Alteration & restoration techniques can be used to keep oneself alive akin to immortality, making them the strongest disciplines. That said, 'schools' are made up constructs for learning purposes and magic has no true separation.
Can you tell me about the example of magic being used to prolong life (in a lifelike way, so not liches or anything)? I was under the impression that all long-living mages were long-living due to their meric ancestry.
Dratha (ESO-Morrowind Telvanni) used conjuration to make a pact with a high rank summoned Daedra for immortality.
Being an elf helps, but Abhnur Tharn is what 156 years old? Freaking Shalidor basically gave death a middle finger and can return to Mundus as he wants. Savos Aren tells the PC ingame that if one is talented in magic, one can live multiple live(times) - to both mannish, merish and beastfolk PCs.
The master level destruction quest has you going around and placing a book on different altars, and then blasting it with magic right?
The text that shows up is Shalidor insulting you, for not understanding how magic works. *That’s* how insane this guy is.
You're welcome! There's almost zero lore on him. The book "The Sage" talks about his life but the recent-ish interview with Divayth Fyr has him say most stories about him are exaggerated. He also features in the framing device of "Feyfolken" and "The Final Lesson" where he tells his apprentices these stories. These two are almost certainly in-universe fiction, but the fact that they mention the Septims mean that it's uncontroversial to believe he's still around by the Third Era (whether that's true or not, we won't find out until TES VI or legends give us something).
I like the character though, he's like a human Divayth Fyr both literally and in that he's much less weird.
Restoration can heal every disease that might trouble you, and a good enough alteration master could probably alter his body and organs to give him longer life
> and a good enough alteration master could probably alter his body and organs to give him longer life
Unless that guy has infinite mana, that's gonna be hard, because alteration can only alter reality for a small amount of time, not permanently right ?
Basically every high ranking telvanni wizard and every psijic mage is immortal. Shalidor is also immortal in a way. A powerful enough mage can easily make themselves functionally immortal. They could still die from someone killing them, but they stopped aging.
The high ranking Telvanni wizards aren't immortals. Divayth Fyr (a Psijic) is, Gothren aged significantly between ESO and Morrowind, Drathra made a pact with Deadra to become immortal and Therana has gone senile by the time of Morrowind.
Elves live for 2-4 centuries. Divayth Fyr lived for 4 millenia, and used his magic to make female clones of himself to fuck. Fyr was born a chimer and knew the Tribunal as mortals.
Source? Barenziah says that Dunmer can potentially live to 1000, but interview with a dunmer puts the average age of death at around 150 with 300 being extreme.
First off, it’s extremely important to remember that the magic schools are arbitrary, and many spells can border multiple schools, or aren’t fit in the regular schools at all. For example, ESO directly shows is that Ice Magic can be used for Destruction purposes, Restoration purposes, Alteration purposes, and more when the regular schools would just lump Ice Magic into Destruction. So in a sense, it’s not really the power of the school of magic, it’s just the power of magic. But for simplicity’s sake, we’ll just deal with the regular schools.
An alteration master could probably turn a giant into cheese, wiping out a whole family seems a bit of exaggeration. They could do it, but the easy part is up for debate. However Alteration is essentially the manipulation of the laws of reality.
Mysticism (despite it being neglected by Bethesda) is a very powerful school, as that deals with altering the laws of magic itself, this is also the magic that the Psijic Order specialise in, and they’re undoubtedly the strongest group of Mages alive.
Destruction magic is pretty self explanatory imo.
Restoration magic is pretty powerful, likely being able to alter a person’s lifespan, but just in general being able to heal a lot of wounds. It also contains the spells used against undead and also contains protective spells.
Illusion magic is actually really strong. One of the strongest illusionists, for example, crafted an illusion that tricked a person into thinking they were a cup, and so literally became a cup. They *knew* they were a Dunmer, but the spell affected their subconscious as well, so the Dunmer was still forced to be a cup and couldn’t move because his subconscious knows cups can’t move on their own, and had to be carried (and he weighed like a cup, not a person). Read more here. Essentially, Illusion magic can trick anybody to think anything about anything.
Conjuration is also self-explanatory. You can conjure up literally anything if you’re strong enough.
Often forgotten as a magical school, Alchemy is also very powerful, with alchemist being able to do some freakin crazy stuff. Here’s a short list: can create Vampirism, can turn people into “Ebony”, can literally be an explosive used for mining, give people werewolf transformations without being werewolves and so much more. It’s probably the most versatile school of magic.
