I've played through the game a couple of times (well, large parts of the game including the MQ; I'm playing again to try to get things I missed before). One thing I've never quite figured out - I know there is a cap on what your armor rating can be (I think it's like 75% or 85%, something like that). If you already have high armor, but you cast a shield spell, will that save your armor from taking the full beating, to preserve your armor condition longer? Seems like I recall that certain enemies can bash down your armor condition pretty quickly.

I'm playing a Spellsword, and considering not taking smithing as a minor skill this time, and trying to figure out strategies to deal with that. I figure I'll try to carry a spare set of armor and spare sword, but weight limitations being what they are sometimes, I'm not sure I'll be able to do that, at least, not until I've got good enchantments and potions of +Strength, +Feather, etc.

Hm? I'm aware of no such limit in Morrowind. There is one in Oblivion (at 85), but unless I've missed something there isn't in Morrowind. I don't use heavy armour that often, though, so I honestly could have missed it.

IIRC, you could make a CE item that would cast all of the bound armor. Whenever the armor gets damaged, just remove the CE item and then equip it again to get a new set of undamaged bound armor. Then you only have to worry about pauldrons and greaves, because these are not covered by the spells.

P.S. Yeah, there's no cap. My armor # is like 290.

Couldn't you make the "bind pauldron" and "bind greaves" spells in the CS? Problem solved.

These slight hassles are why I like unarmored. The first few levels are rough, but when wearing a full CE fortify unarmored set of clothing and jewelry, your armor rating is well above 300. I think it may actually be 390. No repairing. No re-equipping. Good stuff.

I never realized it can be that effective. I might have to try this on my next build.

As for regular AR, what do you mean by %? I don't really understand AR in terms of a percentage...

The fun thing about unarmoured is that its effect increases exponentially, as the square of the skill level multiplied by a constant - once you get up to 100 and (with enchantments) above, your armour rating begins increasing fast. Just make sure you're using the Morrowind Code Patch or you won't actually get the benefit... I'm actually using unarmoured for my current character, and it's certainly very interesting, if not the sort of thing min/maxers would like to use. <_<