Morrowind character idea: Is this even possible?

[Atalante]

With Morrowind mod disk in hand, I'm planning to take another stab at this game. My first time playing I went with a pure melee character. This time I'm hoping to go a slightly different route, although one still
based on melee weapons.

I want to build an older character, proberly a Brenton or Dark Elf (?) who rather than being physically strong uses magic to boost his fighting abilities. He'll be able to toss out a fireball and its elk to turn the tide of battle if need be, but he'll mainly be focused on boosting his melee ability. So were talking lots of defensive spells to make up for what will be a relatively low health pool, similar deal for boosting melee damage and some seriously enchanted weaponary and armour.. But will that be enough to survive?

Will Morrowind let me pursue this somewhat backward philosophy? I'm pretty ignorant of whats available as far as Morrowinds spell system goes so, please, if this is even possible some general guidance would be most appreciated.

[ericb]

It's been a while but my main Morrowind character was a battlemage...basically a normal mage with a few schools of magic removed and weapons/armor added. So I had a mage wearing medium and heavy armor and a sword while still using the majority of different magics. You can also train ANY school...depending on how you start is how fast you'll level them but nothing prevents you from learning every skill if you have the time and money.

[Blackhawk]

Sure. There are two sets of spells to concentrate on:

Absorb Attribute - (Absorb Strength, etc) lets you drain an attribute from an enemy and give it to yourself. IE - you suck twenty points of Agility from an enemy and get 20 temporary points. Along with this are Absorb Magicka, Absorb Health, and Absorb Fatigue, which drains the health/etc bars from your enemy and boosts your own.

Fortify Skill - (Fortify Long Sword, etc) boosts your skills. Fortify Health/Magicka/Fatigue/Attributes are available, too.

The Absorb spells are Mysticism. The Fortify spells are Restoration, so I would have those two as primary skills. Both rely on Willpower, so boost that.

Another suggestion is Alchemy. Make yourself plenty of Fortify Attribute potions to save you spell points in combat - you'll need them. Alchemy uses Intelligence, which also determines your Magicka (spell points), so that would be your second primary attribute.

I would also suggest Unarmored and Alteration for the defensive abilities. Taking enchanted armor is great, but you'd have to really focus on boosting your strength to manage it. The stat boosting spells will only stay active for a minute or two. That's long enough to win a fight, but not long enough to lug a suit of armor across the Grazelands.

Summary:

Attributes: Intelligence, Willpower

Primary Skills: Restoration, Mysticism, Alchemy, Alteration, Unarmored.

All there are a few problems with the build. If you wear lots of armor and use lots of weapons, you are going to boost your skills in those thing regardless of your desire to be weak in those areas. If you go for super-enchanted gear, your magic will be irrelevant; you'll survive on the enchantments, and be a melee character. Finally, this particular build is functional, but would be very, very difficult at the earlier levels. Check out the mage strategy guide linked in some of the other threads and get the Magicka Regen and Cast Reduction mods, and avoid things that add extra combat in the first fifteen or so levels.

[KiloOhm]

You're going to want to concentrate in Summoning also since you will need to have "bound" weapons and armor. Otherwise with low str your weapons and armor will constantly weigh you down. This will be a difficult character to play for sure.

[Grundbegriff]

I want to build an older character, proberly a Brenton or Dark Elf (?) who rather than being physically strong uses magic to boost his fighting abilities. He'll be able to toss out a fireball and its elk to turn the tide of battle if need be, but he'll mainly be focused on boosting his melee ability. So were talking lots of defensive spells....

Will Morrowind let me pursue this somewhat backward philosophy?

Morrowind will let you pursue whatever you want to pursue. The character you described is pretty close to the one I used: an axe-wielding enchanter/alchemist. Harsh with melee weapons and tactical with cleverly chosen spells (but not potions -- those were mainly for income), he managed to survive whatever the game dished out, but it was rough in the early days. Since I like the challenge of survival scenarios (where the character's irresistible dominance grows out of his pitiable salad days), I enjoyed "this somewhat backward philosophy".

IIRC, I took the in-game quiz to determine a character type, and also made some direct choices from a grid of possibilities. Both procedures pointed to the same sort of character: "witchhunter" or somesuch. So, I used that pre-defined character type as a basis and tweaked its settings till it matched what I had imagined as a melee/enchanter.