Silvonwe, huh? My latest Mortowind mage is called Silonwe.

I used to carry around a bunch of crap but now I limit my mages to no more than about 100 pounds. No more than one staff. No more than two or three lightwieght daggers, preferably fine iron and self enchanted. Limited potion supply. Etc. Found I was having much more fun with a smaller inventory.

Elven is good. I wasn't telling you to wear armor, though. I was pointing out that you'd have more enchanting slots available if you wore something with more pieces. But an armor-wearing mage is a perfectly fine idea; spellswords, battlemages, and sorcerers all generally wear armor.

A whole Elven suit only weighs 35 pounds, though. Not enough to over-encumber the usual character. I suspect you're dragging around stuff that could be kept in a chest in your house, or some such. (And, as we've been discussing, everybody tends to do it. You're not alone. )

i know this is a bit off topic for a mage but if a mage would have a reason to use a bow, what enchantments make sense? I mean you can't put paralysis on the bow(outside of potions) and the only thing I see worth adding is draining health 60pts for 5 seconds or something.

Edit: didn't see your post glargg, well outside of the alchemy apparatuses which is 16lbs, i suppose the ton of arrows i have is also contributing. I have like 200+, 15 strong health/magick potions and a bunch of soul gems for refilling my weapons.
I don't have alot of heavy alchemy reagents and i only have 8 hammers to repair with atm so. probably between all that and some weapons(found a lesser frost staff for 20pts on target) yea i don't have too much else giving me weight lol

There are a lot of ways of making a bow more effective. If you're using poisons, which generally work over time, you can speed things up by including a damaging effect that also works over time. If you're fighting other mages, like necromancers, Silence is a good effect (there is a Bow of Silence in the game.) You can put Command on a bow, and turn enemies into temporary allies. One of my characters, for fun, made a Frenzy bow with a wide area of effect; shoot somebody in a group of enemies, and stand back and watch the fun.

It depends if you want to boost damage or immobilize.

For boosting damage, it is tough to beat shock damage (with an obligatory second of soul trap to help recharge).

Immobilizing bows are great fun for a poison using mage. Here are a couple options (remember to add a second of soul trap to any bow):

1. Demoralize + Turn undead. Both effects at max magnitude and for 1 - 2 seconds. When shot, the foe stows his weapon, turns to flee and takes about a step away (all while you are loading the next arrow). Then the effect wears off, they draw their weapon and start to charge - right into the next shot. In effect you can keep them dancing between the run away and charge animation. Caution: If the foe has friends around, they can still swarm you of course so it works best vs solo foes.

2. Drain speed 100 x 1 second. The real beauty of this effect is that when you drop a foe's speed to zero, it also brings his mind to zero - that is, he goes stupid for a second and 'forgets' that he was just shot. If you are hidden when you shoot, you will remain hidden after impact. This is a very very deadly bow for a sneakster. The fact that the bow actually stops a foe cold for a second is really just a bonus. Getting the effect in your spellbook (and thus, available at the enchanting altar) can a bit tricky. There are no spells for this available for purchase, but there are a few ways to get the effect. My character simply did the Orrery DLC quest to get it, but there are several other ways to get it. Note that if you know any 'drain attribute' effect, you can create spells/enchantments to drain any attribute. If interested, this link gives details: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Drain_Attribute

I′ve mentioned this a couple of times, having a weapon work together with a spell is another good idea me thinks. Lothran has a spell combining all weaknesses 100% for 20 secs and then he has an axe doing all those elemental damages. Pretty effective, plus he can use another spell within those 20 secs which has all the elemental attacks too.

Of course this can be translated to a bow; either the bow has the weakness effects or it has the elemental attacks. Saves charges and saves magicka if one were to use only bow or spell Needless to say this approach works best one-on-one.

Yep, bow + spell works great.

Buffy will often 'chase her spell with an arrow', using a weakness to poison spell to 'prep' her target for the poisoned arrow that follows. A touch of drain speed in the spell will help hold the target still in between spell and arrow.

She will also often 'chase her arrow with a spell', perhaps following a poisoned arrow with a demoralize/turn undead spell. Poisoning a foe then commanding them to run away and die is quite fun.

One of her fave tactics though vs a group of foes is to toss a command spell in the group. Then she leisurely waits and congratulates the generally badly wounded sole survivor with a lethal arrow.

A mage who wants to fight too, can conjure a full set of bound armor and a weapon of choice. So, no need to actually carry real ones. The nine slots of worn items should each fortify your intelligence. This gives a 24 point boost to your character's magicka from a grand soul for each item, which is 4 points more than you would get from a fortify magicka enchantment. Similarly, you can enchant a set of clothing to fortify your strength so that you can better carry a load of loot back to a merchant after you are done casting spells to clear out a dungeon. My mage also has a spell to fortify strength 100 points/invisibility for 38 seconds. That way I can cast it repeatedly on the way to town if I need to carry an extra 500 over the strength clothing limit.

If I go to college to learn astronomy, I must take other required courses to complete my degree so that my education is well rounded. Why would your mage not learn something like hand-to-hand to improve strength?

