I recently got into Morrowind after Skyrim and am loving it. The depth is amazing. I am now on my third reroll after probably 30 hours or so total time and am considering a reroll to really start playing the game.

Currently I am playing a pure mage (breton, mage class, mage birthsign). But since it is early days I have to continually buy/chug potions to keep magicka charged. So I tend to go for a shortblade/shield most of the time. The downside with this is that because the blade/shield combo is not a major or minor skill I am levelling very very slowly. Is this really a bad thing? I would rather level slow than too fast and suddenly find myself gimped against the majority of creatures I need to fight.

So, the alternative is to go for another reroll. After looking around, I thought a custom build like;

Breton

Attributes of speed (mainly because I really want faster walking/running) and willpower for the magic. Do I really need to worry about a non melee attribute at the start even when I will be using melee a fair amount?

Major Skills

Block (was minor, but swapped with short blade)
Light Armor
Destruction
Alteration
Mysticism

Minor Skills

Short Blade (I had this in Major skills, but moved it down here so I don't level too fast)
Restoration
Heavy Armor
Blunt Weapon
Sneak

Birthsign either The Mage (for magic boost) or The Lady

Any advice on that build? I want to have a reasonable setup that will allow me to really get into the game this time and not think about rerolling yet again anytime soon. The reason for both light and heavy was so once light is maxed out I can always swap over to heavy for further levelling up.

Thanks for any ideas.

Sneak might be more useful as a major. At least I never found it easy to succeed with low skill value.

Shameless plug: you might want to try my http://morrowind.inventivegamer.com/tools/chargen/ to crunch the starting numbers.

You should know this.

Unlike the newer games, Levelling up only makes you stronger in Morrowind...there is no 'bad'' class....they are only classes that take longer to get powerful.


With weapons, if you intend to use any weapon near the start of the game the skill must be a major....else you'll never hit with it. This is pretty important as training is too expensive.

Major & Minor skills level at the same rate, the only difference is Major start with 30 points & Minor with 15
so better to have your shortblade a major.

I would consider dropping one of your Willpower skills to Miscellaneous, & going maybe for Illusion.
Having all your willpower skills in Major/Minor will mean your only chance at getting a 5X willpower multiplier is if you level up no other skills for that level.

Faster running and walking is also obtained with any other build. If you think you can run and walk fast right from the start as in oblivion and skyrim, then you got disappointed. It won't happen, even if you select speed as favored attribute. You start at zero, from scratch and have to built up slowly. So at the start you will be as fast as a slaughterfish on dry land. But over time you will become faster and stronger.

Anyway, if you tend to play as a mage, then i would swap one of those armors, as one is more then enough. If you want to be a battlemage, then remove light armor. If you want to be more close to a classic mage, then throw heavy armor out.
I would consider Conjuration and Alchemy, as well as Illusion. And set Restoration as major. It's always good to have a healing spell right from the start.
But what is actually the idea? Playing mage? or battlemage? or nightblade?

Bretons start with only 30 endurance but 50 willpower, so you might take endurance as a favored attribute. Most definitely take The Lady as birthsign to further raise your endurance. You must take block, an armor and a weapon as majors or these will be useless. If you took alchemy and enchant, then you would never have to cast a spell again. You can enchant items to do all the other magicka skills except alchemy.

If you take athletics as a major then you can run continuously with the aid of restore fatigue potions or enchanted items. It takes months to max athletics, but you do get around quicker, which makes everything else that you do happen sooner.

Otherwise, a shrine outside of the Tribunal temple in Vivec grants 100 points of levitation that lasts half of a game day. This is pretty quick movement. Put a mark near any guild guide to get to the Mage’s Guild in Vivec and cast Almsivi Intervention to get to the temple. Then it’s a short walk over to the shrine. So you could keep this going continuously, but you can only sleep by activating a bed. The game won’t let you rest while you are floating.

Your build will work; as da mage wrote, there is no "bad" class. The question is more to what extent the skills fit your idea of how you want to play your character. I like Bretons and always play them as some type warrior/mage. One mage skill I've found hard to use has been enchant. it just seems slow, and you have to know the spell in order to enchant an item with that spell. Same applies to spellmaking. Alchemy is extremely useful, but I abuse it and therefore almost never take it as major or minor, if only because it is so easy to level it up. There are only a few spells that can't be duplicated using alchemy.

As to armor, just remember that your armor class reflects your skill level, meaning that when you switch over to the other armor type, your AC will drop like a rock as you build it up. You're essentially starting all over again.

FWIW, I usually go for two weapon types. I don't usually go for block, sneak or marksman because it feels like they take ages to improve skill wise, but then I also don't use trainers either, but that's just me. You don't say if you use Morrowind Code Patch (MCP), but I'd recommend it if you want to use sneak because it has an option to toggle sneak. In the past, it got pretty tiresome holding down the keys. Of course, I'd recommend MCP anyway because of the other things it fixes

P.S.: looking at your OP (where you said about switching armor in order to continue leveling), if you're trying to min/max, then you need to keep a different set of parameters in mind. I'm poor at explaining that, but there's info in the UESP wiki about it.

Many thanks for all the tips. A lot of things I didn't realise.

I do want to have a decent magic capable character, but also want to be OK in light armor and short blade for those close encounters, especially in the early game when magic runs out so fast.

I am using the Morrowind Overhaul that includes the MCP, so I will look for and make sure the toggle sneak is set.

So after using the character planner (nice tool) I now have...

http://morrowind.inventivegamer.com/tools/chargen/?character=1,2,5,2,6,3,23,22,11,1,20,16,12,17,14,15:
Female Breton
Birthsign: Lady
Specialization: Magic
Favored attributes: Endurance, Willpower
Major skills: Short Blade, Light Armor, Destruction, Block, Sneak
Minor skills: Restoration, Alteration, Alchemy, Conjuration, Mysticism

Is there anything there that could cause major grief down the line that should be changed?

No, just take the advice to heart you get from the NPCs during the course of the game, especially at the start. Can only repeat that all the builds can eventually be powerful enough to beat the bosses, you just may have to learn patience to give your char the chance to grow and tailor your fights to your char's skills and equipment at the time.

So sit back, enjoy the ride and try not to rush her

There might be slight problems casting those minor skill magic schools at start. You should do fine if you start with more cheaper spells and cast them when you have high Fatigue, though. The skills will develop slowly but surely.

Otherwise you're lightly equipped, and you have good melee skills with Short Blade and Block and also ranged attacking with Destruction - even a moment of surprise with Sneak (that won't still be that effective from the start, and it levels kind of slowly). Be sure to use right type of weapons and armor and you will have a great, versatile character on your hands!