Pactraiser is the name of a custom class I'm thinking of building, but wanted some other opinions on it first. The basic premise of the class is that combat will revolve around the use of summoned creatures to do battle for me, as well as the use of blade-type weapons.

Race: Breton

Favored Attributes: Intelligence, Willpower

Birthsign: Mage or Apprentice

Major Skills: Conjuration
Restoration
Alchemy
Blade (Either Short or Long, haven't decided which yet)
Block (?)

Minor Skills: Enchant
Alteration
Mysticism
Illusion
Light Armor

I didn't take Destruction, mainly because I thought the idea of my damage relying totally on just my minion and my blade sounded appealing. I'm not sure how well this will actually translate into the game as my little experience with summoning in Morrowind so far has been underwhelming. Minions seem to need a lot of coaxing to get them to actually attack, usually requiring me to actually get attacked before they leap into action. I'm also unsure how necessary Block will be. Since I'm not taking Destruction I want to be good at melee combat, but my minions should be my shield for me most of the time, yes? If so then I could drop Block and take the other Blade skill to give me a larger selection in Weaponry.

In regards to birthsigns I'm thinking with this build I might could get away with The Apprentice what with Breton's natural resistance to magic cutting down the penalty, as well as my minions absorbing the brunt of the damage I don't see the downsides being quite as apparent.

One thing about Conjuration that puzzles me though is when to get a new pet and what type of pet to get. For Destruction it's pretty self-explanatory since you can see exactly what the spell does, but with Conjuration all you know is what creature you're summoning and how long he'll be around. You don't get to see it's stats or what kinds of attacks or spells it can use, so choosing a new one seems pretty obscure to me.

Thanks for any feedback. I'm really just looking for opinions on how effective this style of play will fair in the game.

About conjuration:

If you're on PC, I recommend using the Code Patch for the Spellmaker/enchant multiple effects. That will allow you to create a spell with the same effect more than one time. So you can create a "Summon Undeads" spell that conjure 2 skeletons and a bonewalker all at once. (4x ancestor ghosts is also pretty fun )

My experience with the creatures:

The Clannfear is a very reliable warrior type summon. Overall good stats and not too costly.
The Bonewalkers are excellent anti-warrior due to their Damage Strength spells.
Skeletons, Ancestor ghosts and scamps are basically cannon-fodder. Still useful in a large group.
Deadroths cost more, but start off as very aggressive aoe spellcaster and when out of mana, switch to melee combat. They are decent fighters too.
Atronach summons are kinda fragile spellcasters, but effective when used against the right element.
Dremoras and Golden Saints will pretty much be your high-end killing machines. Say goodbye to your mana reserve though.

I didn't use the other summons often enough, so I'll just stop here. Hope that helped.

Interesting. I already have the Code Patch installed with the multiply spell effect fix. Didn't know it allowed you to do that kind of thing though. Sounds like fun, but also kinda broken like it would make the game too easy if you could just summon a miniature army. Also doesn't sound like something you'd be able to do early in the game since I'm guessing summoning 4 things at once costs your soul and a half in magicka. Thanks for the bit of insight on the different minions as well. I guess if you had played for a while and fought against these creatures you'd kinda get the picture on what they'd be good at.

Thanks for the reply. Still wondering if taking block as one of my skills would be a waste on this type of character.

Whether 'Block' will be worth having depends on how you plan to fight. If you want to hang back and let your minions do the fighting, then it wouldn't be worth having. It does take some coaxing to get them to start fighting sometimes. At one time I played as a conjuring sort with Illusion and Restoration as major skills, the idea being that I would be mostly invisible during battles and let them fight for me while I enhanced them with various Fortify and Restore spells.

It sort of worked but it makes for some long and involved battles. If you are going to resort to melee combat, you might find yourself losing patience with your summoned creatures and doing most of the fighting for them. If you have the patience, try summoning a few melee-fighting minons, like dremoras and such, and then hitting them with Fortify Attack/Strength spells to speed things up a bit. You might even hang back and pop arrows at the enemies, both to help the battle and to give your minions the idea of just who they are supposed to be attacking.

If you want your minions to do the actual damage, another option is to hang back and hit enemies with lots of what I call FWP magic, meaning F...ool With People magic. Like Blind, Disintegrate, Paralyze, Drain Fatigue, that sort of thing. That gets your summoned creatures to fight, makes it easier for them to win, plus feels sort of appropriately evil or something, sitting there all chameleonized and messing with people while your legions attack.