Should I? It seems to me that I wouldn't have enough of either health, stamina, or magicka to play a good one. Am I wrong? I also don't think I would have enough perks. Wrong again? Anyone play as a battlemage here and like it? I like the idea of going sword and spell.

Magic being only Conjuration' Restoration and destruction along with one handed and light armour?

I reckon you'd have enough perks, I'd maybe only go to 200 on stamina.

Yeah, I was thinking either light or heavy armor - haven't decided and appreciate advice
one handed
conjuration (necromancy perks only)
destruction (flame and frost only)
restoration (up to adept only with other perks


Do bound weapons make sense? Should I just use regular weapons?

I was thinking about this as a build:
http://skyrimcalculator.com/#135508

EDIT: I am just concerned I would be too short in health, stamina, and magicka to be very effective at either combat or magic.

You should only pick fire, frost, or lightning, not all three. Other than that it looks fine to me.

You think picking fire and frost is too much? Hmmm......which then? Fire or frost? I am thinking fire maybe.

It's a great archetype, by far one of my favorite. If you're worried about lacking sufficient points in the appropriate attributes then make an Altmer. Due to the necessary diversity required when distributing points to attributes to make a successful Battle Mage, Enchanting will quickly become your best friend. Enchant your boots for Stamina and your gauntlets to raise your One-Handed Att, and enchant the rest to reduce the cost of Destruction spells.

I have a few criticisms about your build though. Personally, I don't think Conjuration is necessary, I would swap it out with Alteration. I think having access to Atronach, Paralysis and Flesh spells is a lot more useful, especially if you're going to be using Light Armor. In Destruction, I confine myself to only one of the three elements - typically lightning.

i made a lvl 57 breton with heavy armor, one hand, destruction, restoration, smithing and enchantment. badass battlemage. one of my top characters. to me brentons are good for battle mage cause they can absorb spells and turn it into magicka. plus they just look badass in necromancer robes and ebony armor

I'd pick fire seeing how almost everything is weak to it. Fire is only weak agaisnt dragons and fire atronachs.

Ok, thanks everyone. I've refined my build a bit. The most significant change is going heavy armor, deciding on NO smithing for this character.
http://skyrimcalculator.com/#135539

Sort of a death knight/battlemage build I guess? My only concern is that I won't have enough magicka to raise the higher level undead.

You can always perk into Respite, and dump your points into Magicka/Health. You wont need Stamina, but I dump points into it anyway

Battlemage is a hard build to pull off now with the Hand limit.

I picture the stereotypical battlemage wielding a greatsword in heavy Armor while flinging destruction/conjuration spells, but since you can't cast and use a 2handed weapon at the same time...

H/M/S Ratio of probably 2:4:1

Not really related, but given that limitation on 2handed weapons, they really should have made 2handed melee weapons a bit stronger. It's not really the initial damage that hurts it, it's how Smithing improves at a static rate.

True, I never thought of that. Thanks.

I absolutely love battlemage builds, but I can understand your problem. Before anything else, I want to say this: I personally prefer battlemages in exclusively heavy armor and I detest the idea of using an Altmer in heavy armor, so neither will any of my build ideas use Altmer nor light armor.

First and foremost, we have a stamina problem. Yes, Respite is a great perk, but with only 100 stamina, we'll be using it often, and therefore using our magicka. Not a good idea in my opinion to rely solely on this perk, though it may be worth investing in.

Secondly, the price you pay for armor is that you don't get the awesome bonuses robes get unless you are a good enchanter or happen to have loads of money and good luck.

Generally speaking, Enchanting is a good skill for a battlemage. It mitigates the fact that you have to spread your attributes thin while giving you access to defensive bonuses, spell cost reduction, magicka regen and enchantments on weapons that reflect or compliment the magic you use in battle.

For balance's sake (and also so that we can have some other skills), Enchanting should not be used in conjunction with other crafting skills. I will not make examples of or advocate such builds. For a battlemage, Enchanting is the most useful crafting skill (as outlined above), so my builds and builds I will suggest will contain either Enchanting or no crafting skill.

