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First, I am playing a custom class dark elf born under the Ritual. My specialty skills are combat and my favored attributes are strength and willpower. My major skills are: Long Blade, Block, Medium Armor, Destruction, Mysticism. My minor skills are: Acrobatics, Athletics, Enchant, Speechcraft, Mercantile.

I have a question about magicka and how it improves. The manual says on page 17 that your starting magicka is half your intelligence. My starting magicka was 40. I did not get a bonus for being a dark elf or for my birth sign. Is the manual wrong? Do you always start with your full intelligence?

My next question is about gaining more magicka. When I leveled up to second level, I put one point in intelligence. This raised my magicka to 41! Does magicka only go up when you raise your intelligence?

My character has only one major or minor skill that is based on intelligence, enchant. My character is lawful and will not break into anything so security is not an option. He does not have the only magic class that is based on intelligence, conjuration. He does not want to mix potions, so alchemy is a miscellaneous skill. Does this mean my only option for raising my magicka is to become a trader of enchanted items?

It seems to me that there is a flaw in the game design. What do you do if your magic using character is not a thief, does not want to mix potions or create enchanted items and has no interest in conjuration? You have no way to raise your intelligence and thus no way to raise you magicka? What am I missing?

What is your birthsign?

I was born under the Ritual.

The problem I have is my two magic schools, Mysticism and Destruction don't give me bonuses when I raise my IQ. Therefore, my magicka is going up very slowly. I see this a design flaw that prevents the player from playing some characters.

Design flaw? No offense, but that's like saying that because you work as a bookkeeper during the day and play computer games at night, it's a design flaw in whatever deity runs things that you're not also gifted with the strength of Atlas. You made the choices for your skills, so you live by the results. If you'd wanted to raise your intelligence, you should have placed skills that depend upon intelligence in your primary group. Want more intelligence multipliers when you make levels? Put conjuration and alchemy in primary and major skill groups. Keep casting the Bound Dagger spell, and make potions. It works.

magicka = int x multiplier
multiplier = racial bonus + birthsign bonus

most races have a racial bonus of 1 (normal magicka)
bretons and high elves get a higher racial bonus. i am pretty sure high elves get 2.5. my character was born under the apprentice so he gets 1.5 for a birthsign bonus

therefore, if my character starts the game with a 60 int, my magicka would be (60 x (2.5 + 1.5)) or 60 x 4, = 240 magicka

my character now has 134 int (he found 2 great items and has leveled his int well), so his magicka is 536, or 134 x 4.

the ONLY way you will ever increase your total magicka in this game is to increase your int. sorry, thats just the way it is. the only way to increase your int more than 1 point per level is to build your int leveling multiplier. the only way to build your int leveling multiplier is to practice int-based skills.

so, with the character profile you have provided, it looks like your only option for increasing your total magicka is to practice your enchanting a 3-5 points EVERY level and increase your int EVERY level. or to look for items with Fortify Int as a Constant effect.

Vargar: don't worry about it. It's not a problem. Misc skills going up will add bonuses to your Int or other stats just the same as major or minor. Let me create a little example (I'll try to respect your character concept, it sounds cool. But if I get something wrong just look at the spirit of it.)

OK lets say you are Level 4. As you play you gain experience like so: 2 in Long Blade, 1 in Block, 2 in Medium Armor, 2 in Mysticism, 1 each in Acrobatics and Athletics, 1 in Destruction. This will qualify you to level up, and you will see the following bonuses possible:

2x Strength,
2x Agility,
2X Endurance
2x Willpower
2x Speed

no bonus if Intelligence, Personality or Luck is chosen to improve.

NOW, lets say you, during that same period of time, also gain 4 points in Conjuration. You will receive those exact same options, plus:

3x Intelligence.

If you were to do a lot of Conjuring (10 points worth in fact), you would get a 5x Intelligence Bonus at level up. This holds true for any Miscellaneous skill, the only restriction really being that you cannot train the skill, you must practice it.

