Only needed my Altmer Healer so far. I have made other characters, not to play properly, just to see if I could get Redguard and Bretons to look good, but that first character doesn't ever get boring. Ten minutes of stealth, twenty minutes of sword and board, nearly 300 hours of magic.

I clocked over 500 hrs on it. Console though.. and from what I remember there was no way of having even a Restoration spell out with a weapon at the same time. Correct me if I'm wrong.. but I haven't played it in quite a long time.

You can. I mean, it's not equipped to your left hand as in Skyrim, but you can cast spells with your weapon unsheathed.

Don`t do mages- Ever since I was a kidand just didn`t like `em.

I like keeping my feet on the ground and away from foul other world sorcery.

Nothing cold steel can`t cure.

I enjoy my mage thoroughly...

I've avoided armor and relying on Alteration to keep that squishy feeling. Also only took 5 levels of hp, rest all go to magicka (just to not get 1 shot so much )

Also not going for free casting though I am using some enchanting. Idea is to use it to fill gaps and help boost magicka & magicka regen.

managing magicka usage and regen cycles is key.

You can't just rely on destruction but gotta back it up, most likely with conjuration, maybe with illusion, restoration can help keep you and your follower alive. Alteration for DR.

It's pretty fun...

NOT the most powerful build.... but in Skyrim... that's also not necessarily a bad thing

I played Mage then I went back to thief. My Mage was too op, I mean zero casting cost for destruction spells and 90% reduction on restoration made game boring. Think I'm trya Mage that uses all 5 schools of magic might be less boring.

I'm using a pure destruction mage, light armor, and a big 2H sword as backup, just in case the enemy manages to get close to me. Which they normally don't. Must have stagger perk, and inceneration (or what it's called) is also nice when they burn to a crisp at the end.

My second mage is a pure conjurer type battlemage. Heavy armor, again a 2H sword (for reason previously stated). However, also must know some destruction spells to help out his conjured fighter.

I was a Mage, now I'm an archer. I only revert to magic when my arrows don't seem to do much damage. Then I blast a Fire Storm.

It's funny, my original mage character spammed the hell out of Destruction magic. Sure, I'd conjure an atronach every once and awhile, or raise zombie here and there. Well, my son erased that profile (console) and I became discouraged with playing through the whole College questline again. So I began my new life as Robert the Breton, conflicted mass murderer who decided to join the Dark Brotherhood in order to channel his lust for death in a more professional manner. Flash forward twenty hours and I've created a mage character again. Haven't looked back since.

Saren, my Dunmer mage has a new lease on life. I try to mix it up more. I find myself using Illusion with greater frequency because it's fun watching bandits kill each other for my own amusemant.

My character is a mage and still a mage. So what she use fire ball here and a fire ball there. She gets a kick and dose a little chuckle (I do anyway) casts a fury spell to a npc or a animal. Or do a calm spell to a dark brotherhood assassin "What ever you do don't do that again" comment. She wears little armour said for braces and boots. The cloths she wears is the Mythic Dawn Robe. That Oak flesh comes in handy for a mage which has 100 health. There is the repel the undead spell and see the undead run when it work. Then I have the flaming dog. Who needs a companion when you have that dog. Though I am playing on adept not on expert I have no major issue on the game. No point doing other skills no good at them. My mage experience is not playing with bows and arrows but with magic because she is a weapon herself. She dose not need swords or shields. The burden carrying those around.

Look at that main quest in Oblivion when you have to go into Dagon Shrine you have to give your stuff to Harrow not knowing that you are a mage that dose not need weapons to fight your way out.

I'm heavily addicted to ranger characters, but ever since I made my mage I've LOVED it.

Never cared for magic. I like characters who can snipe.

MAGIC BLOWS, get heavy armor perk and a warhammer and then you will see awesome.

I'm a little disappointed with the lack of necromancy & dark magic in general in this game.

I'd love a mod that allowed us to summon a great variety of undead minions(Like Draugr & ghosts) and gave us new, dark and wicked looking spells!

Try illusion magic if you're an evil character, it's so fun, if your not evil try Alteration or something, but being a thief illusionist is amazing, and if you can be bothered, try Vampirism alongside it.

Odd that you didn't notice then that you could cast spells regardless of having a weapon and shield equiped. Spells were treated seperately from them, you didn't need a free hand to use them.

I love magic and archery. I have one character. His name is Qui Rune, a wood elf. I just find it difficult to balance perks between archery magic etc...

As someone who goes with the warrior archetype almost every time, I have to confess mage is a lot of fun (especially an illusion/conjuration build!). Though it does get a bit dull after you craft your freecast gear. Wabbajack definately keeps things interesting though!

As soon as I tried a full mage character I realized how much more powerful she is than my warrior. Enemies can't even touch me. They die before they ever get near.

I've tried mages in the past but without much success. In Oblivion for example, I was sad to discover that magic was simply a repetitive chore in which you cast passive buffs on yourself and passive debuffs on enemies, then proceed to summon a pet to do the job for you and, finally and if needed, spam similar-looking destruction spells at your opponents while hoping that they don't have a 'reflect spell' effect active.

All this seemed tedious for me, and hardly involving. Why can't I actively block the spells other casters are sending my way? Why can't I, if good timing is involved, send those spells back at the original casters? In melee combat you can block other fighter's swings with your shield and counterattack with a bash. Why can similar principles be applied to magic as well?

In that sense, Skyrim magic system is a refinement over past TES games, since it finally gives you the ability to actively block magic (via ward spells) or the ability to set traps (via rune spells). In my opinion, those were steps in the right direction but it's still not enough. Unlike before, now we have (a badly implemented) active defense but, like before, we still don't have ways to actively counterattack magic.

For those who feel the same way and are on PC, I advise you to watch for the upcoming Duke Patrick's magic combat mod. If its oblivion version is anything to go by, the mod will add many features to make magic feel 'more like melee'.

I honestly haven't tried one yet. My first character was a thief that ended up so good at killing things he never really stole for a living. Now I'm doing an actual assassin and a mercenary with a mace and shield. I might give a mage a shot afterwards, I've been meaning to try out enchanting so it all works out.

I prefer mage even with all the things lacking in skyrim to make a better mage but heavy armor has a perk to make it weightless so you shouldn't judge by carry capacity. Also enchanting can boost carry greatly as well as putting points in stamina (which i usually do more for my warrior)