There were a number of mods that fixed that, which I would like to note is not a defense of the game. The one I used was Ordinator, which is a perk overhaul. For the magic skills, it makes it so that the first perk of the tree makes spells scale, up to twice as much damage once you max the skill out. The magic perk trees in that mod also provided a bunch of other nifty abilities. For example Illusion had a perk that added I think 1d20 power to spells such as ‘fear’, allowing you to try your luck in casting them at targets that are normally out of range.
There were a number of mods that fixed that, which I would like to note is not a defense of the game. The one I used was Ordinator, which is a perk overhaul. For the magic skills, it makes it so that the first perk of the tree makes spells scale, up to twice as much damage once you max the skill out. The magic perk trees in that mod also provided a bunch of other nifty abilities. For example Illusion had a perk that added I think 1d20 power to spells such as ‘fear’, allowing you to try your luck in casting them at targets that are normally out of range.