Morrowind talk:Destruction

Exhausting Touch

It's been my experience through testing that you DON'T start with this spell for some reason. I know it's checked as "Starting spell" in the CS, and I can't figure out why you don't get it, but I've tried several times creating a new character with Destruction as a Major skill, and I always just get the Fire Bite spell. The Morrowind:Classes page seems to conform to that experience, and that part was not created by me. If you can figure it out, let me know. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 09:32, 5 March 2007 (EST)

I've gotten Fire Bite, but I don't remember the circumstances exactly. I've never run across the Exhausting Touch spell as a starter. I'll try to get more info next time I play Morrowind... Somercy 12:25, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Interesting...Does this happen with any of the other spells checked as "Starting spell"?--DrPhoton 13:33, 5 March 2007 (EST)

I have barely played Morrowind yet, but in the CS I notice that Exhausting Touch is the starter spell with the second-highest cost, surpassed only by Tap Energy. If I read the page about maximum magicka right, this may be too high for a newly created character to cast, unless they have magicka-enhancing Race/Class/Birthsign attributes. Could that be a cause? -- JustTheBast 14:51, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Tap Energy is another spell that you don't get to start out with. The trick would be to try it out with a magicka-enhanced character. I'm not sure what order these things are calculated in, but probably you'd have to start with an Altmer, as I'm not sure if Class and Birthsign would be taken into account. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 15:35, 5 March 2007 (EST)

I'll try an Altmer Mage with Atronarch Birthsign; that seems to be the maximum, judging from the CS. -- JustTheBast 15:54, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Okay, that got me INT 60, MG 270 and the following spells: Hearth Heal, Shield, Water Walking, Bound Dagger, Fire Bite, Chameleon, Sanctuary, and Detect Creature, but not Exhausting Touch, Feet of Notorgo, Summon Ancestral Ghost, and Tap Energy. I notice that the four spells I didn't get were also the four most expensive ones, which seems to point at a connection. But the cheapest of them (Ancestral Ghost) is only two points above the most expensive one I did get, so what exactly causes the cutoff? -- JustTheBast 16:28, 5 March 2007 (EST)

I think the Ancestral Ghost spell doesn't come from your skills - that's a native ability of Dunmer characters. So if you had a Dunmer, you'd start with it, regardless of whether Conjuration was a major skill. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 18:32, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Hmmm, I also overlooked that by using the prefab Mage class Conjuration was not a major skill. I'll try it again with a handmade class. -- JustTheBast 01:37, 6 March 2007 (EST)

Okay, by swapping Conjuration into the major skills and Restoration out I got Ancestral Ghost, at the cost of Heart Heal, obviously. That leaves three Starter Spells that appear unattainable, and all three of them are significantly more expensive than the others; the cheapest is more than twice as expensive as the costliest attainable. That seems to confirm that spell cost is significant, but what is it that governs the cutoff point? (BTW, Dunmer have the power Ancestor Guardian, but that's actually a Sanctuary spell, not a summon, as in Oblivion.)

Why did you get Bound Dagger but not Summon Ancestral Ghost when Conjuration wasn't a major skill? Are there spells you get with minor skills and spells you get with major skills? --DrPhoton 08:21, 6 March 2007 (EST)

I was just wondering that. So it seems that the spells I just added to these pages cannot be obtained at the beginning even though they are marked in the CS. Why marking them if you can't get them? Can you get them under some special circumstances, i.e. a specific race-birthsign combination? --DrPhoton 03:49, 6 March 2007 (EST)

I'm beginning to wonder how much significance that "Starting Spell" marker even has. It is possible the spells are just added by a script or dialog at some point during the character creation process? Because if it isn't, then the spells must just be hard-coded somehow, and that's kind of contrary to the way the game usually works... --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 09:26, 6 March 2007 (EST)

(outdent) It's definitely not just about major skills - minor skills also provide spells and it's to do with a character's skill in the spell school rather than their total magicka. For instance, an Altmer Witch-hunter born under the Atronach doesn't get the Detect Creature spell (mys) but a Breton Witch-hunter born under the Atronach does (the +10 bonus to Mys must be what makes the difference). From what I can tell there are definitely three spells marked as starting spells that can never be attained at the start but that the others might be attainable even as minor skills. —Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 13:52, 4 January 2008 (EST)

I did a little investigating, and I'm moderately confident I've got it figured out. There are indeed twelve spells marked as "starting", two for each College, but I suspect those markings are informational only and not really accurate. Because I too could not get those three oddballs (Exhausting Touch, Feet of Notorgo, and Tap Energy) to show up even with the most extreme of magic users who had more than enough skill and Magicka to cast them.

