If, and only if, the metal is not touching you body at any point.
Even then, I remember learning some physics formula about energy travelling in air in highschool and if the potential energy in the bolt exceeds the energy needed to cross the seperation between skin and metal, one would still have a connection and still get fried.
Sorry.
A metal plate or chainmail armour is conductive, not protective.
The reason a metal armour like a car is protective, not condunctive, is because it acts like a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage
I dont think anyone here would contend that a suit of armour acts like that.

That is why most of us have concluded that metal armor shouldn't resist shock. It only matters at all if your completely covered so if your just wearing gloves or something it wouldn't help. And it might not even help if your fully covered, so there's no point in adding that to the game. Other armor types would help with shock though, like glass.

Yes
Glass is the opposite of a conductor in the real world.
And since in Elder Scrolls ebony is a type of volcanic glass, and daedric is a type of ebony procesed via the torment of lesser daedra, they would as well.

Hmm, I don't agree with that. The metal suit would act as a resistor, and while it would certainly be a better conductor for the current than a human body, it (like all resistors) would heat up if current were to pass through it. The lightning itself may not shock the wearer, but the suit would become like an oven and burn the wearer to death.

What about sweating? Sweating is a major problem in winter.

The metal doesn't act like a resistor becasue it's conductive. It would also take a really long time to heat up. You also can't disagree with it because it's proven.

Doesn't this depend on how destructive or forceful the magic is to begin with? And wouldn't this require measuring (or assigning a value to) the magic's output etc.? It sounds like a overwhelming mass of arcane physics and subsequent calculations depending on a multitude of armour variables. Dare I say, this appears too complex for a practical application, IMO. It is an interesting idea though.

Perks are the future

The flame in Oblivion doesn't last for less than a second though. The shortest possible duration for the explosion is second. The flame also approaches, flying through the air, and then it explodes when it hits you. I'm sorry, but your argument really is invalid.

The maximum temperature at the south pole during February is about -20 degrees. The freezing point of salt water is -20.1 degrees. Salt water would be frozen. Those men were also nowhere near the coast (I'm talking about Scott and co). Antarctica is the continent. Besides that, the freezing point of human sweat isn't that much less than the freezing point of water, it's about -0.5 degrees Celsius. In Antartica you wouldn't have any exposed skin if you could because of frostbite. Even if you did, your sweat would be close to freezing even at the highest temperatures of winter. Of course, it is highly unlikely that you would be sweating, at -20 degrees Celsius on the hottest day ever recorded. The mean temperature is much, MUCH lower than that. I stand by my original statement, you can't get wet in the Antarctic.

If snow touched exposed skin at minus 40 degrees I don't think it would melt. I think that even if it did, they wouldn't realise they were wet, because the exposed skin would have died.

This is magic we're talking about. Magicka is in every living thing. You don't need to instantaneously change the core body temperature - my point was that a small change in temperature could cause devastating effects in the human body. The frost magic doesn't need to change the core temperature (although it can - as after all, willpower resists the effects of magic in previous games, so obviously the change the magic causes is within your own being) Remember the "frost burns" that merchants died of on the roads outside of Anvil? All that the frost magic needs to do is lower skin temperature to below 0 degrees Celsius to cause damage, and with a blast of air at -20 degrees it would be more than possible to do that.

By the way DIscount_Family: Anything that conducts electricity will experience resistance. So Avrils' statement is technically correct. A resistor is conductive. It's why it's a component in an electrical circuit. Of course, it wouldn't get enough time to heat it, unless both current and voltage were very high.

I would although like to add that we do not know the core temperature of the fireball - a gasoline on fire has relatively low core temperature, after the temperature value got high enough it will do damage even with less than a second exposure.