Back in Morrowind I sincerely hoped that Bethesda would release a patch one day to un-break unarmoured, which of course they didn't. See, they designed armour class to be calculated when a hit roll occurred, which only happened if you were equipped with armour. So while you could level up in unarmoured, it never actually reduced damage, which also made defence spells rather pointless. Players wanting to play a mage were often forced to equipped one piece of armour, which enabled hit detection to take place.

Unarmoured wasn't the only problem for mages, you often had to carry a considerable number of mana potions to survive in fights. There was always the balancing problems, one being armoured players always had more enchantment slots available than unarmoured. So between a armour class that didn't work, plus having far less enchantment slots, the game was very unfairly balanced against robed mages. So when Oblivion came along; there was the hope of resolving all these problems in the sequel. In fact the developers made all sorts of promises to assure mage fans that their concerns were being addressed.

Then Oblivion arrived, and little by little I got that sinking feeling that mages were being neglected again.

They had resolved the mana problems, giving us a suitable mana regen so that fights didn't become potion drinking fests, that's something good they did. What wasn't so good is their promises to address unarmoured hadn't gone nearly as far as people hoped. They had removed the unarmoured skill completely, claiming the perks of unarmoured would come from the disadvantages of wearing armour. What they failed to inform us prior to release, is that almost all the downsides of wearing armour would be negated later in the game. If you were wearing clothing mid to end game, you were worse off than a armoured player. Some skills worked 5% better, but it came at a cost of 100% of your defence. Both light and heavy armour got the maximum defence in the game, armoured players were left with 0.

As if this wasn't bad enough, Bethesda seemed to have gone out of their way to make some aspects even worse. They made it so that you couldn't wear armour and clothing at the same time, which was a step in the right direction to resolving balance issues; regarding the number of enchantment slots available. However, there are less clothing enchantment slots available in Oblivion than Morrowind, items like gloves didn't even exist in Oblivion. A lot of clothing were merged together, so a multi item outfit only represented a single enchantment slot. In addition, since they removed enchantment quality; that entire outfit was only as good as any single item.

Then to add insult to injury, as if to show robed characters were seen as second class citizens, they weren't allowed in the arena. They showed a robed mage on the arena poster, but you were disqualified if you weren't wearing the arena's light or heavy armour.

Over the last two games, the message Bethesda has been sending out has been consistent. If you want to play a mage, play a battle mage. Their vision of players is of an armoured hero throwing fireballs with one hand; before pulling out their weapon for melee. They don't want you to play a pure mage class, try to do so; and you will be worse off.

I can only hope the situation will improve in the next game. But given the trend, I somewhat doubt it.

To be fair, in Oblivion a pure mage was one of the most overpowered classes you could play simply due to how exploitable some things were. Have a weakness to magic effect on a spell, for example, and it'll effect subsequent spell hits, letting you, with a little build up, do thousands of damage points in a single hit. You could also become completely invulnerable to weapons and magic. But yeah, mages have never seemed to have much put into them.

Neglecting unarmored? Sure. Disliking pure mages? Definitely not. In TES 3 and 4 magic has been by far the most powerful option.

Just so you know, you can enchant a couple pieces of clothing with Elemental Shield, thus not only giving you the Elemental Resistances but Shield enchantments as well. With just 3 Transcendent Sigil Stones with Elemental Shield you can get 75% AR and 75% Resist Element.

The power of magic is not a counter argument for the neglect of certain areas.

Why should a pure warrior have access to considerably more enchantment slots than a pure magic user? If anything, a mage having more enchantment slots should be used as a counter balance for their lack of physical defence.

If magic is too powerful, then perhaps a rebalance is in order.



A warrior can do exactly the same. Only they would have more slots to enchant; and have the added bonus of already having high AC.

Which in turn uses up 100% of a robed mage's potential enchantment slots, leaving no room for any other forms of enchantments (like magicka boosts, etc.). Not counting Rings and Amulets, of course.

Any armor wearing class gets a defensive rating plus 5-6 enchantment slots which can be used for anything. A robed mage gets no defensive rating plus 3 enchantment slots. A distinct and completely illogical disparity.

Err, Oblivions Mages were overpowered as hell. At around level 30 a Mage was completely unstoppable with Invisibility, Chameleon and Paralyze spells, not to mention 100 point damage attacks that could do more than 1 type. Mages in OB are unstoppable.
And you can enchant quite a few pieces of gear as a mage:
Hood
Shirt
Legs
Shoes
Wrist Irons
That's a lot of +Magicka.

There's no reason not to count Rings and Necklaces. Besides, I was merely pointing out that Mages aren't stuck with a 0 AR, they can have some if they want. Also, don't use robes if you want more enchantment slots. You don't need to max out the number of enchantment slots in order to make a fun-to-play and effective Mage. Get creative.