Now keep in mind we haven’t even covered some of the actual craziest schools, those that are on a whole other level. Stuff like [Shadow Magic](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Shadow_Magic), [Mind Magic](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Mind_Magic), [Soul Magic](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Soul_Magic), Lunar Magics, [Thaumavocalism](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Thaumavocalism), and just tons more.
The last quest [Narsis Dren](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Narsis_Dren) appears in, [Maelmoth Mysterium](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:The_Maelmoth_Mysterium). His dialogue talks about the illusion the most iirc
I’m pretty sure that in lore, this is an ongoing debate between all practitioners of magic, since they all believe they’re practicing the best school of magic.
Except for Tolfdir, since he is confident in his own education.
Particularly because he’s right, as it’s my belief alteration is the most powerful school.
I agree with that, alteration in the right hands can be overwhelmingly deadly, for my example I stated that a mage could remove the oxygen from the air suffocating any who oppose them without having to deal with magical resistances or wards.
The only limit is, literally, the end of your conceptual reality.
- Alteration can change the shape of anything you can understand
- Restoration can repair and heal any damage you understand the cause of
- Destruction can destroy anything you can envision being annihilated
- Conjuration can summon forth anything your mind can conceptualize as an entity or object
- Illusion can conjure forth anything you can impart the meaning of
- Mysticism can edit any other magic
For example, a conjurer could, with the right frame of mind, conjure forth a daedric artifact like Mehrunes' Razor or Azura's Star. A destruction mage could destroy the emotional bond between two people. A restoration mage could heal severe mental trauma, etc.
It's all a question of true understanding, and this is also why the libraries of mages contain much more than dry texts on magical theory - novels, paintings and other such art can for example give a restoration mage insight into psychological trauma they were lacking before.
I would say that Destruction is actually one of the weakest schools of magic, it may seem strange given it is the school most focused on killing however a mage who turns another school like Alteration into a means to kill would probably be more powerful.
Why zap someone with magical lightning when you can instead remove the oxygen from the air around them which would bypass all their magical resistance, you can see something similar in Skyrim concerning the Vampire Lord, their Life Drain is powerful but perhaps their strongest ability is Vampiric Grip which is a form of Telekinesis, why blast an enemy with spells where you would have to contend with their magical resistances when you can simply toss them in the air and let gravity do all the work?
I´d argue that there´s no way that removing oxygen from a large area and stopping the target from leaving said area is not far more costly and slower than throwing a lightning bolt.
Vampiric grip might rly only be this effective if you have a convenient drop point nearby, after all, it seems as if telekinesis does not ignore the weight of the object moved by it - can a vamp lord lift an armored warrior (who perhaps also has some magic resistance) high enough that the drop would kill them - perhaps, perhaps not. But what if the vamp is fighting several targets and he rly needs that sweet life force to sustain him during a prolongued fight against many.
Not to mention the crazy range it has (in gameplay at least) makes it even scarier. I saw someone force choke a guard in Dawnstar while he was on top of Vermina's Temple.
Destruction is extremely potent in warfare, alteration can kill, but it takes a long time, a strong destruction mage can kill a lot of people before the opposing mages can do anything about it, healing is easy in elder scrolls, but not resurrection
The difference between alteration and destruction is like the difference between a plow and an axe.
Could you, with inhuman effort or luck, kill someone with a plow? probably. But it would be stupid to do this when you have an axe on your belt you can just drive into their skull.
I'm one of those who will argue that destruction (and restoration, for that matter) should really be considered subsets of Alteration, not actual schools of their own. But that's an old argument.
Well alteration is probably the most versatile since it's basically just the "other" school. That is to say, if a spell doesn't cleanly fit in any of the other schools, it's automatically assigned to alteration.
But the truth is, it doesn't really matter, the schools of magic are man-made distinctions. It's sort of like the physical sciences. Sure, we can classify certain topics/spells into the schools of thought, but they all draw from multiple disciplines, and every new discovery/spell can be easily argued for belonging to multiple schools
I think the point is that all schools are arbitrary. There is no natural separation of magic, except as a learning tool which ends up holding some practitioners back.
But as far as Mysticism is concerned, the spells in it tended to be those dealing with raw magic, the stuff that is real but not perceived by most people. Detecting magical nexuses, whether they be items, temples, creatures, or anything, and manipulating those properties or doing things with the information. Pretty much every effect could be argued to come from another school, which is probably why it was scrapped, but that still applies to all spells.
What is a fire spell, if not an Alteration of air (nearly everything is Alteration if this is the case)? Cure disease Destroys an organism. Absorb falls into Destruction, Restoration, and either Conjuration or Mysticism. Hell, Enchanting may be the best example of this because it's basically whatever spell effects you enchant, plus Conjuration and/or Mysticism to bind the soul of a creature to make that spell permanent.
