Hi, so I'm fairly new to Oblivion (I played it a while back and never got into it, but recently got it again) and I made a warrior character the other day just to get a feel for the mechanics of the game and I've gotten used to it. Now I'm playing as a mage and all is going good, but I have a couple questions. Can you only equip spells on your bumper (xbox) button, or can you put them on your hands like in Skyrim too? I kind of figure that this isn't possible, or I would have come accross it by now, but just want to make sure.

My other question is what do you mage players out there wear? All robes, Light armor, Heavy armor? I just want some direction. Mage has been my favorite play through in Morrowing and Skyrim, but I havn't done it in Oblivion yet. Thanks

You should be able to remap your controls to put spell casting on any button you want, but yeah, there is only one spell casting button and it is independant of your equipped weapon, so you can have a weapon out and cast spells at the same time.

A mage can wear anything, but there is a spell efficiency penalty when wearing armor. This is most important with spells like command, fear and turn undead. The most powerful spell in the game is level 25 and at higher levels, you will encounter enemies that are higher than level 25. However, a level 25 spell will affect any enemy in the game. The result is that if your character is wearing no armor, their level 25 command, fear and turn undead spell will work on any enemy in the game as long as your character is not wearing any armor. Put some armor on, however, and the spell efficiency penalty will kick in and drop your level 25 spell to a level 24, which makes that armor penalty pretty significant for high level casters using those types of spells.

I like playing "pure" mages that wear no armor and don't use weapons other than staves. Since there is a seperate attack and casting button, a mage can switch between using charges on the staff and casting spells by just pressing different buttons. Youy can combine a weakness spell with a elemental damage staff to great effect. Staves also work well to block.

But you can also play all sorts of hybrids that use weapons and armor to varying degrees. With spellmaking, enchanting and a wide variety of spell effects to choose from, playing a mage in Oblivion can be very rewarding.

I like the no armor and staves... I think I'll do spell and for back up, if I run out of magicka, a staff equiped that I can just pull out when I need to. Thanks for the advice!

What's "adn"? or was this a typo and you meant and?
Anyway i'm not trying to be a pure mage per se but does the magic efficiency penalty affect all spells or just the command dead and repel undead..etc?
Kinda why i haven't started wearing armor outside of a shield to level up my light armor little by little.

wow..... all i can say is wow. Yes I meant and. gosh...

Pure mages can be very powerful until you run into enemies with spell reflection and spell absorbtion. Spell reflection can be particularly deadly. On trick when facing an enemy with spell reflection is to cast a weakness spell, (like a custom weakness to magic and weakness to shock 100% each for five seconds) and watch to see if it reflects. If it does, run until the spell wears off. If it doesn't, then follow it up with a couple quick shock spells that are not going to be strong enough to kill you if reflected.

You can also deal with such enemies with conjuration or illusion magic. Good luck!

Yeah, I can't type for crap, which is why I game with a controller rather than keyboard/mouse.

The spell efficiency effects all spells, but a 5% penalty on a destruction spell just shaves a little damage off, whereas a 5% penalty on a command, fear or turn undead spell may be the difference between the spell working or failing.

The actual amount of the penalty varies between a maximum of 20% and a minimum of 5 %, depending on the character's skill in the type of armor they are wearing.

Thanks!

I not only find it possible but very fun and rewarding. You can become very powerful this way, while balancing it with no armor and watching your health.

You could enchant a full set of your clothing with Grand Soul Gems to Fortify Intelligence. That would be nine items, a hood, shirt, pants, shoes, the iron shackles you start with, a necklace, two rings and a light shield. If you carry a staff, which is two-handed, then the shield is not going to interfere with your character's spell efficiency but will give the spell effect. So the combined total should give you an extra 200+ magicka.

Well right now, i'm still level 7 haven't been training my majors atm outside of mercantile and archery when i need to. What would be the penalty for level 7-9?
Assuming i'm wearing a armor set(without a helmet), like boots, chestplate, shield, gloves and it's light armor.

It is in your jurnal on spell page.

more on that is on tip part: using armor here:

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

Your present Spell Effectiveness is displayed on your Magic menu.

Edit: Ninja'd again. (I should learn to look for new posts, when I've been away from keyboard in the middle of posting.)

so if a full suit of light armor decreases it to 85% for example and you're not a journeyman yet, when you are a journeyman it'll decrease it to 95%? According to that link it's 20% when level 5 skill and 5% when 50(journeyman) - 100(master). Unless i'm getting myself confused here

Well, the armor penalty on magic is a reduction of 5% to 20%, depending on skill level. The 85% is the maximum armor rating you can have.

I'm talking about Spell efficiency % and how armor decreases it not the percentage of armor rating. With robes and hood it's 100% spell efficiency seeing how there's no armor equipped and it doesn't decrease, however according to that link a full suit of armor without being journeyman in light armor or heavy reduces it to 80-85% spell efficiency, so i'm asking if being Journeyman to Master make a full suit of armor to 95%(5% decrease) for spell Efficiency?

If you discipline yourself, and never wear armor, you will be able to anticipate situations better, and learn how to deal with them.

My mages often run away in the early levels. A lot.

Also, elemental shield, will always be better than elemental resist. Because: the game thinks elemental shield adds to armor rating. So if you wear only robes or clothing to have 100% spell effectiveness, you can enchant, or pick up a random enchanted item in loot, an elemental shield on one of your clothing items. Giving you an armor rating, without the spell casting penalty. My former (maybe about four years ago) uber mage, used to wear street clothes (Heinrich's Shirt/Black Shirt, Heinrich's Pants, Hunter's Moccassins and Green Robe Hood, with three clothing items enchanted with 25% Elemental Shield, thus giving him an Armor Class of 75, with still 100% spell effectiveness.

These days however, my mage usually runs at about 7% elemental shield (usually shock cuz that hurts the most) and relies on his fingers of death to do the rest.

edit: just saw the discussion in the other thread. I don't want any trouble. *Daddy slowly backed away*

It doesn't matter if you have full set or not.

And yep if you are master you will have only 5% decrease.

well it does matter technically, each piece of armor lowers the efficiency rating of magick, this I do know as i was looking at the light armor I recently acquired and it dropped it to 85% but one or two pieces drops it to 95 or 93%

It'd be nice if I can find a good fireshield ring though, game keeps trolling me with everything but fire resistance ?_?

By the time you get it, you probably won't need it. At least that's how it works for me!

yea, a shield of frost resistance and now a ring of frost resistance. ?.?

Par for the course.

You don't need all that junk anyway. Real Mages don't need no steenkin' magic rings!

Tell that to Mannimarco he uses Necromancer Amulet and a enchanted Helmet

Not in Oblivion. Although he'd like to.

The great thing about Oblivion when it comes to mage, is how much flexability that you have, Spellmaking and you can enchant 25% resist Fire/Frost/Shock Shields, which counts towards your armor rating but isn't counted as wearing armor if you put it on clothing.