I quite agree with the OP. Playing a pure mage is not all that much fun in Morrowind and even more so in Oblivion. I do not know, but it is sort of a tradition that a pure mage wears a robe. in the whole vanilla Oblivion you only have 4 different robe meshes for male character (one of this is totally unique and your character will never wear it and 2 are specific and not too easy to get) and only one female robe mesh. Most of the robes form the peasants to the highes achelons of the Mages' Guild share the same mesh with only a slightly recoloured texture. If that does not shout more then clearly that Beth did not care for mages, I do not know what does. The same goes for mage weapons, by the way. While all the swords, axes and armours got all the love, the stuff ment for mages was left out. Not to mention that these items were totally uselss

The second thing is that even the most stupid barbarian who can hardly read can use the most powerful spells without skill in magic whatsoever. All he needs is a scroll or an enchanted weapon. However not even the most powerful mage cannot do any non-magic harm to his oponents unless he uses melee weapons (and thus ahs to have some skill in that weapon as well). So if a worrior who ignores magic totally and relies absolutely on melee faces a creature that resists or reflects normal damage (and there are just few of these in the game), he can with no problem rely on enchantments, staves or scrolls. If a mage faces a creature taht has magic resistance of reflects magic (and ther are many of these) he just has to have some melee skill as well, or have a very VERY difficult time. Another reason why to think that mages are getting the short end of the stick in TES.

Mages in most games including TES are quite weak in face-to-face combat, but Oblivion does not ahve means to further teh distance between you and your oponent other than running which is not always possible. We have telekinesis in the game, but you do not have the possiblity to use it on attackers to get them off your throat.

On the ther hand, it is true that Oblivion's magic system is very exploitable especially after reachng 100 in a magic skill, because then you can cast about any silly spell you can come up with as long as you have enough mana and you can boost your mana pool very effectively. That, however, shows more that the new spell system Oblivion has is totally flawed, not that there was anything done to help the mages.

All I can say is that I find using magic is tremendously more enjoyable in Oblivion than it was in Morrowind. In fact, Oblivion is the first RPG I've ever played in which enjoyed playing a mage. That feels like a step in the right direction to me. But then again I'm not a min/max type of player. I judge these types of things by how well they allow me to roleplay. *shrugs*

Complete the Arena questline then speak to Ysabel. You'll be able to charge into the arena in your robes blasting away.

And yeah, your mages are completely unstoppable. =)

That you are counting the wrist irons most discard at the beginning of the game says something. You have even avoided mentioning a robe, because you know a "mage" is worse off using a "mage" robe; in terms of enchantment slots.

Note the main focus of this thread has been regarding the balancing issues of unarmoured Vs armored. If you think magic is over powered, that is a different topic, it doesn't change that unarmoured is significantly underpowered. I don't consider one aspect of a pure mage being overpowered; as being a counter argument to another part being severally under powered. If anything, it's an argument for rebalancing both of them.




Why should we have to be creative to get around Bethesda's neglect and imposed limitations? Is it too much to ask that of the three major classes, all of them are treated equally?

Don't get me wrong, I have resorted to modding to get around some of these problems, such as a mod that adds cloth gloves to the game. But I really shouldn't have to; and wouldn't have to if Bethesda didn't neglect unarmoured.



That doesn't address the problem, you cannot play through the arena quest line in clothing. That you can after you have completed the quest line doesn't help much.

I agreed with just about everything you said, but how would you go about fixing this problem? it's not that easy of a fix.

I've been going through my head on this ever since the first time I tried a pure mage in morrowind, but every idea I had would of caused several other problems or alienate other playing styles.

In which case you probably should have named the thread something unarmored-related, and not referred to pure mages as neglected in the OP. Because how powerful magic is is quite relevant to whether or not pure mages are neglected or over/underpowered.

They removed hit roles, so it's not possible to have a unarmoured skill that enables you to dodge blows any more. It's unlikely they would add an unarmored skill back in, because levelling that would require being hit; and a large part of it is avoiding being hit.

Bethesda's approach was to give merits to unarmoured by applying limitations to armoured. Which may of worked, but they destroyed their own system by removing most of those disadvantages at higher levels. If they stuck with the limitations to an extent, maybe it would work. Is it really unreasonable to ask that armour weighs more than clothing for example?



Perhaps my previous post was worded badly.

This is about playing a mage. The main focus was on unarmored, but that's only because it is a largely neglected part of playing a mage. I criticised reference to magic because "I do not" consider it an excuse for trashing unarmoured. As I said, if it's over powered; then I wouldn't be against rebalancing it down. My issue is getting good balance between classes, not making what you claim is a overpowered class even more overpowered.

