Does the Birthsign lesser power Blood of the North (from the Lord Birthsign) increase the Restoration skill?

No.

Neither Greater or Lesser Powers count towards skill increases.

Note also that Restoration is a very slow skill to increase.

That said that power can be extremely useful with lower level characters. Eventually, if you raise restoration you might not need it. But early on it could be helpful in difficult situations.

I'm not positive, but I wonder if casting Blood of the North counts toward leveling up your restoration skill, the same way any healing spell would.

I'm sure it would be easy enough to test it. Create a new character with good magicka and the Lord birthsign. Cast it a few times and see if your resto skill has gone up?

Edit: Ninja'd by Savlian, and I will defer to his knowledge here.

If you created a healing spell identical to Blood of the North it would have a base Magicka cost of 148. Blood of the North costs 50 Magicka to cast so your Restoration skill would have to be 89 before your own spell would become more cost effective than the power.

This makes the Lord a good birthsign for combat focused character who don't want to invest into Restoration.

Well Savlian is right that Lesser or Greater powers aren't supposed to increase skills, but I took Acadian's advice and created a character to test it out... Blood of the North DOES increase Restoration.

This kinda pisses me off. I created an Orc melee character who is supposed to level cap at 30. He doesn't cast spell but does have the Lord Birthsign and has been relying on Blood of the North. Thirteen levels latter I noticed my Restoration skill has climbed a bit. Restoration was one of the three skills I chose as a Primary not to use or level.

Restoration is going up very slowly, but eventually I can see this as being a problem.

After reading Chumgeyser's post I reated a character with the Lord bithsign myself and tried it out, but there were no skill increases. So if it does increase Restoration it seems like a bug to me.

Are you sure you're getting a skill increase?

I tested this. No experience increase with the Blood of the North. On the PC you can easily test by entering the consold commands:

tdt
sdt 10

Then you can see exactly how much experience you have for each skill, with a number not a bar. If I cast the Blood of the North there is no increase. If I cast a Heal Minor Wounds spell I get a small increase.

I've also checked the wiki that confirms, and I see no dispute on the wiki discussion page.

If it is increasing for you, then maybe it is mod related?

Or maybe you're using a spell, forgetting it is Restoration. Like a Fortify, or a Resist, or an Absorb, or something like that.

I'm on a PS3 using the GOTY Edition.

I created a High Elf without Restoration as a Primary and it had a starting value of 10. I went to an Aeylid Well and started casting Blood of the North. I would check every several casts and I could see that the red line was moving. It moved slowly but it moved.

My level 13 Orc started off with no red in the Restoration line, and now he has some. He doesn't cast spells, just Blood of the North, on a very rare occasion the two special powers from the Tower Stone (forgot what they are called. One is a Lock spell, the other increases Armorer temporarily.) I've never picked up any books that would increase Restoration... that would raise it a whole level though, and Restoration is at 25 still.

I have to admit that Restoration's progression has been super slow, but it's there. Originally there was no red in the Restoration line, and now there is.

I just did the same thing. I cast Blood of the North at least 25 times, and restored from the Well once during that process. There was no increase to the Restoration skill at all.

Edit:

This may point to where your Orc is getting the increase. That sounds like a Fortify Armorer spell, which is Restoration.

Are you 100% sure you're using Blood of the Nort with your elf and not the default healing spell that every character has?

My first character had the Lord birthsign, I am 100% certain that it does NOT increase restoration.

Yeah you might just be using "heal minor wounds" by accident, the Lord birthsign power does not increase restoration

Just so everyone knows, I'm NOT using the beginning heal (Heal Minor Wounds) by accident. I've been super careful about this. My goal with this character is to never cast any spells, but instead rely upon equipment and special abilities ie. Blood of the North. btw I am aware that if you key Blood of the North into a fast key, and then leave the starting sewer, your selected spell will automatically go to the starting heal Heal Minor Wounds. Confusing but true.

I double checked and it's not from the Tower Stone power Fortify Armorer. Repeatedly casting this causes no jump in Restoration.

I've made two more test characters and the same thing happens with each. I start casting Blood of the North and the Restoration skill seems to jump a little... but I can't get it to climb higher by continuing to cast it. I think it's a bug of some sort.

So it appears that the game is confused on the first several casts of Blood of the North, and it raises Restoration, and then it stops. That's the best I can come up with /shrug

Again, I'm playing on a PS3 with the GOTY edition.

just one more reason to switch to Xbox.

I disagree with that advice. If you do switch platforms, go for PC. The various platforms boil down to this:

PS3 - It was a late port and the game wasn't initially desgined for it. You get bugs not present on other platforms and no DLC.

X-box 360 - One of the two original platforms. You get the best patches Bethesda made and all official content.

PC - The other original platform. You get everything you'd get in the X-ox 360 version, but on top of it all you get a console for bugfixing, better graphics (if you have the hardware for it), and the ability to use mods which range from a simple unofficial patch to a full blown total conversion like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGkqjabgVks and everything inbetween.

The main downside of the PC version is that a new gaming PC is probably going to be a lot more expensive than another console. So if you're happy enough with the PS3 version, just stick with it.

The spell selection will always default back to that Heal spell if for some reason no other spell is selected.

Really, there is no reason to use something other than PC when gaming :wink_smile:

Just an update... I've been casting Blood of the North like crazy since I first made this post. My Restoration skill hasn't budged. It must be a PS3 glitch.

Thanks for all the input here guys n' gals