Pure mage in Morrowind (and expansions): Hard or Impossible?

[Heresiarch]

Despite how dumbed down Skyrim is with all stats gone and so little spells to choose from, I'm actually having a blast playing as a pure mage, now level 41 and finished over half of the main quests. For the first time in TES history, I do feel destruction magic HURTS when I use them (especially combined with fortify destruction potions) and magicka actually manageble with spell casting cost reduction enchantments. Not mention how ridiculously powerful conjuration is. Though I must admit I'm playing on adept only.

Of all the TES games, I thought Morrowind is the hardest on pure mage characters. The worst thing of all is magicka problem, as spell cost doesn't come down with increased spell skill, and there are very little ways to increase your magicka base, and your average magicka isn't particularly high to begin with. Spell damage is very weak too, with Frost Storm dealing only an average of 55 damage over a 10 sec span, while a clannfear has 118 HP, Dremoras have around 160. You're pretty much forced to play as a Breton or Altmer + Apprentice or Atronach sign, and spam magicka potions if you want to rely on spells as your main damage source.

I think with the expansion sets, mages got the final slap to the face. Tribunal and Bloodmoon creatures all have insanely high health and most of them boast with some (or a lot of) spell reflect or absorption. I have never played the expansions (always burned out after went through about 66% of the main game part), but I can't imagine how mages can play through the game.

Even monsters got suffered too. Ascended sleepers for example is always a joke, because their spells have pathetic damage, are extremely easy to dodge, and they move soooo slowly for melee. Though once I moved into melee range, he can pretty much one shot me with his trunk at max difficulty. BTW even at max difficutly, his spells can't hurt me much, because spells don't scale with the difficulty setting.

Just some random thoughts. Anyone here actually manage to play Morrowind especially with the expansion sets as a pure mage? Which means no armor, no swords, just robes and staves and spells? No machinegunning with enchanted equipments too.

 

[baronjohn]

I finished Morrowind and Tribunal with a pure mage. As I recall it wasn't hard or anything, although in the beginning you had to be quite resourceful. Later, I had an area spell like Drain Health 100pts for 1s that killed everything. Also, I would just levitate out of the way and summon golden saints to clean everything up. Didn't have any self-enchanted items.

Right now I'm actually playing a Breton with the atronach sign and it's quite easy. I am even hardcore LARPing it and pretending I don't know where all the shiny artifacts are and it's still easy. The mage's guild quest sends you to get the staff of magnus which makes recovering magicka trivial (ancestral ghost casts the fire spell on you five times and you have full magicka again) and at the end you get the awesome necromancer's amulet.

I plan on doing Bloodmoon and Tamriel Rebuilt this run too, we'll see how that goes.

The action in Skyrim feels better, but mages are extremely dumbed down, so I would definitely say Morrowind is better overall.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

The sheer number of spell effects in Morrowind + a spell maker meant that you could create stupid powerful spells. As long as you had a bit of forethought before you went into battle, Mages could curbstomp pretty much anything.

 

[baronjohn]

I forgot to mention, you can also go to a temple to get your magicka full restored, and some tombs have shrines that do it too. It costs like 35 gold. If you want to train a magic school, this is a lot cheaper than trainers.

 

[Gord]

I found that if you don't want to spam potions or rest the best way to play a pure mage is to install some mod that gives auto-regen magicka. Sounds but is really the most enjoyable way to play a pure mage in Morrowind, at least early on.

Using an enchanted dagger will probably still do more damage, though.

 

[laclongquan]

Is it that hard to play Morrowind without such stuffs? It's not like there are not tons of abuses already.

 

[DraQ]

Re: Pure mage in Morrowind (and expansions): Hard or Impossi

Re: Pure mage in Morrowind (and expansions): Hard or Impossible?

Neither. The words you need are "Requiring paradigm shift".

Mages are surprisingly easy to play if you play them right.
It's playing them right that poses the biggest problem.

Despite how dumbed down Skyrim is with all stats gone and so little spells to choose from, I'm actually having a blast playing as a pure mage, now level 41 and finished over half of the main quests. For the first time in TES history, I do feel destruction magic HURTS when I use them (especially combined with fortify destruction potions) and magicka actually manageble with spell casting cost reduction enchantments. Not mention how ridiculously powerful conjuration is. Though I must admit I'm playing on adept only.

