After a few months of perusing this board I've heard the term, "Spell-crafting" used more than once.

I'm wondering what it is and how it works.

And is it in Oblivion? I plan on getting Oblivion because I've heard great things, especially now that I am obsessed with Skyrim.

It's in Oblivion, and not in Skyrim, for some reason.

You need to gain access to the Arcane University and have a lot of gold.

in oblivion and morrowind your could tweak your own spells, much like enchanting works really however there was abit more freedom. however dont let the name fool you, you cant actually ''craft'' your own spells you simply tweak and modify existing ones.

It's over-rated but there was no -need- to remove it as you could choose to use it or not to use it, Beth took the choice away thats peoples real problem with it.

It was a feature of TES II-IV. If you knew an effect like fire you could create your own spells that used that effect and choose things like duration, damage, ranged or touch, area effect.

Technically the term in Morrowind and Oblivion is "Spellmaking", not "Spell Crafting".

I also maintain that the reason why it was "removed" is because it's not compatible with the current system.

But yes, otherwise, you're right. You don't actually -create- spells, you just modify existing spell effects that you already know, as well as combining effects. It didn't really add anything else to the game, it just gave you another way of customizing things that were already there.

It's a shame that spell-crafting isn't in Skyrim.

it was perfectly compatible with the current system, we just have 2 more ways to cast something and the ability to use two spells in our hands, this is the same system thats been used since daggerfall (i never played arena, but maybe there too) just with those little, almost impossible to notice on paper, changes

and, wait for it...wait for it...i can already feel merari coming this way, i can feel it in my bones, the little ones

they should use the spell crafting from two worlds 2.. one thing that game did right was the spell creation.

What's more, before the game was even released people were coming up with possible ways to balance Spellmaking. Like fixing the massive loopholes where you could manipulate the Weakness to Magicka spell and give yourself massive healing with cheap spells.

i dont see why anyone would want to "fix" these since they can make for great fun when you just wanna mess around and see what you can do and it is totally optional

besides, todd gave the excuse it was "too spread-sheety" (which i like, spreed-sheety is sorta a nesessity in a great rpg), but that is jsut somethign i heard on the forums, i didnt pay attention to news or announcments so it might have been a different reason, anway, this proves (if true) it is compatible and that todd and friends are just lazy or ruining some beloved features on purpose

The others have said what it is pretty well, but i will add this,

You said you plan on picking up Oblivion sometime and getting into that game, i would like to add this little note, try Morrowind too. you may think it's 'old' but it's not and still is the favorite of the series to alot of us, myself included. still play it non stop to this day ) alot with over 200 mods as all my games have lol )

Well he did say that, it was on one of the Game Informer exclusives I think. But I think my signature sums it up pretty well. Who cares if it looks "Spreadsheety"? If it works better like that than it does with a prettier setup than it should stay the functional version until they can find a way to make it pretty without sacrificing function.

But as far as what I said before, it's strictly a matter of game balance. And say what you want about game balance not mattering in a Single Player game, but it does matter. Otherwise we would be able to one shot everything bare handed right off the bat and that wouldn't be very fun at all.

(Note: That wasn't directed at you, just a comment on game balance in general.)

since you brought it up, i think games should be balanced pretty well, at first. but you should be able to wreck balance as much as you want using an intended exploit or something, not have a healing spell that heals 1000 per second and costs 0 magicka avalible to buy at the mage's guild for 2 gold or something, but we should be able to unblance the game with a bit of work

That makes me chuckle, considering this game isn't very well balanced at all.

Agreed. I think you should have the opportunity to become godlike if you work at it. But just putting a button in the first part of the game that gives you god mode would not be fun at all.

That's what I liked about some parts of Oblivion. You COULD get 100% chameleon, but you needed to fill like 5 Grand Soul Gems to do it, not to mention actually figuring out that you can. But that doesn't mean some things can't be modified to make it less exploitable.

@Darkside Eric: Yeah I agree. The balance is rather off, but then again it IS a lot harder to balance a game like this than one like CoD

Call of Duty isn't balanced either...

It's not that hard to balance spell making. They did it pretty well in Oblivion. You can only pick spell types that you already know and depending on how it deals damage and how much damage it deals will affect magicka cost. Just do that with Skyrim.

Oh, and spell making should've really been included with Enchanting perk tree. It's so simple to do spell making with Bethesda's assets and skills. It should only take them about a week.

Just pick a spell's effect, how it delivers that effect (stream, bolt, bomb, rune, chain, charge, self), the power of that spell, and the name. That's it! All of the delivery methods and spell effects are already coded in so all they need to do is make a method, write a few scripts, and make a UI from the already existing crafting window.

As for being overpowered: remember you'll have to give up something for spell making. Whether it be gold, an enchanted weapon, a spell tome, a soul gem, or whatever, you'll have to give up stuff. And the stronger the spell, the more you'll have to give up.

Not to mention the Magicka problem. While you can get infinite magicka through enchanting, you'd have to get 100 enchanting, the enchantment, and 4 grand soul gems to do so. Besides, making the spell is the hard part. If you got ten thousand gold and the four pieces of armor you need for infinite magicka, you deserve a god spell.