I tried browsing through the scripts, but I didn't spot any logic that actually created the starting spell set to prove this. It's possible it's a side-effect of the EnablePlayerMagic command, which is invoked by the script CharGenStatsSheet, which seems to be run the moment you take your release papers. Playing with Skill levels in the console and then Disabling and re-Enabling PlayerMagic might confirm this; I didn't try.

Anyway, if you get comfortable with the idea that those flags are red herrings, the rest looks pretty simple: You get all the spells for a College if your Skill is at least a certain amount, which is either 25 or 30. Maximum Magicka, class Specialization, and Major/Minor Skills all seem to be irrelevant. Except, of course, that a Major Skill is guaranteed to pass the threshold, while a Minor Skill would require extra bonuses, and a Miscellaneous I think has no chance at all. Here are the situations I tested:

Female High Elf, Atronach sign, custom Magic class, 60 Int., 270 Magicka

Major: Dest 45, Alter 40, Illus 40, Myst 35, Conj 40

Minor: Rest 20

Spells: Alter. Shield and Water Walking, Conj. Bound Dagger and Summon Anc. Ghost, Dest. Fire Bite, Illus. Chameleon and Sanctuary, Myst. Detect Creature, no Restoration

Female Breton, Atronach sign, custom Magic class, 60 Int., 210 Magicka

Major: Rest 45, Dest 35, Alter 40, Illus 40, Myst 45

Minor: Conj 30

Spells: Alter. Shield and Water Walking, Conj. Bound Dagger and Summon Anc. Ghost, Dest. Fire Bite, Illus. Chameleon and :Sanctuary, Myst. Detect Creature, Rest. Hearth Heal

Male Nord, Warrior sign, custom Combat class, 30 Int., 30 Magicka

Major: Dest 30, Illus 30, Myst 30, Alter 30, Conj 30

Minor: Rest 15

Spells: Alter. Shield and Water Walking, Conj. Bound Dagger and Summon Anc. Ghost, Dest. Fire Bite, Illus. Chameleon and Sanctuary, Myst. Detect Creature, no Restoration

So if someone can try some combination that will yield a 25 in one of the Colleges and see if it qualifies, I think we've got the answer. The question is, where do we note this information? Certainly on the page for each of those Skills, but that's too out-of-the-way to be sufficient. Classes isn't right, since it's only indirectly related to class. Logically it would go on the Spells page, but it "feels" out of place there. It might make some sense on the Skills page, since there's definitely room for a lot more detail there. (I plan to take that on in the near future.) There is no page that quickly summarizes the various pieces of character creation, is there? Should there be? --TheNicestGuy 15:18, 5 January 2008 (EST)

Very interesting. I just noticed that there was another, more complex, hypothesis already put forth at Morrowind Talk:Spells#Starting Spells. Basically, it was that you would get any spell flagged as a starting spell if your success rate would be over a certain threshold, probably around 60%. I tested it, and it seemed to hold water. Moreover it disproved some of what I just suggested:

Male Breton, Atronach sign, custom Combat class, 60 Int., 210 Magicka

Major: Dest 30, Alter 35, Illus 35

Minor: Rest 25, Conj 25, Myst 25

Spells: Alter. Shield and Water Walking, Conj. Bound Dagger only, Dest. Fire Bite, Illus. Chameleon and Sanctuary, no Myst., Rest. Hearth Heal

I did notice that the lowest success rate among those turned out to be 64%. The poster made two interesting claims alongside this. First was that certain mods would replace the Hearth Heal with Balyna's Soothing Balm as a starting spell, and that the spell was so much easier that you could actually get it with Restoration as a Miscellaneous skill under the right circumstances. They also suggested that the threshold for the success rate was a Game Setting that could be viewed and changed in the Construction Set. I looked, and nothing obvious jumped out at me. There were a variety of interesting settings under Gameplay called iAutoSpellBlah, but I didn't really understand them.

