It's been one of the trademarks of the series, found in each major installment. Greatly expands the possibilities for magic from what they are in Skyrim. Anyone who says it's broken is an idiot. It's only broken if you yourself break it. Yes there are possibilities to make extremely powerful spells, but only if you choose to do so, and only if you have the power to do so. Anyone who complains that it's broken has to remember that it's their own fault that they broke their own game experience.

You could take base spells that you learned and customize them...fire/ice/spark...light...invisible...levitate...waterbreath/waterwalk...etc.

You could make a Fireball ranged spell do a 100 points of damage if you have the Magicka to cast it that is...or do 5 pts of damage for 20sec...or do 50 pts of initial damage with 5pts of damage for 10 sec...control if your spell is a ranged spell or a touch spell...does the spell affect one person or is it an area of effect spell...how big if an area does it effect? or if you cast the spell on yourself or on others...

You could combine different effects...a spell that paralyzes your enemy and sets him on fire....a spell that allows you to breath under water and allows you to also swim faster...a spell that restores both Health and Magicka...or Health and Stamina...etc...the more powerfull or longer lasting the spell the more Magicka it cost to cast.

The cominations seemed endless....if you combined number of types of spells with ranged or touch...with different amounts of damage possible...different length of time the damage can happen...different combinations possible of different spells...single taget and various area of effect sizes...etc.....I wouldn't be surprised if you could creat over a million different spells technically... my math skills are not anywhere good enough to figure it out.

The down side is that the number of spell animations was limited .....was a great magic system though....I mean who doesn't like to be able to cast a Night-Eye spell and have it last for 5, 6 or 7 minutes so you don't have to constantly recast the spell in the middle of combat.!!!!!

Spellcrafting is taking existing spells and combining them together like putting enchantments on a sword, only there is no sword and you cast the spell.

Be aware, if you get Oblivion, it's dated by 5 or 6 years, so the graphics aren't near Skyrim's, and the systems and processes are significantly different.

Actually 5 parameters....you forgot ranged/touch... and weather you cast on yourself or on others....well maybe 4 and a half parameters...lol

Fixed your comment with the highlight. Anyway, one actually does get to craft their own spells whether or not the name/type of the spells already exist that can be modified. One can change the strength, duration and the effect and on whom or what it is used. Not only that, one can name it whatever they so desire. I'd say that is pretty much creating one's own spells.

I loved spellmaking in Morrowind. Restore multiple attributes to counteract disease or damage attribute spells, long duration levitate, summoning several pieces of bound armor and a bound weapon, lots of others. I miss it, and I also miss the more extensive spell library.

Was it really compatible?

How would you combine different casting styles? Morrowind and Oblivion had a rather simple casting mechanic - spell effect on self, touch, or target.

Skyrim doesn't have that. Skyrim has constant cast spells, instant cast spells, streaming effects, rune effects, wall effects...

How could you combine a Ward spell with a Rune spell? A Shield / Skin spell, with a streaming flame spell?

Because of the simplicity of the Morrowind / Oblivion system, it allowed for virtually any spell effect to be combined together. Not so much with Skyrim's system, where each spell has a different way of being cast.

How do you work out dual casting? Magic in Skyrim this time around utilizes perks as an investment for how magic functions, from casting cost, to spell effect strength. How do you combine spells from different schools together, and then have them function with countless magic build possibilities? What if someone is heavily invested in Illusion, but not Destruction, but wants to create a combo Frenzy / Fire Damage spell? That person is fully perked out in Illusion, but not in Destruction?

What about if I'm highly perked out in both Illusion and Destruction, but I have the Illusion dual cast perk, but not the Destruction dual cast perk? Does this custom spell get a dual cast benefit? Well then, I've just found a loop hole for getting Destruction perk benefits without Destruction perk investment. You can't dual cast the spell? Well then I'm losing out on my Illusion perk benefit and wasting that investment.

