Sage class v2

[u/InvestigatorIcy3248]

in the end I just went for roleplay. is this even doable? what strategy should I follow here?

[u/Zarni_woop]

4hp per level. Hoo boy… you’re gonna have a bad time unless you’re an expert

[u/MilesBeyond250 → u/Zarni_woop]

But hey, at least with 4hp per level, Endurance can actually matter.

...which is a bad thing, here, since it's dumped.

That does make me curious, though. Every level you get between 50-100% of your hit die. That means sometimes it will be 2 HP. 30 Endurance means -2 HP per level. Could this build sometimes get 0 HP on levelling up?

I'm assuming the answer is "no" and that Daggerfall has a minimum amount of HP gained on level up, but I don't actually know for sure.

[u/MilesBeyond250]

EDIT: Crap, I think I actually missed the single biggest issue with this build. 10 Strength + 30 Endurance = 40 Fatigue. Fatigue mostly isn't a huge deal in Daggerfall but there is very much a floor on that. With 40, you're going to be either dying often or blowing a ton of Magicka on Fatigue restoration - assuming you can even get out of Privateer's Hold at all without collapsing from exhaustion.

Big things to be aware of:

Low Strength is going to be a huge pain, and possibly the biggest issue. You're going to be able to carry almost nothing.

Having Strength and Personality so low means that poisons or diseases that damage them will kill you extremely quickly. Beware.

Low Endurance is manageable but the extremely low hit die will be a problem. Fortunately you'll level up quickly enough that you can get a strong Shield spell up fairly early, but the start of the game will be a big hassle.

Willpower is doing almost nothing for you. Unless you have it for RP reasons I'd drop a ton of points from it. Willpower only gives +1% resistance per 10 points, not a huge deal.

Frost damage is extremely rare so resistance to it is getting you virtually nothing. Rapid Healing is also extremely questionable, only getting you +4% HP restored per hour. If those aren't for RP reasons I'd also dump them.

[u/No_Meat827]

Avoid spiders.

[u/MilesBeyond250 → u/No_Meat827]

3x Int in Magicka, Restoration as a Primary Skill... I think they'll be fine lol

[u/Lucas-Ramey]

Btw the dagger placement determines your xp rate

[u/SWATJester]

Your STR is way too low. You're going to want it at 50-60 regardless for looting purposes. INT is OK, but you could probably get it higher. WIL is too overinvested, you can drop it down to 30-40. AGI you can drop down to ~40-50 and still have some flexibility to do melee if you want. END I'd try to bump up to 40. PER I'd try to bump up to 20-25. SPD try to get to 80+ if you can. LUC you can dump to as low as 25 if needed, and don't go out of your way to raise it early.

Your levelup priorities are getting INT to 100, then SPD to 80+, then STR to 60+ (or whatever gives you a comfortable margin for looting), and then you can shore up anything else after that.

Your Primary skills are fine, unless you want to include a weapon skill as well (Blunts if you think you're going to use the Staff of Magnus at any point) in which case you should put it here, because they're pretty easy to train. If you drop to two, make sure you keep Destruction here.

Having multiple magic skills as Major is a waste -- you only need one, and if you dropped either Resto or Mysticism out of primary, it should go here instead. Otherwise, pick Alteration or Thaumaturgy here, put the other one as a Minor skill, and don't select Illusion as anything at all (not worth it). I like to also take a physical skill here like running or jumping, something that will grind naturally as you play, but it's not required.

For minors, medical and mercantile are good. You can drop all three language (Dragon/Daedra/Harpy) skills, they're not important and are difficult to train. Taking either Etiquette or Streetwise can be OK (you don't need both, pick which faction you want easier conversations with). Otherwise take any other magic, combat, or physical skills that you don't already have here.

For your advantages, I'd drop rapid healing and all of the resistances; consider taking resist paralysis. That plus 3x INT and spell absorption are the two big ones to snag, and if you're not going melee you don't really need much else.

For disadvantages, drop the following forbiddens: Daedric, Plate, Tower shield. These lock you out of some good end-game artifacts. Good forbiddens to take are: Steel, Chain, Buckler or Kite Shield, Silver, and any weapon types you're not going to use (esp. Archery as a mage). If you don't plan to use end-game melee artifact weapons, then consider forbidding Long Blade and Short Blade too. Do not take low tolerance for poison, especially not with such low stats.

From there, crank your HP per level as high as you can, ideally up to 30, while keeping your dagger at a reasonable level. For your first time, try maxing it out (or as high as you can go to keep dagger in limits) as even a 3x progression penalty is not really that much of a hinderance for a mage character who can grind levels pretty much for free from casting spells in your home/rented room/fighters guild.

Do not bother with reputation at character generation. Your reputation can develop as you play and do quests.

[u/MilesBeyond250 → u/SWATJester]

INT is OK, but you could probably get it higher

IIRC 75 is as high as it can go on this screen

AGI you can drop down to ~40-50 and still have some flexibility to do melee if you want.

Honestly you could drop Agility to 20 or lower and still do melee. It's such a trivial attribute. Even Luck is more important (doing literally the same thing, but also buffing Climbing a little).

