This is something I've been dreaming of for a long time. Now, before I continue, yes, I like Naruto, Yes, my favorite character is the sand user. But the idea of playing a game with spells that revolves around Sand manipulation has always caught my fancy long before I have heard of that anime. [Besides, the idea exists in many other stories and fantasy worlds]

Anyways, Here are some ability ideas and what they would look like.

Sand-Minions: Summon a humanoid fighter made of sand, to fight alongside you. I imagine these guys would be decent, but fairly weak at the same time. They would look like people made of sand, with a light-sand cloud around them, [imitating the idea of sand-grains falling off them.

Sand-wave: There would be different levels, the higher level, the more damage, speed, and size it has. I basic wave of sand rushes towards where you point.

Sand Tsunami: Much larger and much wider version of the Sand Wave.

Sand-vines: Vines made of sand Shoot from the ground, [ preventing any enemy or person from moving for a short period of time and damaging them slightly].

Dissipate: Your character dissipates into a cloud of sand for a short period of time, and you basically become ethereal [being immune to damage during that time period, but being unable to attack during then as well] You'd still be able to move, i'd imagine.

Sand-storm: Summon a storm of sand to flutter around a vicinity, dealing damage to anyone in its range and slowing them [damaging their speed, as long as their in the range] their speed would return after leaving the spell's area of affect.

Sand-spikes: You summon a quick burst of spikes from the ground where ever you aim, dealing a tremendous damage.

Sand Arena: Summon a large wall then encases anyone or thing within a small vicinity. [helps keep back enemy's if you are being jumped by many and when you just want to focus one only].

Sand-shield: Creates a barrier roughly the size your body that will stop both magical and physical damage. the shield will stay until your magicka is completely drained. [you cannot attack when shield is activated]

Sand weapons: summon a weapon of choice, made of sand. They break easily but do hefty damage.

Sand Skin: It drains only a little amount of Magicka when in use, but is permanent, until you run out of magicka or it breaks. [this would be the master protection spell], a certain amount of damage done to it breaks it, but it can take loads of damage, as long as it is activated, you'd be invulnerable to physical damage. However, magic, as a drawback, is strongly-effective against it.

Plenty more ideas, but I am curious if these spells are even possible and or if anybody is interested in making them or even likes the idea.

I wouldn't know where to begin, eventually I'll get to learning scripting and all of that, however, I currently am working on mastering texturing and 3d modelling. that's my skills.

wold replace "sand" with "snow" to stay on the theme

No snow. I hate snow. lol. And yes to sand. There is fire in Skyrim. Why shouldn't there be sand? Besides, if someone is kind enough to make such spells that involved "Sand Bending" I can implement my mod into Skyrim that much easier.

TL;DR - There are many issues with such a concept, the main two being work vs result isn't balanced - more work and less result here, and the other major issue being the entirely 'unthematic' concept of the mod. READ: I'm not saying that it's a bad idea or that it being unthematic is a bad thing! I'm saying it will affect the content and possibilities of this mod. Read on to find out why.

Also, a side note before I begin: You 'hate' snow? That's a shame! Seems like you may have made a poor choice of game! XD Just saying, because Skyrim's a snow-country, man. Also, Skyrim having fire in no way implies or links that it should have sand. What does fire have to do with sand? Many things have fire concepts that also don't, and rightly shouldn't contain sand concepts. I'm not saying Skyrim is or isn't one of these, Skyrim is a game that you can modify to add a lot of things, but some things just stretch the limit of what an author is willing to work on in various ways.

I think the reason LukeH says 'snow and not sand' is because... Well, aside from what I said above, with Skyrim being set in the snowy northern region of a continent, I'm almost 100% certain there's actually no sand in all of Skyrim; if it does, it's a very, very minuscule amount confined to one or two areas - certainly not a gameplay mechanic-defining amount. Geographically, there's NOTHING in the area that would have naturally-occurring sand. All the bodies of water in Skyrim that I know of are dirt, marsh/clay or gravel based, so sand powers would be... Entirely out of place, really.

But ASIDE from thematic concerns: the major problem with the mod idea is it requires several things that aren't currently capable of being done, as far as I know. Some craft bugger may have come up with ways, but they haven't been widely taken up or implemented in Skyrim modding yet, I know that much.

Depending on how you wanted it, the best route would be like the current magic effects system, which is to use textures and light particle effects over already established animations, as I'll mention below. The problem with NOT doing this is, it's time consuming and hard to create brand new effects, which is what some of the major spell ideas would require; in fact, I think you specifically can't create new spell visuals properly yet, though that might just be my memory going a-derp. Either way, it's a time-consuming and bug-ridden endeavour there. The other route, any kind of particle simulation, is downright impossible in CK, so there's that too.

About half of your ideas could be recreated (albeit dodgily) by chopping up existing spell templates and adding sand textures to them, but frankly, that'd look pretty bad, because almost all spells in Skyrim are entirely transparent, non-material-based effects. Overlaying a 'solid' like thick sand (even if the sand is blowing, it's still a solid) would look a bit out of place. Any solid sand object would require scripting, and scripted spells are a pain in the bum, but doable. An example of what I mean by solid textures on particle cloud effects is to look at the (frankly awful looking) 'dust' effect when you're in a dungeon/ruin and dust falls from the roof. That's what you'd be looking at, here.

Overall, it's a very ambitious project that would require a hell of a lot of effort to pull off, and is also entirely 'unthematic' to all of Skyrim and its contents. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it's a major thing people consider when investing their efforts into a huge mod, and I suggest this is a 'huge', or at least 'big' mod not for the content, because a few spells is hardly big, but that the ratio of work put in vs 'a few spells' output is really heavily skewed toward 'work put in'; in other words, you'd get less out than you put in, in my eyes, in sheer terms of coding and visual-creation time per spell. Few mods as major as this are as entirely 'unthematic' as this is; some add many somewhat 'unthematic' elements such as LOTR weapons, but they're at least medieval. This would be an entire departure from the kind of stock Swords and Sorcery fantasy world Skyrim is, so I'd be very doubtful if anyone would pick it up, let alone invest so much effort into it.

Then again, someone's probably working on a mod that adds robots to Skyrim. But going by the top mods that everyone seems to use, unthematic mods don't tend to rank very high at all, and having a fanbase of your mod is what drives the continued development of a mod.

I should note: I'm not against this idea. If someone were to pick it up, I'd be highly interested to see its progress and how a lot of the issues were tackled. Also, I've been entirely wrong before, and all of my above comments are assumptions and guess work based on quite a number of years browsing TES mod communities (back to the start of Morrowind, to be precise), not hard facts.

I highly appreciate your reply and detailed answer! I completely understand where you'd be coming from, and I hadn't thought of those issues, because ,well, I am a modeler and texturer, not a coder or scripter, yet. . . .lol. It's a darn shame though, this is something I'd really like to see, and well, would be implemented in my mod.

By the way, do you know of a good easy way to transfer morrowind models into Skyrim? My Nifconverter and Nifmash keep crashing for no reason, and I can't seem to get my models I made, from Morrowind to Skyrim.