As for the spell schools you use, that's totally up to you, but I have my suggestions. I speak from experience when I say that Destruction and One Handed compliment each other for the absolute most potent combat capacity I've seen in the game, so I implore you to try it. That, and it really suits the playstyle

However, it's perfectly reasonable that other players have used builds that completely mastered Conjuration, a melee skill, and sometimes added Archery. Those three skills combined with an armor skill and Restoration end up great: you'll have a tanky character who summons one- or two-handed weapons for melee, bows for range, atronachs, dremora lords, and even raises his fallen foes to fight for him. It's a really great build that I recommend, but it's not my style. Here's an example build that will hopefully interest you: http://skyrimcalculator.com/#135551

I left many things out of the build, most notably the Master Conjuration perk, but I assure you that it works very well. Atronachs and weapons for every occasion, generally a free hand for casting, powerful healing and necromancy, this build pretty much has it all. But, as I've said, I'm more fond of using Destruction, so on to that.
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For the sake of preparedness, I prefer One Handed to compliment Destruction, though I would neither invest in dual casting nor in dual wielding.

Important note: A lot of people are saying that you should invest in only one element if you use Destruction in a battlemage build to save perks. This can be a good or a bad thing depending on how you do it. I advise you to invest your elements with the following in mind.

Shock is the best element for neutral coverage. The pros are that very few enemies resist it, it travels instantaneously, it harms enemy spellcasters significantly, and it can turn enemies to ash. Disintegrating enemies is more than a gimmick: on top of being an automatic one-hit kill when they're at low health (meaning you can cast a menial lightning spell at an enemy at low health to kill them instantly while not spending a lot of magicka), there's no corpse for an enemy mage to raise. This can be greatly important, as when you're fighting a group of strong mages, you usually end up fighting them twice, which is not something anyone is overly fond of doing. However, this leads me to the cons of shock damage.

Firstly, just as stated above, it disintegrates enemies, which leaves you with two problems if you're using Conjuration: either you can't reliably invest in the necromancy branch of the tree, or you can't use shock spells to their full potential. Secondly, shock is the most expensive element, which is never good. Finally, while excellent neutral coverage is a good thing, it's also a bad thing--just as few enemies are resistant to shock, there are also few (if any) that are weak to it. Currently, I know of no enemies weak to shock damage.

At the end of the day, shock is still superior to the other elements in terms of singular usage. If you're going to go for one, go for shock.

Fire and frost, though, have their pros as well, and in fact I prefer them to shock. Alone, they're not as potent--you'll find that there are resistant enemies all over Skyrim and that their secondary effects aren't great on their own, and half the dragons you fight will resist your magic by 50% if you choose only one of these elements (as opposed to dragons being neutral to shock damage). However, fire and frost synergize extremely well and do better together than shock does on its own--for the cost of twice the perks, of course.

For starters, fire and frost together have the best coverage you can get. Aside from one enemy (some mage, there's only one of him) who is almost immune to all magic and shouts, you'll be hitting things hard: fire and frost is the best super effective coverage in the game. Almost every enemy you encounter, including dragons, will either be weak to one of the two or neutral to one. Without the top perk in their branches, fire can already set up enemies for further damage and frost can slow enemies and prevent them from power attacking with its stamina damage. With the top perk, you're looking at casting a fear effect with no level cap on any enemy short of dragons and paralysis. Those five status effects--fear, slow, paralysis, stamina damage, and extra damage while on fire--are useful against any enemy it can affect (read: the majority of enemies), versus shock's single status effect of damaging magicka (which is only useful against enemies who cast spells) and its chance to disintergrate foes (which is only useful against mages who raise undead). Finally, both elements are less expensive than shock.

It is obvious to me that fire and frost together are superior to shock, and that shock is the best element on its own. Investing in all three can make for a powerful mage, but we generally cannot spare the perks, especially with a hybrid build like this. Also, remember that, if you invest in Enchanting, your weapon enchantments will benefit from your Destruction damage perks--another reason to use fire and frost over shock alone, as you'll be saving more perks and doing more damage with better effects using a build that contains this (http://skyrimcalculator.com/#135557) rather than this (http://skyrimcalculator.com/#80033). At the end of the day, though, it's all up to you which element(s) you choose.
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Restoration is pretty much a must-have for battlemages. I don't think I need to explain why. Conjuration and Illusion are options, though not necessary. Within Conjuration, when it comes to which allies you want on the field, you should have EITHER this (http://skyrimcalculator.com/#80033) OR this (http://skyrimcalculator.com/#80033). One rank in the Summoner perk is necessary to get the higher tiered perks on the atromancy branch, and it's certainly not useless (I'd say it's a lifesaver), but two ranks is a bit much and is wasteful in my opinion.

