Give Feedback
0 of 0
The Arcane Philosophies
“'Schools' of magicka are, as we know, artificial constructs, originally formulated by Vanus Galerion to divide and thereby simplify study. They have changed many times throughout the years.” -- Excerpt from The Black Arts on Trial
Morrowind’s magic meets The Tome of Arcane Philosophy.
The Tome of Arcane Philosophy is a collection of philosophy, theory, history and lore that draws from all eight Arcane Traditions D&D 5e, written by Aravar. I love these ideas and thought they would fit into TES nicely.
This mod introduces Aravar’s ideas and changes the schools of magic accordingly, as an alternative to Vanus Galerion’s paradigm.
Morrowind is limited to only 6 schools of magic, because that number is hard-coded. Even though there are eight Arcane Philosophies, we’ll have to limit ourselves to six.
And so we have: Abjuration, Conjuration, Illusion, Evocation, Pneumancy, and Transmutation.
Abjuration
"The Evokers like to joke and say that the best defense is a good offense. Well, I think an even better defense is a really f*cking good defense."
Abjuration is a defensive school of magic that focuses on (1) not taking damage and (2) being a pain for other mages. Abjurers can block damage, secure locations, detect things, bind/banish entities, and negate magic.
The School of Abjuration has the following spell effects:
• All shield effects
• Resist elemental damage, magicka, and normal weapons
• Reflect and Spell Absorption
• Sanctuary
• Lock
• Turn Undead
• Silence
• Dispel
• Stunt Magicka
• Cure Paralyzation (given that paralysis is often magical in nature)
• Detect Enchantment, Key, and Creature (unfortunately, I didn’t have space for the school of Mysticism. Abjuration deals heavily with magic itself, so I felt that it’s the best fit for Detect Enchantment, and then I wanted to keep all the Detect spells together.)
Evocation
“The best defense is a good offense.”
Evocation is the magic of force and elemental energy. There aren’t any force spells in Morrowind, so we just have elemental damaging spells. Spells like God's Fire are here.
Conjuration
“A Conjurer brings you what you need, where you need, when you need it.”
Conjuration keeps all of its vanilla spells and gains two more effects: Light and Teleportation.
For the Light spell, you are conjuring a sphere of light (especially if you have MM – Enhanced Light). For teleportation, we have to put it somewhere now that Mysticism is gone, and D&D puts it in conjuration – because, in a sense, aren’t you just summoning yourself to a location?
Illusion
"An illusionist is never late, nor is he early. He arrives at precisely whatever time he makes it look like the clocks are set to."
Illusion is unchanged, except for the Light spell going to Conjuration.
Pnuemancy
“We manipulate the energies of life itself, dabbling in equal parts arcane and divine. We do not shy away from the ugly work of corpses and spirits, for we understand that the forces of life and death exist in the world – and they need a strong hand to guide them rightly.”
Pneuma, the ancient Greek word for “breath.” To the ancient Greek stoics, pnuema was “the breath of life.” Pneumancy is the manipulation of life forces. In other words, it’s the combination of vanilla Restoration with D&D Necromancy. Pneumancy has:
• Benevolent Pneumancy: Fortify Health/Fatigue/Magicka, Resist Disease and Blight, Cure Disease and Blight, Restore Health/Fatigue/Magicka/Attribute/Skill
• Malevolent Pneumancy: All “Weakness to X” spells, all Drain/Damage/Absorb spells, Soul Trap
Transmutation
“Transmutation has been shaping the world since the first days of the world’s existence."
Transmutation is the school of manipulation and metamorphosis. It has:
• Self-transmutation: Feather, Jump, Levitate, Slowfall, Swift Swim, Water Breathing, Water Walking, Night-eye, Fortify Attribute/Skill
• Other-transmutation: Burden, Telekinesis, Disintegrate Weapons/Armor, Open, Telekinesis
Night-eye is there because I imagine it as changing your eyes themselves to something that can see in the dark (like turning them into Khajiit eyes). Fortify attribute/skill is there, because you are transmuting yourself (and D&D puts fortifications in this school).
How does this mod work?
Here are the transformations
fSkillAlteration –> Transmutation
fSkillConjuration –> Conjuration
fSkillDestruction –> Evocation
fSkillIllusion –> Illusion
fSkillMysticism –> Abjuration
fSkillRestoration –> Pneumancy
I chose the transformations based on which new school has the most used spell effects from the vanilla school. Example: I think most people use Destruction for the elemental damage spells, which are now in evocation, and so I mapped Destruction to evocation. This is so I could avoid editing common spells, to try to be as compatible with other things as possible.
Do non-vanilla spells work?
Yes. Spells added by Magicka Expanded are still in their original categories though (meaning Banish is in Conjuration instead of Abjuration, for example).
DO NOT INSTALL THIS MOD FOR A PRE-EXISTING SAVE. THIS IS FOR NEW CHARACTERS ONLY!!!
If you use CREL, during character creation, the vanilla magic schools will be there -- so instead of seeing "Abjuration," you'll see "Mysticism." I think I'd have to edit CREL to fix that. Anyway, it's fine; once you start the game, everything will be named appropriately.
I have extensively play-tested this, and everything works as it should for me.`
Recommended Mods:
MAB0's manipulated -- makes casting certain illusion spells illegal
Illegal Summoning
Magicka Expanded