So where does this put us? If it's true, it would explain a lot, including why these three "starting spells" never show up: They're just too difficult. --TheNicestGuy 16:19, 5 January 2008 (EST)

Well, spell success depends on your skill in the school, as well as your Intelligence and your Luck. Say you chose a character with Luck and Intelligence as favored attributes, using an Altmer, Breton, or female Argonian as your race. Birthsign is in this case irrelevant, as no existing birthsign gives a boost to Intelligence or Luck. (It might be worth modding a birthsign that does, just to see if it has any effect.) Or boost your Intelligence/Luck via console maybe. Though I'd prefer to see if there's any combination that results in your getting those three spells without mods or the console. (Incidentally, have you tried giving yourself the same spells via console after the fact and seeing what the success chance was for them? Might help to figure out exactly where the line is.) --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 22:43, 5 January 2008 (EST)

I have now. Every test I've done so far has continued to point to a threshold success rate. So I rigged up a custom race that was identical to male High Elf except for a +6 to Conjuration instead of +5 and a different starting Luck. I played around with Luck to see if it could make "Summon Ancestral Ghost" appear or disappear, and it did. I made a number of Mages of this race, and I found that the spell appeared with a Luck of 90 and success rate of 63%, and it did not appear with a luck of 80. I added it manually from the console and saw that this equated to a success rate of 61%. That's suggesting that it is based on success rate, and the threshold is between 61.1% and 63%. (Maybe 62.5%, which is exactly 5/8?)

This is tedious as nails to test, because there doesn't seem to be any point at which you can console-hack your Attributes and Skills before the spells are recorded. Nor does Disable/EnablePlayerMagic reset the list. The only timesaver is invoking EnableMagicMenu as soon as you finish talking to Socucius. Beyond that, all you can do is begin a new game over and over. So if anyone else wants to do more testing, feel free. I'm satisfied, and I'll eventually start updating the Classes and magic Skills pages to reflect this "corroborated hypothesis". --TheNicestGuy 17:20, 6 January 2008 (EST)

As the person who made the original comment on Morrowind Talk:Spells#Starting Spells, I feel I should really contribute to the discussion. Which spells your character starts out with is definitely based on your percentage chance to cast them (of course, they need to be marked as 'starting spells' as well). I didn't realise there was such a great debate over it - I thought it was common knowledge. Anyway, I think the GMST in question is fAutoPCSpellChance, although I can't check this at the moment.

In summary, you will only start with a spell that is marked as a 'starting spell' if your chance to cast it is above the value of the GMST. This is why you rarely see some of the spells - they cost too much magicka for their cast chance to be high enough - and why you get some spells even if you don't pick the school as a major (a Breton with Conjuration as a minor is likely to get both starting Conjuration spells, and an Altmer or Dunmer with Destruction as a minor is likely to get at least one of the starting Destruction spells). Note that the cast chance is based on your skill in the school and your Willpower - so a higher Willpower increases your cast chance (as does a high luck).

As an aside, the same situation occurs for the spells that NPC spellcasters start out with, when the spellcaster is flagged as 'auto-calc' (although they are not limited simply to 'starting' spells, but to any spell that is also 'auto-calc', and I believe they check the fAutoSpellChance GMST). This is why you will sometimes find NPC spellcasters casting spells added by mods - the most famous example being the Brittlewind spell from Bloodmoon.

--Gaebrial 04:03, 8 January 2008 (EST)

Has the question about starting spells been sufficiently answered to remove the tag? It seems Gaebrial's post explains the conditions pretty well.--Benould^•T•C 12:57, 3 June 2008 (EDT)

yes Lukish_ Tlk Cnt 04:07, 4 November 2008 (EST)