For atronachs, dual casting is not necessary as you can simply summon them again (and they're likely to die at lower levels or against tougher enemies before their time would expire twice over, anyway). For risen dead, however, dual casting is imperative: only staves, the Ritual stone power, and Dead Thrall can raise zombies that don't disintegrate, so it's highly important that we use dual casting to lengthen their, uh, lifespan. Even when you can cast Dead Thrall, it only works on humanoids, who not only might not be present (say, in a draugr crypt), but may not even be the best choice (is that a dead mammoth right next to you?).

Whatever you do with Conjuration, I advise against getting the master perk for many reasons. Firstly, you may just not want a permanent ally: different situations call for different battle tactics, and it would be especially disappointing if you spent a perk, casting time, and lots of investment in magic and cost reduction to summon a permanent Storm Thrall just to find out that you'd be better off with a Fire Atronach for a fight. Secondly, even if and when you do want to summon a permanent or semi-permanent ally, there are better ways to do it than wasting a perk. Consider that, of all the master spells in all schools, it's generally an infrequent thing and always better to do outside of combat, so you can easily just find the resources (magicka + cost reduction) to cast the spell at your leisure rather than spend a perk on it to cast it cheaply.

Finally, there's Illusion. I don't think it's incredibly useful for a battlemage, but if you want, you can do this (http://skyrimcalculator.com/#135564). Eight perks is pricey, but this allows you to cast Muffle and Invisibility in order to add some stealth to your playstyle--and I don't mean for assassinations, but for getting the hell out of the battlefield. Useful, yes, but not incredibly important, especially since Restoration and Heavy Armor generally keep you healthy and Respite allows you to run away pretty easily. Using Illusion for the only other thing it does, battlefield control, requires practically every perk in the tree to be effective. Is it useful? Incredibly so. Is it worth it? Not for a build that doesn't specialize in it, and most certainly not for someone who already has a powerful presence on the battlefield.
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Here are a few sample builds. They're based on one overall build that's tweaked for different playstyles.

With Enchanting, specializing in fire and frost: http://skyrimcalculator.com/#80033
(Big, angry, bulky damage dealer. Freakin' unstoppable and generally my favorite battlemage build.)

Non-elemental Enchanting with fire, frost and Necromancy: http://skyrimcalculator.com/#80033
(Remember, kids: no shock + necromancy.)

Heavy Elemental Battlemage with no Enchanting: http://skyrimcalculator.com/#80033
(Atronachs and no Enchanting give us room to use all the elements and use Heavy Armor to its fullest potential [useful for falling off cliffs, running around, and punching people].)

Enchanting, all elements, no Conjuration: http://skyrimcalculator.com/#80033
(Pretty well balanced.)

That's all for now. I'll edit this post as necessary. PLEASE NOTE: It's four in the morning as I write this in my part of the world. I am tired. It is perfectly possible that I messed up some of the builds and left perks in there that I didn't mean to. I'll come back here tomorrow to look over my post and edit anything that needs it.

I hope I managed to help!

Alternately level health and magicka until you hit 200 on both the focus on stamina to 200. Afterward level as you see fit. Illusion is fun to disappear mid-battle and stab your opponents' backs.

Destruction is fairly useless when you get to higher levels, I'd stick with one-handed, conjuration, restoration, and heavy armor. Might want to level enchanting and smithing to make a good set of armor that protects you and can provide magicka buffs, magicka regen buffs, and spell cost reduction.

The ratio for magicka:health:stamina should probably be 3:2:1, or 2:2:1

If at any point you feel your destruction magic is lacking in power, try Alchemy!

Looks like I forgot to anolyze races and armor. Oh well, I'll get back to it. *yawn* Goodnight, folks.