Of all the TES games, I thought Morrowind is the hardest on pure mage characters. The worst thing of all is magicka problem, as spell cost doesn't come down with increased spell skill, and there are very little ways to increase your magicka base, and your average magicka isn't particularly high to begin with. Spell damage is very weak too, with Frost Storm dealing only an average of 55 damage over a 10 sec span, while a clannfear has 118 HP, Dremoras have around 160. You're pretty much forced to play as a Breton or Altmer + Apprentice or Atronach sign, and spam magicka potions if you want to rely on spells as your main damage source.

I think with the expansion sets, mages got the final slap to the face. Tribunal and Bloodmoon creatures all have insanely high health and most of them boast with some (or a lot of) spell reflect or absorption. I have never played the expansions (always burned out after went through about 66% of the main game part), but I can't imagine how mages can play through the game.

Even monsters got suffered too. Ascended sleepers for example is always a joke, because their spells have pathetic damage, are extremely easy to dodge, and they move soooo slowly for melee. Though once I moved into melee range, he can pretty much one shot me with his trunk at max difficulty. BTW even at max difficutly, his spells can't hurt me much, because spells don't scale with the difficulty setting.

Just some random thoughts. Anyone here actually manage to play Morrowind especially with the expansion sets as a pure mage? Which means no armor, no swords, just robes and staves and spells? No machinegunning with enchanted equipments too.

The worst part about playing mage in Morrowind is that you have to readjust mentally.
First, mages are not artillery. They are mages. Mages are supposed to be smart guys. Spells are not idiot friendly tools to deal massive damage, instead, you get wide array of effects for every occasion.

Second, circinate spells, especially offensive spells are shit. The most powerful ones may be useful for light support fire, but not as primary combat tools in their own right, maybe save for God's Fire and God's Frost, but those are hardly economical.
Non-hybrid spellcaster makes his own spells. Period.

Third, Atronach or Apprentice sign should make you an effective mage regardless of race. Sure it's nice to have racial magicka bonus too, but it's hardly necessary. Atronach is especially nice combined with race that has full or near-full immunity to some kind of magic or elemental attack, because you can then summon and provoke monsters using this kind of magic without significant risk and absorb their spells - for example, an Argonian can summon daedroth and absorb it's poison attacks (while dodging lightning based ones), Dunmer with little additional protection can do the same with flame atronachs, Nord can use frost atronach instead. It's much better than using ancestral ghosts. Summons for this purpose should be custom tailored for no longer than 15s duration and work best as enchants because you don't have to worry about having not enough magicka to summon your charging station this way. Immunity is also nice when selecting what to attack reflective enemies with, especially if you patch away the absorb health cheese with MCP.
You don't have to cheese potions to find alchemy useful, restore magicka alone is useful enough. You don't have to be an alchemist to be an effective mage, but it helps.
If you're going to use staves, try to obtain Mace of Molag Bal. You won't be using it to kill stuff, but to tap incapacitated enemies gently and steal their magicka.
You can also try enchanting everything you wear with fortify intelligence, possibly with some willpower thrown in. In main game there are quite a few items with that effect including Necromancer's Amulet you can get at the end of MG quests, and Robe of Drake's Pride you will be directed to if you're Telvanni. In Bloodmoon there is a robe that should offset any magicka problems you should ever have, though it's a late game stuff.

Fourth, monsters and NPC casters indeed got the short end of the stick, because they don't use any interesting effect combos, don't use much AoE spells and lead the target indiscriminately which makes them easy to trick into casting at walls.


Now, for the actual gameplay - the key is to exploit stuff working as intended while also avoiding cheesing stuff that does not or is obviously broken (like drain intelligence glitch, soultrap glitch, levitating out of enemy's reach and pelting them with fireballs or massive potion abuse):

-experiment a lot and ask yourself questions regarding how stuff works, for example "why do some characters resist paralysis most of the time?", "how is max fatigue determined?", "what is the unique trait of weakness to magicka effect?" and "how about drain health?". RTFM if necessary.