Spellmaking would require a -LOT- of work to function with the current system, it would -not- be compatible. And in that regard, I'm glad it was left out. And I certainly wouldn't want them to have pushed back the release of the game to find a way to get Spellmaking to function properly, especially since it would have to be a severely limited version of what we had before, and what we had before was over-rated in importance to begin with.

it would be comaptable with some easy adjustments in requrments, it would make it a bit more complex but i know even a 6 year old could design a spell making mechanic for skyrim, a ward and a stream spell would have a ward and a stream coming from your hand, simple, an armor spell and a stream spell would have the armor cast on self once while the other part did its effect, any and all effects would just play through what they do (probebly with some form of new animation) along side the other effect. perks that would increase effects would only work on their respective effects and if you dont have both duel casting perks you dont get anything from duel casting simple.

honestly it is not that hard, bethesda just had the mindset to not include SM since they started making skyrim, otherwise it would be in and, if not how i just said, it would be something so simple im overthinking things and missing it (of course it could be nice and complex but bethesda does not seem to want complex with skyrim)

[I can't mod to save my life, but I've been trying to work out http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1348208-spellmaking-an-idea-of-mine-and-a-thread-for-further-brainstorming/page__fromsearch__1 should some modder ever want to take up the endeavor. Not that my ideas are the best ever, I was just trying to make the problems more manageable.]

It is a little harder than that.

What does a fireball combined with an Ice Spike look like?

...Or what goes on the screens if someone wants to combine an Ice Spike with Flames?

...Or Frenzy in a 15' radius with a 5' radius of Fear?


I think the solution to the glitches would be for scraping both original effects and making a whole lot of new effects for each possible combination. Of course that is way too much work for Bethesda when they were looking at the problem in March and had the 11/11/11 deadline in place. Even if Bethesda limited the number of slots to 3 and took out the ones that don't seem plausible [combining any Destruction and Healing], then that is likely 100s and probably 1000s of combinations. Of course some effects will overlap and many others would just be slight variations and there will be some recycling which will help cut the work load.

I see this as a lot of work, but not something much different than creating a texture pack.

Of course, there is and additional problem of new spell mods. What do you do with those effects? Or what do modders with Spell mods do when a Spellmaking Mod comes?


The real solution to Magic and Spellmaking was 12/12/12. If Bethesda released Skyrim with Spellmaking, modders would have contended with that from the get go and their mods could be compatible. Instead we are faced with an anemic Vanilla magic system, or having 300 modded spells from different mods, or having a Spellmaking mod that works with Vanilla Skyrim and what ever Spell Mods want to attempt compatability. Worse yet, players are going to be facing a combination of all three situation.


There is one other option. Somebody [maybe even Bethesda themselves] could offer a mod porting over Oblivion's magic system and just preserving runes and dual-wield since DW is only good for when the same spell is in both hands so it should be non-issue, that way the perk trees remain functional in their current form.

I would install an Oblivion magic system mod and never look back. Sure it's less pretty, but it's also less [censored].

[...ooh! I made a rhyme]

I think another way of balancing this would be to add in a Perk for each school of magick that allows you to create/combine spells in that school,

Create would be a simple pick effect and choose the duration/damage/level of the effect. at the cost of say a Greater and above soul gems

If you want to combine 2 school spells into one, for example a Ward spell and a Damage spell (magic sword and board) then you would use each spell in each hand, but to combine as a Duel wield spell hence halfing the magicka cost and doubling the damage effect of the combined spells you would have to have the duel wield perk and the create/combine perk for both schools, meaning 4 perks to be able to do this.

There is no way in hell that Spellmaking is worth pushing the game back for over a year. None at all.

Hello:)

Ehm thats not true.
You could combine up to seven effects in one single spell and upon cast they were applied last to first.
Meaning that if you had a spell that did fire damage 10pts, 10 sec, on target - frost damage 10pt. 10sec, 10ft on target, the frost would be applied first, and the area effect only needed to be applied once, to the last effect.

Considering all the other bugs, the broken quests from discovering something without being handed the quests, the other issues with the threadbare magic system and all the polish and general filling out of "the skyrim experience" that could of been done with an extra year, 12/12/12 is something I could live with.

