So, I have watched my cousins play Skyrim and tried it a bit myself. I was waiting for it to go down do $30 but today I caved in and just bought it for the 40% discount on Impulse. While the game is downloading, I have a small question:

How viable is a sword and magic combination? I want to enjoy both and I am not the sort of person who is likely to play the game several times. So I want to get it right.

Sword will definitely be my main attacking skill. I can take either light armour or heavy armour, although I prefer light for its speed. What do I do for defence? I also want to be good in Smithy and Enchanting as I love making gold and I love crafting. I would have said Alchemy too but I know that is just out of the question.

I am just a bit nervous that I will simply not have enough perks to be a good melee figher, decent mage and yet have enough defence to not fall like a lightning struck tree. Plus be good in crafting.

Is this possible? Or will I be one of those sad characters who try to do everything and end up weak later on. I do not need to play the game at a higher difficulty than Adept, even Apprentice will be ok if it allows me to have all this.

Sorry for the long thread, I am very excited to finally have the game now and also have the time to play it

If you have a link that answers this question, please direct me to it.

BATTLE MAGE!@!@


Yes i said it you want to be a battle mage.

heavy or light armor (preference) with a cloth hood, personally i like elven armor with red cloth hood for my battle mage

use destruction 1 hander restoration and light armor as your main skills

my key way of playing for when fighting multiple people
- fireball what i can, throw down fire runes on the ground as many as my magika will let me, than take out sword (2 hander is my preference) and once runes blow up i go in for the swings and mess them up, So much fun

restoration will be you defense and you wont need much of it once you take most of their health away with the range of destruction, DO NOT USE ARCHERY IF YOU ARE DOING DESTRUCTION you do NOT need 2 ranged abilities, you need to pick one. archery is more stealth where magic is more im over here come get me

smithing is the easiest thing to lvl up and only use perks into what armor you would use left side is light and right side is heavy, enchanting same thing just pick a route you like to the 2 enchants per gear, they are easy to lvl up and can be done within a few hours, enchanting will take longer for the fact if you farm soul gems.

you can play at mastery and be okay, but start off at adept and if it becomes to easy than roll expert and than mastery if expert is to easy.

this can also be done with 1handers duel wield or board and sword, but board and sword just means you need to add block to you main skills and will spread you out even more.

my last advice is you can pick up illusion as a defense if you want but make it a secondary skill, calm and fear could be game changers, but also can make you OP if over used, i only use if i know i am going to die and need to run and heal.

post any other question you have i love battle mages!@!@

If you're going destruction magic in the other hand then it will be powerful in the first few levels, but at high levels your sword will hit a lot harder than it. However it is still viable to hit enemies from long range (e.g far away enemies or dragons) and if you specialise in lightning magic there is a perk which lets you one hit kill an enemy that's on 15% health or less. And choosing the +damage destruction perks will also improve the power of elemental enchantments on weapons (which is very nice, especially when combined with enchanting perks).

Alteration magic is also effective due to the paralyze spell- you can knock someone over with it and then hack at them when they're down (alteration also provides armour buffing magic which is nice). So Alteration will be your best defence. Passive perks in the alteration tree are great too.

Smithing and enchanting are pretty vital- makes your weaponry and armour a lot more powerful, though only specialise in one side of the smithing tree based on what armour you are using (light is a little better than heavy armour when maxed though the difference is pretty minimal. It also costs less in perks allowing you to spend more on other things).

Restoration is nice for health and stamina recovery (with the right perk) which really helps with a battlemage type character. And some nice passives (necromage and magicka regeneration).

Well, I tried it for a bit and found it unpleasant. I won't lie: it's my attitude. I'm not fond of magic use, other than healing, and found the whole destruction+melee awkward. Once I learned Frost, though, I did find a nice use for it against bandits and Forsworn trying to use heavy weaponry at me. Frost hits against both health and stamina, and the stamina loss was more critical for me as it weakens their power attacks quickly.

I gave it up after a few levels, returning to my moving attack + melee choice for 1H combat. One of these days, I'll carry a shield.

It's perfectly viable. My main character is the same build.

agreed your magic will not be that powerful but considering you want to mainly use your weapon than thats a good thing no point of duel weapon +magic if your magic will kill everyone so do not listen to this guy and put massive pts into destrcution just pick 1 school of destruction of follow it, i would recommend frost for the reason, it atks stam and health.

Alteration is good for paralyzing people, but DONT mast magika on magic armor it COST WAY TO MUCH MAGIKA and it wont do anything for you considering you are wearing armor so you dont get any bonus just the little armor it gives you which is not worth the magika, save magic for frost runes on the ground or range atks and alteration isnt not worth lvling for just paralyze, illusion is better cause u get the calm and fear and at higher lvls you can calm and fear everyone around you. But if you want to have fun with paralyze make it a secondary skill that you lvl when ever u want to have a little extra fun.

Please post this thread back so we no what we can answer for you so we are not all answer the same question do you ahve anymore thing you want to know

Welcome to skyrim and the forums....here's a fishy stick http://i394.photobucket.com/albums/pp22/fabricek/Fishystick.jpg

I find it best works out (for me anyways) is to be a mage who avoids destruction (and illusion). You can be a great mage in every other way though. Just one that fights up close with melee or uses bows for range. Destruction is best for dual wielding spells/pure mages. Not halfassed.

I'd suggest a Spellsword with Swords, light armor, a shield (which you bring out when locked in melee or out of magicka), destruction for off hand damage, alteration for armor buffs and restoration for healing.

yes destruction is most effective for dual casting pure mages, but for just using as range dmg and for a person who wants to use WEAPONS as main damage than its perfect, it wont kill the targets but will weaken for him so he does not need HUGE defense abilities

Plus cloak, runes and wall spells are very useful for a weapon user

indeed didnt think of wall spells, cloaks not a huge fan of, but would be helpful for you to pick up on lack of defense and mentioned runes in earlier post

Stack em see what kind of damage you do...especially the fire variety

Edit: slow effects on frost stack too

i use ice wall all the time on my pure mage just cause its funny, but for my battle mage i never though of it lol, i am going to go try it and see how funny it can be

lol thanks