I miss unarmored damn it...

thats easy

robes will have higher enchant potential

problem solved

Okay I admit it, I used to think H2H was the dumbest skill in TES since MW but I stand corrected...unarmored is. Why on earth would this be a skill or need to be one? I'm glad it was taken out in OB because it is unrealistic in the fantasy world sense...increasing in skill for not wearing armor???

If they didn't do it this way it would be harder to play a pure mage, unless "being good at unarmed defense" is magey. I think you could have an old wizard who was no good at defensive kung fu (or whatever "unarmored" is supposed to represent).The skill would've gone in the Mage category though, so one less school of magic or rebalance for 21 skills.

Maybe Conjure animals to fight in the front line, there are ways to get around worse AC.

I agree it was needed in MW because it was a more dice-roll-y kinda game

and like I said robes will be able to have a much more powerful enchant on them, so thats a good reason to use them over armor and you can move and sprint faster without heavy armor.

As far as I know it works like this:-

If you wear armour your armour skill goes up. You level up after a certain number of gained point in any skill. When you level up the game gets harder around you. If you are playing a mage build you might rather level up from gaining points in magic skills rather than skills which are not essential to your style of play, so that you end up with a few high level skills to deal with high level threats, rather than lots of mediocre skills.

I read you can save your perk points each level so levelling up does not happen when you place perks, it happens when you gain skill points.

If you play jack of all trades it would be like choosing athetlics, acrobatics, security etc as main skills in Oblivion. You would level up but your character wouldn't be any stronger.

Plus armour will nerf casting ability.

[pressed wrong button]

Where's your source?I haven't seen any evidence of this so far.And movement speed is not an incentive not to wear armor, we need encouragement not to wear any armor, not just heavy armor.If we wanted movement speed we could just wear light armor, but wizards don't wear leather and chainmail, they wear robes and cloth.So what advantage do mages get for wearing NO armor whatsoever, that's the question.

You don't get any advantage except that you can put the points somewhere else and try to compensate for lower base armor class through tactics. Just like the warrior doesn't get any advantage for not using Destruction except that he can raise something else.

That doesn't make any sense, why would someone try to compensate for lower AC when they could just wear armor instead and not be totally gimped?There needs to be something stop heavily armored warriors from casting spells just easily as a mage.Otherwise what's the point of robes?

Heavily armored warriors having lower spell effectiveness isn't an advantage that you get, it's a disadvantage that they get. There are a few of those.

As for the advantage, as I said, you can play a purer mage who knows more about magic, but nothing about defensive kung fu.

If skyrim is like Oblivion then armor weight becomes moot when you got it maxed and it's never hard to train armor skills, just find a low level area and let some mob bash you over and over again until your skill is maxed.
The only plus thing about robes was the fact your spell effectiveness was 100% instead of 95% which people would barely notice. Everything else about it was inferior and I hope this won't be the case.

Defensive kung fu?What are you smoking?Of course mages don't fist fight or use melee attacks, but that's not my point.My point is, if there is nothing to encourage mages to wear armor or cloth, then why even put robes in the game if it's just for looks?Is there a point to wearing robes instead of armor, that's all I want to know.

@Takolin

I know, many people were hoping that in Skyrim the penalty was steeper, instead it seems like we won't even have a penalty.

He answered this already. But let me break it down for you;

The way it works is you gain a level for every X number of skill increases. Lets assume you need 20 points to go up a level

Mage 1 skills (that are being used/focused on):
Destruction
Restoration
Alteration
Conjuration

Mage 2 skills (that are being used/focused on):
Destruction
Restoration
Alteration
Conjuration
Light Armor

Assuming roughly equal usage, Mage 1 will level when each skill is at 5, where as Mage 2 will level when each skill is at 4. Meaning at level 21, Mage 1 is maxed out on his 4 core skills, where as Mage 2 is still at 80 in each. Mage 1 becomes the more powerful mage, where as Mage 2 is more utilitarian, but less powerful with the magics.

Also, skill level will affect which perks we can take, so in my example, Mage 1 will have access to higher level perks than Mage 2.

