Just a few things I've been thinking about.

1) Mage robes. While the low-tier robes look appropriate, it's sort of jarring to see Expert and Master school robes look so...mundane. The Archmage robes, on the other hand, look like a furry poncho. New meshes that appropriately reflect the sort of robes a regal, powerful archmage would wear would be most welcome. Better meshes for the other robes would be nice, too.

2) Enchantable staves. It's funny that the weapons of an archetype caster can't be made, whereas every warrior with smithing lugs around an armory of daedric weapons and armor. A way to craft and enchant staves would go a long way towards making Enchanting a viable crafting skill for a mage that does not involve -100% mana cost silliness. On that note, craftable robes, too.

3) Fixing the relative weakness of Destruction magic compared to other dps skills. Some sort of scaling (or perk changes) would be nice, as would more magic effects. Absorb Health for Destruction, for example.

Would it be too difficult to bring back enchanting active effects too?

I mean, back in morrowind, it was somewhat useful enchanting my (left) gloves to cast fireball, my right to cast something else, my helmet casts heal, chestplate summons somethingoranother, ... You get the picture. Nowadays, everything is constant effect, and honestly, either useless or totally OP feeling (see: fortify enchant/alch/smithing....), or automatically an onhit. I mean, thats not bad, in morrowind the main issue with enchanting seemed to be bows lacking the ability to apply onhits ...

Then again, in morrowind enchanted items slowly regenerated their reserves, while your mana never regenerated. I still miss it
(mind you, I also miss the variety of spells and by extension, enchantable effects. )

Going back to your original point; yeah, staves would be an active use enchantment. But ive never found an unenchanted staff..
I also really dont understand why fortify destruction reduces mana costs, whereas fortify archery doesnt reduce.. say, arrow costs. Or fortify one/twohand doesnt reduce stamina costs.

Funny you should say that. I made a thread in General about the damn robes but I only got a reply from someone stating that Gandalf didn't wear flashy clothes so it's ok... Copy pasted below my text:

"Maybe it's a very subjective thing but I hate the higher tier robes. The Expert and Master robes look so mundane - the Expert ones especially look like something required in 'agricultural endeavors'. They have nothing that says: look at me, I mastered the damn elements... or I can bend the will of an entire town. Mages are not supposed to be stealthy... why do they have so bland robes?

On the other hand, the lower tiers of the College robes look pretty good. The only thing that bothers me here is that it's not very clear what magic school they belong too - the id. tags so to speak are not very clear.

It would have been cool to have a nice robe for each tier - and that they will get more flashier as you go up in ranks but instead, they look more and more uglier. And that Archmage thing... what is that? Looks like something pulled from a western movie. Why do I have this weird carpet on me? Is this the most awesome thing a mage can wear? C'mon "


For other mage stuff things, I also made a [IDEA] thread about expanding Smithing for mages, using the silver and gold that you can Transmute. So the mages should be able to make: circlets, bracers, gloves, robes, staffs, masks... all with silver and gold insertions cause they are noble metals, appropriate for using in the arcane arts.

Hopefully a nice modder that likes to play as a mage will come up with some good things in the near future.

Ugh. I hate them so much.

Yeah, the Archmage didn't really look the part, did he?

On the other hand those Tholmar robes (don't know if I got their name right ) ... right there Archmage robe material.

It's kind of annoying that NOTHING about magic is customizable anymore. No spellmaking. Staves can't be enchanted. All the robes other than the really low ones are fugly. Mages got shafted.

Yeah, I agree with all of this. The robes leave much to be desired, but yeah the Thalmor robes were cool, even the Greybeard robes are cool. What gives?

@ Lancefighter, I totally agree. Part of the mage's power and versatility was enchanting many different things to do different effects. Can you imagine how hard/boring Morrowind would have been for mages if we would have had Skyrim's enchanting system? Yawn.

And having useful active enchantments like that really helped us mages not feel totally useless when our magicka ran out...sigh.

I actually quite liked the Archmage robes. Could be better, but IMO they're quite nice, and fit the setting very well.(Winterhold is COLD).


Btw someone released a preliminary mod that tweaks magic, mostly destruction, a bit to make it better. If you have FOMM you can use TESsnip included with FOMM to edit the .esps to your liking.
http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=382

This. It's too restrictive.

Yeah, expanded spell effects and enchantable/craftable staves/robes/circlets could do wonders. As it is, a mage only bothers with enchanting as a quick goldmaking machine and to get the -100% mana cost enchants. There's literally no other reason; there are no damage bonus effects or weaponry a traditional mage could make or enchant his gear with; it's kind of sad.

Add that with the horrible-looking robes (seriously, they're not even robes!) and it looks like people roleplaying pure casters just get kicked in the groin for no reason.