Hey! Well I've been playing Oblivion for a little bit now and my level 14 Breton is having troubles... he majors in everything magic except he has blade instead of alchemy... but more to the point, I don't seem to be doing any real damage. I'm using Flash Bolt because Blazing Spear is taxing on my mana and I can only use it 4 times b4 running out. My Flash Bolt does almost nothing to an opponent's health and if I don't summon my Daedroth, my fights can take minutes simply because 10+ Flash Bolts only does half the health of my enemies and now i'm just hacking away at them... with the occasional Flash Bolt doing another 20 damage when my magicka regenerates. So I'm just wondering, if I'm just that bad or if this is to be expected throughout the game? Please let me know THANKS!

Edit: I'm playing on Normal difficulty... or I assume it's normal since the difficulty bar is centered...

How high is your intelligence? Sounds like it's pretty low, no insult How high is you destruction?
You need some fortify magic close some oblivion gates for fortify magic sigil stones (save before you grab the stone and reload if you don't like it) you might want to wait until level 17 as you get fortify magic 50 who is maximum.
You might also make some restore magic potions, the self made one restore magic over time keeping you filled up.
Your conjugation is excellent as you can summon Daedroth, you could leave most of the fighting to it and just help.
You might want to make a weakness to fire spell, something like weakness to fire 100% for 3 seconds or longer if you can, then you cast a fire based spell it does double damage.
Some creatures resist fire, might also try shock.
Make your own spells, fire damage 30+weakness to fire 100 for 3 seconds on target, second and later hits does double damage.

If you get real mad make a fire damage 30+weakness to fire 100 for 3 seconds+ weakness to magic 100 for 3 seconds. Adjust damage 30 to that suits you, warning you might want to turn up difficulty if using this spell.

Post your full build, but my initial response is to just turn the difficulty down, since Oblivion is a fickle game as is. You oobviously need more mana and a better spell(s).

Thank you for the quick response, my intelligence is 84. <--- Low? Anyway, my destruction skill is 58. My magicka is only 278 .... does higher intelligence make spells do more damage?

Nope. Higher Intelligence gives you more magicka, higher Destruction skill makes you do more damage with Destruction spells.

Presumably you are aware that different types of enemies have resistance to various types of magic. Dunmers, for instance, are almost immune to fire, just as Nords are partially immune to frost.

At level 14, most of the deadra you're meeting are strong against fire; you'd be better off using a shock-based magic against them. Save the fire for the undead, who are mostly weak to it. Also, that fire spell you're using is an Apprentice-level spell; if you're really into using Destruction magic, you really should be making your own spells. Combine that fire damage with Weakness to Fire, and then when you cast it several times in a row, each time will do more damage.

Destruction magic is very magicka inefficient. You can do more damage with a Restoration spell like Absorb Health on Touch, for less magicka. Likewise, Illusion magic's Command and Frenzy spells can take out large numbers of enemies very quickly.

Edit: I missed the "Blazing Spear" reference, when I mentioned Apprentice level. I think your main problem is that you need some shock spells (most enemies are weak to it), and you need to expand into other types of magic.

Also, this game gets harder as you level because of how the level scaling works. Every time you level up, the world levels up with you. Your intelligence is fine (actually, pretty high) for a level 14 mage, what you need is higher willpower and alchemy to help your magicka regen and allow your Restore Magicka potions to get more powerful at this point, and also search out Fortify Magicka enchantments and Sigil Stones to raise your magicka even further. I'd also suggest going to the Arcane University and crafting some new offensive spells to use that are in between the flash bolt and blazing spear. Oh, and get your blades enchanted while you're at it, sounds like you need that.

Thanks guys for all the help! I just got Mehrune's Razor (took 5 hours of gameplay because I had to wait for Daedroth to kill everything...) but now i'm back at the Arcane University crafting my own spells and enchanting my new sword. Tell me what you guys think...

New spell: Incinerate--40 fire damage for one second and 100% weakness to fire for one second
New sword: Frozen Fire--15 fire damage per strike

The first spell... The weakness part needs to be a longer duration, to give you time to shoot again. The weakness isn't applied until after the damage is calculated, so it doesn't count on the first strike.

The sword is good. Bear in mind that it will be useless against Fire Atronachs, and weak against scamps and clannfears. It will be good against vampires and undead, though.

Thanks all

Your fire spell wont be effective because the weakness to fire will wear off before your next strike. Unfortunately the weakness won't apply to the first damage spell you cast, only the subsequent damage spells cast within the duration of the weakness. Therefore you must make the weakness last long enough for you to hit the opponent with your NEXT attack. Most effective duration seems to be 3-5 of weakness seconds for most.

Also remember weakness to magicka stacks, so 100% for 3 seconds cast at an opponent = 100% weakness. If you hit him within those 3 seconds with the same spell it will 'stack' and become 200% weakness for 3 seconds. Again = 400% weakness, so long as you continue to hit them before the spell wears off. (e.g. 3 seconds)

From what I can tell it looks like your leveling up too fast. What I would do is focus on getting Destruction up to 100 that way you can get the Advanced and Master Level spells. Those will do a ton of damage although it will eat up your magicka. I had a Breton that was at LV 26 and he had Destruction Mastered and I could kill an Imperial Legion Guard with 2 Electrocutions. At a Level of 14 you will only need 1 Electrocution and maybe one other spell to kill the same Imperial Legion Guard.

It should be expected the game scales to your level it will get harder as you get stronger you can turn down the slider to make it easier or if you like the challenge turn it all the way up i did it at the start of the game when i was a bad guy it was very difficult considering how strong i was the enemies had power to do real damage

If Destruction is a Major skill, as is likely, don't you think that might worsen the problem of leveling too fast?

You may want to try making some cheap Paralyze spells (touch or ranged) or Paralyze + Weakness to X (Fire, Frost, etc.) and then follow up with your elemental damage spells or weapons.

It depends on how high his Destruction skill is already. From what he told us it looks like he's pretty far down the road around Journeyman in the range of I'm guessing 50-65.

I think the OP should be aware of what 'scaling x leveling' means...

Your spells do NOT get more powerful the higher your level, nor the higher your Destruction. A spell Drain Health 100 needs only Destruction skill 26 and will cost you about 50-60 mana to cast. And when Destruction is at 100... Will do the same damage, 100 Health. Only, will cost you around 10, so you can cast more times. Thats it.

I mention this because the OP may think (as I thought in the beginning) that at level 30 he will do 'awesome damage', like 30 x something... Not unless modded.

So what you do is 'stacking'. There is a lot about this here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Spell_Making#Spell_Stacking

In which case, he'd have to raise it by about 40 to get to 100, and that means, at a minimum, 4 more levels. So now he's at level 18 or 19, and facing even tougher enemies than before.

There's nothing wrong with the Journeyman level spells against level 14 enemies. The key is using the right spells, and that almost always means making custom spells with multiple effects.

Yes increase weakness to 3 seconds,
Second hit would do 40 in fire damage, against the Fire Atronach because of the weakness.
You can also add weakness to magic after weakness to fire, this way every hit would increase damage.
You can also do the same with enchanted weapons
You will find the game much easier.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_em5ppoijwUU/TNmrhRhvPAI/AAAAAAAACnM/GGdUAGOWK2k/s1600/step+up+game.jpg

http://www.jinx.com/Content/Product/248p_0c_1b.jpg

Its a good thing you didn't take Alchemy as a major, now you can spam it without it leveling you up. Have you been utilizing training? Also, I'm not sure if you know, or if anybody else mentioned it but your mana requirements will go down once you raise you destruction.