Or to put it a different way. I started off with Oblivion on the 360 in 2006. At the end of 2007 I bought a $2000 laptop to play Oblivion on PC... because I was still playing it on the 360 and I wanted the mods... got a ~$1500 desktop ~6 months later... because I was still playing Oblivion.

It's been ~3 months since Skyrim was released and now I'm playing Batman: AC with Deus Ex: HR and The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition on deck. The God's honest truth is it is the magic system that has turned me off from Skyrim so soon. When Someone mods in Spellmaking or mods in Oblivion's magic system, I'll be back. I would of gladly waited to 12/12/12 for Bethesda to get things right the first time.

There are alternative ways and solutions to implementing a spell-making system, some effects may simply not be allowed to combine and there might be restrictions, but it is doable.

I always found the spellmaking system to be too exact and accurate, you could make optimal spells for any kind of situation without any drawbacks (just costing you money...not a big deal in the end...). I think a good and interesting spellcrafting system needs to be more rough, unpredictable and dependant on trial and error, like the alchemy system.

I don't know why they took it out, it was one of the best parts of Oblivion IMO.

Great feature in Oblivion that was removed for Skyrim. As long as you knew the spell, you could craft your own. For instance, I learned Weakness To Fire, and Fireball. I may have the name wrong on Fireball (it's been a while). I crafted my own spell with both. So I shot a Fierball that gave them a 10% weakness to fire, and burned them for 5 seconds. It may not sound like much, but I pretty much shot it at the mob, and watched it burn up as it ran to me, only to drop dead along the way!

It's not compatible internally. Spellcrafting was possible because Oblivion's spell effects were all hard coded, they couldn't be changed. Therefore it was easy to enable spell creation of these effects. In Skyrim, all spell effects are not hardcoded, they're script based. This makes things pretty tricky from a technical point of view.

Those spells are my favorite ones!
There were many fun combinations. Like, Paralyze-Fire Damage, Levitation-Burden, Fortify Acrobatics-Fortify Athletics-Fortify Speed-Fortify Agility

I want it back. I do not really see the problem, they can allow you to modify:

How it's cast (stream, bolt, rune etc.)
Effect (Fire damage, paralyze, fear etc.)
Area Of Effect (0ft, 10ft, 20ft, etc.)
Magnitude (10p, 20p, 30p etc.)
Duration (0s, 5s, 10s etc.)

Not really complicated it seems.
And for the Dual Cast issue, you can't combine diferent spells anyway, so if you want to cast a spell with Fear-Frost Damage you simply cast it in either one hand or two hands. Trying to combine the visual effects of those spells seems easy enough.
They can make it such that you can't Dual Cast if it have multiple effects.

(Like voice of reason, I just knew Merari would come by )

Although, I have looked into spells in this game, and they are all scripted events it seems. That could maybe make complications when I think of it, but I believe Bethesda could manage to fidn a workaround.
A DLC that allowed spellmaking would be bought in an instant. Easely 10 bucks.

Absolutely. I would buy it in a heartbeat! One of my fave features of OB. I'm actually going to go back and play some OB again. I'm gonna try some of your combos. Levitation-Burden sounds interesting.

Well, Levitation were taken out of Oblivion, so that won't work. But it was fun in Morrowind to make people fly and be stuck in the air.
Try Paralyse-Damage instead, or Frenzy-Calm.

Damn, didn't know it was gone, lol. I just thought I hadn't learned it yet!

...and there we go, that's why it was taken out, too many possibilities to use the spellmaking system to create combinations that the designers hadn't intended...if I designed a game like Oblivion I would also take it out once I realized that this is what players used it for...

Yeah, players using something in a game to actually have fun!! How apalling.
How do you know what the designers intended? The reason it's out is because the spells are scripted events now. It had nothing to do with how people used it.

But that is totally the wrong way of looking at things.
It is the antithesis of fun.
Much more fun is emergent gameplay such as spellcrafting and levitation allowed.
Dungeons also used to be much, much more fun in Morrowind as all three dimensions were utilised.

P.S. I dont understand the difference between 'scripted events' and 'hardcoded', as I know nothing of computer hardware.
Can anyone explain it please?