or 90% or 80%) resist magic or reflect damage or chameleon or whatever else. Bethesda uses powerful magic effects like they're worth nothing. 20% resist magic here, 20% shield there. Something for everyone! I think they should greatly decrease the magnitude of powerful spell effects. 10% resist magic is great, 20% is fantastic and 30% should be max, maybe if you really, really try hard and find the best equipment in the game you could get to 40% or even 50% if you have a race/birthsign bonus. But under absolutely no circumstances you should get above 50%. It makes your character resist all types of magic no matter what after all. So instead of throwing around ridiculous enchanted items and (self-made) potions that grant crazy resistances they should tone down the whole system. And make these spell effects what they should be - something that on one hand helps a lot and is extremely useful, but on the other hand something that doesn't make your character invincible sooner or later.

The other problem is spell stacking. Whether it's damage spells that cause ridiculous amounts of damage (weakness to X, weakness to X, weakness to X, damage spell X = instant kill for example) or simply stacking (already overpowered) shield potions. It's easy to become invincible with just a few potions made with an alchemy skill of 50 and journeyman equipment. Why should I spend a lifetime to find Daedric armor if two shield potions made from common ingredients have the same effect?

I wish they would spend more time to think about their gameplay in general. There is so much wrong with it I could write a book about it. Bethesda makes fantastic, believable worlds. I love the quests, the landscapes, the NPCs, the 1st person gameplay. But to me 80% of the gameplay is broken and if there was no CS I wouldn't play their games (with mixed feelings of course).

Agree, yes mages is probably 1.5-2 times more powerful than archers in normal use however it’s no big issue, a few more enemies with reflect spell and it’s solved.

This is all completely irrelevant. Todd Howard stated that the magic system/mechanics has been completely overhauled. This thread should be in the Oblivion section since everyone is discussing the Oblivion magic system which is not the same system that Skyrim will have, all of your complaints that I have seen in this thread have been resolved in one way or another already for Skyrim.

I'd rather see some enchanments ballanced first, like 100% reflect/absorption/sanctuary/chameleon *if* they are still in Skyrim. Then, fix alchemy and infinite potion/spell spam as others have mentioned. From your list, spells being bloackable with shields makes absolutely no sense to me. The rest I don't particularily consider terribly important, I could live with or without them.

Oh, and make NPC casters actually dangerous in some way.

I voted for more powerful spells taking longer to cast. If I want to unleash a cyclone of fire, it should take a few seconds of focusing my abilities.

Link(s)?
All I've read about that's different is equipping spells in each hand or using two hands but if there are more details I'd be interested in reading them.

Also I don't think it's completely irrelevant, and let's be honest, yeah most threads on this forum are just people speculating and arguing and will have no effect on the final product, but some of us enjoy doing just that regardless. Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.


Why not?

I guess it depends on what magic is supposed to be in TES, I'm honestly not clear on it myself. Are the balls of fire we hurl physical fire conjured into being or are they magical fire that's intended to pass through solid steel or iron or whatever right to their target?

Some spells should be mitigated by armor
Maybe some spells that cause physical harm, like force push (in lack of better name) etc.
Some materials might absorb or deflect spells. I don't think this should be common, though. Fur and cloth should catch fire

Some spells should be blockable with shields
Maybe stuff like fireballs, if you block the right way. I think there's a perk for this now. It could reduce some of the damage taken -- but it would seriously damage your shield.

More powerful spells should take longer to cast
This one's good. Some very powerful spells you shouldn't even be able to cast in combat -- like long-term summons?

Cooldowns on (some) stronger spell effects
No. No thank you. There's enough limitation with the other (better) suggestions.

Spell creation limitations to prevent "cheese"
I like cheese. You should be able to make cheese if you want to.

Potion use in real time
Yeah, makes sense. Nords could have a perk called Speed Chug

Magicka cost based on spell's power
Well duh.

Tone down overpowered spell effects from previous games
Bit uncertain about what you mean by this one... maybe some should have higher cost etc, but none should be removed.

Chance of spell failure depending on skill level
Yes! Not to the extent of Morrowind, where at the beginning only 1 out of 5 spells would succeed. Maybe it shouldn't just be fail/succeed either -- maybe degrees of success? If you don't succeed 100%, the spell might not be as effective as planned, or might burn off a lot of magica (or might backfire on you).

Disruption of spells from taking damage, ease of getting disrupted based on skill and attributes
Yes, especially for those that take a long time to cast. I think powerful summon spells should need a lot of concentration -- maybe to the extent that you can't use them in combat -- you'd have to summon your minions beforehand..... And stuff like Chameleon and Invisibility could be disrupted in low level characters by moving -- you'd have to stand still to keep the spell up unless you're good at Illusion.

