Hey!

I finally found a character that Im having fun with. Its a Breton full mage born under the sign of the Atronach.

I roleplay him a lot and I really want him to be a total mage and nothing else. The only thing he uses aside from magic is alchemy, so healing and magicka potions and poisons.

But now Im stuck. I dont know which attributes to raise during level-up. Intelligence is clear, but what else? Willpower is of no use to me, since I am an Atronach. Strength and Endurance don't fit to my character as a full mage. He is supposed to be physically weak. Agility is useless too. Speed could be okay I guess, but I dont want my character to get to fast so that it gets unrealistic. So I plan on stopping leveling speed at about ... 60? I dont know.
Personality is absoloutly useless especially since I use Illusion and have access to Charm spells. And Luck ... I wanted to take that but I read a bit about it and it seems to be not as good as I thought. The skill increases vanish after the skills reach 100 and other than that, theres only few things that are improved by luck. And beside that, it is also unrealistic to train luck. You have it or you dont have it. 50 luck seems perfect to me, because its completly random if you are lucky or not lucky.

So what attributes to level up? Intelligence will by the way have reached the 100 quite soon. Im level 3 and do already have 65 Intelligence, so considering I get +5 every level-up (I use Oblivion XP so I will) I will have maximized it out at level 10 and then I have no attribute left that I actually want to increase.

I think Agility would be perfectly appropriate for a mage, myself. I would think a mage would want to be as agile as possible (leaning backwards, to the sides, crouching, etc) to avoid blows from physical weapons when she gets surrounded or when someone sneaks up from behind.

When I play a magic-oriented character I use http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11237. Wilful Resiistance makes Willpower a very important Attribute, no matter what Birthsign the character has chosen. I would recommend taking a look at the mod, if you haven't already. It brings a little Morrowind into Oblivion.

Endurance is not the same thing as Strength. Your character can be physically weak but still able to run great distances. I think Endurance is a great Attribute for Mages.

Yes that mod looks ok to me too Besides I think one of the loading screens in Oblivion says that willpower affects your ability to resist magic, even if it′s not the case here

Thank you, but since Im a Breton Atronach I really dont need this resist magic. I absorb 50% of the magic anyway and the other 50% are already weakened through my racial resistance. I also plan on fortifying the Absorption with Enchantments.

I could go with Endurance until its about ~50 I guess (currently 30). And Speed to about ~70 (currently 38).

Your atronach 50% spell absorption means that you absorb 100% of half the spells thrown at you. Absorption is all or none, and it is checked before your magic resistance.

Your Breton 50% magic resistance resists 50% of all spells thrown at you.

You are correct that willpower will not help your atronach (assuming you don't care too much about the tiny fatigue component).

Intelligence, agility and speed are most important for your pure mage in my opinion.

Endurance can be very important if you want your mage to be a hitpoint tank - - but I ignore it because I like the 'glass cannon' danger of low hit points - I like my mage characters to intentionally be fragile (RP).

Strength can be helpful for hauling loot - - but I ignore that also because I envision a mage as weak. (Do you want to walk around at later levels listening to 'Look at the muscles on you!' Lol.) I also prefer the challenge of getting rich slower - although feather can sort of fix that. Again, an RP choice for me.

Luck can be a hotly debated attribute. Without trying to open the luck debate, let me simply say that I ingnore it.

Personality is trumped by a mage's ability to charm the pants off anyone. It depends on the nature of your character though. My character is a chatty gregarious little thing, so she does toss points into personality for RP reasaons.

Anyways, just some thoughts to consider or ignore.

But why is agility important for a mage?

It is not super duper important. It does however help keep you from getting staggered on those rare ocassions when your mage gets hit. I like to minimize being staggered, so I like to increase it. It depends on how you want to view your mage. I tend to see them as weak, low on hitpoints, but pretty quick and nimble to survive. It isn't that agility is so critical, it is just that after intelligence, nothing else is really super critical for an atronach pure mage.

My findings on luck with a spellcaster:

After your skills hit 100, adding points to luck continues to decrease the magicka cost of your CUSTOM spells only. By about every three points you add to luck. I have one mage that uses 95% custom spells. Some of these spells, when originally made, were on the highest draining of spells, as I add points to luck, those spells can now be cast two times in a very short time.

I might add the observation that the way "luck" is implemented in the game, you could as easily consider it "concentration" or "focus," and argue that it's logical for one's focus to improve as one practices one's skills.

I'd go so far as to say that the game isn't modeling actual "luck" at all, since the level of that attribute doesn't affect random things like the amount or quality of the loot you find.

usually when i think of mages, i think of old men. so i understand the 'speed' reasoning BUT consider that speed does not mean 'running'. At speed 100, if u do NOT press the run key, ur character will not run. also, speed means how quickhanded u r, which fits a trained spellcaster well.

my mages never have more than moderate agility, but have high willpower, regardless of how it is implemented: it is a 'mental' attribute, so i pump it.

now, if u role play a high intellignce mage, u could pefectly pump personality too - speechcraft comes to mind when thinking of mages. also mercantile (ie, knowing value of things and how to reason negotiations).

Never can go wrong with Endurance, health is always a good thing and the earlier you max endurance the better, all the other stats you can max whenever you want and still get the same results in the end, but the later you work on Endurance, the lower your max health will be. That being said, if you wanna RP a mage that is kind of like a glass cannon type, then Endurance wouldn't be the best option.

