The cooldowns completely balance them in my opinion
may be a bit too long though

jesus stop complaining

I just used that as an example. But if you think about it, shouts are the language of the dragon, why would dragons worry about having a shout that stops a wolf from attacking you? The dragon would be like *chomp*

It seems that half of the people like my idea, and half hate it.

umm no, neither ruined the other
Bi*** leave haste in 3.0 where it belongs
we need improved spells *cough*dead thrall*cough* and shouts.

On the bright side, shouts probably won't be in the next ES game. Therefore the devs can (and should) move a lot of the shouts into spell schools, especially Alteration. I have a post on this which is linked in my signature.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: It's not shouts that killed magic, it's the lack of variety. Look at destruction magic. Nearly all of the main damage spells are the same basic type: Full Damage for 1s Missile Spells. Back in Morrowind, we also had: Spells that hit on touch, spells that affect self, spells that deal damage over time, etc. In fact, the spell type in Skyrim is one of the most inefficient spell types in the previous games. Any carrer mage can tell you that skyrim's magic is fool's magic - you get far more out of a 5 damage for 5s spell than you do a 25 damage for 1s spell. Why? Cost. The damage over time spell is cheaper and more efficient to use. More than that, though, there's something else that really hurt the hell out of magic.

Alchemy.

Fortify X is alchemy now.
Resist X is alchemy now.
Healing via potion is now far more efficient than via magic.
Weakness to X is alchemy now.
Poison damage, period, is alchemy now.

There went a HUGE amount of destruction, restoration, and what would likely have been alteration in this system.




Now let's look at shouts. Someone joked "there's a shout for that". I counter: Yer waisting your shout on that? That's something that a spell can do far more efficiently, so any time a spell and shout share an aspect, the spell is nearly always the better choice. What do I mean? Fireball Shout vs Fire Magic. Fire magic easily outdamages the shout, and without the cooldown. Once you're done casting, you can immediatly follow it up. Detect Life Shout vs Spell. Spell is cast, boom, there it is. Shout is shouted, bam, now you wait.

So where to shouts lie in this? Well, the ever-loved Fus Ro Dah is indespesible regardless of build. Hell, mages love the freaking hell out of it - melee is a mage's nightmare fight, so this actually HELPS magic shine. Ice Form is similar - the problem foes can be frozen over while the weaker mooks are dealt with - it helps a mage with much needed crowd control, especially since we were robbed of many of our AoEs. Whirlwind Sprint is a freaking godsend for when you're in trouble - especially because you can bypass gaps. Throw Voice is a great distraction, and can be used to set up for what few AoEs we do have.

So no, shouts don't ruin magic - they help it shine. The Shout System was a very clever little thing, because it's useful regardless of build. There's a shout for almost any situation. And while yes, some shouts are utterly useless for certain builds, those same shouts could be very handy for builds that specialize in other things.

Dunno, i haven't used a shout in months ...

Bethesda ruined magic, and shouts pretty much.

Not to tell Bethesda how things should have worked and all... but here's the only way the concept of shouts honestly would have made sense.

Essentially, as the Dragonborn, you're naturally able to somewhat comprehend and perform shouts, right? Ok, so then all you'd have to do is learn how to get better at focusing your voice to perform them, right?

So then why in the hell is it that at the same time you're getting BETTER at using Thu'ums, you also take LONGER to use them?

That has got to be the most counterproductive nonsense in Skyrim. It's not as if most of them are that powerful to begin with. They're more geared towards causing annoyance or providing basic utility than anything else as far as I can see.

The rumor that the Jarl of Windhelm literally shouted someone to death should have been an actual truth for the Dragonborn. What's the recharge for Fus Ro Dah? 15/20/40 I think? It ought to be 40 for Fus, 20 for Fus Ro, and 15 for Fus Ro Dah. So while I can see there being some cooldown given that you're not entirely Dragon, it sure as hell shouldn't take you LONGER to use shouts as you hone your ability to use them.