Because she doesn't need strength for anything, and has better things to do with her time.

ok but lets say i didn't want those types of effects on the bow and just want something that increases the damage per shot to kill them in 1-2 arrows?

Then go with Damage Health I guess, and experiment how strong you want it while still have a good enough amount of uses.

Eh, I like this mage class better

-------RACE------

Male High Elf

-------Class-------

Alchemy (SUPER important!)

Destruction

Conjuration

Restoration

Illusion/ Alteration (Mainly for leveling)

Blade (for if you run out of magic and enchanted with +magicka absorption sigil stone)

-------Birth Sign------

Atronach (No hate)

I recently used this and love it. True pure mage in my opinion. Yours seems more like a stealth/ illusionist mage IMO

well i just tried: Damage Health 15pts for 1 second, Drain health 30pts for 1 second and Weakness to magick 100% for 1 second with a 30 uses and it seems necromancers and Conjurers die in 1 hit. I haven't tried it against armored enemies though so i'm unsure about that. I know flame atronach seems to take 4-5 hits to kill compared to my dagger in sneak mode so probably not a great weapon to use against that type. So it's sorta working how I'd like. But probably will be obsolete soon enough. However, i did go dungeon diving then past few hours trying to acquire journeyman apparatuses and was successful, all 4 are updated to the level requirement, despite multiple reloads refreshing the loot. Pretty happy though with that

I often use a bow enchanted with Shock against daedra. It's effective against all but the big guy made of flying rocks.

Not an expert here but I think that weakness to magic is wasted since it′s only the following attacks that makes use of it.

How is that stealth? Or illusionist? She won't be doing any of that.

I have played a mage like you have posted many times (except i never use the most imbalanced birthsigh out there, but appretice and don't use weapons at all).

The pure mage in my opinion relly and use only magic. That is sole definition for me..... It doen't mean that he is good or bad characterer, that he sneaks or run in battle, that he steals or give to the poor. That is solely on roleplay.

Destruction, Conjuration and Alteration together with staves are forte of mine planned mage. She will use that. She will synergize her spells with stave that she will hold. Against one enemy she will use her staff for protection (therefore the block, armorer and to some point light armor-as i wrote i wanna try something with that) together with nice movement to create space between them(acrobatics). If facing more than one enemy, she will summon meat shield (conjuration). That is pure mage no matter how you look at it, well one would want to call her wizard maybe, but there is no difference to start with and she is SHE and not he. (Gandalf was same)

My wife calls these "the rolling stone".

FYI, 800 points of poison damage in under 30 seconds beats any magic damage you can enchant. With the journeyman gear you would be able to make a poison that does 400 points in under half a minute if you master alchemy.

Yeah, I fully agree about the poison being supreme. My Wild Elf character would be impossible to play without alchemy, since she can't enter cities (to buy spells.) But she can take down nearly anything with a nicely poisoned arrow.

I've done it before, long long time ago. Was the hardest build I ever did. Mainly because the hill was so steep to climb.

I was under the impression that the drain health and damage health were magick? So 100% magick should technically work i mean i haven't tried a bow without that to see the difference but it's still killing some mobs with 1 hit

It's killing with one hit because the other effects are strong enough. The Weakness to Magic isn't doing anything at all.

Weakness to Magic only works for subsequent spells. It does not work on the first cast, but rather applies the weakness so that it is in effect for whatever other magic is cast during its duration. (That includes the Weakness to Magic effect, so the enemy becomes even weaker to magic on the second hit, and so on.) The point of Weakness to Magic (or Weakness to Fire, etc.) is to increase the damage caused by the next spell.

But my point was drain health/damage health is magick. Weakness to magick should increase the strength of the previous two because it's magick spells, because magick is plural. It's not saying "weakness to elements" i mean if you think about it it's a pretty Ambiguous term here

A Weakness spell doesn't work for magic effects that are in the same spell with it. It only works for effects that are applied after it, while it's in effect.

Cast "weakness to fire" on a Flame Atronach. Then cast a fireball on it, while the Weakness is in effect. The Atronach will take damage, even though it's normally immune to fire.

you lost me with the whole "doesn't work with magick effects that are in the same spell with it" Drain health and Damage health are both offensive and after looking on various forums including gamefaqs it seems drain health does indeed benefit from weakness to magick. I cannot say for damage health but regardless it seems i did something right.

Maybe I can explain. If you cast a weakness to magic spell on an NPC it will make them weak to the next spell that hits them until the timer from your weakness to magic spell runs out.

So, if you use spellmaking to create a spell that does damage health 10 points in one second plus weakness to magic 50% for five seconds and cast it on an NPC the NPC will take 10 points of health damage and will be 50% weak to magic for five seconds. If you cast that same spell again before the five second timer runs out, then the NPC will take 15 points of damage and will be weak to magic for another five seconds.

The weakness from the first casting affects the damage from the next casting, and so on.

If you use two spells with different names, then the weaknesses will stack, but unlike spells, successive strikes from the same enchanted weapon will stack weakness if weakness to magic is used.