-note that effects are applied in sequence, a compound spell is best seen as DnDesque sequencer and should be built in such way that each effect amplifies or aids the next effect in sequence.

-you can use multiple tiers of fortify intelligence and willpower to allow for casting truly epic spells

-again, be creative - AoE absorbing from multiple short-duration summons at once may be far more effective than fortifying or restoring

-remember that power of individual effects, summons and such is relative - ancestral ghost may be piss weak, but if you you encounter freakishly strong, high level Nord armed only with massive unenchanted steel hmmr in a narrow passage it may well be a far better choice than much more powerful winged twilight (although you will probably have to recast it a lot).

-if you're going to cast a spell at enemy you know to reflect, try making yourself immune to that type of magic before you cast. Or try using slow acting effect that is cheaper and can be dispelled before it fucks you up.

-it's possible to have multiple summons at once, and it's possible to have multiple summons in a single spell (although the latter have to be of different types if you don't use MCP), swarming can be effective even against much more powerful enemies and is a good workaround when you meet bethesda's ultimate "FUCK U" in the form of highly reflective enemies or Gedna Relvel.

-any enemy without full magicka resistance or high reflect can be reliably and permanently immobilized with damage strength if it carries items.

-any caster without full magicka resistance or high reflect can be reliably and permanently prevented from casting with damage intelligence.

-paralysis is unaffected by magicka resistance and resist paralysis effect is rare. It is affected by willpower, though (hint).

-while warriors benefit from focusing, mages work best when using all schools together. Pretty much every two schools can be used together for greater effect than sum of both being used alone.

-seriously, be flexible and experiment.

 

[sirfink]

I got through Bloodmoon with a pure mage, but I cheezed out with Alchemy, cranking my stats to 1000 and Magicka to, hell I don't remember, but it was insanely high.

The greatest spell is Damage Strength. Just hit melee enemies with that and their Strength hits zero in a second or two, they become encumbered and can't move. Much cheaper to cast than paralyze and it's permanent. Then just stand a safe distance and blast away.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

The problem with mages is that anything that isn't underpowered is easily turned into something ridiculously overpowered. There is really no way to play a balanced mage character. Anything that you can do to not suck as a mage is a borderline-exploit, since no enemy mages will ever use anything remotely like what you do and they have absolutely no counters to anything you do except the stupid reflect magic effect.

A spellsword-type character is much better at letting you actually play the game in a balanced fashion without being godlike from lvl 1.

 

[Heresiarch]

The problem with mages is that anything that isn't underpowered is easily turned into something ridiculously overpowered. There is really no way to play a balanced mage character. Anything that you can do to not suck as a mage is a borderline-exploit, since no enemy mages will ever use anything remotely like what you do and they have absolutely no counters to anything you do except the stupid reflect magic effect.

A spellsword-type character is much better at letting you actually play the game in a balanced fashion without being godlike from lvl 1.

That's exactly a problem I have while playing as a mage. Balancing feature vs exploit is hard, especially since sometimes you just must use some of the overpowered stuff to get through the game. That's also why I'm quite reluctant to use mods to "balance" things out, like regenerating magicka. It's hard to tell if a design is working as intended or not when there are so many variables out there.

When I was playing at the main game, I do made a spell called Lich's Touch with drain life 100 on 1 sec on touch. I thought it was pretty powerful or even overpowered, but is the drain life effect working as intended if I use it that way? Is it supposed to be THAT powerful, that I could one shot pretty much anything weaker than 100 HP with EXTREME low magicka, while I was at apprentice level? Think about it, DnD's Power Word: Kill has the same effect, and it's a level 9 spell.

I've also tried all those silly, or just like DraQ said, creative ideas on spell making. Levitating 1 on Touch for example, it can cripple anything without ranged attacks and is vastly more effective than burden spells. Speaking of Levitation, flying in the sky bombarding stuff is some of the funniest way to play as a mage, but people like DraQ consider it broken (as the AI can't effectively fight back). So almost all the creative ways to play as a mage are controversial to one or another.

