I miss spellcrafting too, but I'm glad it's gone.
The big issue with Oblivion was that everything was so sterile and nothing was special.
But now since spells are set, there is a thrill at finding a new tool or getting one as a reward. That's something you could never have if you can just make everything yourself.

I never have Mana problems in this game.

I hate conjuration and do not use it. I just stick with fire and Ice. Even at Master, everything goes down in 1-2 hits, Don't forget RUNES!!!. I went with casting cost decrease enchantments in destruction so I can cast my massive AoE fire ball 1000x before I dent my mana. Plus the mana decrease perks. Plus an absorbtion shield because anyone who has decent magic resists usually is using an enchanted blade,staff,or spells themselves. In the rare occasion when someone uses a mana leech on me, I might have to activate my racial elf ability but this is very rare. I have never used a mana potion and had to stop carring them when I reached 200 mana potions.

Secondly, I do not use a campanion because they get pissed with all my AoE's and generally block my shots. But I am working on a super fire/ice resist set of armor so I can use a companion because I need a pack mule.

Mages are really overpowered in this game. Dragon Dead in 5 dual shots. Make sure you use their weakness. Fodder dead in 1 AoE. Boss dead in 2 hits plus a good rune. Ocassionally use my shout to knock them across the room just because it is crazy fun. Even better is to paralyze them then shout them across the room and send everyone they hit go sprawling.

Anyone use Frenzy, super useful for multi boss battles. Nice to make use of all their minions.

Stagger for dual casting made the game too easy. I am playing DiD game and when my time comes I will not take that perk again.

Let me preface with the fact that thus far I love the game overall, am a PC elitist, I've only had 1 crash in a full day of playing 2 characters, dislike greatly some of the interface changes (and no hotkeys for the pc, at least that I can find, so I hate the "Favorites" system). Some of the story lines and huge lore changes I disagree with/vehemently don't like, some I love, but that's for another thread.

A pure mage is not a viable character in Skyrim.

The magic system in Skyrim is abysmal. Unlike melee, where even with no stamina and no ability to do power moves, you can still swing your weapon. With no magicka, you can't do anything as a mage except run.
The spell costs are not even high, they are stupendously stupidly high.
Beyond the fact that cloth has no armor value and enchanting stinks as bad as it did in Oblivion (yeah, the ability to put one buff on a piece of armor..yay), which makes pure mages take a horrible beating compared to a character even in light armor. A mage will be out of magicka right after the fight starts, and carrying around 200 magicka potions is not a viable means of trying to go on as a mage character.

Finally, removing spellcrafting from the game just adds insult to injury to those of us who wanted to play a mage, Bethesda. You could have made a vastly improved spellcrafting system (even though the one in Oblivion was pretty good as it was, especially after adding the Supreme Magicka mod) but instead, you pretty much guaranteed no one will be able to play a mage in Skyrim, and if they even decided to suffer through some how (god mode for the win I guess) why bother when, without spellcrafting, the magic system is boring by default.

Oh yeah, on top of all that, thanks for putting in all the little stories about npc mages researching this spell or creating that spell. Seems the npcs can do it, but the players can't.

Can't wait til mods start rolling out to change all this mage abuse. However, it would be a helluva lot better Bethesda, if you put out a patch to add spellcrafting and reduce the grossly high magicka costs of simple spells, let alone the higher end spells. Evidently some "savant" at Bethesda thought a mage could actually kill 5 bad guys when only able to cast enough spells that can actually kill ONE bad guy. Better yet, I want someone at Bethesda to make a mage, use only the spells in the game, and just try to kill a giant and his pet mammoth on your own. Let me know how that works out for ya...

By the way, to reiterate, I'm talking about "pure" mages here, not battlemages.

To end, no I'm not nerd raging, no I'm not frothing at the mouth (any more than normal) no I'm not even shrieking a little bit. This was my discovery of creating a mage and trying to play him, and subsequently deleting his worthless carcass.

Magic system is great, but try being warrior that stuff is hard.