As for magic... it was stripped to barebones for seemingly no reason. You can't create spells anymore (hence, no "signature spells" that only you would be known for), they took out on-touch spells (eliminating half of the previous variety of spells entirely), and furthermore, Destruction's lack of scaling means that if you're going to make a pure mage, you -must- focus on it. Splitting your attention in any other direction ends up making it as such that for most of the middle portion of the game (basically, half the game) your destruction magic becomes pathetic to say the least. You're strong early, and presuming you build properly, you're strong late. But for that entire middle portion you're just kind of... "blah," and your only option is stun locking single targets to death. Heck, it's flat effin incredible that a normal human bandit can take 20 seconds of a constant stream of lightning from a "master" mage -.-

That would be broken as hell, Teddy. The increase in cooldown is in conjunction with an increase in POWER. Fus knocks them back, Ro to their knees, and Dah throws them across the freaking room. You can literally KILL an opponent by Dah-ing them off a cliff or into water. Hell, it's an AoE! You can kill a whole GROUP that way! You're saying that the weakest word should take the longest to charge, and the strongest should be ready before the foe gets back up.

You have no sense of game balance whatsoever if that's honestly what you think.

... Shouting powerfully every 15 seconds seconds instead of 40 is broken?

You sir have clearly never played a broken game in your life.

Also, no [censored] the increase in cooldown comes with an increase in power, otherwise it would be pointless entirely. But that fact of the matter is that getting better at something implies getting better at it. Not getting better at it AND worse.

Now, if for every 40 seconds I could actually shout an enemy into oblivion, that would be different. But a damn knock down? Why exactly wouldn't I just use mass paralysis or a potion? Now perhaps it's logical to you for a single spell or potion to be better than a form of "magic" that is exclusive to an individual of supposedly distinguished "power," but I'm sure you'd find that most people would disagree with the notion.

Who gives a flip if you could theoretically knock someone off a cliff and kill them? I could do that with a friggin arrow. For that matter, how often is an enemy standing next to a cliff, hmm? How many cliffs do you even encounter in a cave/dungeon/ruin that would lead to death for you shouting them off of it? How many fights where a shout would actually be necessary occur near those cliffs? From my gameplay experience, typically there's a whopping 1 guard patrolling cliffed areas.

Yeah, the weakest word of a shout when you're more of a novice to using the Thu'um should take the longest to recharge because you're a novice at using the Thu'um. That might bewilder you, you may feel confused, you might be down right befuddled, but I promise it makes sense.

Besides, if you found it to be broken, there's the simple solution of banning yourself from using it for another 25 seconds. I don't exactly have such an option, now do I

And I'm not sure what game you're playing, but foes don't take 15 seconds to get back up in Skyrim. They'd be up and hot on your tail before you could shout them back to the ground in my game. 15 second cooldowns would mean probably getting to use a Thu'um once or twice per fight. Which for a so-called powerful "Dragonborn" ought to be doable. Instead, you can now shout powerfully once every multiple fights, despite supposedly improving in your ability to use Thu'ums. Perhaps that's balance in your world, but that's completely bassackwards on this planet.

You can smith items until they one-shot everything.

Sneak gets to a point where you can stand right beside someone and they'd have no clue you were there.

And you want to talk to me about the balance of doing something once every 15 seconds? Knock it off

Spell creation is the same topic as the magic system. They are one on the same, the shouts are a gimmick and yew I think that took away from the spell system.

The Thu'um is a form of magic and therefore I think the shouts should have been added into the magic system, what we need is our old spells back for diversity and we need spell creation to tailer our mages and wizards the wah we see fit. Then we could create spells and spell combinations that suited our roleplaying builds.

Soul Tear ruins raise dead too

I, for one, found the inclusion of Shouts into Skyrim to be a STROKE OF GENIUS.

It's this which makes the game such a joy to play.

Don't like magic; always hated it, always will.

You know shouts are magic right?

yes, it did. i read in GI that the spell list was actually cut to make shouts seem special (didnt work, jsut sayin', iait actually made magic unspecial and did nothign for shouts). although i still dont get why so much of the list was cut, some effects i could understand if you want to make those mundane things special but removing straight up "damage health" spells? the shouts do not cover all the bases and magic has be so stripped it hardly covers any at all (this is, of course, compared to past games' effects, which should have carried over. series, bethesda, TES is a series.)