Oh not again...
It isn't, and it has been proven countless times. Try yourself, on paper. You won't get far until you realize you're stuck. Combo spells from the JAM I don't have any problems with, with that system all the sorting of what works together has already been made and set in stone, rather than a generic system that spell maker was.

And please, spare me any personal issues on a public forum.

I don't want to be forced to use a spell maker in order to get decent spells that actually work - that makes me feel like a cheat exploiting the system. Now, with "fixed" spells, I find that they actually work without having to tweak anything, which makes them fun to use as is, just like all the dice systems I've played. We didn't have a "spell maker" but we had more spell lists (different mechanics all together), that could give thousands of spells without cluttering up the spellbook - typically 5-20 spells per character - and it was still powerful and useful.

I'd rather have stock new spells that also AI knows how to use, than the spell maker as it used to be that "only" benefited the player and the AI couldn't counter at all.


Absolutely not. Powerful, yes. Unbalanced, no. Even to get to the powerful state, you have to make some sacrifices in order to keep it balanced. This is already evident in Skyrim by limiting the number of perks, but sadly we're still able to reach ridiculous imbalance - without a lot of work. Just look at previous titles and see how much effort Beth does to limit exploits - it's something they take seriously, but it's damned hard if not impossible to get right. In no other games that I play do I ever get game breakingly imbalanced, something I end up doing in Skyrim without even trying. With your mindset on game balance, I have one advice for you - don't get into game design.

So... how would one get stuck making a higher damage version of Frostbite? Or Flames?

Current spell system needs a lot of tweaking, as Destruction damage is very low end.

Absolutely sickening that they gutted this.

That's just it. You don't get to make a higher damage version. You get to create current damage version, with the stock spell effect being significantly weaker. Try playing a mage in Oblivion on the highest difficulty using ONLY stock spells.

Relying solely on Destruction? It doesn't make sense. By its very nature its nerfed as hell and deserves to be hard as hell on highest difficulty without great focus. It's like a fighter with half a sword. From what I can tell, destruction is about the best balanced damage dealers in the game. On highest difficulty, you NEED to be extremely focused on your skill combinations to make it work. As an archer you're not forced into any mindsets at all - you never absolutely NEED to take on enchanting or alchemy as it deals sufficient damage on its own and have no frustration elements at all (like arrows having weight).

Edit: Sorry, misread the first line. You'd probably be able to make these two examples vary in damage. But most other spells are fixed wrt effect - they cannot be varied. That makes it "spell specific" rather than "generalized system", and that's exactly what the combo system in the JAM does - it takes two effects that CAN work together, and presents it as such. It doesn't allow us to mix and mingle all sorts of combinations that will never work.

Spellcrafting was basically a feature that allowed you to tweak three parameters (those being damage, duration, and area effect) even its prime it was incredibly limiting as you had no ability to sequence spells. Combing multiple spells felt like you're creating a spell soup rather than a spell.



You do something like 12-20 damage with flames per second (dual casting does double). A long sword does around 60 damage (if it's a higher up sword with some smithing done to it every 2 seconds, not including how much armor the enemy is wearing. Spells also allow you to stay away from enemies.

Honestly I see the destruction spells as being a balance issue. You're trading damage for range, while swordsmen have more damage up from but are likely to get hit. If you can kite and do crowd control then you'll be much more effective as a mage than you would be as a fighter.

I miss my spell crating.

I used to make custom spells for my spellsword:

nighteye/armorskin/detectlife/fortifyblade 120 seconds - classic.

It gave soo much more freedom and POWER to magic.

took the words right out of my mouth


it has not been proven once, and it is one of the most simple things to design:

casting method (whatever you want to call it): plume
effect: fury
duration: 1000 seconds
power: 51
the spell would shoot a fury spell out like the flames spell that will fury anything up to level 51 for 1000 seconds (likely with a very high magicka cost)

sure that spell would be a bit of a waste (i should be able to get a crazy as i want though) but that is just an example of how it could easily work, and the combining spells is jsut as generic as spell making
not directed at you, not a personal 'issue' and i can say anything i want as long as it pertains to the topic at hand on a public forum, this was a joke at the expense of someone else on his forum who always comments on threads like this (and agrees wiht my stance on spellmaking)


spell making is a staple of the TES serise that provides an outlet to roleplay and have great fun, in oblivion i made a spell of light that was red (well it was an enchantment, but i might test it in spell form), not to mention what we players come up with will always be more entertaining than what bethesda could make


those are not mutually exclusive you know, add in some usefull spell for the NPCs and let us who like to make our own spells make our own spells


the point of the game is the freedom to be who you want to be, tell me, what does freedom mean if i am not free to be as powerful as i want to be? although i dont like to make OP characters some people do, we should be able to make waaaaay OP spells, armor, weapons, ect if we want, it has always been like that and always has been a choice (and always will, btw, bethesda loves to put in ways to make people OP, smithing for example)

Taking what spells you know, & forming greater spells with what you have learned.

Simple as that.