You're right. For most characters pumping endurance hard and early is good. :goodjob:

You're right also that for a glass cannon, it can be a neat 'live on the edge' thing to ignore it. Ignoring endurance is not for the faint of heart. Buffy is at her top level of 20 and is quite proud of her endurance at 30 and tiny red bar (117 hp). That is to say she is proud that she can go anywhere and survive. And she normally runs around with an armor rating of about. . . 6. Lol. Now in fairness, she is not as glass as she could be. Her father was a Breton who gifted her with 50% magic resistance. She is also a darn good alchemist; that is, she can pop two potions and instantly boost her armor rating from poop to 85 for as long as any fight might last. Of course her motto is 'don't touch me' and she goes to great lengths to make it so.

I suppose to really push the glass cannon thing, one might consider an Almer with the Apprentice birthsign and no armor with base endurance. Lol. oo:

Before you dismiss the mod entirely, note that the effects of Willpower affects all NPCs as well as the player.

Welkind Stones are a huge help when you're a low level Atronach, and you can make some pretty basic restore magicka potions with alchemy too.

For a Breton Atronach, I'd take Agility because it will help govern your ability to withstand knockdown effects which can be pretty devastating to a character who needs to be standing to cast.

While magick is pretty well broken (local slang for something that's way over-powered in a game), eventually you're going to have to deal with close-quarters melee combat, and a paralysis staff is gonna be a must.

If you get knocked down from a warhammer or something though you'll take a hefty beating from it, so I'd take agility just to counteract that possible annoyance considering you'll probably have low HP if you're not looking to rank up Endurance for an HP tank battle-mage type of character.

There is another reason to consider Agility. Angel, my Breton Atronach pure Mage has developed a curiosity about archery and has been training in between each level with Shameer in Skingrad. Her high agility will be an asset if she gets into an exchange of arrows. Her older sister, (my previous character) was, in a sense killed by an archer. An arrow drove her off a bridge into a lava flow. Angel dreams of someday visiting that bridge and paying that archer back in the same coin.

Unlike Buffy, Angel is not really a glass cannon although she has never worn armor and normally uses only a dagger, her poisons. potions, and spells. She has received enough armorer training to be able to repair a staff if it is damaged by a Disintegrate Weapons enchantment and she has availed herself of the increased endurance. She also has leveled very rapidly and I can guarantee that at the high levels, the monsters are big and bad and they come in bunches. They all begin taking advantage of those special perks that come with high skill levels for example the melee fighters can disarm you; Archers can paralyze you; etc. They more frequently have nasty enchantments on their weapons. Angel can leave huge piles of the baddest bodies on the ground behind her if the situation calls for it.

APprentice is better for mages, Atronach is best for warriors. My 2 cents.

Technically, it depends VASTLY on how you wish to play your mage. If you are willing to spend all the time collecting ingredients and materials for +magicka means, then the Atronach is a mage's best friends. +50 spell absorption through other means basically means you absorb every single enchanted blade's charge that comes at you, and every spell cast at you.

I personally believe that the Apprentice is more suited to thieves (who will have the least exposure to damage if they are sneaky enough), and the Mage to fighters (who will eventually want to delve into the Restoration, Alteration, and possibly Mysticism schools). Save the atronach for those who have the means to cope with the burden -> pure mage.

My opinion, for what little it's worth, is that both of them are good for creating mages that require a bit more attention during gameplay. Apprentice increases weakness to magic, which requires a slightly more defensive gameplay, while Atronach forces the character to manage magicka, but allows a very aggressive gameplay. The Atronach mage is superior in combat against other mages, or against creatures who cast. Wear a couple of items that reflect melee damage, and you've got a very durable battlemage.

An atronach mage simply needs to use alchemy. The ingredients for Restore Magicka are plentiful, and one can easily hotkey either a stack of Restore Magicka potions, or for low level mages, just a stack of flax seed.

Buffy's birthsign is the mage. Fortunately, we are on PC and, at her request, I changed her to atronach so she could try it out for awhile. She quickly amassed gear to boost the spell absorption to 100%. She could easlily top her self off with her potions and even telekinesis spells. It was very powerful and not hard to deal with.

At her request again however, I changed her back to mage. Why?
- She is somewhat compulsive about repairing, recharging, eating, drinking water, etc. She found the extra chore of keeping her blue topped up, while not hard, to be simply another easy but tedious task.
- She is a very fragile glass cannon, and extremely good at avoiding getting hit by weapons or spells. She found she almost never had the oportunity to absorb anything because of how she played. She would have to find and hug a will-o-the-wisp or seek out a fire trap to absorb anything - that was horribly foreign to her policy of not letting foes even see her, much less damage her.
- She didn't really need the extra magicka. As a Bosmer with the mage birthsign, she has plenty of blue to support her needs as a mystic archer.

Clearly, atronach is a choice that depends greatly on your taste and playstyle. I found it worked wonderfully many characters ago on both a Redguard Warrior and an Altmer Battlemage - both of those characters were built to give and take plenty of hits/spells. For a character who goes to great lengths to avoid getting hit however, Buffy found it was not her cup of Tamika's.

Just our two septims.

Yes, this is what I feel the Atronach is all about. It's for aggressive, non-stealthy characters, to help protect them from the folly of charging mindlessly into battle.

The point about time spent getting recharged or collecting ingredients for alchemy is a valid argument against being an Atronach. It is a source of pleasure for Angel who considers herself an Alchemist by profession. She often has only a partial charge of Magicka but her powerful potions can quickly pump that up to max and keep it there in a fight no matter how fast she is casting spells.

For anyone who wants go through the preset quests without a lot of side activity it would be best to have a Mage birthsign.

For a Mage style glass cannon you could try the Apprentice but most people already know my feelings about that. I consider it the equivalent of a firefighter wearing gasoline soaked cloths.