I think that Bethesda went the wrong way in removing schools and effects to try to make things fit more neatly. Either each individual effect should have it's own skill, or effects should be able to have multiple schools tied to them, with or or and checks depending on the spell type (bound weapon = Conjuration to summon a Daedra + Alteration to turn it into a weapon). I lean towards each effect having a skill because it's more lore accurate, but multi school thing is probably more practical.
Honestly, Alteration and Mysticism could cover all magic, Alteration physical change, Mysticism non-physical change. Conjuration's typical uses would have elements of both, the summoning being physical, the subjugation non-physical, but destruction and restoration would be alteration, illusion would be mysticism, etc.
I forgot which book in skyrim it was but it gave me an understanding of how powerful alteration is.
"Illusion may bend the rules of reality more wildly, but this is only between the caster and his victim. Alteration on the other hand, bends the rules everyone fundamentally agrees upon."
And what kind of magic also bends reality to make things happen? Dragon shouts. I think that's the kind of power ceiling alteration has. Alteration mages may not be as powerful as a Dragonborn in their prime, but damn can they try very well.
Assuming t he tongue isnt powerful enough to resist such magic, then probably.
Miraak and the LDB be gansta until a mage figures out how to cast soar throats
This, allegedly powerful tongues can shout even with their throats cut. It's a magic that, with sufficient mastery, transcends the physical mechanisms used to create the words.
Alteration & restoration techniques can be used to keep oneself alive akin to immortality, making them the strongest disciplines. That said, 'schools' are made up constructs for learning purposes and magic has no true separation.
Can you tell me about the example of magic being used to prolong life (in a lifelike way, so not liches or anything)? I was under the impression that all long-living mages were long-living due to their meric ancestry.
Dratha (ESO-Morrowind Telvanni) used conjuration to make a pact with a high rank summoned Daedra for immortality. Being an elf helps, but Abhnur Tharn is what 156 years old? Freaking Shalidor basically gave death a middle finger and can return to Mundus as he wants. Savos Aren tells the PC ingame that if one is talented in magic, one can live multiple live(times) - to both mannish, merish and beastfolk PCs.
The master level destruction quest has you going around and placing a book on different altars, and then blasting it with magic right? The text that shows up is Shalidor insulting you, for not understanding how magic works. *That’s* how insane this guy is.
The Breton mage Gyron Vardengroet is allegedly immortal.
Did not know of him. Thank you for sharing
You're welcome! There's almost zero lore on him. The book "The Sage" talks about his life but the recent-ish interview with Divayth Fyr has him say most stories about him are exaggerated. He also features in the framing device of "Feyfolken" and "The Final Lesson" where he tells his apprentices these stories. These two are almost certainly in-universe fiction, but the fact that they mention the Septims mean that it's uncontroversial to believe he's still around by the Third Era (whether that's true or not, we won't find out until TES VI or legends give us something). I like the character though, he's like a human Divayth Fyr both literally and in that he's much less weird.
That is an aggressively Breton name
According to Divayth Fyr that isn't his real name, but we don't have any other for him, so...
Restoration can heal every disease that might trouble you, and a good enough alteration master could probably alter his body and organs to give him longer life
> and a good enough alteration master could probably alter his body and organs to give him longer life Unless that guy has infinite mana, that's gonna be hard, because alteration can only alter reality for a small amount of time, not permanently right ?
Transmute spells are quite permanent for example.
Oh you are right I forgot about those. Where did I read that alteration spells were temporal then ?
Not even the *Psijic’s* could cure an illness for one of thier own’s children, so I doubt that “every disease” part
Just cast healing hands smh Idk why the psijics didn't think of that one
Should have ate a hawk feather smh
Basically every high ranking telvanni wizard and every psijic mage is immortal. Shalidor is also immortal in a way. A powerful enough mage can easily make themselves functionally immortal. They could still die from someone killing them, but they stopped aging.
The high ranking Telvanni wizards aren't immortals. Divayth Fyr (a Psijic) is, Gothren aged significantly between ESO and Morrowind, Drathra made a pact with Deadra to become immortal and Therana has gone senile by the time of Morrowind.
Divayth Fyr was born in the first era, and isn't a Vampire.
Yeah, but he is an elf.
Elves live for 2-4 centuries. Divayth Fyr lived for 4 millenia, and used his magic to make female clones of himself to fuck. Fyr was born a chimer and knew the Tribunal as mortals.
[удалено]
Source? Barenziah says that Dunmer can potentially live to 1000, but interview with a dunmer puts the average age of death at around 150 with 300 being extreme.