If only the AI and the system is a bit more thought out, there won't be so many balance issues. Enemy mages in all TES love to throw random weak offensive magic and then go full melee on your warrior once their magicka is emptied, instead of drink potions or levitate out of the way. They also don't use restore attribute or dispel magics to counter the effects of burden or offensive levitate. Skyrim did a "good" job on this by kicking all the supporting spell effects out of the game and let enemy spell casters just focus on casting uber attack magic over and over again, and can often one or two shot you if you're not careful. This brings back some of the "scary" element of Daggerfall spellcasters, but still far from bringing us "intelligent" spell users.

 

[abnaxus]

In Skyrim though, boss mages use a few tricks like teleporting and/or creating copies of themselves.

Not to mention most of them use Wards, and the fact that frost magic drains stamina (and paralyzes your character) makes them quite dangerous even for high level characters. Not to mention the high level ones will turn your summons against you (lol my dremora lords are raping my face).

In Morrowind, enemy mages are only dangerous for low level characters.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I don't think enemy mages were ever dangerous in Morrowind. Dodging mage spells is about as easy as dodging a single Imp's fireball in Doom. Then because of the broken AI they ran out of mana in ~.5s and reverted to charging at you with a butter knife.

 

[abnaxus]

In the beginning of the game when you're slow as fuck, though, it can be hard.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

In the beginning of the game when you're slow as fuck, though, it can be hard.

If it's just you and the mages, bunny hop all over the damn place. Though you'll want a couple stamina potions for when you get the perfect chance to cast.

 

[DraQ]

When I was playing at the main game, I do made a spell called Lich's Touch with drain life 100 on 1 sec on touch. I thought it was pretty powerful or even overpowered, but is the drain life effect working as intended if I use it that way? Is it supposed to be THAT powerful, that I could one shot pretty much anything weaker than 100 HP with EXTREME low magicka, while I was at apprentice level? Think about it, DnD's Power Word: Kill has the same effect, and it's a level 9 spell.

Well, the effect was probably intended to be a temporary debuff rather than all or nothing instakill, but I wouldn't consider it imbalanced.

First, it has base cost of 4, fire damage has base cost of 5, but it deals lasting damage, can be re-cast to increase total damage (while if 1s drain 100hp fails to kill the target on the first casting it will keep failing no matter how many times you re-cast), and can be used as damage over time, which reduces the casting cost below 1s drain doing the same damage total even if you only spread it over 2s.

The main advantage of drain Health is that it can be stealthy, because if it kills it kills instantly, while even 1s fire damage spell is actually still working as DoT.

I've also tried all those silly, or just like DraQ said, creative ideas on spell making. Levitating 1 on Touch for example, it can cripple anything without ranged attacks and is vastly more effective than burden spells. Speaking of Levitation, flying in the sky bombarding stuff is some of the funniest way to play as a mage, but people like DraQ consider it broken (as the AI can't effectively fight back). So almost all the creative ways to play as a mage are controversial to one or another.

If only the AI and the system is a bit more thought out, there won't be so many balance issues. Enemy mages in all TES love to throw random weak offensive magic and then go full melee on your warrior once their magicka is emptied, instead of drink potions or levitate out of the way. They also don't use restore attribute or dispel magics to counter the effects of burden or offensive levitate.

Agreed.

The most obvious fix would be making spell effects travel faster. The second most obvious fix would be making most NPC spells AoE. The third most obvious fix would be giving NPCs really nasty creative spells as opposed to boring fireballs and shit.
Even with their derpy AI Morrowind mages would make you FFFFUUUU- aloud if they had my character's spellbook.

Other easy fixes would consist of providing NPCs with restorative potions and spells, ranged weapons and such.

Harder fixes would include making NPCs attempt dispel on buffed enemy (especially levitating - they can dispel themselves if they have the spell - Golden Saints tend to do it when you try to soultrap them), fixing leading target exploitability, making AI seek cover or run away when unable to counterattack, making AI drop stuff when overencumbered and unable to fix the problem in any other way, giving AI more sophisticated spell selection algorithms, giving AI ability to jump, sneak and levitatate and so on.

 

[Heresiarch]

After a few days of playing it, I must say...the disappointed feeling, on the gameplay part, right comes back.

The worst comes from the magic part, especially as this time I'm trying to play as a pure mage with no fucking armor or shiny long swords, just all full magic. And god, the spellcasting system of the game is just so awfully broken.

