I'm curious what the benefits of wearing clothes is, compared to wearing light/heavy armor.
Do you move faster wearing no armor, even with the weightless armor perks? Does your mana regenerate faster? Is your magic stronger? Are you quieter wearing cloth than light armor?

Thanks

The less your armor/clothing weighs, the more quietly you move. So clothing is good for thieves in town to wear. Or you know, they could burgle naked.

Other than that, I believe it is purely cosmetic. I personally like to have my character wear clothing in town and only wear armor while adventuring. As a mage though, you could also enchant clothing to be very effective.

The phrase "burgle naked" made me lol

In Oblivion/Morrowind, if you were a mage you'd want to wear clothes instead of armour since you weren't very strong and you'd still want to carry some loot. Since you stayed out of the way of swords most of the time you wouldn't need too much armour rating, plus you can put good enchantments on clothing.

But in Skyrim I haven't found out yet where the Strength/Endurance/Intelligence etc is. If a Mage is just as strong as a Warrior then there wouldn't be much point only wearing clothes, you might as well have armour in case you couldn't get out of the way of a sword. Where is that stuff anyway? Can someone explain?

Mage robes have a lot of benefits, I'm using one that makes all destruction spells cost 12% less mana to cast, and also has 50% faster mana regeneration.
Also found a hood that has 30 points of magicka.
So yeah.

That stuff isn't there.

Stamina affects how much you can carry, Health affects . . . your Health, and Magic increases your magicka. So, if you focused on Magicka each time you leveled up by choosing Magic, you would eventually have a lot lower carrying weight that other characters who were free to focus on Stamina instead.

Attributes were levitated away into the weapon skills and got injured badly losing several acrobatic parts.

so theres really no difference between light armor you enchant to have 50% faster mana regen on it, and a robe enchanted with 50% mana regen on it?
So why shouldn't mages, or any character, at least wear light armor?

I usually dont like wearing armors in elder scrolls games, and im a thief. but it seems now that armors carry no penalties (perks make the weight and noise a non-factor) I don't know why I should stick with clothes.

And the robes look SO cool in this game!

i found novice robes/hood in the first dungeon that have stats on them. 1 of them gives me 50% faster magicka regen.

a lot of the fabric hat vendors sell also has similar style stats.

There is one robe that just makes mage characters ridiculous.

Wearing armor hinders magic.

Armors limit stamina and magic
Robes and clothing allow longer stamina and magic usage
As well as being more quiet than armors and allowing for the full jump hieght

1. light armor with 50% more stamina regen, regenerates stamina faster than wearing clothes.
2. light armor without the stamina perk still regenerates stamina at the SAME rate as wearing clothes.
3. you can enchant armor with the same bonuses that robes get.
4. armors don't limit magic regen or magic power.

What if your like my character, you just found out that magic in Skyrim is boss and want to change to a Mage, but you're kinda low on mana and die if you don't wear heavy armor? What would you do? Might not make sense to some people

There is such a thing as a battle mage that wears heavy armor.

Edit: If you are a Breton and did not realize the significance of the race that you rolled, you win the internet for being clairvoyant.

Again, you can go ahead and double enchant your armor with the same magic bonuses that robes have

So um.. None of you bothered to look into the alteration perks? Or any of the magic ones even.

Alteration has a perk that gives all "flesh" (the armour spells, eg. oakflesh) spells up to +100% armour value, when you have an armour value of 0. the only way of getting this armour value is by wearing clothes.

SO basically, for those mage characters, wearing clothes/robes and having this perk. your shields will give you double the amount of armour, in the case of higher level armour spells , eg. ebony flesh, this is often more than Heavy armour. The only downside is having to recast it every now and then, but the point is, for those that want a pure mage, your armour comes from spells. Add onto this bound armour, which doesnt encumber you the same way heavy armour does, giving you two (at least 2 of what i know of) ways of getting high armour as a mage.

Well I'm talking about a thief. From a sneaking standpoint, light armor and clothes are the exact same

Ohh, sorry, just when you said mana in the OP + robes in the title i assumed you meant for a mage.

For a thief... um... Probably just the increased sneak, but then again at later levels it wont matter. Ontop of that... certain.. thief friendly groups, all use and give away light armour.

YES!! 100%+ OF 0 RATING, THATS UM 0 + 100(0). omg my rating can be 0!

Settle down troll settle down.

Read what i said.

+100% to Flesh Spells. SO you take the armour increase value of that flesh spell.. and double it. For example.. Oakflesh, one of the first armour spells you can get, has a armour increase of 60. With this perk that spell will give you 120.

Ontop of this, seems i misread, +100% is the first rank, +150% is the second, +200% is the third.

So fully maxed, this perk makes all flesh spells do three times as much armour

yeah alteration armor is really good. Bad thing is im sure it costs a ton of mana, you've got to recast it constantly, and it's just as expensive as speccing into an armor tree.

Light armor gives you +50% stamina regen. Alteration doesn't. Honestly that seems to be my main beef.


Also, with clothes of any style, you can stack 2 enchants on them. With the decent looking light armor in the game (assassin armor, for example), they usually already come with an enchant, so you can only put one of your own enchants on them. I don't know if there's assassin armor in the game that doesn't have enchants on them built in.

Such a dilemma. Light armor or no armor. Ugh

For a thief, id say yes, As you say re-casting the armours is only worth it if your a mage and have invested in magicka. So light armour is less fuss.
For a mage, id stick with the magic armours.

I really hate being forced to use their preset armor sets though.

I planned on sticking with robes and double enchanting them with health or armor. But light armor has a ridiculous stamina bonus and absolutely NO downside to either sneaking or magic use.

Bretons arent really a mage class anymore, none of their racial bonuses boost magic. However the bonuses that Altmer get seem pretty meh in comparison, I'd still rather have a permanent 25% magic resistance than +50 magicka, and the dragonskin clickie works wonders in places like necromancer caves, or anywhere else where you might be fighting magic users (a lot more useful IMO than the high elf power - If I run out of magicka, I can simply chug pots or swap over to my enchanted greatsword).