Hi all,

So, I want to make a character where I am stealthy, good at magic, and good at archery. My theory is that I will be stealthy using archery, but if I get into big trouble, I will pull out my magic. Is this a solid combination? Anyone play like this before?

I am worried since a bow is two handed and I couldnt pull out magic on the fly if I were using a bow. Also what class would be most suited for this playstle?

I've found magic to be a pain in the butt whilst using my bow. I find both are pretty much range attacks, so if a bow is no longer appropriate, I have a blade to back me up.

An advantage to blade/magic is that you could have both at the ready at any given time.

I'm just thankful for shouts and spectral assassins.

Hotkeys. That's your answer. If you are on console, one hotkey for bow, one for invisibility. If you are on PC you have more options. Bow, melee backup, Frenzy, Calm, Invisibility, etc.
What I often do is kick butt from a distance with the bow until things get too hot. Then I go invisible, hide in a corner and cast Frenzy. Then out comes the dagger in one hand, Invisibility in the other. Use the chaos to sneak around cutting throats.

Combat archery is very doable. Especially with the powered up bow bash (if you hit with a fully drawn arrow, if your next attack is a bash (and it's quick... less than 4 seconds or so) you'll do bow damage with the bash. That said, if you use bound bow, you'll ALSO be leveling your conjuration.


Before a fight, you can cast a flesh spell, summon a minion then cast your bow. It works better than people seem to think. That said, I'm not so sure you'll really be able to use destruction too. There's still plenty of options though. Illusion is a good (though magicka intensive) compliment to conjuration, and with alteration (for flesh spells) you'll be able to paralyze at higher skill levels.

Restoration is good for healing AND messing up undead. Really your only "combat" skills will be light armor and archery. You won't need smithing (except arcane) because your bow is summoned. At level 35 your build could look like this:

http://www.skyrimcalculator.com/#146943

That leaves you plenty of levels to figure out what other skills you want, or to continue on the paths already laid out.

P.S. Didn't put any perks into sneak... my bad. Try this at 40. http://www.skyrimcalculator.com/#146947

Hope it helps.

That's a fun idea except a fully perked Bound Bow does 24 damage while a fully smithed Daedric one does nearly 8 times as much.

My friend... I'm not certain where you got your numbers, but they're TERRIBLY wrong. Archery perks affect BBow too. It also fires roughly 3-1 arrows in comparison to a daedric.

Seriously... where'd that idea come from?

Load up your archer and cast it. You'll see damage MUCH higher than 24. Roughly 7.5 times as much (assuming your daedric numbers are accurate).

IamI3rian's lv40 build is pretty good but you could probably take all those 3 points out of Mage Armor since investing in both it and Light Armor is obsolete.

Illusion works very well with both bows and daggers, giving you crowd control options as well as an escape button in invisibility. Runes from the destruction school can be very useful as traps to protect your back and also to deal some splash damage. Make sure to pick up Rune Mastery and Quiet Casting, and they become pretty effective from stealth.

Good point mage armor... no IDEA why I did that. I'm tired.. just got in. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

I agree about illusion, but it's (almost) one of those "all or nothing" trees. Without all the perks (excepting perhaps cost redux) it just stops working on stuff you want it to work on. It's a pretty hefty investment, though at level 40 (37 now... after taking out mage armor) there's plenty of perks to go around. Try this :

http://www.skyrimcalculator.com/#146969

Up to 50. Added Dual cast and Expert to illusion, and finished off archery. Something else thrown in there too. Looks good to me, anyone else?

http://www.skyrimcalculator.com/#103158

Not sure if you realize Xolah... but that's a level 8 build with only some illusion perks.

That's the base damage of the bow, Bubba. I think we would assume that an archer who uses a bound bow and an archer who uses physical one would both want the Archery perks. Re-read my post. I'm talking Smithing, not Archery perks/skill. That's what makes the difference.
Bound bow has a base damage of 18. 24 after the Mystic Binding perk. A Daedric bow has a base damage of 19. Both bows have arrows with equal damage.
But 24 + your Archery perks/skill is way less than +/- 190 + your Archery perks/skill. See where I'm going with this? If two characters have 100 in Archery and all the perks while one uses Bound Bow + Mystic Binding while the other uses a Smithed up Daedric Bow, the guy with the Daedric bow will be doing many times the damage of the Bound Bow guy.
You can't 'smith a bound bow. It's as simple as that.

I agree that illusion is an all or nothing spell tree,but it's well worth it.
With all the illusion perks along with some archery and stealth I don't even wear armor anymore.
If you really want to mess with peoples minds through in some reanimate spells from the conjuration school.

A battle will go something like this:

Cast muffle on self and sneak in to cast a frenzy spell on enemy.
Watch as your enemies kill each other then reanimate on of the dead bandits.
Help your zombie with stealth attacks from the shadows.
Youe enemies will never even know your there.