For example, absorb spells are so much more powerful than drain spells but they don't cost too much compared to the latter. Actually, drain spells cost a TON for essentially useless effect (drain 5-20 health for 30 seconds on touch and it cost 75 magicka?? In contrast a 2-40 AOE long ranged fireball cost 10!). Also, absorb health/fatigue spells are powerful because it absorbs things OVER TIME, which means absorb health 10 for 10 secs will deal 100 damage while you get 100 health.

All the shield spells magicka cost are so outragously high with pathetic effect that makes them useless in battle (+20 armor rating for 30 seconds cost 60 magicka wtf? A bound helm spell does the same thing but last 1 min and cost only a tenth). Spell absorption and reflection spells cost is crazy too, spell reflect 20-30 for 10 secs cost 125 magicka. I know these effects are supposed to be powerful, but then again almost all the daedras and anything not a rat or NPC have at least 20 built-in spell reflect.

Another thing that really hurts my mood when playing as a mage is, as discussed above, how pathetic the AI uses spells, no thanks to all the stupidly designed default spells. At first I thought it was scary that they keep spamming spells at me and try to keep a distance at the same time, then I facepalmed to death when I realized all the spells they casted were useless, UTTERLY USELESS stuff like "drain speed for 5 secs" or "burden 20 pts for 5 secs". By the time they wasted all the magicka on those spells, they would finally run up to me and poke me with their daggers, which actually proves to be much more capable of dealing damage than spells.

BTW why the heck do bethsoft LOVE giving spells awfully short duration? Spell absorption 1-40 pts for...5 secs? And it costs 50 magicka? Not mention all those weak, short lived buffs, that by the time you're done casting them, they either stopped working or you're out of magicka to cast the offensive spells. And those buffs are WEAK to begin with. Some are just fucking JOKES. Great feather: feather 100 pts for...10 secs! Only 50 magicka!

While sure a lot of people complain that Oblivion and Skyrim has so much less kinds of spells compared to DF and Morrowind, they ignore the fact that over half of the spell EFFECT (not spells, but spell effects) in Morrowind are useless and/or bugged. And the magic system itself of Morrowind is also shitty to begin with (No magicka regen? Fine. No magicka cost reduction with better skill? Fine. Together? Fuck no.)

 

[DragoFireheart]

Morrowind: where the best spells can be cast from a giant crab/squid helm.

I AM IN DENIAL

While you try and pretend to play a mage, I buy random rings of fireballs and pwn shit. I then sell the Sword of White Woes to make better rings of fireballs so I can machine-gun everything.

 

[DraQ]

drain 5-20 health for 30 seconds on touch

Why the fuck would you use drain health as debuff, rather than durationless, potentially stealthy instakiller (possibly crowd instakiller)?

And why the fuck would you use ANY circinate spells apart from utility ones and lightning/viperbolt/god's_*?
:/

If your idea of playing a mage is casting circinate fireball or drain derp over and over again, instead of devising new ways of completely fucking enemies over you're doing it wrong.

If only NPC mages were doing this as well, mage combat in Morrowind would have no equals.

All the shield spells magicka cost are so outragously high with pathetic effect that makes them useless in battle (+20 armor rating for 30 seconds cost 60 magicka wtf? A bound helm spell does the same thing but last 1 min and cost only a tenth).

Helm has AR of 80, but doesn't protect 90% of your body and supplants any other headgear you might be wearing (for example custom enchanted adamantium helm with CE fortify int).
Shield provides AR bonus to all parts of your body, it's as if you'd stack 20AR helm, shield, bracers (2x), boots, greaves, pauldrons (2x) and cuirass on top of any you might be already wearing.

over half of the spell EFFECT (not spells, but spell effects) in Morrowind are useless and/or bugged.

Apart from feather/burden and disintegrate weapon/armour that only suffer from broken cost/usefulness?

Besides, why haven't you installed WGI?
If something is broken (like some retarded effect costs) you fix it. There is no point in leaving unusable effects unusable and then bitching about it. Sure you don't need burden or feather to be successful mage, but why not fix what is clearly broken?