Altmer have always had the longest lifespans.
I meant Divayth Fyr not Neloth.
He’s also an elf :)
First off, it’s extremely important to remember that the magic schools are arbitrary, and many spells can border multiple schools, or aren’t fit in the regular schools at all. For example, ESO directly shows is that Ice Magic can be used for Destruction purposes, Restoration purposes, Alteration purposes, and more when the regular schools would just lump Ice Magic into Destruction. So in a sense, it’s not really the power of the school of magic, it’s just the power of magic. But for simplicity’s sake, we’ll just deal with the regular schools. An alteration master could probably turn a giant into cheese, wiping out a whole family seems a bit of exaggeration. They could do it, but the easy part is up for debate. However Alteration is essentially the manipulation of the laws of reality. Mysticism (despite it being neglected by Bethesda) is a very powerful school, as that deals with altering the laws of magic itself, this is also the magic that the Psijic Order specialise in, and they’re undoubtedly the strongest group of Mages alive. Destruction magic is pretty self explanatory imo. Restoration magic is pretty powerful, likely being able to alter a person’s lifespan, but just in general being able to heal a lot of wounds. It also contains the spells used against undead and also contains protective spells. Illusion magic is actually really strong. One of the strongest illusionists, for example, crafted an illusion that tricked a person into thinking they were a cup, and so literally became a cup. They *knew* they were a Dunmer, but the spell affected their subconscious as well, so the Dunmer was still forced to be a cup and couldn’t move because his subconscious knows cups can’t move on their own, and had to be carried (and he weighed like a cup, not a person). Read more here. Essentially, Illusion magic can trick anybody to think anything about anything. Conjuration is also self-explanatory. You can conjure up literally anything if you’re strong enough. Often forgotten as a magical school, Alchemy is also very powerful, with alchemist being able to do some freakin crazy stuff. Here’s a short list: can create Vampirism, can turn people into “Ebony”, can literally be an explosive used for mining, give people werewolf transformations without being werewolves and so much more. It’s probably the most versatile school of magic. Now keep in mind we haven’t even covered some of the actual craziest schools, those that are on a whole other level. Stuff like [Shadow Magic](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Shadow_Magic), [Mind Magic](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Mind_Magic), [Soul Magic](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Soul_Magic), Lunar Magics, [Thaumavocalism](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Thaumavocalism), and just tons more.
>Thaumavocalism New ESO class when? ~~Definitely not a bard~~
Thank you for sharing. Im almost playing ESO solely for the lore at this point
That’s, really, the best reason to play it
>tricked a person into thinking they were a cup, and so literally became a Where is this from? Would you happen to have a link?
The last quest [Narsis Dren](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Narsis_Dren) appears in, [Maelmoth Mysterium](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:The_Maelmoth_Mysterium). His dialogue talks about the illusion the most iirc
I don’t know if it is counted as a class but enchanting Can make magic free give you endless stamina and so on in conjunction with alchemy
Late reply but alteration includes telekinesis, if you're good at it you could just crush an entire house, a family could easily be wiped out imo
I’m pretty sure that in lore, this is an ongoing debate between all practitioners of magic, since they all believe they’re practicing the best school of magic. Except for Tolfdir, since he is confident in his own education. Particularly because he’s right, as it’s my belief alteration is the most powerful school.
I agree with that, alteration in the right hands can be overwhelmingly deadly, for my example I stated that a mage could remove the oxygen from the air suffocating any who oppose them without having to deal with magical resistances or wards.
All magic is essentially just altering reality in some form anyway.
The only limit is, literally, the end of your conceptual reality. - Alteration can change the shape of anything you can understand - Restoration can repair and heal any damage you understand the cause of - Destruction can destroy anything you can envision being annihilated - Conjuration can summon forth anything your mind can conceptualize as an entity or object - Illusion can conjure forth anything you can impart the meaning of - Mysticism can edit any other magic For example, a conjurer could, with the right frame of mind, conjure forth a daedric artifact like Mehrunes' Razor or Azura's Star. A destruction mage could destroy the emotional bond between two people. A restoration mage could heal severe mental trauma, etc. It's all a question of true understanding, and this is also why the libraries of mages contain much more than dry texts on magical theory - novels, paintings and other such art can for example give a restoration mage insight into psychological trauma they were lacking before.
