Hmm, Decisions Decisions

[thanateros]

So I'm sitting around scratching my head as to what the Race/Birthsign of my new mage character should be. The skills are somewhat hammered out, but I need a face to put with them.

 

Here are the skills:

 

Restoration

Alteration

Destruction

Illusion

Conjuration

Hand to Hand

Athletics

 

 

OK, now I wanna know what you have to say.

[batesmotel34]

So I'm sitting around scratching my head as to what the Race/Birthsign of my new mage character should be. The skills are somewhat hammered out, but I need a face to put with them.

 

Here are the skills:

 

Restoration

Alteration

Destruction

Illusion

Conjuration

Hand to Hand

Athletics

 

 

OK, now I wanna know what you have to say.

My first character has been mage/stealth (Witch Hunter Class) and has worked well. I tend to use summoned creatures and my bow as my primary offensive skills (with my mysticism skill raised mostly by the continuous use of various versions of the detect life spell ;-) ) and haven't found that I have suffered for want of magicka or generally for how quickly it regenerates. If you do want to primarily use destruction spells as your offensive skill then you may want to either go with an Altmer or with the Atronach for a higher reserve of magicka. The Atronach sign is probably a good choice for an Altmer since the ability to absorb magicka can help offset the increased vulnerability that Altmer have (or at least that was the case in Morrwind. I had a number of MOrrwind non mage characters who used the birthsign just for the magic "immunity" that it does give.)

 

I really liked the Atronach as the birth sign for my mage characters in Morrowind but I think that a mage character in Oblivion would loose too much of the new magic system by forfeiting the ability to regenerate magicka. I really have found that the dynamic regeneration of magicka makes it much more useful to use magic in general than trying to carefully husband my magicka level until the next time I will be able to rest or lugging around zillions of restore magicka/sourcery potions.

 

I haven't really explored whether Oblivion has an equivalent easy way to recharge with magicka for a character with the Atronach sign like you could with summoned Ancestral Ghosts in Morrowind. That option really helped make the Atronach sign viable and really the only good choice for mages in Morrwind.

 

As a final reason for me, I've always like the appearance of Bretons as well as the general background and culture they come from. That's true for Daggerfall as well as for Morrowind and Oblivion.

[goseki]

the lady is a good option for its +10 endurance/willpower, especially for races with a lower starting endurance such as female bretons (which is what my mage will be). increasing endurance will increase the number of hp you gain per level (always one tenth of your endurance) magic characters may have more difficulty uping endurance as the skills related to it (heavy armor, block, armorer) are not key to mage gameplay. increasing endurance early on will give your character greater durability later in the game.

[modernlegend]

I would have to agree with jurgen on that one, the longevity of mages was always one of the issues I had playing on morrowind, if you failed to eliminate a target you just dont tend to last long in combat, and considering that in oblivion I have often had to take on many more opponents at a time, from my somewhat limited experience of oblivion (although playing as a warrior type it's less of a problem) I would have thought some more hp would be nice, as you probably wont have the skills required to up it. Other than that I would probably choose breton, they just have that bit more charachter about them than the altmer, and I'm not overly fond of the altmers appearance in oblivion, not that I was in morrowind but... :glare:

[o-seven]

Between those you mention, I (as a lotta others I see) would go for the mage (though that's based on Morrowind) - I never really fancied the balance of Atronach, and much points to the fact that it's been made weaker, as has been mentioned.

 

My favourite birthsign was always The Shadow; though that was only because I couldn't be bothered concentrating on the magic system long enough to get a similar skill.

Ooh, on that (semi-off topic)-note - about the Shadow: Does it give invisibility once for each time you sleep (like Morrowind) or actually once each day?

[RogueMale]

One small point, building a mage character with Destruction as a primary skill is going to make the game much harder for you, you should never have your kill (ie most used) skill as a primary skill. Remember, your character gains a level everytime you gain 10 levels in any of your primary skills, combined !

 

So likely, you'll get a few points in Destruction and Restoration, a couple in conjuration, Hand to Hand, and Athletics, and you'll level up to Character level 2 with +2 or +3 to your attributes, which is fairly slow progress.

 

Better to make your major kill skills like Destruction, and major support skills like Conjuration and Illusion, as secondary minor skills, replace them with things like Armorer or Speechcraft, or Block. Skills that you don't have to use all the time, you can pick and choose when to use them, and thus when to level.

 

I'm building a War Mage character, my main kill skills are Destruction, Blade, Block, Conjuration and Restoration, and all of these I have made minor skills on my character. Thus, I keep using them in the game until I gain 10 levels or so in all of them, then I do so jumping (Acrobatics), or talking (Speechcraft) or armour repair (Armourer) to make my character level, giving me +5 to all my main attributes (Intelligence, Willpower, and Endurance). I'm currently Character Level 7, but all my main kills skills listed above are at or above level 50, and I'm able to throw fireballs around, and cunjur up Daedra !

 

As for the main point of this discussion, I choose a Dark Elf, good all rounder, major fire resistance is helpful, and the +50 Magika birthsign (Mage ?).