 

[DragoFireheart]

Cmon DraQ don't be shy. Respond promptly.

 

[Heresiarch]

The things I'm pointing out is not about how I play, but how the game is broken. I sure as hell won't fucking use drain spells, but it's irrelevant to the fact lies that it's broken.

Good point about the conjure helm spell IF it's a game like Deus Ex, but Morrowind don't even have system for protecting different body parts (check the damage part on the combat article on UESP). If you cast a bound helm and it gives you an AR of 20 shown in your character sheet, it is an AR of 20 applied universally to your whole body, i.e. equal to casting a shield 20 spell on yourself. The main problem with shield spells is the casting cost is fucking terrible. Shield 10 for 30 secs = 30 magicka cost. The most powerful ingame shield spell is shield 60 for 30 sec = 180 magicka cost. It's great if casted from scrolls, but wasting 180 magicka on a shield spell?

Recommending WGI is good though, I always forget about it as I always have it in mind as something like a complete overhaul. Though some tweaks seem out of place (dark elf having extra 0.5x int modifier in magicka for example).

 

[DraQ]

Cmon DraQ don't be shy. Respond promptly.

I have responded to that, many times.

Items have insufficient capacity for truly interesting spells, even if they are daedric tower shields.
Item slots can be occupied by CE items enhancing spellcasting potential even further or providing other useful effects.

The things I'm pointing out is not about how I play, but how the game is broken. I sure as hell won't fucking use drain spells, but it's irrelevant to the fact lies that it's broken.

It's effectively a BETa, it was released by BEThesda. Duh.
I'd expect people to notice somewhere between Daggerfall and Skyrim that bethsoft's games are not exactly polished, finished or bug free.

Good point about the conjure helm spell IF it's a game like Deus Ex, but Morrowind don't even have system for protecting different body parts

It does. It merely doesn't have a system for aiming at different bodyparts. You still can be hit in any specific part of your body, it's just that it seems to be determined by a random function.

If you skimp on certain pieces of armour or mix and much pieces with very different AR, the same hit may have dramatically different effect depending on where it lands.

(check the damage part on the combat article on UESP).

UESP is a wiki. It's an immensely useful source of info, but not a trustworthy source, otherwise you might want to reconsider oblivion as worthwhile roleplaying game supporting variety of characters to roleplay as.

If you cast a bound helm and it gives you an AR of 20 shown in your character sheet, it is an AR of 20 applied universally to your whole body, i.e. equal to casting a shield 20 spell on yourself. The main problem with shield spells is the casting cost is fucking terrible. Shield 10 for 30 secs = 30 magicka cost. The most powerful ingame shield spell is shield 60 for 30 sec = 180 magicka cost. It's great if casted from scrolls, but wasting 180 magicka on a shield spell?

Overall AR is just for show, just like in Wizardry 8 for example, so that player can quickly gauge how well he's protected on average, so no, your overall AR won't improve by 20 points if you cast bound helm. Your head AR will improve by 80 points (assuming base 0), which is enough to make you survive (barely) attempted braining with a daedric battleaxe (discounting strength and difficulty modifiers) even at low levels (possibly at level 1 with right stats), but you'll split like a hair of a woman with serious hair dye overdose if hit anywhere else, even on much higher levels.

OTOH 20 pts of shield might not protect you from DBA to the head at lvl 1, but surviving daedric war axe hit should be perfectly possible at lvl1 regardless of hit location (as long as you account for unarmoured bug and AR calculation bug).

Recommending WGI is good though, I always forget about it as I always have it in mind as something like a complete overhaul. Though some tweaks seem out of place (dark elf having extra 0.5x int modifier in magicka for example).

Get modular version.
It allows you to pick exactly what fixes and tweaks do you want.

BTB is somewhat more advanced and radical, but it breaks most of the gameplay elements available to mages, so...

 

[Clockwork Knight]

...so you won't be able to appreciate the distinct gorgonzola smell that emanates from those gameplay elements.

 

[DraQ]

...so you won't be able to appreciate the distinct gorgonzola smell that emanates from those gameplay elements.

 

[Heresiarch]

Good point about the conjure helm spell IF it's a game like Deus Ex, but Morrowind don't even have system for protecting different body parts

It does. It merely doesn't have a system for aiming at different bodyparts. You still can be hit in any specific part of your body, it's just that it seems to be determined by a random function.

