i put my mage followers in light armor, and then just enchant all of it with magic fortification or more health, stamina, magic etc...the only thing the robe really helps with is magic regeneration, but its so slow during combat anyway that magic regeneration isn't where its at..if robes made your magic regenerate at a lets say twice as fast as outside of combat, then there would be more incentive to wear one..so thats all robes really do, but i do wear em. i do wish they were more magic enhancing.

This is not true at all if you have perks in illusion, you can cast calm or pacify to exit combat. It literally takes seconds to regen to full, then you can nuke again.

The bonuses are not huge. Definitely not HUGE either. Seriously. Magic regen is almost useless. Don't be fooled by those big numbers. 100% in combat (as opposed to out-of-combat, where it's much faster) regen is almost nothing. What you should focus on is gear that reduces magic cost, and there's plenty of light and heavy armor with these enchantments. You'll find them for sale, in treasure chests and you can enchant your own.

i dont remember Merlin wearing a suit of shining steel armor.

But Divayth Fyr did.

Anyway, as a balancing factor it makes sense to me that a mage would be gimped if he chose to be armored. Otherwise what's the point of choosing to go the traditional, unarmored route? Once you reach a certain level of competency, you can make up for your shortfalls by way of enchanting zero cost spells for armor-wearers, or using Shield spells for unarmored mages. (Sorry, can't remember what they renamed Shield in Skyrim... Ward and stone skin? Something like that)

the reason mages are traditionally unarmored is because they spend their lives in libraries pouring over books to advance their knowledge and and further understanding of magic. this doesnt leave them time to go out and train to use armor effectively and it only hinders them in spellcasting because of the restriction of movement. just like they never had time to go train in the effective use of martial weapons. they forgo this for the powers that magic affords them. they dont need any of that because a fireball will always be more destructive than a sword and their defensive spells make up for their inability to wear armor.

traditionally of course. in skyrim for example its perfectly fine for them to whack stuff with a sword in one hand while shooting fireballs out of the other running around in full dragonbone plate. it doesnt make any sense in the traditional sense but there you go.

Lore based Character Classes that use Magic, Armor and Swords/Maces:

Battlemage: Mix of Scholar and Soldier

Spellsword: Student of Combat and Magic

P.S. Skyrim plays one character class only: Custom Class from Oblivion/Morrowind/Daggerfall. Play the character as you wish.