Better Magic

The Better Magic series is a group of magic changes that was built simplistically in order to make it compatible with as many mods as possible. In working on this, I've had two main goals: improve the balance of magic (compared to similar effects and costs), and make magic feel more fun to use.

Also available from the Steam Workshop.

Better Magic is now available in five languages.

French translation provided by artabanus4.

Dutch translation provided by rikvanoostende.

Russian translation provided by Nihility.

German translation provided by Skibble.

In the base game, you can swing a sword for no cost and still do more damage than casting destruction spells, all of which cost magicka to use. That really isn't fair to destruction. In other schools, things also didn't seem to last long enough or have enough power.

• []Each mastery perk (novice, apprentice, adept, expert, master) within all five spell schools now has a secondary effect that improves all spells in that school. For alteration, conjuration, and illusion, each perk increases the duration of spells in that school by 15%. For destruction and restoration, each perk increases the magnitude of spells in that school by 15%.

  These are multiplicative bonuses: taking all five perks results in (1. 15^5), which is about x2. 01 to either duration or magnitude. The value 15% was chosen for this reason. Weapon skills can spend five perks to get doubled damage, and now spell schools can also spend five perks for approximately doubled effect.

• []The Augmented Element perks now only add 15% damage per rank (down from 25%). To maintain their utility, they also add 15% resistance to that element with each rank.

  While the changes to mastery perks were required for most spell schools, bonuses were stacking too high on Destruction. This helps to mitigate that for fairness while still making the augmented element perks very attractive options.

• []I've also stopped Augment Element perks from affecting weapon enchantments.

  This was stupid. Combat doesn't need to be any stronger.

• []Cloak spells had their base range dropped to 8 feet (from 10), but they now grow in both size and damage with mastery and augmented element perks.

  I wanted to make these more useful, so they can now get pretty huge. Base range was dropped to match base damage so that they can correctly list their range/damage in description as it changes.

[*]Paralyze and Mass Paralysis have reduced durations, from 10 and 15 to 7 and 10.

The changes to duration from mastery perks were meant to make Alteration's utility spells less annoying, not to make these sp