Well, for all the years I've been playing Morrowind I've been putting off playing a mage, creating one then trashing him just 'cause. I've finally decided to actually stick with playing him and plan to roleplay him as a Telvanni wizard. All of that aside, here's the build I've come up with:

Race: Dark Elf (personal preference)

Class: (Custom)

Specialization: Magic

Favored attributes: Willpower and Luck

Birthsign: The Atronach

Major: Destruction, Alteration, Illusion, Mysticism, [weapon skill]. Blunt or Spear? That's what I'm debating over.

Minor: Restoration, Conjuration, Enchant, Unarmored, Speechcraft.

It's essentially a pure mage, with a backup weapon (staff or spear) for when things get too messy.


Feel free to critique, this is basically a rough draft of what I've come up with. Any help is appreciated.

I love playing mages when I'm not hacking and slashing. I actually like to make Enchant a major skill. People underestimate how powerful enchanting can be. Alchemy is useful because at low levels your physical stats will be low and surviving will be a bit tougher so having restore fatigue and health potions will be useful. Make as many enchanted items with low level damage on target spells and cast them like crazy on the stuff that attacks you and soul trap everything, recharge, rinse, repeat. It will level fairly quickly. (Enchant a restore health on self item too so you don't have to use up all your potions, they're good for in between fight healing).

I prefer blunt personally over spears, but that's a personal preference thing. Your build should be fine though if you don't want to fool with enchants, but I highly recommend them.

From a RP playstyle I would go with Blunt. Staffs suit the mages.
If you're on console, remember that Unarmored doesn't work correctly. The Code Patch fixes it on PC.

http://morrowind.inventivegamer.com/tools/chargen/ is great for tweaking a build before you jump in game

Yeah, planning on wearing light pauldrons to counter the unarmored glitch.

Thanks for the site by the way. So, is Willpower okay or should I roll with Intelligence?

I never noticed any major difference having the starting Luck of 50 instead of 40. You can not have level-up multipliers with it, either. So, my two cents: drop Luck and go with Willpower AND Intelligence.

I also vote for Blunt. http://images.uesp.net/7/7a/MW_Weapons_Staves.jpg are just so mage-y!

However, now I do want to play a mysterious, rather eccentric spear-wielding mage myself, hmh... Never really used a Spear as a main weapon on any character...

I second alchemy. You'll need it at start. A very useful skill to have. Also reeks of a mage. You don't need every single school of magic in your arsenal... unless you want to have them.

Okay, great! I've just got into the habit of picking [insert skill] and Luck, so I suppose I'll roll with Intelligence and Willpower because the extra magicka sounds lovely.

Recommend putting Blunt as a major or minor? I've begun the process of eliminating a few magic schools, starting with Conjuration. Bound weapons/armor are useless for this character IMO and I don't like summoning things they just get in the way.

Major, if you really want to be able to hit things more often than not in the beginning of the game. Minor if you wanna concentrate on more schools of magic and are okay to feel disadvantaged whenever you have to do close combat.

Okay great! Thanks for the help guys. This is what I went with:

Race: Dark Elf

Class: (Custom)

Specialization: Magic

Favored attributes: Intelligence and Willpower

Birthsign: The Atronach

Major: Destruction, Mysticism, Alchemy, Alteration, Blunt

Minor: Enchant, Restoration, Illusion, Unarmored, Speechcraft (filler)

ALSO, has anyone ever played a mage and joined the Morag Tong? I think that'd be fun to do.

I've always just played a stereotypical sneaky Morag Tonger, but have recently thought that either a berserk hack-and-slasher or a mage could do equally well. The idea feels fresh to me. Could very well work!

Excellent build IMO! I'm starting a pretty similar Argonian mage, although no Destruction and the weapons of choice are the Spears. I also like to put Restoration to major skills for more safe and secure healing.

Sounds good, just make sure you have a big enough magicka pool. Personally I take Breton or Altmer, but its good that you took the Attronach birthsign hopefully ensuring a big enough magicka supply. PS Just dont play expansions

with the writ system of the morag tong, you don't necessarily need to be discreet about your killings. I could see playing a mage that just walks up to the target in broad daylight, blasts him with a fiery explosion and hands the writ to the guard before walking away.

I went with spear for my mage and found it enjoyable. it killed two birds with one stone in that i'd never really used either mage skills or spear as a major skill.