Hello,

I've noticed a lot of people have problems with the way spells (especially destruction) works in this game..

My proposed mod to fix this would be to change Fortify Spells from reducing mana cost to increasing damage. So, at the moment you can Fority Destruction and it gives you (for example) 20% reduced cost - I say we make that 20% more damage.

Don't know if possible since we haven't gotten the CS yet but I feel like it hopefully should be. For other schools it could do similiar like increase duration of conjuration, effectiveness of healing, longer durations etc. As a side note from this mana costs might have to be looked at to balance it out a smidge.

Thoughts?

As of right now, this is impossible to do. Fortify spells increase the level of your destruction spells which only has an effect on mana cost, not damage. In order to increase damage done, you'd have to add "Weakness to X" to the spell's effects, which would make it grossly overpowered..

Not strictly true, there are alchemy potions which increase destruction damage by a % for a duration, so the effect exists. Once the Construction kit arrives it should be the work of 20 seconds to remap the current Fortify effect from -cost to +damage, given the function already exists in game.

This would make Destruction magic even less useful. As-is, it's only comparable to melee combat due to being able to get mana costs down to zero or near zero. Without the 'reduced mana cost' enchants, you're out of mana after two or three spells, even when you've got 400+ mana and the half-mana-cost perks. With them, you can toss around fireballs and chain lightning like nobody's business.

Then create your own enchant with + damage and - mana cost. I'm not proposing to change YOUR game, I'm simply explaining to someone who asked how they'd go about adding an enchantable +destruction damage mod once the creation kit becomes available.

I was replying to the OP, not to your post, John.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you meant, but how would that make a spell "grossly overpowered"? It's a common element in *many* games, and has always been a part of TES until now. Combine "weakness to X" with "X damage type." Really it's no different, other than saving time, than first casting a weakness to X spell followed by a X type damage spell. What you call overpowered I call smart combat tactics.

I could have sworn there was a vanilla effect that increases destruction damage.....
*goes to check*

EDIT: I guess I was wrong.
Man, no water walking, no way to boost my magic damage.
This is a sad day to be a mage. I know the spell effects look great, but this game was obviously made with muscle heads in mind. Heh, at least they can't attack under water either.

Actually it wasn't made with anybody in mind (in my opinion). Skryim suffers from the same thing most games are suffering from now. The devs are more concerned about "looks cool" than playability or how well it really works in the context of the game.

John: "Man this game svcks!"
Fred: "Dude, at least you can play. My game is broken!"
Pete: "Guys, quit being so negative. It has face melting graphics!"
John & Fred: "..."

First off, sorry for not replying to any of you guys earlier - I got lost in a mountain range somewhere...



As I noted in the OP mana costs would have to be rebalanced to account for this change in fortify spell. My proposed change was to have gear increase damage rather than reduce magika cost - and as added effect re-balance the base cost of the relevant spells (as there aren't really that many in the game it wouldn't take a gross amount of time).


And yes as john noted the effect already exists which is why I think this would be quite easily doable. I might do it for my own game whenever (if??) the CS gets released. Just to have some sort of scaling. With any luck it would be possible to make destruction skill also increase damage by some small %..