I'm going to be playing a pure mage, and i was wondering if having two pieces of gear enchanted with reduce destruction spell cost by 25% would have the same affect as taking all the destruction perks "novice,apprentice,adept etc.)

IE. say lightning bolt costs 50 magicka, and i have the apprentice perk reducing it by 50% making it cost 25
alternatively could i have two peices with reduce by 25% each also reducing the cost down to 25?

Yes, you can reduce it down to zero, if you so choose.

Just do both, in the long run. You'll keep having lower costs as you level up Destruction, anyway, so it's a moving target until you max it.

The perks and armor are multiplicative though, not additive. So 50% reduction from two armor items and 50% from a perk would be a reduction to 25% of the total cost, not 0%. You'd need all 100% to come from equipment to get free spells.

No wonder Mages are so damn powerful.


So basically the same thing as chameleon armor?

I personally choose one school to use enchants on and save those perks. The other schools I just use the reduce mana perks or ignore those perks and just have high cost spells (conjuration summons). I did take the reduce mana cost for apprentice spells for detsro because I ddin't enchant much in the start but that was as far as I went.

I don't feel the need to reduce the mana costs for summons becuase they aren't that expensive and I use them primarily as distractions. rarely do I summon twice in one battle. I have quite a bit of mana so casting an expert summon storm atronach or an adept summon forst atronach really doesn't bother me much. Plus it's nice to see that mana bar go down sometimes!

Allright thank you everyone.