Maybe I'm bugged or something...but it certainly does not take 2 DW Fireballs to kill harder mobs on Master. Switching to Adept and it still doesn't take 2...... What level are you?


And I also thought about using the infinite spell casting exploit via enchanting, but meh.

In my original post, I did declare I'm talking about a pure mage, someone who uses magic only and wears all cloth and nothing else. I have a battlemage that can dropkick most enemies (battlemages usually wear heavy armor, usually a 1h weapon and a shield, in addition to their magic). I'm also talking about the system itself being horribly boring and confining without a spellcrafting system when compared to Oblivion with a spellcrafting system. The insulting part is there are so many stories with the npcs about them researching and creating their own spells, yet we do not get to do that ourselves anymore.

I find the L2P responses to my post, also stupidly insulting. I've played the hell out of mages in practically countless games prior to this, and I'm well aware that a mage has to use all of his tools to be effective, and to do otherwise is equivalent to fighting with your hands tied behind your back and trying to break your opponents knuckles with your face.

Overall, in response to the many responses in this thread, I think some of you are bald face liars, and some of you have figured out how to make it work well for you, which with my mage I definitely did not. One other caveat, I did *not* do anything with conjuration at all, as my character's "story" is that he was Nord, having lived in Cyrodiil for a long time and now returning home, knows that Nords by and large still hate magic and still carried his own prejudices against summoning for that reason, and so would not insult his countrymen by summoning.

You can still play the game as a pure mage and have fun with it, but from someone who has been toying around with all "classes" on master difficulty they come out as the weakest. Mages are supposed to be glass cannons, but really they come off as glass pistols in comparison to two-handed weapons or bows and have very little benefit above them.

Playing a mage has distinct disadvantages:

- The majority of beneficial armor for magicka regeneration are robes. So, no heavy armor unless you are late enough to be a decent enchanter. After you are decent enchanter, it is unlikely that any plot/quest/unique armor will fit your build beneficially due to item discrimination.
- Destruction spells do less damage than bows or two handed weapons
- Your power is gone when your magicka is gone, unlike the aforementioned weapons with stamina.
- Spells of any school are virtually useless unless you have the perks that reduce mana by half.
- The majority of actually hard areas in the game require you to use direct damage to win; which leaves you with destruction and staffs. Companions and conjuration are viable, but their lack of tactics make it less than optimal an sometimes frustrating.

The most annoying thing of these disadvantages for me is the fourth one. I cannot have "in a pinch" spells. If I only use them in a pinch then I don't practice the school that often. If I'm in a pinch then I probably don't have a lot of magicka left. Not having the perks and being somewhat low on magicka, 1/3 of my bar for instance, means that I really cannot use them to save my butt. I could remedy this by grinding, but that is a failure on the balance's part in my opinion.

Edit: I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression. Magic in Skyrim is still the best it has ever been gameplay-wise, minus the lack of spell making, and playing a mage is still wicked fun.

Aye, I'm quite a bit underwhelmed. Simple matter of fact being, my spells are doing far less damage to monsters than a companion with a sword. crowd control, fine - but the mobs are not fast at killing each other, so in the end the time spent per enemy is still far longer than with a melee character. And.. Conjuration - at level 34, I found I was relying on the conjured summons to do all the tanking, damage dealing and so on, while I was running around trying to avoid getting hit by anything and guzzling down mana potions to try and cast a spell here and there. In other words - somehow it was not working out.

Rerolling as a dual-weilding assassin build. Atm having more fun on account of doing actual work myself as opposed to waiting on the AI.



I'm not saying magic as such is not good.. It can be. However - it's certainly not the biggest damage-dealer, and it's not the quickest way to deal with enemies. And you are more fragile than the other two archetypes, probably. Looks like the magic system of Skyrim is meant to be far more of a supportive/debuffing role, instead of a glass cannon damage dealer that it is in other games.

There are two ways they could have prevented the magic system from being so crappy. Ones that I thought they'd use because it's basic common sense:

1) Make spells become more powerful as your skill goes up. Then fewer spells doesn't matter quite so much.
2) Have multiple versions of each spell effect, so that you can keep doing the cool flamethrower thing at higher levels and actually do some damage.

