I was wondering today what the best Race for a PURE Mage character would be, in terms of scaling. Mostly with Destruction. Altmer starts with all the magic schools having +5 or +10 skills off the bat, so that obviously helps them in the early levels, but what about a ways down the road?

Altmer mages should have a much lower maximum level than say, a Nord mage who has lower skill levels in all the skills you're going to be using. So I was wondering would a higher maximum level (more perks) be a better choice than a lower maximum level (less perks)? Obviously Destruction at a skill level of 100 should do much better at a lower maximum level than a higher maximum level. I'm just not sure whether I'd want better Destruction scaling or more perks. What do you guys think?

PS: By pure mage, I mean Robes, Destruction/Alteration/Conjuration/Illusion/Restoration/Enchanting. No weapons, no armor, no sneak, etc.

You have the same max lvl no matter what race you choose? And anyway it will take you FOREVER to reach that anyway

I would say Altmer, only because they start with the 5 levels of Magicka bonus.. If not for that then any class wouldn't really have too much of an upper edge on each other. If you don't want to go Altmer then I would go Breton.

I would go with Breton because they get that 25% magic resistance, and their racial ability lets you resist magic for 60 seconds.

Let me elaborate.

Say you use ONLY Destruction/Alteration/Conjuration/Illusion/Restoration/Enchanting on your character. You're never going to reach level 81 if you don't use the other skills. So there will be a certain cap to your level.

An Altmer starts with Illusion at 25, and the others at 20. The max level is when all of those skills are 100.

A Nord would start with all of those skills at 15. Again, their max level is when all of those skills are 100.

You can immediately figure out that an Altmer Mage would be capped at a lower level than a Nord Mage would be. Being a lower level mage would certainly help make Destruction essentially more powerful than a higher level mage's Destruction, despite both skills being 100, due to the lack of scaling of the skill.

It's basically a tossup between the Altmer and the Breton.

If you prefer being a glass cannon, go Altmer. If you like to take damage but not dish it out so much, go Breton.

I wish there was a level calculator. There's plenty of perk calculators out there, but for some reason I can't find any sort of level calculator. ie If I wanted to determine what level an Orc with 100 One-Handed skill, 50 Block Skill, and 87 Heavy Armor skill would be at. There were similar calculators for Oblivion, but nothing for Skyrim.

It really doesn't matter on the race. Eventually they will all be the same. However, that extra 50 in Magicka for the Altmer, is very attractive. Late game it is not so much, but early to mid that is nice to have. Still it is what ever race you want.

As far as level, with focusing on those six skills, you are looking at around level 50+, with any race. Plus you will surely be leveling Speech and maybe Lockpicking. By late game I would guess somewhere around 55 to 58. Anything past 50 really doesn't make any difference. Except for more M/H/S and a few perks.

Well with focusing on those skills, Altmer have a head start to 100 by 35 skill levels in total. I'm not sure how much of a difference of level that would make, but hopefully not more than 2-3 levels over a race that has no benefit in any of those skills at the start?

Edit: I really wish there was a level calculator out there, then I could just figure out what level each race would end up at and make my decision from there.

No matter your choice, you will still break level 50. I think the 2-3 levels are not even a factor. I haven't seen any calcs either. I would just pick which ever one fit the character's personality and run with it.

Sounds to me like it's time for an experiment...

I made a specific thread asking about it. Hopefully somebody knows of one, or perhaps it will raise interest for somebody to make one. Who knows!

I do hate that speech is autoskilled by buy/sell. I forav mine to 100 and set all merchants to sell 200% and buy 50%. Even steven that way- with slower level progression and lower max level.

Since i use steel/leather (triss?) mod armor- i max smithing as well. I think this saves about 4 levels between the two, with much less tedium.
YMMV

Altmer, you had it right.

if you have enchantment then magicka doesnt matter because you can just reduce the cost of spells to nothing, so in the end altmer have less advantage than another race. this likewise applies to the regen magicka power they have.

I actually like Dunmer. Very high destruction early on, which IMO is the most important to level early on. Combine that with the atronach perk and you can basically ignore incoming magic plus you have more magic now. The fire resistance makes that even more apparent, especially against dragons, hargravens, etc. Fire enemies act as recharging stations.

Ugh there used to be a really good level calculator but I can't find it now. In my opinion the lower level will be more valuable than the perks. Also if you decide to go with a race like Breton/Imperial, not only will you have a lower level cap but also the useful racial abilities.

IMO it would be either Breton or Altmer.

The Breton is more defensive, having resistance to magic and their ability Dragonskin gives them a 50% chance of absorbing magical attacks for 60 seconds.

The Altmer is more offensive, having a bonus to magica and their ability Highborn allows them to regenerate magica much faster than any other race for 60 seconds.

I'd go Altmer, +50 magicka is awesome, but especially the racial can be a lifesaver.

The difference between starting all magic skills at 15. and starting with one at 25, four at 20 and one at 15 doesn't affect the max level for a pure mage much at all. The amount of 'xp' toward next character level is the same as the skill level gained, i.e. get restoration from 50 to 51, you get 51 toward the next character level. From all skills at 15 to where an Altmer starts at gives 565 (16+17+.....+25, and four lots 16+17+18+19+20). The number required to reach one character level higher is (Current level +3) x 25 [so level 1 to level 2 is 100, level 4 to level 5 is 175]. If you reverse that, 565/25 -3 = level, comes to 19.6, so once you reach level 20, the extra a non mage race had to do comes to less than a level. All pure mage races end the same, or at one level apart.

Edit : my very rough and probably wrong calculations put it at level 45 for the Altmer, 46 (just) for the race with no starting magical skill bonuses.

I had an Altmer Spellshield and got her to level 50. I used her magicka regeneration ability a LOT in large/tough battles. The 50 extra magicka is nice, at early levels you can put more into health then your average mage.

I understand your point. What you need to know is the math behind leveling. In Oblivion it was easy to calculate, since 10 points in any combo of your major skills gained you a level. In Skyrim I don't know how many skill levels it takes to level up, and I don't think it is a linear equation like it was in Oblivion. So, the higher level you are, the more skill levels you need, or something like that. I too would be interested to know what the math is behind it.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Leveling

The formula I quoted should be correct, (current level+3) x 25 for next level, and each skill up contributes the same number to this as the skill level reached. To get to level 2, you need 100, then another 125 for level 3, another 150 for level 4, etc.
If you start a new game, and increase each skill by 1 point, that's 26, plus four lots of 21, plus 13 lots of 16, that's 318, that's level 3 (needs 100+125=225), and more than halfway to level 4 (100+125+150=375, you have 93 toward the next level, 57 to go).

If you then used one of your lowest skills, it would need to go up 4 times to get the next level (17+18+19=54, +20 puts you at level 4 and 17 points toward level 5); if you use your highest skill, you only need increase it 3 times (27+28+29=84, level 4 with 27 points over).