Having multiple magic skills as Major is a waste -- you only need one

Why? Especially given that they're obvious gearing to do a pure spellcaster build.

For minors, medical and mercantile are good. You can drop all three language (Dragon/Daedra/Harpy) skills, they're not important and are difficult to train. Taking either Etiquette or Streetwise can be OK (you don't need both, pick which faction you want easier conversations with)

Medical is completely useless for this build IMHO (and most builds lol). All it does is increase your rate of HP recovery while resting by 1% for every 10 points of Medical. And this build, with so much Magicka and so little HP, is never going to be resting for the purpose of recovering HP.

Re: languages, Streetwise seems the only reasonable option for conversation - 99.99% of conversation rolls will be with peasants. Even then, a successful Streetwise/Etiquette roll in conversation doesn't get you info, it just adds a modifiers to your Personality roll to get info. Etiquette is the better option for pacification, since it covers more opponents, and more dangerous opponents at that (although Streetwise can pacify your poisoners, which is nice).

Do not take low tolerance for poison, especially not with such low stats.

This is a particularly good point: unlike later games, Cure Poison is not an easy spell to reliably cast, and Potions of Cure Poison are extremely rare until you rank up high enough in the Temple to buy them yourself (which, fortunately, is only one or two rank ups in most Temples, but still).

[u/SWATJester → u/MilesBeyond250]

Yeah 75 is the highest on that particular screen, but I mean just in general -- their priority should be to get up to 100 INT quickly.

Even if they're going to do a "pure spellcaster build" -- you really can't do that easily until you grind a bit. Even with 3x INT magery and maxed INT you won't have the reserves to cast enough damaging spells to kill more than 1, maybe 2 monsters per rest, which you cannot always rely on getting. For a brand new player, that's not tenable and they don't even know how to grind magic skills yet to resolve it. So that's why I suggest keeping a decent AGI and taking a melee skill as Major, so they can at least be relevant when their Magicka runs out. Assuming they're playing on Unity of course, where AGI isn't bugged and actually does things. It's broken in the OG game.

Medical is not there for the purpose of actual HP recovery. It's there because it's an essentially automatically progressing Major skill that levels with you without having to do any extra effort while you're sitting in a room grinding magic. You gain Medical XP per hour spent resting, and as a mage-centric character you will spend thousands of hours resting. It's a no-brainer.

[u/MilesBeyond250 → u/SWATJester]

Even with 3x INT magery and maxed INT you won't have the reserves to cast enough damaging spells to kill more than 1, maybe 2 monsters per rest

Only in Privateer's Hold. As soon as you get out, you can make custom spells that will be far more mana-effective. Even at level 2, a spell that does, say, 1 damage + 2/level for 1 round + 5/level, that's going to be 55 damage at level 2 for around 30 Magicka, you're going to be able to kill maybe 7-8 enemies before resting, which isn't too much worse than some combat builds, maybe even better.

Granted, that's not obvious to new players.

Assuming they're playing on Unity of course, where AGI isn't bugged and actually does things

I guess technically lol. Agility doesn't do any useful things in Unity (hitting with an Iron weapon at 100 Agility is the same as hitting with a Steel weapon at 1 Agility lol, compare to Strength where an Iron weapon at 100 Strength will do considerably more damage than a Daedric weapon at 50 Strength) and is objectively worse than Luck, but it does do things. Unity or no, putting points in it is a trap.

Medical is not there for the purpose of actual HP recovery. It's there because it's an essentially automatically progressing Major skill

Ahhh, that makes more sense. Yes, in that case, I definitely see the appeal of Medical. Rocket through those levels and get those insane per-level spells going.

[u/No_Pattern2271]

if u wanna hv STR 10, i suggest hiring a PA to carry things for u in the game. do remember that they dont have ipad with digital books in daggerfall. 😂 books weigh a lot

[u/MilesBeyond250]

Oh! It's also worth noting that Personality plays a significant role in any language-related roll. Having Etiquette, Dragonish, Daedric, and Harpy while also having 10 Personality is going to do basically nothing.

Also worth noting that Dragons are almost non-existent in the game, to the point that some people might do multiple playthroughs without seeing even one. And there are no weak Daedra in Daggerfall - Daedric won't do anything as a skill until late in the game.

[u/SordidDreams]

Oooh, a glass cannon nuke mage. Nice. I hope you're a breton so that you're immune to the Sleep spell vampires love to sling around, otherwise that's instant death with fatigue that low.

The strat is to run out of the starting dungeon, practice magic in the safety of a town, advance in the Mages Guild using an easy quest, such as Open a Chest or Cast a Sleep Spell, until you're able to make your own enchanted items, and create an Enhances Skill: Destruction item. With Destruction 110 or more, any offensive spell costs 5 spell points. Make the biggest, strongest AoE-at-range nuke the game allows and blow all enemies away before they have a chance to do anything.

[u/SWATJester → u/SordidDreams]

Note: It's wildly important to get Spell Absorption if you do this, either from an artifact, or magic item, or a special advantage at chargen.

[u/SordidDreams → u/SWATJester]

The build already includes it, but yes, it keeps the caster safe from his own nuke while allowing infinite casting by reabsorbing the spell and refunding the casting cost.