Oblivion talk:Weakness to Magic

The UESPWiki – Your source for The Elder Scrolls since 1995

Contents 1 Combining Weakness and Resistance 2 How weakness affects spells with no magnitude 3 Weakness to magic on self 4 Weakness included? 5 Destructive spells? 6 Effects on Command/Frenzy/Turn Undead etc.

[edit] Combining Weakness and Resistance

Someone should cover what happens when you have both Weakness to Magic and Resist Magic functioning at the same time. A Breton born under The Apprentice, for instance, will simultaneously have Weakness to Magic 100% and Resist Magic 50%. Do these two effectively cancel each other out, then? (You'd be taking half of double damage.) I don't know, myself, or I'd post something.--Robin Hood 20:57, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

Yes, they would cancel each other out, since both effects work on the same "actor value", by increasing or decreasing it. Thus the end result would be a 50% weakness to magic, in this case.

I have a half-finished article about the way resistance and weakness to Magic/Poison/Elemental Damage work, which you can see on my Sandbox page. -- JustTheBast 09:01, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

Thanks, that was the basic question I had was whether it left you with a 50% weakness, or no weakness, no resistance (since 50% of 200% damage is 100% damage). Your formulae make it look like it would be 100%, but you say above that you'd be left with 50% weakness...so I'm a little confused. :) --Robin Hood 21:39, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

So does that basically mean that weakness to magic lowers your resistance? Like, as an example, take a 100 point fire damage for one second spell. If you use the Breton example, that would do 50 points of damage, yes? Now, what happens if you have someone cast a 100% weakness to magic spell at you? Is it reduced to only 50% effectiveness, making your total resistance 25% then? --Mikekearn 08:22, 25 May 2007 (EDT)

Yes, a weakness to X will first counteract any resistance to X. Only once your weakness to X is larger than any resistance to X will you start to actually be weakened.

A standard (non-Apprentice) Breton would indeed take 50 points damage from a 100 point fire damage spell. If someone casts a 100% Weakness to Magic spell the Breton resistance would reduce the magnitude of that spell's effect to a 50% Weakness to Magic. That would effectively add to the Breton's inherent 50% Resist Magic and leave the Breton with 0 total resist/weakness. The next 100 point fire damage spell would do 100 points of damage to the Breton.

Note that on JustTheBast's sandbox "RM" = (Resist Magic)-(Weakness to Magic); "RE" = (Resist Element)-(Weakness to Element). So Resist/Weakness of the same type always add to each other. Multiplying only comes in to play if both Resist Magic and a Resist Fire (for example) effects are active; in other words when combining resistances of different types. --Nephele^Talk 11:36, 25 May 2007 (EDT)

I just added a new section Resistances and Weaknesses to hopefully explain this all in one places. --Nephele^Talk 12:43, 25 May 2007 (EDT)

I was able to confirm the answer to my own question later using the console, and it agrees with what you've said in the new section. 100% Weakness + 50% Resistance = 50% Weakness. Thanks for the new section, BTW, it really covers the topic quite well. --Robin Hood 01:54, 7 July 2007 (EDT)

[edit] How weakness affects spells with no magnitude

Would it just affect the duration? If you cast paralyze for 3 seconds on something with 100% weakness to magic, would it become paralyze for 6 seconds? --Kevindrosario 03:19, 3 July 2008 (EDT)

That always works for me. When I cast Weakness to Magic 100, followed by a 7-second Paralyze spell, the paralyze effect lasts twice as long. I'm playing on the 360, with no patches or add-ons, if that makes a difference for this function. Padomay 13:53, 9 July 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Weakness to magic on self

Can I cast Weakness to Magic on self to enhance the effect of my defensive and healing spells? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.233.81.91 (talk • contribs) on 10:47, 9 July 2008.

yes—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 58.166.67.150 (talk • contribs) on 21:50, 14 July 2008.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that this no longer works after one of the patches, but I don't recall where. --Mike | Contrib 10:22, 19 July 2008 (EDT)

Information has been added to the article. --Nephele^Talk 11:07, 19 July 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Weakness included?

Let's say I have this spell:

Fire damage 10 pts for 15 seconds on touch

Weakness to fire 100% for 15 seconds on touch

Weakness to Magic 100% for 15 seconds on touch

If I cast this spell once, will the weaknesses help, and if so, by how much? --Zirakseez 17:26, 12 December 2008 (EST)

If you cast it once, the weaknesses will have no effect (other than to increase the magicka cost of casting the spell). As stated in the article, "Weakness to Magic increases by M% the magnitude of subsequent Destructive spells." --Nephele^Talk 16:30, 18 December 2008 (EST)

If i had a weapon with say weakness to fire 100% weakness to magic 100% Fire damage 3pts for 4secs, Weakness to shock 100% and shock damage 3pts for 2secs, would it do 45 damage?

[edit] Destructive spells?

This isn't related to that question, but I thought weakness to magic affected all schools of magic, not just destruction spells. The main page states, "...the magnitude of subsequent Destructive spells," but paralyze isn't a destruction spell and its duration is changed. So what's up with that? And, while I'm at it, does spell stacking not work against yourself? I know it doesn't work with positive effect spells, but what about negative spells? I tried to see the extent of spell stacking by making two weakness to magic 100% for 10 second on self spells, casting them one after the other like 20 times, then cast a paralyze on self spell, but the duration was the same length if I hadn't casted any weakness to magic. And when I checked my active effects page, there was only two weakness to magic effects there, there was no evidence of spell stacking. Does the game not show the true value when you do this? Or does the effect only work on hostiles? --ZombieRoboNinja 13:15, 22 December 2008 (EST)

Re: destructive spells.Good point. I've fixed the article accordingly.

Re: your second question. As stated in the article (with a few more details at the provided link), spell stacking on yourself was an exploit that was fixed by a patch. --Nephele^Talk 17:40, 1 January 2009 (EST)

[edit] Effects on Command/Frenzy/Turn Undead etc.

Imagine combining Weakness to Magic 100% and a Turn Undead effect on a sword. Now, if you used Turn Undead Level 25, which would guarantee an effect on any Undead, would the Weakness to Magic aid increasing the duration of the Turn Undead, or become simple overkill? Reducing the Turn Undead to Level 13 would be more economical, but will it actually guarantee an effect on Level 25+ enemies (on the second strike, of course)? There is another thing to consider: spells set to Level 25 are set to a 100 magntitude. Spells of this nature, like a lock difficulty set at 100, overrides the conventional limitations set against it (a 100-magnitude Command Humanoid spell will work on any humanoid, regardless of level, just as a 100-mag door cannot be lockpicked). Will we get this same overriding effect by combining Weakness to Magic 100% and a magnitude 52 (Level 13) Turn Undead spell? Or does the whole deal get pranged somewhere inside the game's calculations? —Dark Spark 04:07, 19 April 2009 (EDT)

I don't think weakness to magic has any effect on command, turn, frenzy, and such. It should only affect those effects that are designated as 'hostile' - i.e. damage, drain, burden, etc.

Certainly, in-game use shows that resist magic has no effect on command or calm, so I wouldn't expect weakness to magic to have any effect, either.

--Gaebrial 08:49, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

That answers the problem for non-hostile Level-oriented spells like Command, Calm, Demoralize, and Frenzy. The interesting question now is whether or not Turn Undead does get affected by Resist Magic/Weakness to Magic. Turn Undead is a hostile, offensive spell whose magnitude is indicated by character level. —Dark Spark 07:04, 21 April 2009 (EDT)