So I wanted to attempt a thief character w/ minimal magic. Basically avoiding the mages guild because, well, the character is a thief not a mage (and I’m tired of doing those damn quests ). Also I was hoping that it would make the game more challenging, but not in the difficulty slider kinda way.

Every character I’ve had I’ve used magic fairly heavily. Completing the mage’s guild gives you a large advantage since you gain access to custom enchants and spells. I’m trying to stay away from the usual spell stacking / weakness to X / drain health gameplay that is usually incorporated into my builds.

I’m sure others have attempted a similar playthrough. Did you find it fun or just frustrating not to have access to the mages guild? Was your gameplay changed in any significant way?

As much as I love the types of Destruction spells you describe, yes, I've played a number of characters who don't rely on them, but I still like to be able to make my own custom spells regardless. There are still ways to go about it if you don't want to deal with the MG. Frostcrag Spire is one way; pretending that some NPC shopkeeper like Calindil or Rindir offers spellmaking services is another, provided you're on PC and can access the spellmaking menu via console. Just make your spell, and deduct some further gold from your balance for services rendered.

I don't consider that to be cheating, as long as it's costly. Morrowind and other TES games had spellmakers; Oblivion forces you to become one. I don't entirely agree with that requirement for obtaining custom magicks.

I have a TON of fun with Marksman and Sneak skills.

Get this, with standard Marksman skill at say level 50, you can do 3x the damage if you strike a creature while in Sneak mode undetected.

You can also use Alchemy to create powerful poisons to add to the damage, and bows can be enchanted, I usually stick with Sigil Stones to keep in character.

Marksman in vanilla Oblivion is rather weak though, I use the "Eagle Eye" Realistic Archery Mod to make archery more fun. Todd Howard has recently come out saying that it was mods just like this that made them take a different approach at how Marksmen was implemented in Skyrim.

The best part though is simply spotting a baddie some 100 or more feet out down a dark corridor, knocking a poisoned arrow, zooming in for accuracy (Marksmen Perk), and either knocking the baddie down (Marksman Perk) or out-right killing it, knocking it 10 feet back in the process.

It gets even more fun when you realize you were never spotted, and you can simply repeat that process with as many baddies as you can before they spot you.

Peace,
Dan O.

Yea I think that is the issue a the heart of the prob. Really nudges your thief or warrior into completing the mages guild quest line. I mean, it is not like mages really lose out on such a large component of the game by skipping the thieves or fighter guild quest lines.

Or at least completing the recommendation quests.

Virtually all of my characters - not only the mages, but the thieves, the assassins, the hybrids, even the pure warriors - end up doing the mages guild recommendations, just to get access to, at least, custom enchantments. I've got a mod that gives one mage at each guild hall a conversational topic for spellmaking and another a conversational topic for enchanting. Picking those options grants access to the appropriate menus. I use that with a couple of my pure warriors who simply aren't going to do the recommendations no matter what.

That whole thing was something that Beth handled poorly, I think. I've always presumed that they did it that way because they were investing quite a bit in the gimmick value of sigil stones, and if it had been easier to get access to enchanting, then sigil stones would've just been that much more useless.

To the original topic - I find it easy enough to avoid relying on magic with a character whom I wish to play as a pure thief or warrior (or to avoid relying on weapons with a character whom I wish to play as a pure mage). I just don't give them access to whatever it is that they're not going to use. My non-mages get the basic spell effects for enchanting purposes, and that's it. They're not going to be able to rely on magic if their best offensive spell is Flare, and they generally don't get illusion or conjuration spells at all, since they're not useful for enchanting. (Actually, that's not entirely true - Command is probably the single most devastating weapon enchantment there is - one second each of max level command creature and command humanoid on a weapon means that whatever you're fighting just stands there and lets you kill it. Which is entirely unfun, so....) Beyond that, I don't hotkey any spells (other than Heal Minor Wounds and, as pertinent, Moonlight or Eyes of Eventide), so in the rush of battle, they're not going to have quick access to them anyway. It's the weapon in their hands or nothing at all. After a few levels, their weapon skills have so far outstripped their magic skills that there's no longer any reason to even be tempted to use magic.

One of the biggest oddities in the whole thing is that in terms of offense, Mages shouldn't really be using staffs or other enchanted weapons anyway.

The reason is that every time you use an enchanted staff or other weapon as a Mage, you've just avoided using a skill. The more you avoid your skills, the less they level up and advance.

Defensively, Mages do benefit well from enchantments, shield, feather, extra strength to carry more loot, all great enchantments, but the same could easily be said for any character, not just mages.

Archers and mele fighters benefit greatly from offensive enchantments, as well as defensive.

So yeah, it is quite the conundrum when trying to keep a character "in character". :/

Peace,
Dan O.

I remember noticing, on my first playthrough with a pure mage (after playing a couple of assorted fighters and such) that I had no use for Azura's Star, or for soultrapping in general, or for offensive enchantments at all. He used a fair number of defensive enchantments, but that was it. Actually, my non-mages rely far more on enchantments than my mages do, though my mages of course rely far more on spellmaking.

Which makes one of the primary differences between them which gate I go through to get into the AU - the right one to get to the Chironasium or the left one to get to the Praxographical Center.....

The same could be said against fast-travelling, regarding any char that has Athletics as one of his Major skills, or any way of avoiding combat (Invisibility, Chameleon, even Detect Life) for a Warrior char.

Anyway, those things (staffs, potions, etc) can be "manually banned" via the adequate roleplaying. My char never uses either staffs, potions or scrolls, as he's too proud to do so, and he's the "doing it himself, or not doing it at all" sort of guy.

This doesn't exactly apply, in the case of mages who rely mostly on Conjuration/Restoration. Such a mage might use a staff in order to have a Destruction ability beyond anything naturally available, for instance.

Also, there are valid reasons why a person might not want to advance a skill, in order to avoid leveling up too quickly. It is not advantageous to level up quickly in Oblivion.