I did not see that is GI.
That is news to me. It's also just asinine the cutting of the spells dis not make the shouts feel special at all it just made Skyrims magic lacking.
I also agree about the game series part, series are supposed to be built upon and fixed not gutted.

i think the wording was aong the lines of "the spell lsit was cut but the shouts are to make up for it" or something like that (i could try to find it, if i still have the magazine i will edit the exact quote in here)

Actually, it's clear that they're not.

It is a spiritual thing, not a warlock channeling wierd powers from some dark source of energy by waving his hands around and mumbling wierd phrases.

I thought this would have been obvious to everyone - the Dragon shouts are a byproduct of the spirit/blood of the dragon being in a human. It is a fundamental power, far beyond something silly and trite like magic.

Its actually quite clear they are and did you know anyone can learn it but it takes years of practice.

By your assumption on this topic please explain how Ulfric Stormcloak leader or the Stormcloak rebellion or the greybeards use shouts its a form of magic. By your post they would all spiritually have to be Dovahkiin but that's not the case. Lol. It's one of the many types of magic on Nirn for that matter there is more than one variation.

By your hand waving segment I am going to assume you really know nothing of ES magic, and I am going to assume your referring to sonething like the Harry Potter hocus pocus you mention.

Also the Dragonborn have a natural ability to cast the Thu' um because they share the soul of a dragon they don't have to learn it they know it because of their connection but people can learn it with time.

You don't have to find it its annoying tho for sure.

Ma'am, actually. Come on, at least use gender neutral terms.


I can see that you just want to play this for the sake of killing things... to which I must ask, why are you playing RPGs? A shooter or pure action adventure game sounds like it'd be more to your taste.

You're basically arguing here that as you have things grow in power, they should be cheaper. Now, I can understand an argument for "more efficient", or even "scaled more appropriately than they are now", or hell, even "done more intelligently", but flipping the current method on its head? You've never really considered what goes into balancing the game at all, do you? If you really think that a full forced Fus Ro Dah in 15, and then with the Amulet and Blessing of Talos compounded onto that, is gonna be balanced... think again. Now, cutting some of these times down from their stupidly-long cooldowns is something I can understand. Afterall, 40 seconds is kinda long. But consider that you need to reduce all of these values by 30% - that 40 is really a 28 if you wanna build your character for shouting. That 15? Just over 10. Ten Seconds. If we do this your way, that's crazy fast for a full force Fus Ro Dah. Yes, I exaggerated a bit with the timing there, but my point remains, you throw them to the other side, throw a bunch of fireballs, and by the time they can reach you, you can Fus Ro Dah again. It breaks. The game.

You have to keep in mind the Fortify Shouts buff when you're thinking about this. If you're really going to suggest such a method, please do so intelligently.

"The thu'um, also called the Storm Voice or simply the Voice, is a form of magic inherent in most Nords and some others which uses the words of the language of the dragons to form "Shouts", the equivalent of spells, of immense power. "

Source: UESP

Thank you, I could not post a link I am on my phone glad to have a person with sense on of what magic actually is.

I admit I am not familiar with that much lore in this series. Frankly sometimes I find things a bit confusing. If the Nords hate magic so much, why is using shouts acceptable?

Also if I remember Oblivion correctly I was under the impression Redguards hated magic. While Nords were not very good mages usually, I did not get the sense that they despised it.

But like I said, I am hardly an expert on all the history and lore of the series.

Anybody can be a mage Nords have a distrust of it because they have had countless battles with mer like the Dunmer and Falmer in the last of course th have a distrust of it same way natives to Morrowind distrust outlanders. But there are Nords and Redguard mages not every single one hates magic.

The Thu' um is practiced at High Hrothgar in seclusion, and my guess the Nords just accept the power of the greybeards.

But just because there is a distrust of magic that does not mean that maid is not in Skyrim the sane as its the Summerset and Morrowind. Magic effects literally everything in the world of Nirn.