DraQ
Arcane
Another thing is that throwing multiple fireballs or anything else in quick succession just cheapens them and robs them of impact while giving nothing in exchange.The notion of "combat magic" at all is fairly recent, really.
Mythical heroes that use magic to defeat their foes never simply fling fireballs at their enemies until they die. Magic was never that overt.
Even if you have flashy magic capable of creating massive fiery explosions, they either take out what they are meant to or they don't. Well designed magic shouldn't be spammable nor have any rationale for being spammed.
Actually, it might be neat approach, to make the hero use magic by default and that being his sole edge against numerically superior and physically comparable (people) or better (all sorts of monsters) foes. The exact kinds of magic would mix&matchable with the rest of the build.The notion of wizards that can ONLY use magic, also pretty much created whole-cloth by D&D. All mythological wizards, and even the base source material of modern fantasy, Lord of the Rings, has wizards that are fully capable of physical exertion. In fact, in mythology, people who can't use some kind of magic are nobodies.
Actually it's the other way around. Low key fantasy is the most memorable because you aren't running around facerolling shit after you have established your power, but actually win using your wits.Thinking back to my time playing Morrowind, I recall running through some cave after stealing an artifact, eventually escaping (narrowly) by leaping over a pit of lava. But thats about the only thing I recall doing at a low level. I have lots of memories of cool shit I did later, like murdering Vivec, becoming permanently invisible and chasing imperial guards around, or flying around the island with insanely potent levitation potions. Or wiping out the mage guild in Aldrhun so I could use it as my personal house.
Low key fantasy adventures tend to just be really forgettable. You're not risking much as a character that can be easily replaced by any other character that can do basically the same shit. And the rewards are obviously shit. So you have small risks and rewards... rather dull.
When you can do everything, nothing really matters. When you can do little, what you manage to achieve with it is important. Killing tens of enemies at once with spell while you could have just as well done it nearly as fast by farting at them or throwing lockpicks at them is unmemorable.
Murdering five dudes (4 quest targets, 1 extra) 2 or 3 of whom could have easily soloed you, in a cramped inn in the middle of a town, using specifically crafted spell, without actually having it traced back to you is awesome.
In the former case your stats win the battle for you, in the latter you do it yourself.
Well, first and foremost that would get awfully repetitive - just like killing all the targets by flingingWould you have wanted to play a mage in Morrowind if you had no direct damage spells at all though? If you HAD to kill all your targets by drowning them in rivers? That'd suck balls.
Pretty much any situation where these things were really useful had to be hand crafted specifically to make them useful, it wasn't 'emergent' at all, except for the exploits. Using slow fall or levitation to avoid splattering when you use an icarian flight scroll isn't emergent gameplay, it's the only thing you could have done which the devs specifically designed the scenario to make you use. It feels incredibly contrived and even worse than an outright scripted event.
Personally I used CE slowfall as an alternative to my built-in "airbrake" in my own, more practical Icarian Flight counterpart - would more or less have to use it if the levitation didn't conveniently break conservation of momentum.
I also don't consider anyone carefully crafting "drown the fucker in the nearest body of water" as a solution to any "kill X" quests a particularly plausible scenario.
Also tons of rare/unique phat lewt hidden out of reach.Most of the spells in morrowind were useless anyways. The only time I'd ever use a levitation spell is specifically the one room in the game where you need to levitate to get up the mushroom house. So why not use a potion and avoid wasting space in your spell menu? Oh, or you can enchant a weapon to cast 1 point levitation on striking and have it be functionally equivalent to paralysis that nothing is immune to. Cause that makes sense. Water walking? What purpose did that ever serve? It's marginally faster than swimming, but then you have to recover your mana anyways, so you've actually wasted time or resources. I can't even think of any places where you need to cross a body of water anyways. Water breathing is laughable as well, camouflage was relatively pointless unless you had 100%, invisibility was pointless, telekinesis was useful for stealing a handful of things in the entire game.
Levitate is one of my most used spells in Morrowind. You may not strictly need it all that many times but it is very nice to be able to go over a mountain instead of around it, go straight to the top floor if there is an opening inside or a door on the roof, or simply levitate above a melee character's reach.
Stealing aside TK was good anti-trap spell, I guess with better AI/encounter design it would absolutely rock for purposes like opening doors from afar and not risking close combat.
Waterbreathing - there quite a few underwater areas in game.
This. You can also use it for combat advantage when fighting near a body of water, either by casting it on yourself and retreating onto water, or by casting it on your enemy and diving.I'm also pretty sure I've used Water Walking at least some 40 times on my current playthrough as not only is it faster than swimming, it also makes it possible to avoid those annoying little fishes that come biting. It also uses very little mana (practically nothing) so that point is moot. I do not know how exhaustively you've player Morrowind or how enthusiastic a boat-user you are but I have had to cross water many times.
Plus, at the beginning slaughterfish could murder you.
Even more useful on escort missions.Invisibility is useful when you don't want to kill anyone in a particular place (e.g. the floating prison above Vivec.) It is also a relatively cheap spell (at least in comparison to Chameleon.)