They did neither of these things. That cool flamethrower spell? The weakest one in the game? Only one you get. No higher level versions of it either, no "great flames" or "incinerate" or anything like that, just the same crappy one you start with. It's been gutted. The CK cannot come out fast enough, because I'm going to go into it and make these spells myself. And I know I can, too, because I've seen more powerful versions of the spells in there, probably for use by NPCs.

Devs, if you are reading this (though I doubt you are): You screwed up. It looks like something that can be easily fixed with mods, which I intend to do, but the poor sods on the consoles deserve better than this. Add more spells in a patch. Not a DLC, a patch. Make a sustained invisibility spell that svcks away your magicka quickly. Add upgraded versions of Sparks, Flames, and Frostbite for PCs to use, since they're pretty essential for close-combat battlemages. As of right now it's like giving us a single sword to use for the entire game. and that just svcks.

Use all your schools people! Destruction and restro are great, but alteration and illusion combined with conjuration are what will define mages in the higher levels. And please stop this "Oh, if you're playing on novice" and "You must not be playing on master!". Your damn right, some of us play on Adept or anywhere in between. Respect the middle people.

Let me preface with the fact that thus far I love the game overall, am a PC elitist, I've only had 1 crash in a full day of playing 2 characters, dislike greatly some of the interface changes (and no hotkeys for the pc, at least that I can find, so I hate the "Favorites" system). Some of the story lines and huge lore changes I disagree with/vehemently don't like, some I love, but that's for another thread.

A pure mage is not a viable character in Skyrim.

The magic system in Skyrim is abysmal. Unlike melee, where even with no stamina and no ability to do power moves, you can still swing your weapon. With no magicka, you can't do anything as a mage except run.
The spell costs are not even high, they are stupendously stupidly high.
Beyond the fact that cloth has no armor value and enchanting stinks as bad as it did in Oblivion (yeah, the ability to put one buff on a piece of armor..yay), which makes pure mages take a horrible beating compared to a character even in light armor. A mage will be out of magicka right after the fight starts, and carrying around 200 magicka potions is not a viable means of trying to go on as a mage character.

Finally, removing spellcrafting from the game just adds insult to injury to those of us who wanted to play a mage, Bethesda. You could have made a vastly improved spellcrafting system (even though the one in Oblivion was pretty good as it was, especially after adding the Supreme Magicka mod) but instead, you pretty much guaranteed no one will be able to play a mage in Skyrim, and if they even decided to suffer through some how (god mode for the win I guess) why bother when, without spellcrafting, the magic system is boring by default.

Oh yeah, on top of all that, thanks for putting in all the little stories about npc mages researching this spell or creating that spell. Seems the npcs can do it, but the players can't.

Can't wait til mods start rolling out to change all this mage abuse. However, it would be a helluva lot better Bethesda, if you put out a patch to add spellcrafting and reduce the grossly high magicka costs of simple spells, let alone the higher end spells. Evidently some "savant" at Bethesda thought a mage could actually kill 5 bad guys when only able to cast enough spells that can actually kill ONE bad guy. Better yet, I want someone at Bethesda to make a mage, use only the spells in the game, and just try to kill a giant and his pet mammoth on your own. Let me know how that works out for ya...

By the way, to reiterate, I'm talking about "pure" mages here, not battlemages.

To end, no I'm not nerd raging, no I'm not frothing at the mouth (any more than normal) no I'm not even shrieking a little bit. This was my discovery of creating a mage and trying to play him, and subsequently deleting his worthless carcass.

I love the magic system in this game. Having played Oblivion and Morrowind this is the first time I felt the need to create a well rounded mage, first time I've ever remotely been interested in Alchemy. I always found if you had restoration and destruction, that was pretty much all you needed. Maybe throw in some alteration to open a few locks but I never found any real use for mysticism or illusion. Now I find that I'm actually using spells from all schools, actually learning about alchemy etc. Plus, I love being able to lob a fire ball and swing a sword at the same time haha.

