Why does lightning effect magic?

It does!?

What?!

Ah... didn't get you at first, but I think you're talking about the "plus half as much damage to Magicka" that you get along with whatever else Shock damage does. Yes?

That's a good question, and I've kinda wondered about it myself. Well, all the elementals seem to have one primary effect and one secondary... Fire does immediate Fire damage to Health, plus extra damage as the target continues to burn. Frost does Frost damage to Health and drains Stamina. Shock does Shock damage to Health and also drains Magicka.

I think it may just be that each elemental was meant to have a primary and secondary effect, and it makes sense to have a target on fire continue to take Fire damage to their Health, and it makes sense that being frozen up by Frost damage would slow you down and make movement difficult, so it got the Stamina damage effect. And the only thing left over for Shock was Magicka damage.

But if there's a "lore" reason why Shock affects Magicka as opposed to anything else, I'm all ears, because now I'm really curious about it.

Electrical attacks effect magic. When you attack someone with lightning you lower their magic bar. It didn't seem to make sense to me so I was just asking why.

Being hit with lightning disrupts your flow of magical energy ...

Ah, I thought the OP meant storms, for some reason. That lead my mind down a rather interesting path... atmospheric effects on magic use. It's a shame the climate doesn't have an affect of spells.

As for the current topic, I did hear a reason mentioned that explained why, but I can't remember it at the moment. While the fact that fire and ice affect health and stamina, respectively, leaving magicka for lightning makes sense, I don't believe it was the real reason. I'll have to try and find it again.

Meh, sounds good enough to me. I was thinking something like this but just couldn't put 2 and 2 together.

Exactly what I was thinking lol.

It's certainly possible. Mages don't really seem like the most well grounded people to begin with.




*ducks*

Atmospheric effects?

You never got the -20% magika during a thunderstorm effect?

By atmospheric effects, I mean based on element so a storm would give a boost to lightning based magic, for example

Yup that's what I was thinking from the original post!

Great minds, and all that, lol

Oh this makes me think of something acually. Is there a shout that makes it rain fire like the opening scene dragon does?

Yes, but I'm pretty sure only Alduin knows it.

Edit: yep.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Dragon_Shouts#Unavailable_Dragon_Shouts

You're thinking of Storm Call. The shout used by Alduin during the attack on Helgen is actually Meteor Storm; one of the five shouts unavailable to the player

Haha couldn't agree more