BTW, the manual is wrong, I always see Magicka being equal to Intelligence, except if you have bonuses from Race or Sign. For instance my Brandwyn, a Breton born under the Mage, gets 2x Int for her magicka.

I agree with Fable that it is not really a design flaw per se, more a matter of lack of experience. I have gone through a couple of character designs trying to find the right balance for me.

Edit: Beaten to the punch! (sort of)

Oh. So some races start out with multipliers to their magicka. I guess it is my fault for not buying the strategy guide to find this out. It is in the guide, right? Could someone with the guide share these super secret numbers with us?

There are three magic using classes in the game that have no major skill with intelligence as the primary attribute and only have one or two minor skills with intelligence as the primary attribute. They are:

Healer
Major: Alteration, HTH, Mystisicm, Restoration, Speechcraft
Minor: Alchemy, Blunt Weapon, Illusion, Light Armour, Unarmoured

Nightblade
Major: Alteration, Illusion, Mystisicm, Short Blade, Sneak
Minor: Security, Destruction, Marksman, Light Armour, Unarmoured

Spellsword
Major: Alteration, Block, Destruction, Restoration, Long Blade
Minor: Alchemy, Blunt Weapon, Axe, Medium Armour, Enchant

Their class bonus for attributes in not in intelligence. This means if you pick a race without a bonus multiplier to starting magicka or the birth sign with one, you will start the game with 30 or 40 points in magicka. The healer will be using Alchemy (starts at 20) to make potions and the Nightblade will be using security (starts at 15). The Spellsword can pick between Alchemy and Enchant (Both start at 20), with Enchant being the favorite. This will give them the ability to get a bonus to intelligence when they level up. Since the skill starts off so low, they will be spending a lot of time trying to improve this skill.

Now consider if the character wants to dedicate a point to intelligence at every level up. The healer may, but the Nightblade and Spellsword may want to boost their other attributes. With a magicka below 60, you are not going to be casting too many spells, yet these three classes have three major spell casting skills. Is anyone playing one of these classes? Do they work?

Don’t get me wrong. I love this game. Maybe design flaw is the wrong word for it, but there are class/race combinations that you just can’t play. It would not be a problem if it meant you just advanced slower than the other races in that class. As I see it, there are some class/race combinations that just don't work. I am not referring to the obvious problems like trying to play an orc magic user in D&D with a 9 IQ. It looks to me that if you want to play a successful Healer, Nightblade or Spellsword, you have to be a certain race and born under a certain sign. This goes against the spirit of the game that lets you play any combination of race/class. These classes were created by the game designer, yet they seem to be limited in function.

Please take this as my personal assessment of the game. I am not trying to start a holy war about this. I still love the game. I am just trying to clarify this in my mind, and it may help others who plan on playing a character of this type.

nah, yer not startin a war. but you gotta remember the fundamental premise of skill development, which in MW feeds stat development: practice. my conjurer is level 26 and i will have to say the majority of my skill development has been in dedicated practice. whether its letting mudcrabs beat on me to build my med and heavy armor (which in turn builds end multiplier for leveling), or crafting crap drain personality potions to build alchemy which also builds int multiplier and lets me build some cash, or standing in the mage guild casting heal after heal to build my restoration. is that kind of boring: yes. but i take breaks every couple of levels and go use my newly developed skills doing missions for the guilds or houses, or just explore and keel sheet. occasionally i will level while i am out in the field. no prob. i consider that as flavoring to my character.

so, you can play a spell-castin spellsword easy. but its gonna involve sittin at an alchemy vendor buying stacks of components from him and selling him back what you produce. it really isnt that bad and doesnt take too much time. your int will thank you

@Varger, there's another option you should consider, as well: acquiring enchanted items. This has always been (in the Elder Scrolls series) a means for magically limited characters to cast with the best of 'em, since items don't use personal magicka. And according to Pete Hines at Bethsoft, there are tons of both randomized and deliberately placed enchanted items spread over the length and breadth of the countryside. I recall what a kick I got out of having a fighter-type in Daggerfall, years ago, who was able to skip a difficult maze of a dungeon by simply using the levtiation spell embedded in hiis cuirass to rise to the central platform where the prize treasure lay. It's worth thinking about all the more so in Morrowind.

