I recently reinstalled Morrowind to see how Overhaul would fare on my laptop - it's doing less than amazing but I'm still hyped to get back into this incredible game. I want to play a battlemage-type Dunmer but - while I once played Morro and its expansions to death, it was years ago and only on one character who was a stealthy Bosmer. As such I'm as innocent as one can be in terms of Morrowind magic, and would love some advice on how to start my build, especially in term of assigning skills to either minor or major. So far I have:

Specialization: Combat, Attributes: Strength and Intelligence

Major: Long Blade, Heavy Armor, Destruction

Minor: Block, Axe, Restoration

My aim is just to have a valid, interesting to play (and roleplay) build that won't take 30 levels to develop into something workable. Does the above assignment make sense? What else is worth adding? Should I change things around? What about crafting skills?

Also, I tend to play characters with high charisma... Is it worth including Speechcraft?

Thanks

My experience with a battlemage is that you must be careful abount not turning him into a melee tank. Melee is easier to use than magic and you typically will run out of magicka often.
So you might need to make some choices to favor magicka before you start the game. Maybe use a Breton to get his extra magicka pool (altmer is probably too fragile for a battlemage) and one of the magicka-improving birthsigns instead of the obvious 'The lady'.
Among skills, you should include alteration and mysticism, since those are the two swish army knives among skills, which do all the small things you need like fast travel, levitation, unlocking, soultrapping, everything related to water and telekinesis plus absorb spells (absorb health is really nice) and shield spells.
Block would probably not be very useful as a minor, so either make it a major and use shields or drop the skill.
With reagards to speechcraft, you can choose that or illusion. Speechcraft is easy to use and don't require magicka, but it has only few uses compared to illusion.
I like to have armorer as a skill to repair my own armor and maybe conjuration (which should be a major if included).

Thanks for your answer I wanted to stick with the Dunmer for roleplaying reasons (I always end up playing a race that is NOT native to the game's province, so I want to try this whole 'homecoming' thing).

As for the sign, I actually thought about the Atronach - I know it cripples mana regeneration but I thought that it wouldn't be a massive problem if I had a few solid combat-oriented skills to fall back onto. I figured that so long that it doesn't make the game unplayable it could be an interesting strategy twist....

And I always wanted to use Alteration, sounds like I finally have an excuse

If you take Atronach, then you will most likely need either conjuration or alchemy to replenish your magicka. If you take mysticism you can also drop restoration unless you want it for role-play or you dislike absorb spells for some reason. Also you may want to decide on your play style early on. From my experience as a battlemage your combat will look like something like that: You throw 2-4 ranged spells and then proceed to hack enemy with your sword/axe/mace, swiching to heal or absorb health when needed. (btw why long blade AND axe?). If you taken alteration, then add shield instead on one of the ranged. Main decision is which ranged spells you want to use? Fire-shock-frost-poison ball is straightforward, but after all why are you carrying that sword/axe for? Maybe use drain/damage strength instead? Or fatigue. Or magicka if enemy is caster. Or maybe weakness to element your weapon has on strike damage. Or maybe you want to use ranged absorb spells, but then you may end up not using destruction at all.
Another play style as battlemage would be using melee range spells and letting your heavy armor to take blows, drawing sword only when run out of magicka. (for some reason i always imagined battlemages fighting like this) That way you wont risk making your character just another fighter with some magic backup, however it will be a bit harder at low levels. Also Tribunal will be VERY hard, so you will have to switch to using weapon as main damage output there.

You only need one weapon and one armor skill as a Battlemage. The other eight skills should be all magic, although you could add in something like speechcraft if you want.