Board Thread:Skyrim/@comment-12277465-20140501182332

This is kind of a random thread, but I'm just going to start a discussion about Skyrim's Destruction magic and how useless it is. Now, I actually think that the devs had the right idea, making magic have a flat damage amount instead of scaling with the skill, and having magicka cost be the thing that scales instead. This makes the gameplay unique, and different from just, say, archery. The trouble is...

DESTRUCTION SPELLS

ARE USELESS

Seriously, expert-level spells do about as much damage as two or three sword swings, assuming a middling 1H skill. And while you can do sword swings for as long as you like, you can cast maybe four or five Thunderbolts before you run out of magicka, at least if you're not using enchantments. Of course, using enchantments can make magic extremely useful, because you can infi-cast powerful spells. But the other schools are still better.

So, I feel like basically, all destruction damage should be boosted. By a lot. To basically "taking large chunks out of bosses' health" levels. Keep magicka costs the same, so you can only cast a few high-level spells without enchantments, but they're really powerful. That's sort of the gameplay difference: mages can do incredible things, but they run out of juice quickly. And then of course once you start using enchantments, you'll be gloriously overpowered. But whatever.

Now, all of this will be remedied when I finally get around to installing mods on my copy of Skyrim, but I feel like we might as well discuss this. 