There are multiple kinds of mages. I find it almost ridiculous that as a warrior you have the option of:

-One handed

-Dual weild one hand

-Two handed

Are you saying now that a dual weilding warrior should also perform two handed?

Some people want to run a pure Necromancer and others pure elemental mage. Why should everyone be subjected to using something they don't want to be?

I'm starting to think the class system in Oblivion was better than this Fallout 3 no class system in Skyrim. I much prefered classes and wish they would come back. Becuase then I wouldn't be focused into areas of magic I do not want.

Well there's your problem right there. You think your character is real.

You do have to Debuff the hell out of them to 2 shot them. Plus use burning debuff you can get up to triple damage per shot (Unless you feel this exploits game mechanics).

Enchanting your gear to reduce the cost of ONE school is hardly an exploit. Infinite damage Buff in oblivion was an exploit.

You do have to Debuff the hell out of them to 2 shot them. Plus use burning debuff you can get up to triple damage per shot (Unless you feel this exploits game mechanics).

Enchanting your gear to reduce the cost of ONE school is hardly an exploit. Infinite damage Buff in oblivion was an exploit.

Finally, removing spellcrafting from the game just adds insult to injury to those of us who wanted to play a mage, Bethesda. You could have made a vastly improved spellcrafting system (even though the one in Oblivion was pretty good as it was, especially after adding the Supreme Magicka mod) but instead, you pretty much guaranteed no one will be able to play a mage in Skyrim, and if they even decided to suffer through some how (god mode for the win I guess) why bother when, without spellcrafting, the magic system is boring by default.

It's terrible. You shouldn't be forced to take perks in conjuration as a mage in order to be viable.

It would be like making every other character take Two-Handed. Bethesda [censored] up hardcoe.

Everyone here saying they have "powerful" mages are likely playing on the lowest difficulty and haven't even reached level 15 yet. Mages both do less damage and can take less damage before dying than thieves or warriors. There's supposed to be a trade-off here. Squishy-as-hell mages are supposed to do high DPS. If they're balanced right, they shouldn't NEED a companion to soak damage. Even MMOs understand this...Mage vs Warlock/Summoner, two different things. Both should be viable. In Skyrim, only one of them is.

Either my game is bugged and my perks arnt working, or Destruction is....

My companion kills a bear in 3 hits with her crappy sword, yet i barely leave a mark on it~ Playing on Master, have the overcharge, augmented flame and shock perks~ *25% dmg*

I use up all my mana before my target even gets to 50%, companion raqes monsters face~

Am i missing something?

To everyone saying there is no problem, play on Master difficulty, physical attacks still do decent dmg, yet magic doesn't.

1. Pull up Favorites menu
2. Mouse-over the skill/weapon/spell you want to hotkey
3. Hit the hotkey (1-8) to assign it
4. Profit

This is in the Manual, page 7.

can you really hot key 8 spells on pc? i'm playing on xbox, and the magic system is completely useless, pausing the game with the favorites list every time you need to cast anything, then assigning it to one of you're hands than casting, then pausing if you need to switch back.

Yeah for sure, this is what happens in my game also. I Have a levle 28 pure mage and stopped playing it to try out melee and man is it alot better. I play on master because the game is to easy on normal. All you guys who say mages are fine are probably low levels playing it on easy mode. I almost quit this game because of this. At 1st in the lower levels your feeling good killing stuff but man when you have to exploit terrain and run around in circles while your pet trys to take agro every damm fight its not fun. If a enemy even looks at you your dead in 1 -2 shots no ward is going to safe you. You run out of mana way to fast. Pausing and drinking tons of pots is a must as a mage because hotkeying dosnt even give you time to switch to cast a heal. Spell selection svcks, its the same damm spell over and over. Flames sparks cold one are all the same just differnt elemts. No variation of spells and imagination went into making these thins. Sure one does what magica damage i think well bs because the monsters dont run out of mana or stam. I fough mages that spam fireballs forever. The only hope is for modders to fix the magic system i dont think this company will/