>>538701987
I believe it's a bit of both. You can't use certain spells unless you have the correct requirement of magicka, and obviously the more magicka you have the more power you can output. Say a powerful mid tier spell costs 50 magicka, but you only have 50 yourself, that means you can output a lot of damage but you can only use it every 10 minutes or whatever. That gives you the option of either using it once or continuing to use lower level spells since you can use those more reliably. It's bit like magical stamina. However, this is only what's displayed in Skyrim, the other games work a little differently when it comes to magic.
>>538665905
My cheekbones are kind of visible