i was considering two maybe three characters. this is a question concerning an altmer mage with the atronoch birthsign. how exactly will atronoch's magic aborption or w/e affect their weakness to magic? will the weakness cause the absorption to absorb more mana? what will happen?

note i may not actually give him the atronoch birthsign. in the past i've found the stunted mana to be far too inconvenient, and now that i think about it an altmer gets +100 mana anyway even without a birthsign, so what's the point? the only advantage it could possibly give is to fix the altmer's weakness to magic.

Yes it could override some of the weakness. Although if you do go the atronarch path don't make Mysticism a major.

The spell absorption percentage is chance that all of the spell is absorbed. If the spell is absorbed then it will cause no damage. If it's not absorbed the damage will be calculated normally.

So if you can get to 100% spell absorption, then your character will be immune to magic attacks, not matter what magic weaknesses you have.

Note also that the Altmer is not weak to all magic. Only elemental magic (Fire, Frost, Shock). Other magic attacks (for example, paralyze or silence) are not affected by the Altmer weaknesses.

i figured that's how it would work, but i didnt know how to explain it.

and why is taking mysticism as a major a bad idea? i know for a fact taking alchemy as a major is a terrible idea, you do that you're predestined to run into the leveling problem.

Well I didn't say that. But I guess the person who did thinks it might result in leveling too fast if you cast a lot of absorb spells. Also if you get Mysticism high enough you can use telekinesis to recharge magicka, or so I hear. I've had many Atronach characters and don't rely on telekinesis to recharge. Also I don't often cast absorb spells either, at least not much at lower levels, because they are relatively expensive spells.

I've had Atronach characters with Mysticism as a major and they worked out just fine. In fact, I kind of like Mysticism as a major because it is a very controllable skill, which helps in controlling leveling.

Yeah, I don't see issues with Atronach and Mysticism characters. Also if you're playing a mage at all you should install LAME mod. Really makes mages more fun to play. And it gets rid of the whole recast all your buffs every 5 seconds deal. As a result your magic skills don't level up so insanely fast.

1. Yes Atronach is a good way to compensate for their weakness, as Absorb is in no way related to weaknesses its just a percentage chance to gain the magicka of the spell negated.
Which takes presidence over damage, I think the system works like this..

Spell cast, target has reflect - % roll to reflect, not reflected - target has absorb - % roll to absorb - not absorbed - target has resist / target has weakness to effect - / + % to damage - repeat.

2. L.A.M.E is indeed a fantastic mod for a caster, it makes some spells work, and opens tactics that are a mages dream into oblivion imo.
As Mysticism spells are given a fair boost as well making reflect and absorb more practical.
Thats of course you're fortunate to be able to mod, which quite a few are unable to sadly.

What leveling problem?

My last three characters were Mages with Alchemy as a major and they had no 'leveling problem'. It's true they leveled fairly quickly to around level 20 where their Alchemy maxed out. Because of their growing Alchemy skill, the steady increase in the power of their potions and poisons kept them safe through that dangerous period. Angel has never worn armor or carried a shield. She relied totally on potions and spells to protect her during that vulnerable early period. A wise Mage will practice some non-magic skills during this time in order to get bonus attributes. Angel bought Armorer training during that time so she could eventually repair staffs damaged by enchanted weapons. It gave her a few nice +3 endurance bonuses.

If anything, rapidly leveling up to level 20 is a benefit. It's there that the rewards start to be worth more than the effort. Since Alchemy is based on the Intelligence attribute, A mage will benefit hugely from the expanded Magicka pool as Intelligence gets those +5 bonuses at each level.

Except for some specific style of roleplaying that call for remaining at the fur and leather level forever, 'leveling-problem' seems to me to be an oxymoron.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Leveling#The_Leveling_Problem

One question he asked went a bit unnoticed... but I want to know aswell



For example, if you have 100 percent WEAKNESS to magicka, the spell would hit you 2 times as hard naturally, if you absorb the said spell, would it give you 2x the Magicka?

This is a quote from that UESPwiki link;



At level 40 I can assure you that Angel is the deadliest thing in Cyrodiil or Oblivion despite not taking "advantage of every bonus that is available to your character when you level up". In fact, She had been down right careless at times. There are several Mage disciplines which, in isolation, could give her this kind of power. She is an expert or master of all the Mage disciplines. It's only necessary to exercise a reasonable amount of good sense as I stated in my earlier post. Practice some non-magic skills between level or get some training.

All of the monsters are big and bad. Angel is small and very very good at what she does.

Deagonx, I doubt weakness has anything to do with the amount of magicka absorbed since the absorb takes place before weakness is even factored in.

i agree. something i read once said that you could exploit the apprentice's weakness thing to create an abnormally powerful heal spell. just give it an insignificant negative effect like -1 fatigue and it'll automatically double all it's effects, both positive and negative. but that was apparently unintentional and has since been fixed.

This is the type of character I play.

I did the following:

Race/six: Altmer (male)
Birthsign: Atronach
Major Skills:
Blade
Heavy Armor
Alchemy
Destruction
Restoration
Illusion
Alteration

Even though I didn't take Mysticism as a major skill, I took the time to abuse the spell absorption from the Lucky Old Lady and standing in front of students in the practice room in order to max out Mysticism and Conjuration. Mysticism in particular for the Telekinesis trick.