[thanateros]

Interesting idea on how to play the game. I have to admit, I like the strategy (this also ensures you reach higher levels because a magic based race character will have lower starting skill levels in other skills). I also like how by having 'minor' skills for major skills, you can determine when you level, which partly circumvents how rediculous monsters become despite your inability to maximize your skills relative to the game difficulty. I'll deffinitely be testing this strategy, it sounds worthwhile. With this in mind my character's skills would look more like:

 

Speechcraft (I hate the minigame, but since it can go on forever and ever....leveling will be continuous)

Hand to Hand (since I'll be using blades as primary weapon)

Acrobatics (jump to leveling victory)

Light Armor (I plan on using Heavy, so when I acutally want to level, this makes sense to use)

Armorer (fix it fix it fix it)

Sneak (really really easy skill to level up when I need to, and generally useful to have)

Mysticism (don't really use it that much, and any minor magic school is extremely easy to level)

 

Thanks for the suggestion; this will make utility skills really useful and I think will make for a more interesting and well rounded character overall. I'll probably end up using stealth as the emphasis since most of the skills are stealth based, so they will go up faster when I need the level.

 

This will make fighter characters much easier to level, considering how quick spells progress. Though for a thief character I had some difficulty, so here's the template I came up with:

 

Armourer

Heavy Armor

Hand to Hand

Mysticism

Alteration

Restoration

Destruction

[RogueMale]

Your quite welcome, my Warmage character is quite the all rounder too, but then I was deliberately going for that, to get a taste of more or less everything at once for my first play through, and I am more or less sticking to the main quest line, and only doing obvious minor quests, like Mage Guild recommendation quests, and so on.

 

One of the most useful skills around for controlling your leveling is Conjuration. I found it incredibly useful to have conjuration as a minor skill as well, cause then I can summon up a skeleton, smack him three times with my sword, and they'll turn on me. Really useful for building up skills like Block or Blade, or any armour skill, you can just let them whack away, they don't do much damage, and you don't have to go looking for mud crabs and the like for getting some practise in.

 

In fact, I've spent so much time conjuring things, Conjuration is now my highest skill level at 55, compared to Destruction at 53, Block at 48, Restoration at 50, and Blade at 41. My Blade is still quite low, as I use that as the last resort, after expending all my Magika on an enemy through Destruction spells. And as I have a pretty good magical Longsword, it only takes a few hits to kill most enemies, so I'm not gaining on Blade very fast.

 

I think that when i have finished the main quest, I wil start a new archer/thief character, concentrating on magical weaponry and spells from the Alteration/Illusion trees. Should make it into a whole new game all over again ! And there are a bunch of mods I want to try out too !

[batesmotel34]

One small point, building a mage character with Destruction as a primary skill is going to make the game much harder for you, you should never have your kill (ie most used) skill as a primary skill. Remember, your character gains a level everytime you gain 10 levels in any of your primary skills, combined !

 

So likely, you'll get a few points in Destruction and Restoration, a couple in conjuration, Hand to Hand, and Athletics, and you'll level up to Character level 2 with +2 or +3 to your attributes, which is fairly slow progress.

 

Better to make your major kill skills like Destruction, and major support skills like Conjuration and Illusion, as secondary minor skills, replace them with things like Armorer or Speechcraft, or Block. Skills that you don't have to use all the time, you can pick and choose when to use them, and thus when to level.

 

I'm building a War Mage character, my main kill skills are Destruction, Blade, Block, Conjuration and Restoration, and all of these I have made minor skills on my character. Thus, I keep using them in the game until I gain 10 levels or so in all of them, then I do so jumping (Acrobatics), or talking (Speechcraft) or armour repair (Armourer) to make my character level, giving me +5 to all my main attributes (Intelligence, Willpower, and Endurance). I'm currently Character Level 7, but all my main kills skills listed above are at or above level 50, and I'm able to throw fireballs around, and cunjur up Daedra !

 

As for the main point of this discussion, I choose a Dark Elf, good all rounder, major fire resistance is helpful, and the +50 Magika birthsign (Mage ?).

 

The major problem I see with your scheme is that kill skills often aren't the ones that you use most. Early on for my witch hunter character (stock class) I think the skills that I used most and that went up fastest were alchemy (much of that was making Restore Fatigue potions buying "food" ingredients at inns and selling the potions back to the innkeeper) and mysticism. The only mysticism spell I really used early on was a relatively weak detect life spell. Since it had a fairly short duration and I tried to keep it going continuously while exploring indoor locations like ruins and caves, it was by far the spell I cast most often. With conjuration as one of my main killing skills, it often didn't need to be cast more than a few times in a given fight since much of the time I could summon a creature powerful enough to finish off one or more opponents in a single summoning. I used my bow and destruction spells to support the summoned creatues but in general none of these skills went up as quickly as the non killing skills of alchemy and mysticism.

 

When I made custom classes for Morrowind (and when I do for future characters in Oblivion) my general goal was to be sure to have at least one non-major skill based on each attribute that one of my major skills used. This gave me a way to be able to insure that I had the option to get a decent leveling gain in that attribute by training and/or using the non-major skill in addition to the gains I would get from the major skills based on that attribute.

[RogueMale]

Quite true, in the end, your mileage will vary depending on exactly how you play through the game. Better then to say, "Make your most commonly and often used skills, minor ones". Either way, as you say, unless you're using one of the player leveling mods available, you need to pick your major and minor skills carefully, to ensure you cover your attributes, and don't end up constantly levelling up your character without an appropriate increase in skills and attributes.