As many people have said, you have various stuff over a guy in heavy armor, such as lower encumbrance, quicker movement, and better spell effectiveness. On top of that, people are apparently asking to go back to Unarmored as a skill, to give Mages better armor class. So what is "getting better at not wearing armor". Presumably it doesn't mean that you keep forgetting and accidentally wearing armor, until one day you are so skillful you manage not to wear any armor. It must mean that you are better at avoiding damage through some kind of technique like "defensive kung fu" or whatever you want to call it. If this is in as a skill, then every single player who doesn't wear armor will get points in this skill as they play.

Anyway if you play pure mage I seriously doubt you will be :mage: if you play smart.

Think logicly lol...whats point of wearing normal robe when you can wear normal light armor? traditional mage is not mage with robe.. its mage with ENCHANTED robe.. i just hope there will be enough robes,that are allready enchanted with magebonus skills... i really would love to see that every armor type got its enchant priority like,if you enchant robe with +magicka you get 50 but if you enhance heavy/light armor you get 30.

Yes and no as it only affects the game until you have maxed said skills. Because after both mages maxed out destruction/restoration/alteration and conjuration, the 2nd mage starts overtaking the 1st one in both skills and levels. sure you can stop leveling, but then you also stop gaining perks.



The problem is that lower encumbrance, quicker movement and better spell effectiveness aren't harsh penalties when you compare to what you get. Encumbrance can be countered by a simple feather spell/potion which will also negates the movement bit. Thus the only downside of using heavy armor is the spell effectiveness and if it's the same as Oblivion, the 5% you lose is a trade off for your armor that doesn't even require a lot of thought. what I and some others want is a harsher penalty for wearing robes because you pretty much sacrifice your entire defense for a measly 5% which you most likely won't even notice.

Then mage 1 picks up enchanting, and makes the Epic Magic Robes of Epic Magic.... Seriously, there are benefits to not using armor. Specifically, you get to use those skill points to focus on the skills that you want. It was stated that you can max out all skills, where you'd hit level 75ish, but it will get exceptionally tedious after about 40, where you max out about 6 skills. Those skills are yours to choose.

Your reward for not going with any armor; becoming the best mage possible, sooner.

i think they went a little more realistic with the armor set up. If i dont wear armor and get the crap beat out of me i dont magically take less damage from it with time. but now it seems they are giving you spells to better defend yourself.

Do you mean you want harsher penalties for wearing armor? So that you don't feel so bad about not wearing armor and leveling that skill instead of focusing on magic? Why don't you just try it without armor, and if you get owned constantly, then start training armor.

Well I'm planning to go robes else my sig would be moot and yes I did meant harsher penalties for wearing armor, because in OB mages with armor was like having your cake and eating it too.

You won't get owned constantly because you have magic to protect yourself, you seem to forget that magic is stronger this time around, so armor-wearing magic characters would be seriously over-powered without some sort of penalty applied to your magic while wearing armor.Mages don't want to wear armor, mages should be discouraged to wear armor, because it would make them overpowered.

As I said I don't think pure mages will get owned unless they play badly, so that is not a problem. Whether heavy armor characters are overpowered or not, it's not an MMO so as long as you can play the game as you want it doesn't really matter.

Here is what I would do, not that anyone cares, but what the hell :
Penalties to damage for destruction, duration for timed spells, magicka drain for sustained spells, enemy level for command/calm/frenzy/turn undead -

Light armour : armour 6%, gloves 6%, boots 3%, helm 3%, 18% penalty for full set.

Heavy armour : armour 10%, gloves 10%, boots 5%, helm 5%, 30% penalty for full set.

Then robes would definitely be viable.

I personally hope there is a heavy penalty for wearing armor and/or a bi bonus for not wearing armor in terms of magic effectiveness. The penalty in oblivion was so small that you really were just gimping yourself by not wearing armor.


It hurts the immersion in gameplay to see most dedicated casters in the game walking around in robes when robes offer no real benefit to spell casting in the first place.


But yes I miss the unarmored skill from morrowind as well, Oblivion had Galerion's Unarmored Acrobatics mod which was the closest thing, too bad it didnt affect NPCs though.