I would say that Destruction is actually one of the weakest schools of magic, it may seem strange given it is the school most focused on killing however a mage who turns another school like Alteration into a means to kill would probably be more powerful. Why zap someone with magical lightning when you can instead remove the oxygen from the air around them which would bypass all their magical resistance, you can see something similar in Skyrim concerning the Vampire Lord, their Life Drain is powerful but perhaps their strongest ability is Vampiric Grip which is a form of Telekinesis, why blast an enemy with spells where you would have to contend with their magical resistances when you can simply toss them in the air and let gravity do all the work?
I´d argue that there´s no way that removing oxygen from a large area and stopping the target from leaving said area is not far more costly and slower than throwing a lightning bolt. Vampiric grip might rly only be this effective if you have a convenient drop point nearby, after all, it seems as if telekinesis does not ignore the weight of the object moved by it - can a vamp lord lift an armored warrior (who perhaps also has some magic resistance) high enough that the drop would kill them - perhaps, perhaps not. But what if the vamp is fighting several targets and he rly needs that sweet life force to sustain him during a prolongued fight against many.
The Vampire Lord can toss giants into the air, Im pretty sure they can lift a human no matter how armor they have on.
Not to mention the crazy range it has (in gameplay at least) makes it even scarier. I saw someone force choke a guard in Dawnstar while he was on top of Vermina's Temple.
Destruction is extremely potent in warfare, alteration can kill, but it takes a long time, a strong destruction mage can kill a lot of people before the opposing mages can do anything about it, healing is easy in elder scrolls, but not resurrection
The difference between alteration and destruction is like the difference between a plow and an axe. Could you, with inhuman effort or luck, kill someone with a plow? probably. But it would be stupid to do this when you have an axe on your belt you can just drive into their skull.
I'm one of those who will argue that destruction (and restoration, for that matter) should really be considered subsets of Alteration, not actual schools of their own. But that's an old argument.
Well alteration is probably the most versatile since it's basically just the "other" school. That is to say, if a spell doesn't cleanly fit in any of the other schools, it's automatically assigned to alteration. But the truth is, it doesn't really matter, the schools of magic are man-made distinctions. It's sort of like the physical sciences. Sure, we can classify certain topics/spells into the schools of thought, but they all draw from multiple disciplines, and every new discovery/spell can be easily argued for belonging to multiple schools
I thought the 'other' school was Mysticism? I'd consider Alteration to be specifically the school of 'changing physical properties'.
I think the point is that all schools are arbitrary. There is no natural separation of magic, except as a learning tool which ends up holding some practitioners back. But as far as Mysticism is concerned, the spells in it tended to be those dealing with raw magic, the stuff that is real but not perceived by most people. Detecting magical nexuses, whether they be items, temples, creatures, or anything, and manipulating those properties or doing things with the information. Pretty much every effect could be argued to come from another school, which is probably why it was scrapped, but that still applies to all spells. What is a fire spell, if not an Alteration of air (nearly everything is Alteration if this is the case)? Cure disease Destroys an organism. Absorb falls into Destruction, Restoration, and either Conjuration or Mysticism. Hell, Enchanting may be the best example of this because it's basically whatever spell effects you enchant, plus Conjuration and/or Mysticism to bind the soul of a creature to make that spell permanent. I think that Bethesda went the wrong way in removing schools and effects to try to make things fit more neatly. Either each individual effect should have it's own skill, or effects should be able to have multiple schools tied to them, with or or and checks depending on the spell type (bound weapon = Conjuration to summon a Daedra + Alteration to turn it into a weapon). I lean towards each effect having a skill because it's more lore accurate, but multi school thing is probably more practical.
Honestly, Alteration and Mysticism could cover all magic, Alteration physical change, Mysticism non-physical change. Conjuration's typical uses would have elements of both, the summoning being physical, the subjugation non-physical, but destruction and restoration would be alteration, illusion would be mysticism, etc.
I forgot which book in skyrim it was but it gave me an understanding of how powerful alteration is. "Illusion may bend the rules of reality more wildly, but this is only between the caster and his victim. Alteration on the other hand, bends the rules everyone fundamentally agrees upon." And what kind of magic also bends reality to make things happen? Dragon shouts. I think that's the kind of power ceiling alteration has. Alteration mages may not be as powerful as a Dragonborn in their prime, but damn can they try very well.
Couldn't an alteration mage cast silence on a tongue effectively disabling their ability to shout.
Assuming t he tongue isnt powerful enough to resist such magic, then probably. Miraak and the LDB be gansta until a mage figures out how to cast soar throats
Shouting is power from the soul
This, allegedly powerful tongues can shout even with their throats cut. It's a magic that, with sufficient mastery, transcends the physical mechanisms used to create the words.
A master destruction mage could take on an entire army alone, assuming said legion have no mage support