Hey all,

I'm still new to this game, and have only played non-magic-using characters, so I'm still really uneducated as far as magic and alchemy goes in this game. I'm thinking of starting a second character who might use a weapon now and then as a last resort, but basically relies on conjuring up creatures to do his/her fighting for him/her (haven't decided on gender). What I want to know is, will this only work for a short while before the enemies become too powerful for my summoned minions to defeat, or will I be able to summon powerful enough creatures to be able to keep me alive against my enemies as they level up?

Also, any tips on how to build such a character would be appreciated as well. I was thinking a Dark Elf as a race even though I generally hate elves, but my usual fallback races (Kaajit/Argonian) didn't seem right for this type of character. Obviously conjuration would be one of the majors with this type of character.

Conjugation will work as a primary attack, but it’s actually more useful in defence. Summon something and let it attack the enemies, they will focus on the summon and you can attack them without being hit. Even weak summons works for this. Problem is that the summoned creature usually is so weak it takes time to kill the enemy. My previous character was a pure mage and used it a lot both for offensive and defensive purposes.

Sorcerer can do this perfectly with heavy armor his major.

I would play a pure mage Altmer+Apprentice. For this. What specifically do you want to know about ALchemy?

This was originally my oldest character's main attack. It's tough against other conjurers though, especially if you run into more than one at once. Destruction magic compliments conjuring well and comes in handy in those types of situations.

Not sure if you′ve already recieved one, but tonight I deliver my second http://images.uesp.net//c/c4/Fishystick.jpg!

:)

Btw, conjuration and dunmer work well together. My own experience

I don't really want to play an Altmer simply because I don't like elves (and from what I understand, race isn't really a big deal anyway). I was thinking of a Dark Elf as a possibility just because they seem to match the overall feel of the character pretty well, but I think most races can be adapted to be sort of a dark cleric/necromancer type. It's interesting that you suggest the Apprentice birthsign. I can definitely see the benefits, but overall I find that birthsign to be a little intimidating because of the 100% weakness to magic. Could you elaborate a little more on why you think that's a good birthsign to go with?

As for the alchemy issues, I really don't know anything about it. I've only dabbled in it with my previous characters, and only mentioned it because it was another area (along with magic) that I didn't have a lot of knowledge on. Alchemy seems to be the type of thing that can be used to suppliment basically any type of character, but I was mostly worried that a pure conjurer would be too one-dimentional and could only be something that you could take only so far before the enemies started to become way more powerful than the creatures you're able to summon.

Also, I play on the PS3, so mods simply aren't an option for me.

A FISHY STICK!!! YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAH!!!

I have no idea what that means, but I find it oddly exciting to be given one.

My mystic archer won't use melee weapons or elemental destruction spells. Just a bow and some support magic. When she runs out of arrows, she relies on illusion + conjuration as follows:

Mind control spells on crowds/groups to get them to fight each other down to one survivor.

She then casts a combo spell (clannfear + invis on self, both for 30 seconds) and invisibly leads Spike (her clannfear) right into her foe. If Spike needs some help (he usually doesn't), she slips around behind the foe and helps with an absorb health/paralize on touch combo.

So, illusion can help improve the odds, then conjuration can finish the job. This is a devastating combo.

If not illusion, I think I would still want to provide some form of help to my summons. This could be indirect, like buffing them via restoration; or it could be more direct, like damage spells from destruction. If your storm atronach is engaged for example, you can blast him with an area effect shock spell - harmless to Stormie, but pretty dangerous for his foes and you don't have to worry about accuracy or friendly fire.

My first magician http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v90/subrosa_florens/oblivion/Oblivion204.jpg was just the sort of character you are thinking about. A Dark Elf as well in fact. Conjuration was her main form of attack. She also wore armor and carried a mace. She started with heavy, but moved to light when she found a suit of http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v90/subrosa_florens/oblivion/Oblivion275.jpg that just happened to be Light Armor. Her basic tactic was to summon a skeleton (named Bones of course) and let it attack her opponent. Then she would draw her mace and move around beside it and start bashing it. She liked bashing things. Or she might use a touch destruction spell or two. I described her as a battleconjurer.

A high level conjured creature (strom atronach) can definately stand against your enemy and win, a weaker creature (like a scamp) may need some help from you but will still slow the enemy down.

This is actually very close to how I envisioned my character to be. A heavy armour wearing, mace weilding magic-user. My plan was more to have the summoned creature do all the dirty work rather than basically being bait, and I was torn on the armour as well when I read somewhere that wearing armour had a negative affect on spellcasting. Is that a genuine concern with this type of character, or is it more for mages whos focus is more on destruction/restoration?

Any advice on what other kind of majors/minors would be most beneficial for a character like this? Mostly just curious, as I'll probably just go with whatever I think will be used most.

I'm sure there are places I could go to find these answers, but you guys are a great help with the explainations. I appreciate everyone's imput so far.

If you sommon something like a skeleton, does that skeleton level up with you like your enemies do, or would you have to summon something stronger as your enemies get tougher? I guess that's pretty much what I was getting at with my original question.

There is a penalty to the magnitude of your spells if you are wearing armor. Or if it is the kind of spell with no magnitude (like a summons), it reduces the duration. The amount of penalty depends on your Heavy/Light Armor skill. The higher your skill, the less the penalty. Even with a low skill, it is not that much though. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Magic_Overview#Using_Armor

As far as major/minors Oblivion is very counter-intuitive when it comes to picking those. If all seven of your majors are skills you use all the time you will level up too quickly, getting only small attribute gains when you do. The monsters are scaled to your level, but they will be getting bigger bonuses. So the game actually gets harder because you level. There are several ways around it. I find the simplest is to take 3 skills I will regularly use as my majors, 3 I will never use, and the final 1 a skill I will only rarely use. Also make sure not to take two or more skills that are based off the same attribute as majors (like conjuration and alchemy). That also insures low bonuses at level up. Just have one major skill you will use per attribute.