ResidentPianist, thanks for that in-depth advice. Awesome stuff - though for some reason the links don't appear to send me to an actual build.

Let me jump on here and give my 2 cents regarding race: consider Imperial.

They seem basically built to be battlemages in Skyrim. That +10 in Restoration is very nice, as that seems to be a slow leveller, and it puts you closer to perks like Respite. Their other skill bonuses are perfect for most battlemages, too.

But the thing I like best is Voice of the Emperor. Excellent crowd control when you really need it, though I'm not sure if it works against all enemies. Still, if you play carefully you may not miss Illusion as a cc school with this.


Otherwise, something my wife is playing right now is a shieldmage, or spellshield - well basically it's sort of a typical D&D cleric. She's perking Heavy Armor, Block, Destruction, Restoration, One-handed... possibly also Enchanting and a bit of Smithing. Her main thing is to use a spell in her right hand and a shield in the left. If/when she runs out of Magicka, she pulls a mace.

I haven't really tried a typical battlemage myself. I've done a sort of paladin - Imperial with Heavy Armor, One-handed (dual-wielding mostly), Restoration. I just can't imagine using Destruction only in one hand... if I use Destruction, I really want to pump up the damage, and then I'm playing more of a pure mage. Well, I suppose a heavily-armored mage would be considered a battlemage...

I would have been a battlemage if Beth didn't screw the flow of a battlemage. Seriously, I wanted it to be like Oblivion:sword, shield, spell. Noooooo they had to change it :puke:

To be completely honest, every Skyrim character ever created begins as a "battlemage" in the fact that they all start with basic fighting AND magic abilities; sans perks. For the devoted balance between magic and melee combat one would have to make sacrifices on both sides. For my level 54 Nord character I have skills in all three categories (magic, combat, stealth) which resulted in a sort of magic-battlethief with decent sword and shield combat abilities, summonable aid, and the ability to pick locks like a boss. The downside for this character is there is almost no way to single-handedly do anything; I always need a summon.

I think it's worth a shot though, if it interests you.

Dunmer

Lightning Destruction (Get Lightning bolt asap, it helps a lot)
-Novice Destruction
-Apprentice Destruction
-Destruction Dual Casting
-Impact
-Augmented Shock
-Disintegrate

Restoration (Fast Healing)
-Novice Restoration
-Apprentice Restoration
-Regeneration

Optional: Conjuration (Lightning Atronach)
Perks:
-Novice Conjuration
-Apprentice Conjuration
-Adept Conjuration
-Expert Conjuration
-Summoner
-Atromancy
-Elemental Potency
-Twin Souls

Heavy armour (Get the Conditioning perk ASAP)
Perks:
-Juggernaut
-Fists of Steel
-Cushioned
-Conditioning

I think of a battlemage as an Imperial in heavy armor but uses destruction magic and restoration instead of melee.

Like the ones we saw in the Imperial City during Oblivion and who are trained from the Arcane University

Aw, crap. I put a lot of work into that. I'll fix it ASAP, probably tonight or tomorrow.

The Battlemage is a very viable type of character. There will be as many suggested variants on this build as as any other character type, maybe even more. So, you will get a ton of different suggestions. Some may seem rather in depth, but don't make it a "Cookie Cutter" character. Make it your own and build it to the personality of THAT character.

A Battlemage can be 1H or 2H. Even though the DW hot keys are still flawed, using a weapon in the primary hand, you can easily use the 2 hotkeys to change spells out in the off hand. 2H is also a great choice, and my favorite, because you can hotkey the weapon to 1 slot and (2) spells to the other slot. This swaps out so fast, it doesn't hinder being a 2H at all.

I can't see a Battle mage wearing anything other than Heavy Armor and a hood. That is just me. I picture them as either being an Imperial in a hood or a Dremora Lord in full Daedric. The latter would definitely be a Altmer. I think the male Altmers, created with the weight slider all the way up and using a dark skin tone make my choice Battlemage.

The skills are purely preference. Any combination will be viable. Pick your weapon and two major magic schools. One can argue any combination of those. I'd pick what is fitting to the character and kick ass. As long as you have a primary damage and a primary defense...the rest are purely choice.