I want after my current playthrough with a stealth character to make my favorite type of character, a Battle Mage. But I am not sure what would help me the most in terms of birthsigns. Can those of you that played with BTB Game Improvements tell me what birthsign you think would be most helpful to a Battlemage?

I was thinking to choose between The Warrior and The Mage because The Warrior has extra 20 strength and 10 Fortify Attack and that would help a lot in melee battles, and The Mage Sign would give me 180 extra magicka once I would max out intelligence. But once I already want to be a High Elf if I would choose The Mage Sign I would have 30 Strength only, so my melee skills would be really weak.

So what do you think would be best from your experience?

Thank you!

Go for the Magicka, no question about it.

30 Strength is low, you're right, but Strength is easy to increase through raising your Axe and Sword skills. There's also loads of ways to temporarily increase strength as well, the easiest being a nice pint of Sujamma or two. It's not practical really to try the same for magicka. Be sure to use Bound Weapons too, those help out a lot in melee, especially early on.

Honestly, I wouldn't even bother with the Mage though - go all out with the Atronach or the Apprentice. The latter is the one I like best. 'Weakness to Magicka' isn't nearly as bad as it sounds because it makes no difference to elemental magic damage, just to 'pure' magic effects, and the dangerous spells of that kind are very rarely found in the hands of hostile NPCs.

The Steed for all characters because moving like a crippled slug in molasses is no fun.

You're forgetting that he is using BTB's mod. Consider that the birthsigns don't have the same effect as vanilla. Last time I checked, the Apprentice didn't have any weakness to magicka in BTB's improvements.

Anyway, the Mage sign is a good choice imo. All the extra magicka will be very handy in the future. Plus you can always use magic to improve your accuracy, if needs be.

The birthsigns are indeed changed in BTB GI, and now the Atronach and apprentice aren't so tempting. In Vanilla Morrowind the choice was simple, High Elf with Atronach, the weaknesses of high elf would be eliminated by the absorb effect and I would have lots of magicka. But now the magicka multiplier of the Atronach is X1, the same as Mage and Apprentice. But Mage has an extra bonus besides this multiplier, 20 extra intelligence that can go over the 100 limit, so 120 intelligence maxed.


I've never been attracted to the steed birthsign, because I mostly travel by jumping around . Its fun to jump over buildings eventually .


Yes, the Mage is tempting, but if I have 30 strength I can't even carry my heavy armor and weapons. The Warrior besides the 20 strength that can max out strength to 120, has Fortify Attack 10, meaning 10 percent greater chance to hit, very tempting. But again, the Mage would mean 480 maximum magicka, while the warrior would mean 300.

So greater damage and hit chance, or more magicka? Still not sure.

It is quite a dilemma you got there. But now that I take heavy armor into the equation and if you like carrying a good amount of loot around, I think that gives the advantage to the Warrior sign. Especially since BTB eliminated the Fortify Attribute enchantments, you can't just say "Oh, I'll just enchant a ring of strength later on." You'll need to carry more mana potions though.

Yes, I like loot . But I also like spells . One thing that was important though in Vanilla and that I don't know very well how it works in BTB's GI, is how powerful can spells become. In Vanilla eventually I could make some insta kill spells that would eat up in one cast 400 magicka. Is the creation of such spells still accessible? Also, are there powerful spells to buy that would require more than 300 magicka?

I have to admit I use a self-made equivalent of BTB's spell plugin, so I don't use his. But from what I know of it (from reading the documents), it's harder to create some of the extreme spells we're used to in vanilla. For example, fire/frost damage cost more magicka now and many effects have been banned from spellmaking. On the other hand, effects like Disintegrate armor/weapon and Drain Magicka have been adjusted to be viable (and fearsome) options. So it really depends on what sort of effects you're planning to use. For self-made raw damage spells it will cost more, that's a fact.

As for pre-made spells, from a quick glance at the docs, the cost seems to top at 72 in most schools, except conjuration that can go up to 180 for a golden saint spell. So I don't think you have to worry about super high cost pre-made spells.

Thank you for the useful and well informed replies, Logorouge. Yes, I looked now at the docs and noticed that in average the highest cost for most spells is about 60, so with 300 magicka and magicka potions, I would be able to use all the powerful pre-made spells plenty of times before running out of magicka, even with the warrior sign. So I am starting to lean towards the Warrior Birthsign as being most useful for my character, but I still have time to change my mind .

If you're worried about encumbrance, BTB has made some changes to Feather to make it much more attractive as a spell and as a potion.

Ultimately, you will be able to use the extra Magicka to give yourself some of the advantages that a warrior will have for melee combat through the various available spells. You can also use that Magicka for many other purposes, so it really allows for a lot more flexibility to go with Mage over Warrior.

Yes, I am aware of that and that's why I think its such a hard choice. Both signs bring very different real advantages.