Some skills to always keep away from as majors are aforementioned conjuration and alchemy. Both level up extremely fast. Especially alchemy.

On the skeleton, its power does not scale with you. It always has the same stats. So as you go up in levels, you will want to replace your summon spell for something more powerful. There are several different types of skeleton, that become progressively more powerful, the regular Skeleton, Skeleton Guardian, Skeleton Hero, and finally Skeleton Champion. You can find a list of all the conjuration spells http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Spells#Conjuration, along with the skill level and magicka you need to summon them.

The summons that you conjure up do not level per se. A summoned ghost for example will always have 60 hitpoints and do the same damage. With higher levels of conjuration however, you can learn to summon more dangerous summons though.

With good armor skill you can reduce the spell effectiveness penalty to 5%. This means that wearing armor for a battlemage is normally not a big deal. The biggest concern is if you want to use 'mind control' spells (like command creature) on your foes - they will not be effective against foes that are level 25 or higher unless you cast max magnitude spells at 100% effectiveness. Even for this concern, there are several workarounds if you really want to wear armor:
- A mod to eliminate armor penalties such as Lazy Altmer's 'Spells be Effective'.
- Enchant the desired effects onto a weapon; weapon enchantments don't care if you're wearing armor or not. You can't enchant calm onto a weapon, but the other command and fear type spells work fine this way.
- Don't level up to 25. My mystic archer is quite the illusionist, but by having several major skills she never touches, she is limited to a max of level 20.

But for summons and fireballs and such, 95% spell effectiveness works fine.

Edit: Oops, sorry if there is some redundancy with SubRosa's post - I was composing as she was posting.

I'm currently playing a character who relies heavily on Conjuration. She's an Altmer with the Apprentice birthsign, and is 100 in conjuration, which means that she summons lich and xivilai. Either of those allies is fully capable of standing up to any enemy. When fighting other summoners, she uses her staff (paralysis) in combination with Silence and/or destruction spells.

It's not so much that the conjurer needs to be an Apprentice birthsign; it's the other way around: An Altmer Apprentice is so vulnerable to magic damage in the early game that using conjuration and/or illusion are really the obvious way for the character to go.

This is a perfect "glass cannon" character. The Apprentice gives you so much magicka that you realistically don't worry about running out. You can summon a powerful ally and cast invisible on yourself, and never get hit at all.

One thing that you should never do is use Apprentice with Dark Elf or Breton. The Mage birthsign is much better.
Gaining a lousy 50 magicka at the cost of weakness to magic doesn't help the character. The Dark Elf resistance to fire and the Breton Resist magic is way too good to lose.

Another reason conjuration is handy is during the fights against Conjurers and Necromancers. Throw out you summoned creature straight away and you will notice that the enemy focuses his/her attention straight onto your creature. This allows you to charge forward and swing quickly.

One of my early characters, Severus Snape once performed an experiment in a Necromancer's dungeon out of curiosity. He came across a chamber with four Necromancers. He decided to see if conjuration was a viable way to deal with so many at once. He tried every form of conjuration from Clannfear and up while he remained cloaked to observe what would happen. None were even minimally effective. At the end of each conjuration, all four Necro's were still standing as well as their summons although they may have recast during the fight.

The point is, I don't know of any single skill that will allow you to be a one-trick-pony. Angel has waded through hordes of daedric monsters and her Clannfear was there the whole time; recalled every time defeat or the timeclock sent him back to Oblivion but it was her other skills which turned the tide of battle. Her potions allowed her wade into their midst with better protection than any armour. Her poisons kept killing long after the stroke of her dagger. Her Illusion skills turned foes into champions ready to fight on her side. She has faced four Necro's at once and sent their conjured zombies running away in terror as her Cannfear brutalized the fast moving Necromancers.

Conjuration as a primary form of attack: In the long run, boring... boooooring
I love conjuration, but restrict it to a diversion and sometimes in a desperate escape....

The first character I beat Oblivion with was a Brenton "War Cleric" heavy armor/restoration/blunt/conjuration/alteration who used conjurations in almost every fight. I would buff/heal the summon as appropriate. This was fairly effective although usually I ended up smackin on the enemy from behind with my mace unless I really wanted to see the summon beat em out just for fun. It will be slower gameplay than just slicing or blasting your way through everything, but it can be fun if you like a little roleplaying aspect.

Cool, but did you do that in vanilla with the sort duration of the summons?

Yes, this is what I have experienced against multiple conjurer types, too. You do have to "help" your summons against other summoners, or you just see an endless summons-against-summons battle. My mage uses her "Paralysis-Stick" to knock down the casters, and throws in an occasional "Wizard's Fury." (And yes, if it were up to me, and not up to my character, the "Wizard's Fury" would quickly take care of most of these battles. )

If you want allies to fight for you, I'd suggest Command (Illusion school) over Conjuration. It's more useful because you can do it on multiple creatures rather than having only a single summons (plus Command isn't restricted as to type of creature you control but Conjuration is limited).

I find the two synergize beautifully. When my mystic archer runs out of arrows in a dungeon (it happens once in awhile), she uses illusion to reduce a crowd down to one, or almost one. She then uses conjuration to finish the survivor(s).

Illusion is overall superior, especially among crowds or summoners, but conjuration is great fun vs small numbers and unlike illusion, can actually kill a lone foe. Fortunately, there is no need to choose, as both schools well suit a 'don't get my hands dirty' character.

No one mentioned the Bound skills ?

Bound a set of heavy armors and your heavy armor skill will support them, for a sorcerer.
I didn't try but I think that could be fun.