Title says it all. Every time I cast a scroll like Blizzard (I can't cast the spell itself yet), I die from it. Fast.
I don't understand this. Shouldn't my character be immune to that attack? I can see it hitting followers, but me?


I can confirm that this is a bug, related to J'zargo and his scrolls. Once you get his quest, all of your scrolls start to work against you.

I've always been an advocate of spells being just as lethal to casters as everyone else... If I shoot a fireball in D&D and it explodes five feet away from me--I'm going to die or be very close to death. If I cast a spell to call a blizzard, it should be as lethal to me as everyone else.

Why would you call up a spell that you can't escape, and that does as much damage to you as your attackers? If you can outlast them in your own attack + their attacks, then you should just go toe-to-toe with them and take less damage.

That makes no sense.

It makes some sense in the context of a misfire, ie, hitting the wall like you said. But a spell like Blizzard can't be avoided, you stand in the middle of it when cast. Therefore, 100% of the time, you will be doing more net damage to yourself then your attackers alone would. That = a worthless spell.

I have to agree with you Varus, it is VERY annoying.

In fact, the paralysis scroll paralyzes the player too. This has got to be a bug. Why would I cast a paralysis spell that paralyzes me?
I am convinced that this was not intended.

I also think it is new. I don't seem to remember having this problem when the game first came out.

I do not appear to suffer this problem with blizzard... ? I'll just test it

I think I know what it is.

It's J'zargo and his stupid scrolls. After using them, all area damage scrolls will hurt the player.
Prior to that quest, scrolls work fine.

Tested and confirmed with save files.

I agree with that - only one of my characters has ever joined the College of Winterhold. My current character's scrolls do not damage the player.



Although for some reason Irileth is a complete psychopath and wants to kill me, triggering all the Whiterun guards, the jarl of Whiterun and his advisor to start attacking. How do you fix NPC aggression?

Console > Select NPC > Type:

setrelationshiprank player 2
resetai

See what that does. You can also try to disable/enable her.

I can make a video of this, post DXdiag or something like that if it would help.

I think this is actually a bug, I've tried it again and again. I don't recall it being the case in older versions of Skyrim, but I have no idea which patch might have introduced it. It is, however, most certainly a bug.

At some point during J'zargo's quest, all player scrolls begin to work against the player character. Any of the level 24 area effect scrolls attack the player, as well as other scrolls that have an AoE (such as paralyze).

As far as I know j's spells are an experiment of his with magic, an experiment that did not work out well ,as it could kill you, this will wear off after some time has passed. [it did for me] this is what happens when you don't know what you are doing when playing with magic.

I've had this happen to me as well, but I don't recall ever talking to or taking J'zargo's quest. So I don't know if it is exclusive to that. But that was with an older character so I might be wrong. Just seems I only did J'zargo's quest with another even earlier character and never did it again as I knew what would happen.