Very offtopic but on the main thread it says this topic has 14 replies and 0 views. lol

Well, I do sort of have a feeling that it is very difficult to roleplay a pure mage in either Oblivion or Morrowind. I sort of have the feeling that playing a pure mage has no advantage to palying a battle mage whatsoever. The battle mage has far more possibilities and is much more viable, but does not have any limitations compared to pure mages. That is sad. besides, I just tend to be picky about the looks and as I have stated above, I think that Beth did not do mages justice in the looks department.

The first thing they need to do, is make the spell effectiveness maximum 50% for heavy and 65% for light. I think that a severe penalty for wearing armor will make the lack of "unarmored" reasonable.

I'm not sure this is the best way to go. the battle mages were always part of the TES lore and they were supposed to be powerful. I'm not sure that nerfing the effectiveness down like this is the best thing.

If magic is as overpowered as everyone says, a 50% reduction would still leave them with a ton of damage potential while being a fair offset for their high AR rating.

Of course, I would prefer to see unarmored implemented in an intelligent manner, as well as having a lot more enchantment slots available...

One idea I played with is slower mana regeneration when wearing armour.

If we assume mana is absorbed from the environment, then dense materials surrounding the player would impair that absorption.

Part of it is that Unarmored, as it is, is a skill that doesn't really need to exist. The idea of getting beaten up, making you more resistant to being beaten up, is just odd. It's not a "pure mage" thing either, since I've never seen any other game with fantasy classes give mages the ability to become sturdier by being unarmored. The more logical reason that being unarmored would afford protection is a dodging ability, which is something attributed more to thief/monk types than mages. So, the issue for mages isn't so much the lack/uselessness of dodge/unarmored skills (that's more an issue for other classes), but the lack of downsides to wearing armor. The downside to not wearing it is poor protection; that's supposed to be the case. TES simply tends to leave out any downsides to armored spellcasting as compared to other games.

However, I'd prefer any penalties make some sense. TES tends to be more free of arbitrary limits (you must be at least level 10/have at least exactly 50 strength to wear this), and I'd like to retain that. Massive drops to spellcasting success or effectiveness don't make a lot of realistic sense, but if you consider the magic in TES to involve hand gestures, you could easily apply a slower casting speed. Spells having different casting rates is a separate matter, but assuming its existence, having your speed dropped depending on relevant skills/stats could work. Perhaps by location as well; armor on the arms/hands reduces casting speed, on the body reduces magicka regeneration, on the head increases failure rate (for a "blocked off" awareness of the environment), legs and feet reduces move speed. While the last one would be an issue for any classes, pure mages are generally the least likely to have the strength/athletics/whatever needed to reduce the penalty, making it mainly a problem for them.

If you read the description for unarmoured in Morrowind; you will note it is described as being about dodging, deflecting and absorbing blows. It's more learning how to deal with attacks on a unarmored body, rather than your body becoming tougher. In Morrowind there were hit roll calculations, so dodging an attack was factored in. This was removed in Oblivion to make combat more exciting for more physical combat orientated players, people who complained about a sword seeming to hit an enemy; and do no damage.



I could live with unarmored just being free from armours downsides. The problem with Oblivion is it eliminated most of the downsides of wearing armour, not just reduced them. It reached a point were a full suit of armour was actually lighter on the player than clothing, which is of course ridiculous.

Another main problem is Bethesda dedicated most of their content development to suits of armour. With clothing it was clearly a rushed job, which cost players valuable enchantment slots.



There has to be "something" there, not for the sake of punishing armour wearers; but to provide options. There really was only one armour class in Oblivion, because regardless of what you picked; you maxed your AC and removed encumbrance. Light or heavy armour, they played largely the same in the end.

If there are no pros and cons to each, why be anything but a master at everything class? Anything else would be inferior. Sure there is role play; and I wouldn't be concerned about having a robed mage if I didn't want to role play. But it's not nice 'knowing' that the game won't support you, even if you are playing one of the three major classes.

After playing as a pure mage, I get the distinct feeling that Bethesda loves pure mages. Why do you need armor when you can cast insane shield spells(Which will surpass even master heavy armor level daedric armor ratings). Heck all spells effects stack so you can become insanely damage resistant for long periods of time. Then there's the chameleon exploit, being able to summon three creatures as meatshields, and the insanely powerful weakness to magick + destruction spell.

Bethesda loves mages.

Doesn't the fact that mages use shielding spells that give a LOT of armor at higher levels kind of make it about even..? You shouldn't be getting hit as a pure Mage in the first place, if you do then you're doing it wrong. But even if you DO get hit, you have shield spells and reflect spells. How's that not considered armor? Not to mention bound armor.