ESPECIALLY Potion use in real time. Or at least a much more strict limit, like 1 potion per 5 minutes.
Magicka cost based on spell's power - isn't that the case already in Oblivion (with the addition of the cost decreasing as you increase skill)?
Chance of spell failure depending on skill level - no, I would definitely not like to return to Morrowind's dice-roll in this aspect.
Disruption of spells from taking damage, ease of getting disrupted based on skill and attributes - yes, pure mages should be screwed once they let a barbarian get too close.

Morrowind spell failure was badly done. Spell failure isn't THAT bad when carefully tuned.

No, it wouldn't fix the problem at all. The chance of spell failures didn't make anything any less unbalanced in Morrowind and it won't even if it returned in Skyrim. What it really served to do was make using magic much more annoying as you could potentially die due to failing a spell you had a 99% chance to cast successfully, simply because an invisible dice roll arbitrarily decided you should fail.



That's correct, and really, there's absolutely no reason to assume that it wouldn't be in Skyrim. It's pretty much common sense, honestly, stronger spells = greater magicka cost, this logic is hardly unique to the Elder Scrolls.

I'd agree that making certain spells take longer to cast than others would be a good idea, it just makes sense.

And I definately agree on taking damage being able to disrupt spell casting as well. Mages are supposed to try to avoid getting directly hit, after all, and the chance of being disrupted should depend on factors like your willpower, skill level, and fatigue at the time.

I'd say no to spell cool downs as that sort of thing is just annoying.

But it seems to me that in Oblivion, the most overpowered spells were invisibility and chameleon, and maybe some magical resistence and reflect type spells, so maybe that sort of spell could have a cap, similarly to armor rating in Oblivion (It may or may not work like that in Skyrim as well, we'll see.) after all, if you can't make yourself invincible to all non-magical attacks, why should you be able to make yourself impervious to magic? Back to chameleon and invisibility, I'd repeat the suggestions in previous threads of invisibility, as its name implies, making you impossible to SEE, but NPCs can still hear you, though they shouldn't be able to know your exact location, since they can't see you, but they could enter the "alerted" state, and start looking for you, the main exception is if there are enemies who don't rely on sight. To go together with this, NPCs should be able to cast detect life, or its equivalent, if they know the spell, and find you by using it. This way, invisibility and chameleon would no longer make sneak entirely obsolete, rather, they'd just be an alternative to it, or a spell that complements it, as they should be. And even if you're invisible, you wouldn't be able to just run right into NPCs without fear.

But honestly, I've never found magic as a whole overpowered in the Elderv Scrolls, in fact, I've always felt it is too weak. Certainly, magic CAN be overpowered, but only if you use specific spells or strategies, if you just play normally, there are a lot of spells that really aren't as useful as they should be. Damage spells do too little damage, making combat as a mage really annoying, summoning and fortifying spells don't last long enough, and when you actually get spells powerful enough to kill enemies in less than 50 hits, chances are they're magicka cost is so high you'll only be able to cast them twice before needing to fill yourself up with restore magicka potions. In fact, I often get the impression that the game is intentionally made to be biased against pure mages, the existence of the silence spell is a good example. The spell pretty much cripples mages for the duration of its effect, preventing them from casting spells. Yet warriors don't have a similar spell, there isn't a spell that stops you from attacking, sure, you might say paralysis does that, but it also woks on mages. Plus, with magical resistences, you can potentially become completely immune to damage of a specific type, yet there's no way to become completely immune to mundane damage, even the reflect damage effect in Oblivion only applied to melee weapons, yet in the end, only mages are the ones who get screwed over by being theoretically able to encounter enemies they can't harm at all. So I get the impression that the games are designed with the assumption that the player will play a battlemage or some other sort of character who can use magic but also has other ways of solving problems, as opposed to a pure mage. No wonder these kinds of characters can be so powerful.



It seems to me like they already fixed that by limiting how many potions you could drink at once in Oblivion. I wouldn't say it's an ideal approach, but it does help to prevent players from making themselves impervious to any attacks that aren't one hit kills by drinking so many restore health potions that any damage heals before the enemy can attack again.



Do you have any examples of games with carefully tuned spell failure, then?

Spells blockable by shields sound like an awesome idea!
I'd like to see my fireball burn a wooden shield, but my flame throw to be blocked by a good mithril one, like in fantasy pictures where you see a knight protecting himself from a dragon's fire =D

And Spell Breaker that will allow reflect like a mirror spell back to enemy mage, also according to GI

I agree, as long as the chance to fail is reasonable. You should have to practice something to become a master and magic is no exception. I don't want my spells to constantly fail at low skill levels, but adding a reasonable chance would add more tension in combat.