If you skimp on certain pieces of armour or mix and much pieces with very different AR, the same hit may have dramatically different effect depending on where it lands.

(check the damage part on the combat article on UESP).

UESP is a wiki. It's an immensely useful source of info, but not a trustworthy source, otherwise you might want to reconsider oblivion as worthwhile roleplaying game supporting variety of characters to roleplay as.

If you cast a bound helm and it gives you an AR of 20 shown in your character sheet, it is an AR of 20 applied universally to your whole body, i.e. equal to casting a shield 20 spell on yourself. The main problem with shield spells is the casting cost is fucking terrible. Shield 10 for 30 secs = 30 magicka cost. The most powerful ingame shield spell is shield 60 for 30 sec = 180 magicka cost. It's great if casted from scrolls, but wasting 180 magicka on a shield spell?

Overall AR is just for show, just like in Wizardry 8 for example, so that player can quickly gauge how well he's protected on average, so no, your overall AR won't improve by 20 points if you cast bound helm. Your head AR will improve by 80 points (assuming base 0), which is enough to make you survive (barely) attempted braining with a daedric battleaxe (discounting strength and difficulty modifiers) even at low levels (possibly at level 1 with right stats), but you'll split like a hair of a woman with serious hair dye overdose if hit anywhere else, even on much higher levels.

OTOH 20 pts of shield might not protect you from DBA to the head at lvl 1, but surviving daedric war axe hit should be perfectly possible at lvl1 regardless of hit location (as long as you account for unarmoured bug and AR calculation bug).

If instead of simply claiming "wiki = bullshit" you can actually go check the damage formula, and use some analysis or testing, you'll know all you said above are wrong. Instead of making assumptions, at least the uesp guys' data are always backed up with console/construction set/thorough ingame testing.

The formula is Damage * ((Damage) / (Damage + Opponent Armor Rating)), which is in the game's code, simple as that. And even if you don't believe a game's code, it's extremely easy to test too, thanks to the simplified and easily adjustable weapon damage system. Just make a NPC with 50 strength and a 20-20 damage weapon and let him hit you (with different AR). Calculate the damage. On a side note, this means the shield spell effect (ignoring magicka cost) isn't too shabby, as 20 AR can reduce a 20 damage attack in half. Combined with actual armor this can be quite useful.

To test the "different body part" theory it's even easier, just put as many combinations of armor on your different body parts as you can - but the final shown AR should all be the same - and let the same NPC with static weapon damage hit you, REPEATLY. You'll see that AR 50 with all body parts covered suffers the same damage as AR 50 with only one hand covered with a glove.

The only thing "body parts" take part in is calculating AR:

Total AR = Cuirass * .3 + (Shield + Helm + Greaves + Boots + RPauldron + LPauldron) * .1 + (RGauntlet/Bracer + LGauntlet/Bracer) * .05



To test it simply, with all the information above:

Make an NPC equiping with 50 STR, a 10-10 damage weapon, while giving yourself a 10 AR, which is provided by a single piece of armor (which means a glove with 200 BaseAR, or a headgear with 100 BaseAR, while your ArmorSkill is 30). Let the NPC hit your repeatly. You'll notice it'll always do the same 5 damage. If you think that "too low damage can't test things", you can make them 100-100 damage, 100 AR, respectively. Also don't forget to use a 10 pt shield magic to test the outcome too.

Or you can just do the way around - make 10 NPC, each with one body part armored, a couple fully armored, but all with the same outcome AR, and hit them as much as you like, and wherever as you like. Notice the actual damage.


Hey DraQ, I understand you're trying to be a bro so you'll defend Morrowind or FFE whenever possible, k?

 

[DragoFireheart]

Cmon DraQ don't be shy. Respond promptly.

I have responded to that, many times.

Items have insufficient capacity for truly interesting spells, even if they are daedric tower shields.
Item slots can be occupied by CE items enhancing spellcasting potential even further or providing other useful effects.

But other than utility like levitate, water breathing, open lock, etc, casting spells is pointless when many enchanted items can do it much better.