I also intentionally went Vampire early on as to help give a little umph into the character to make the beginning of the game easier. I usually stayed at 25 Vampirism, and only let myself go to 50 in dungeons and whatnot.

I waited until level 15 to go close Oblivion Gates, so that the sigil stones would be better. I saved before clicking them, so that I could load if I didn't get one I wanted. My goal was to get 4 sigils stones that gave 15 Spell Absorption, so I could run around with 110 Spell Absorption. Between that and the maxed out Mysticism and Telekinesis trick, this made the Stunted Magicka drawback basically disappear. I then proceeded to the Shivering Isles once I was the appropriate level and got myself enough Madness Ore to make Perfect Madness armor and I enchanted it with said sigil stones.



My conclusion:

The beginning of the game is pretty crippling with the character, but once you get to about level 27-30 or so, you'll whoop ass against everything that gets thrown at you with minimal problems. (The only irritating enemies now are Goblin Warlords).

For further references (and I highly recommend you read over ALL of this before making the character or getting it too far into the game), see:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:End_Game_Optimizing

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Birthsigns#Atronach

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion_talk:Telekinesis#Infinite_High_Level_Casting.2C_nearly_like_god_mode

well i already made my character and played him a bit. he's an altmer with the atronoch sign of course, and the class i made for him was just a slight modification of the mage class: magic main, intelligence and endurance (as far as i know will is useless to an atronoch mage) and all the magic skills except for alchemy which i replaced with block so i could use a staff as a shield sooner.

i tried to talk to another city to start doing the mage's guild quest (i prefer to walk so i level up mostly through combat) but he didnt do too well. i fought a wolf and two scamps, and each brought my health half way down, and despite my 300+ mana pool i still run out of mana absurdly fast. simply casting three fireballs reduces my mana by a third, which makes no sense at all! imagine having this problem as a breton, this is why i stopped making atronoch characters.

i really wanted to try an altmer since it was a race i rarely choose. normally i only choose khajiit rogues(thief, assassin, or both) or breton mages, my first character was a dunmer battlemage (even though i had no idea what i was doing, the guy used a sword but didnt wear armor, he's still the only character that ever closed an oblivion gate), i once made an orc warrior for the arena but i never got through that questline, got stuck at the part where you fight three naked argonians at the same time, seriously they're naked and only one of them has a weapon, a little tiny knife and i'm an orc in metal armor wielding a claymore and i'm nothing to them?! besides that, i got sick of that highly disrespectful redguard, particularly bc he kept calling me an idiot.

i really want to do a mage, but every time i get into combat with the stupid thing it dies. i had once that was a vampire and he died fighting the slaughterfish. the only character i've made that i've ever really gotten far with was an assassin, but i quit him bc something happened to me at the time that made me not want to play a murderer anymore, and i'm still not too enthusiastic about doing it.

This sounded so strange that as a test I made an Altmer to see if I could duplicate your experience. I tried to copy what you did: Magic Specialization, Atronach Birthsign, Intelligence and Endurance as Class Attributes and nothing but magic skills, with the exception of Alchemy. It sounded like you might have given your character Block so I gave mine Block too. I left the prison and found a wolf on the Imperial Isle. Using fireballs, I killed it before it reached me (four shots). After killing the wolf I spammed fireballs until I ran out of Mana to see how many an Altmer with these stats should be able to fire at level 1. My Altmer was able to fire 36 fireballs altogether, including the four I shot at the wolf. You should not be down to 3/4 Mana after casting just 3 fireballs.

Another thing: none of your opponents in the arena should ever be naked. I have to assume you are using mods? That's all I can think of that might be causing you so many problems. What you describe is not normal in a vanilla game.

none of them had armor on, i dont think they were all technically naked, infact i distinctly remember that one of them was wearing rags. and no i've never modded the game, or succeeded in doing so. and besides, after my computer broke i had to reinstall the game so there is no left over corruption from my attempts to alter the game (and irregardless, the only mod i tried was something to add some hats into the game)

Well, I don't know what to tell you, then. My copy of your character was able to fire 36 fireballs. Casting 3 fireballs barely made the slightest dent in her Mana pool. I can't understand why your character's Mana would be depleted by 3/4 after firing 3 fireballs. I also am not clear why your character would have 300 Mana; mine left the prison with 360. Frankly, I have no idea what would cause these problems...

actually it was just an estimate, i didnt actually remember what it was.

i just opened the game and it is infact 360 (technically 410 right now bc i just used one of those mana well things i stumbled upon by shere accident)

If your walking alot, and have the Kotn dlc head to the wayshrines and just spam them untill you regen your magicka..
Otherwise head to IC and Chorral to pick blue steel mushrooms, then all the way to skingrad to harvest flax.
You will gain quite a few restore magicka potions that way.

Finally the last option but one that you may not want to try...
Tha is to try an easy mod to install one of my first infact but download L.A.M.E ( less annoying magic experience ), as it makes the whole magic experience a bit more friendly.
The companion to it RBP ( race balancing project ) is slightly more complex but even without some of the optional files, makes atronach a practical build for those who dislike it in vanilla.

That said RBP adds a ton of weaknesses as well as strengths to races and BS' so its a trade off in if you want to use it.