Theres no reason at all to wear cloth unless you use a mod.

This is laughable.

Yes...those silly ROLE players...not wanting to wear a full suit of armor as mages. How laughably ludicrous :shakehead:

Since when does it have to make "sense"? Does magic itself make sense? There is a reason those old pen and paper games were designed the way they were, and they usually allowed a lot more freedom for the use of imagination than a video game.

The only armour I wear is my awesome boots of sneaking. My robes and mage gear give me about +80 magicka, 125% Magicka regeneration bonus, and 29% cheaper destruction spells. I fight dragons alone this way on Expert and it's awesome. Armour just weighs me down and makes it so I can't carry as much loot out of a dungeon. Then again why would you need armour when no one can touch you? :ninja:

Haha best line I've ever heard on these forums. Cheers!

Nopers

Aesthetic reasons is really it. Light armor (or heavy) is just about better and more convenient than armor spells, and more effective, too. That said, I still wear robes on my magically oriented character -- it just fits better with him (albeit, he's technically got gloves and boots of light armor on, but they look like they could just as easily be considered clothing as opposed to light armor, so I just pretend they are the former (though I'll take them off if I need the bonus from armor spells, unfortunate, but whatever)).

Way too many people talking about high-to-max level characters here. If you are playing Skyrim for the 'destination' then there are probably better alternatives out there. No, I'm not saying go out of your way to intentionally gimp yourself, but as a leveling mage, cloth works just fine.

Nopers

The biggest reason to use light or heavy armor in lee of wearing a robe and just casting defense spells as a mage is if you don't like having to break the flow of combat to pause and change out spells as often. In my view I guess you could blame it on the UI... lol. But the way armor cap works there isn't any real advantadge or disadvantadge to any method of defense. Just go with what you like the looks of. The designers were graphics wh... er... sell outs.

regen only works out of combat, that's why it's a problem

In the early game, robes are a good bet for mages just because of the magicka regen and cost reduction. If you start enchanting things yourself, however, in the long run, the only advantages clothing will end up having over armor are that it's lighter in your inventory and it doesn't slow you down (both of which can be compensated for in armor with the Steed Stone). Personally, I like the look of robes and custom-enchanted clothing (Hammerfell Outfit FTW – you get a cape!), and casting Oak/Stone/Ebony Flesh spells constantly to stay armored leveled up my Alteration skill super fast … but you do get more effortless protection just by wearing some armor.

I only wish it didn't feel penalized in the game mechanics to mix and match armor and clothing. Mage Armor requires you to be wearing ONLY armor, and most armor perks require you to be wearing ALL armor. Since my favorite look is robes-with-bracers or armor-with-hood, that makes certain perks seem less useful…

Im trying to stay alive and have fun with a pure mage. But getting pwnd by anyone waving something pointy in my general direction is getting extremely tiresome. I have ebony skin & cloak spells on consantly and im still getting one-shotted by any and every melee enemy. Im wearing robes because a real mage wears clothes! But the spells for defence in Skyrim are pitiful. The alteration spells for defence need a major buff because atm they are pointless unless your RP'ing your character. They dont last long enough, they dont protect enough, and they cost WAY WAY to much to cast. Sure I can make zero casting gear but the base cost is still way overboard for feeble protection. You know its taking the proverbial when even a cursory run over the smith bench by a noob smith can make armor 10x better than my crappy armor spells.

Armor for a mage? Hell yes! Dont do without it unless you want punishment on anything above adept difficulty.

Oh and yeah Im using all spells at my disposal, its still crap compared to just wearing armor and being done with it.

Robes are so stylish especially the Thalmor robes

?
With three perks i couldnt even made ebony armor nor glass...
And again, the biggest advantage alteration have over armor is that you level it up while entering a zone with enemies,while a mage in armor have to get hit for leveling light or heavy armor. Without perks,armor didnt offer good protection anyway.

I'm L26 and have a number of regen bonuses (Morokei, Arch-Mage robes, ring that gives me 60%) and now my magicka replenishes almost as fast as I can use it.

More generally, I use the Arch-Mage robes and then some light armor boots and gauntlets, not out of dedication to any playstyle but just because they seem my best alternatives. Works out just fine, even if I do have some guy with an axe killing me with one shot every now and then. Oh, and I rarely remember to cast any of the Alteration protection spells, much less invest any perks in it.

Without the perks armor won't do much good, so unless you want to spend quite a few perks in armor I say stick with robes and clothes.

I am lvl 55 mage and went the no armor route. I haven't regretted it at all. Most fights are over before ebonyflesh (or whichever version you have atm) expires so it isn't a problem at all. I learned stagger perk right away and it was a big help. That combined with summoning an Atronach got me through most everything. Now I have the stability perk and Dragonhide so I can get 99 seconds of the best armor class available to armor wearers, anyway. Most fights are over before 99 seconds is up. Also, if you have the Ethereal shout this will allow you to re-cast Dragonhide if you need to in a longer battle. Although, when I bring a follower who can conjure and two Dead Thralls who can also conjure, that makes 7 fighters on my team! Sometimes fights are over before I noticed the red dots! Also going around with DH and dual bound swords lets my mage pretend he is a tanked up Nord.

There's not a whole lot of mechanics-based reasoning for using cloth, but I'm old school. I've been playing mages in cloth armor since original D&D in the 70s. A mage in armor just doesn't work for my sense of role-play, so I'll stick to my Arch-mage's robes.

lol because you want to, wtf is wrong with ppl, not everything can be the best at everything. by magical assassin doesnt because it suits the character and adds replay value, if all you can think of is power play you just bought the wrong game.
In game you will level those skills ensted of your magic skills, it will make you sloppy and not use skin and ward spells, which is ashame they r cool, plus perk are needed to really get the best from armour and then you need to almost always were a set which isnt very mage like imo.

Are the magic resistance alteration perks in effect at all times? Or do you have to have one of the alteration defensive spells running for the magic resistance to apply? Or what?

That perk is always active. You can check it in your active effects list.

Playing as a pure mage, my character only wear robes. Thats how i roleplay her to be.
She's pretty frail, and fragile, definitely not the sporty type and wearing any sort of armor just doesn't suit her.

Robe and hood looks cooler and more appropriate; but if you're an enchanter and/or blacksmith that's all I've got in defense of it. My mage is going robe/cowl and using Alteration and Wards for his defense.

My stealthy mage assassin only wears robes. My Necro Knight only wears heavy armor. Honestly, I think this debate is mainly about rp. If we are talking about min/max, there's no reason to wear robes. At least not at higher levels.