Let's say I'm fighting bandits with my longsword, but I've bitten off a bit more than I can chew, and reinforcements are coming. This would be a good time for me to toss a fireball or two at them to give me a bit of breathing room and maybe clear out the bandits closest to me. But then....the spell fails. I have two options, try to fight them all off or hightail it out of there, either way, tension builds.

As long as things like that don't happen too often, I wouldn't mind.

EDIT: Regarding potions.

I remember in The Witcher, potions were a big part of the game, but potions had sideeffects. They were great in reasonable doses, but poisonous if you ingested too many. Every potion increased your blood toxicity level, and you needed to carry around antidotes to level it out. It's not perfect, but perhaps having some sort of overdose effect would limit players from just chugging potions like an entire frathouse put together.

Let's say you've got some magicka potions, you drink one and you're good for a while, then you drink another, and another. you start feeling light headed, your stomach churns and yet you drink another one. Your stomach burns as it goes down and you stagger and struggle to stay on your feet. This would make players have to manage their potion intake, but again, it needs to be reasonable.

I'm of the school of thought that fun will always be more important than difficulty. Others disagree, some find difficulty fun, others like to breeze through their games and just enjoy the ride. I'm closest to the latter, though I still enjoy a reasonable challenge. If the effects I mentioned were overused then they'd just be annoying. If they are underused, then there's no point having them at all. This is a delicate balancing act.

If I had to choose between very hard and very easy, I'd go with easy honestly. A challenge is good, but if a game is too hard then it stops being fun in my opinion.

On the subject of balance in general, I never saw it as much of an issue in single player games. Any time someone mentions potential exploits in Skyrim, my answer is always "Then don't use it". This is a harder one though, as any magic user looking for a challenge probably wouldn't get one without some limitations.

Firstly, because the way the new archery system will work, shields would be the most effective thing against both archers AND mages, and they are obviusly great in melee too, so that hardly sounds ballanced to me. This would essentially make all spellcaster NPC free kills (not that they weren't free kills in Oblivion of course). Secondly because I see no need for it. Lastly, there is the problem that you mentioned, the type of spells available. What about crowd control spells, drain spells, spells that lower stats and the like, burden spells? I agree we have too little info on the subject, but surely we won't be restricted to elemental spells only?

Many good suggestions in the OP, I think.

Spell blockable by shield = awesome! It should really damage the shield, though, so a warrior still has to kill the mage as a high priority - maybe the shield dies after being hit by just 3-4 fireballs. That would also be an interesting choice for warriors - do I block and lose shield repair, or just take the damage myself?

Spell fails if caster damaged / distracted by close enemies: this would be great. I want positioning, glyphs and 'quick kills' to be very important for mages - they should be in trouble if they go toe to toe.
Possibly linked to perks, as in
"Cold as Ice: You have the ability to ignore the world around you. Even a smelly Orc warrior hitting you with a club can't break your spellcasting concentration."
Ok, that sounded like a Fallout perk, but you know what I mean...

Chance of spell failiure: I prefer the above option (chance of failiure if attacked / distracted). If you're not threatened, and you have learned the spell and have enough skill in that magic school, it's just annoying to have spells fail.

Powerful spells cost a long time to cast: Good idea. This would also allow for more powerful, interesting and visually cool spells than in vanilla Oblivion. It always seemed like they were holding back a bit on epic nuke spells because, if the player could just cast them instantly, they would be 'I win' buttons. If they took some time to cast, and broke stealth (and creature AI was designed to prioritize a mage casting an 'epic' spell), they could be balanced.

Countdowns on some strong spells: I would prefer them just taking a long time to cast, as mentioned above, and costing a lot of mana.

Potions have action / animation / delay: This is IMHO one of the most important things for balance, fun and 'realism' (believability). Even with limits on the amount of potions we can drink simultaneously, instant potion drinking in battle is still too easy... just make sure you have at least one powerful healing potion, and you'll be fine. A potion animation would mean having to think ahead - will I need healing in this battle? Ok, then maybe I should drink my potion now. It would be less forgiving, which I like.

- Fix exploits (such as AI not doing anything against an invisible enemy even though they are aware of his presence)

- Remove magicka regeneration unless sleeping

- Decrease amount of magicka-potions, ingredients, etc

- Real time potions, limited number of potions being chosable during fight (rest in backpack, can't be reached)

I've always been against this. The magicka regen in Oblivion was way too fast, I agree -- but Morrowind's system wasn't that much better.