If you really want to raise your int, it's better to have int skills in misc. That way, you can practice them without levelling.

I make it a point to practice Conjuration (a misc skill) to get 10 skill raises every level. This guarantees a x5 multiplier every level.

Misc skills are handy for raising attributes. I would make sure that you have an easy to practice skill for each attribute in misc, so you can always get an x5 multiplier when you level. Place difficult to raise skills in major and minor to help you level them.

If you really want to raise your int, it's better to have int skills in misc. That way, you can practice them without levelling.

Any skill goes up around a third slower when it's considered minor, and there's also the failure factor to take into account. You are much more likely to fail at alchemy and use up your herb supply, for example, when it's only a minor skill. Of course, you can keep trying to cast conjuring spells, and sleeping, then casting again, etc--but IMO that's rather boring. I'd rather use skills as needed; each to their own.

It is kindof boring Fable, but surprising fast to take a couple days off and level of Conjuring or Illusion 5 or 10 times. Especially if you have a lot of Magicka and a cheap easy to cast spell.

Vargar, you don't need to buy a strategy guide. I certainly wouldn't, those things are always weak. In the manual it merely says "fortified natural magicka" in the special abilities for certain races, but the nuts and bolts information about the races and signs is in the character creation process, highlight the different races to look at their attributes. I think all of the class/race combinations are perfectly viable, and over time as people get tired of the obvious combinations you will see all kinds of weird ideas.

To answer my own question, what are the magicka bonuses for each race, I spent some time with the game last night.

Bretons get a 1.5 multiplier and High Elves have a 2.5 multiplier. All other races get no bonus to starting magicka. So a Breton with 50 intelligence will start with 75 magicka points and a High Elf will start with 125. There are three birth signs that can increase this; Apprentice, Atronach and Mage. The Mage gets an additional .5 bonus. The Apprentice gets a 1.5 bonus, but has a 50% weakness to magicka. The Atronach gets an additional 2.0 multiplier, but has stunted Magicka and Spell absorption. Birthsign multipliers are added to race multipliers. So a Dark Elf born under the Atronach sign would have a 4.5 multiplier to starting magicka, or 225 points with an intelligence of 50.

Now that we have that out of the way, lets all get up and move away from the computer. Lets forget about Morrowind, the best CRPG I have ever played. I want to talk about the generic RPG X for a minute. In game X you pick a character concept. This includes a race, class and collection of skills. In this game you start with 5 major skills, which you would expect to use about 65% of the time. You also start with 5 minor skills, which you would expect to use about 30% of the time. You also have a number of miscellaneous skills that you will use rarely, if at all. This makes perfect sense from a character concept point of view and a RPG system point of view.

Now Morrowind has a lot in common with the generic RPG X, but there is one small difference. In Morrowind, the best way to better your character is to spend an inordinate amount of game time, in a tedious manor, exercising skills that don’t fit into the character’s concept…skills that you had no interest in using. So if it takes you 15 minutes to increase these miscellaneous skills every level and you go up 20 levels in the game, you will have spent five hours on activities that have nothing to do with the story.

Boy, did I pick the wrong week to stop drinking.

This is true grasshopper Hehe I just think of Bruce Lee, Albert Switzer, or Jack Nicholson when I have to do those tasks. Morrowind stays true to the concepts that if you want to be the best you have to invest, no pain no gain, and perserverance will conquer all. Hey didn't we want a RPG without cookie cutter characters? I know I did and Morrowind certainly delivers that.