I recently purchased a book that unlocked a spell that summons a 1 handed sword for me.

It's pretty, no question, but how can i tell how effective it is?! i am a warrior (health - 110, Magicka - 130, stamina - 220) and have plenty of 1H swords. most do about 18 DMG.
how can i tell how good this weapon is compared to my physical weapons?

Good question. I don't know the answer, but there are perks that affect conjured weapons in the Conjuration tree, and I was interested in whether conjured weapons, this tme around, can be boosted to be offset the inherent disadvantage that you can't enchant them. I've never bothered much with Bound weapons in previoous games, but the fact that you can get them to Soultrap makes them interesting, especially since the Conjuration skill is so valuable.

Of course, what you're asking for - a numerical answer - won't help you much because the same weapon does different damage against different mobs depending on your skill, your perks, their armour, their level etc. What you really want to know is 'Can I kill stuff with it' and I'm guessng that the answer is 'you betcha'.

I'm under the impression that they are rather high quality.

svcks that bound bow requires conjuration level 50 to have it appear in shops.

I imagine its very powerful compared to regular non-enchanted bows.

thanks for trying, both.

Flincher14 - why would you assume that these weapons are really tough? any reason besides, maybe, your own personal logic?
it makes sense to me to but without proof i find it hard justifying for myself using these weapon in the game :\

there's important information i find missing in the game. not knowing how much damage i block when i block is annoying enough...

You could set a simple macro to practice conjuration in town and have 50 in no time

bound weapons are quite powerful if you put some perk points in the conjuration tree and the tree in which the bound weapon is ie one handed etc. you can check the damage by summoning them and going to the weapons page in your inventory. At the moment im dual wielding bound swords, and since the perks in one hand go towards them as well, im getting 70 damage total so 35 for each.

they are powerful but the only downside to them is that they have a limited time, so if you get caught in a battle, they can disappear at a bad time. But i am sure that Daedric is better, along with some weapons that can get improved with blacksmithing/enchanting.

Yea the conjuration skill tree is lacking some info, one perk where "bound weapons deal more damage" doesnt even say, in any form, how much more damage.
But i think they can kick some decent ass, i think it probably deals more damage than a steel sword. for the one hand sword.

In previous games they were Daedric quality, so I'd think that steel sword was low-balling it.

i don't think thats true considering i have bound bow on my character and i only have lvl 43 conjuration

@Topiera i think they a fairly useful imo. i have used them and they seem to do quite a fair amount of damage plus with the perks the make very goo situational weapons such as when fighting deadra or needing to fill a soul gem

At the moment i have mystic binding which gives the bound weapons more damage, 4 ranks in armsman that also affects the damage.

with those two i now have 40 damage for each blade, that will be more once i get the dual savagery perk in one handed as well. i don't know the exact way it gets calculated, but the bound weapons i have are better than anything else i have found so far, but i'm only 28 and i don't enchant or smith.

It was more of a personal choice for me, because what better way to kill someone than with weapons that they don't know you have

Hmmm. this didnt work. the bound weapon was not in my weapon page
any other way of checking its damage? or was i doing something wrong.

Try this

Equip the summoned sword.
Go to inventory
Hover over normal sword
See how much more or less damage it does (bottom right of screen)

but this tells me how much damage i do with that sword. not with the magical sword.
and lets say i have a sword that does 16 and another that does 20. what does that mean about the summoned sword?!
and some said that the summoned weapons are more powerful. how would i know that?

i dont like this lack of info.

bumping