Let's say you're doing a bit of dungeon diving and find yourself in a really nasty fight where you're forced to use up all of your magicka. You're out of potions and there's nowhere to rest. In Morrowind's system, you're pretty much screwed at this point. You could go back, but what if there are enemies blocking your exit? If magicka had regenerated just a little bit, you might have enough to cast a weak spell by the time you meet another opponent -- which could be enough to at least give you a chance to escape.

The regen would have to be reeeeally slow, though, in my opinion. It should take ages before your pool is refilled -- and it wouldn't refill as fast when you move around, so resting would be more sensible if you want to recover before setting out again for a new adventure.

Actually, I'd much rather have a large mana pool and slow regen than a small mana pool and fast regen. This would make you able to cast more spells at first, but you'd have to watch out so you don't run out of mana. Mana regen potions could be made less effective so you couldn't just refill your pool instantly. Mages (powerful ones) might then also be able to cast one really powerful spell that leaves them dry and exhausted, but causes extreme destruction (with cool aesthetic effects).


Ah, one last thing before I forget. This might be totally wrong, but I feel that it makes sense lore-wise to have regenerating magicka. Magicka supposedly suffuses everything on Nirn -- the atmosphere itself is radiated with magicka all the time - so the mage should be able to absorb some of this and add it to his personal mana pool which he can use to cast spells.

a few obvious things you forget..

In ob when they playtested a mage they actualy had to play as a mage... thus almost no endurence increasing no strength increasing.... no this no that blah blah blah blah...

And enchanting wasnt magic everyone could get it so your only talking CAST spells... casting reflect doesnt matter in combat as it costs a ton and doesnt last and eats up the energy needed to kill things...

Same with chamelion....

Also remember they coudlnt metagame.. so no exploting the buggy way weakness to magic worked.

Now go ahead play like that and tell me magic is overpowered in ob... go ahead.

Now skyrim uses a new system.. god knows if we even HAVE weakness to magic as a spell effect. We dont know if we have relfect or if it works anything like before. We dont know if we have chamelion or if it can even be enchanted or not or even if ti works anything like it did before.

As for powerful magic.. in case you havnt been reading to get the most powerful attack out of a spell requires both hands free and alot of magicka.

Regarding spell failure chance, it wasn't really removed in Oblivion.
It was just implemented different with the skill mastery levels.
Look at it this way - if you had less than 25 destruction, you couldn't cast a spell that required 50 destruction (i.e. you had a 100% failure chance until you had the required skill)
It basically is a step system, rather than a gradual decrease for failure chance (which is what Morrowind did)
I think that system worked pretty well

However, maybe alchemy failure chance should be brought back. That way potions are less abundant and it's not an overpowered money-making skill

indeed

its just the armor mitigating spell damage (without enchants) and the spell failure that I'm against

everything else are pretty good suggestions, actually the game should be balanced all around not just in magic.

I actually picked all of them EXCEPT spell failure.

Either you know a spell or you don't. Why exactly do you fail the spell? You weren't concentrating hard enough? You said the wrong words? Made the wrong finger gestures?

Yes, great suggestion...

Except they already told us it was in the game. You can get a perk that allows you to block elemental (fire, ice, shock) spells.

For the most part, I agree. Opponents were "damage sponges" in general in OB, which was annoying regardless of whether you played a melee fighter, an archer, or a magic user. Whether it was a few dozen chops with a sword or axe, 20-30 arrows sticking out of them at all angles, or a gazillion spells spammed at them, many of the combats eventually turned into nothing more than endurance competitions, not "fights".

Morrowind's Magic system had plenty of problems, but the deeper magicka pool and no regeneration meant that you had enough power to cast a few serious spells in a row to deal with the current encounter, but had to be careful about how you used it in the long run. Still, no regeneration at all was a tough thing to deal with, so many players abused alchemy, harvested energy from shrine blessings as Atronachs, or exploited alcohol "glitches" to restore it.

Oblivion added rapid magicka regeneration, but gimped the magicka pool to where you had enough to cast one or two decent spells, then it was swordplay or potion time until the bar recharged. "Slash slash, cast, slash slash, cast....", ad infinitum.

I'd much prefer a deeper pool, with a VERY SLOW regeneration. You'd have plenty to deal with a couple of opponents at the earlier stages of the game, then you'd have to back off while your energy recovered. More advanced mages should develop a deeper magicka pool over time, and a "slightly faster" recharge, but still far slower than what we got in OB.