Your favorite Arena/Daggerfall/Morrowind (non) custom class

[Cryomancer]

Not counting custom classes in Morrowind and Daggerfall. In the poll, will be A to indicate that the class exists in Arena, D, for Daggerfall and M for Morrowind. If there is a mistake, let me know.

My favorite class is by far, in Arena, Daggerfall and Morrowind, Battlemage. In Arena, Battlemage has armor and access to all weapons and all offensive spells cost half magicka, has the third largest magical capacity, losing only to sorc and mage. The unique drawback is thatis the lowest class to level up. In Daggerfall, too, mainly with magical weapons. In Morrowind, there are so many enemies with spell reflection that I never played it as a pure caster. Always end up as a battlemage.

 

[Lemming42]

Always play custom class on DF/MW so I can only speak for Arena, but the answer has to be Spellsword. Overpowered to the point where it's basically cheat mode. Enough mana to cast the crucial spells like Spell Reflect, Invisibility, Light Heal and Shield, and enough strength to be an effective melee fighter.

Only snag is that I'm pretty certain it's on the slowest level up track, plus there's the pain in the ass of having double the pertinent attribtues of most other classes (STR, END, AGI, INT). But really the slow levelling isn't a problem because you're so well equipped to turn absolutely everything into mincemeat that the levels come pretty fast anyway, especially in the late game dungeons where Stole Golems, Hellhounds and Homunculi are mass-suiciding against your spell reflection and giving you thousands of XP per go.

Also you can just get the Oghma Infinium a couple times and max out all your necessary attributes anyway.

 

[Cryomancer]

Is interesting how at moment, except by the kc option, at moment, everyone voted for the magical/melee hybrids. I also play mostly with custom classes in Daggerfall and Morrowind. But some times wanna challenge because lets be honest, mainly in daggerfall, custom classes are broken op.

 

[Joseph King]

For Arena, you naturally want some kind of magic abilities so you can use Passwall. Nothing else compares.

 

[Butter]

Arena has the best class system of all the TES games. All the subsequent games are just asking you to make a gigachad master-of-everything character using the custom class option (or you're just a gigachad by default in Skyrim). Arena tied things like hit die, crit chance, and immunities to poison or paralysis into your class choice, and you couldn't just mix and match to get everything. The coolest classes are probably Sorceror with their ability to absorb spells but inability to regenerate spell points (what would later be called the Atronach), and the Barbarian with their d30(!) hit die and faster health regen (which would be reprised as a special advantage in Daggerfall before being discarded entirely starting in Morrowind).

 

[Lemming42]

I wonder what the worst classes are. The thought of an Acrobat playthrough of Arena is inherently funny.

I remember doing a Monk playthrough which devolved quite quickly into doing artifact quests over and over. Warlock's Ring until it shatters, then straight back to Imperial City to nag people until they tell you where it is again. Archer sucks balls too; no use being a master of ranged combat in a game where 80% of enemies just rush you, and you don't even have any thieving skills to help out. I remember after a while the best option to deal with Wraiths became to just run up to them and let them die to their own splash damage.

 

[Vic]

classes in elder scrolls?

 

[Cryomancer]

gigachad master-of-everything character

That depends. Daggerfall allows you to stack lots of "disadvantages" that doesn't matter or are negated by innate resistances and then pick the best benefits possible. However, also allows unique interesting RP character building. For example, my last Daggerfall character was Cryomancer which has resistance vs cold and weakness vs fire that could't use a set type of weapons which doesn't seem fit for this pure RP build.

In Morrowind, you can max out and become Godlike with any class. Is just a bit hard or easy depending on your class. Even in the case, where all of your major/minor skills are extremely hard to level up, you can just farm money and pay trainers to level up it. And killing dark brotherhood assassins and selling their armor or looting the vampires near Balmora is a quick way to get money early on.

I wonder what the worst classes are.

In Arena, I would say that the Thief class is the hardest to beat the game. No spells, only very light weapons and the most basic shield and the unique good thing is the relative high leveling speed which doesn't matter as he has no spells to scale up to his caster level and d14 hit dice is marginally better than d12 and d10 from spellsword and battlemage, arguably the best classes which would have better survivability with a basic buff. Never played as one.

 

[Akachi]

Is interesting how at moment, except by the kc option, at moment, everyone voted for the magical/melee hybrids. I also play mostly with custom classes in Daggerfall and Morrowind. But some times wanna challenge because lets be honest, mainly in daggerfall, custom classes are broken op.

Nightblade is most voted right now and is what I picked, it actually has more ranged options than melee. In Morrowind it has a major skill of short blade, but has minors in both marksman and destruction. I tend to use marksman/destruction combined more than short blade with it. I like its ranged playstyle with lots of utility magic and backup melee. Usually when I've custom classed in Morrowind, my classes end up pretty close to nightblade anyway.

On the other hand, I don't think I've played anything but custom classes in Daggerfall. I should take a look at them next time I play.

 

[MerchantKing]

I like the Nightblade. Too bad there are no Gnomes in the setting. I guess I'll have to settle for being a Bosmer Nightblade.

 

[JamesDixon]

I like the Nightblade. Too bad there are no Gnomes in the setting. I guess I'll have to settle for being a Bosmer Nightblade.

Would you say that Bugsthesda pulled up short on that?

 

[deuxhero]

I'd say Nightblade and Mage are the most consistently good.

In Arena, Mage is top tier thanks to how spellcasting 1: scales with level 2: It's trivial to get nigh infinite spell points (mana potions are cheap, infinite, and weightless at any Mage's Guild, and spell absorption is really, really good) and spells that cost nothing to cast are a thing. It's easy to overcome the squishy nature of the mage by abusing how Create Shield lasts until destroyed (it even lasts through cross-continental travel!) and the fact that Spell Absorption essentially means enemy mages are non-threats. Mage is simply the best caster, even before its high leveling rate is factored in.
In Daggerfall and Morrowind, they have no useless skills as majors (even if they would be much better with some swaps to what is a major and what is a minor) and few useless minors (Unarmored literally doesn't work in vanilla MW). DF version has a very useful advantage that's critical to doing what it wants to do.

Nightblade is just a solid generalist in all three. It's weakest in Arena, since stealth isn't a thing and creating a free open spell you can just spam till it works bypass effectively all lockpicking needs. In Daggerfall and MW its a decent mix of two styles that have some synergy and a minimum of useless skills.

Non-magic user in Arena or Daggerfall is essentially unplayable. Arena's dungeons are built around being able to create lights, levitate, and occasionally remove walls. The need for mark/recall, levitate and healing to play Daggerfall in a sane manner is even more pronounced.

 

[cretin]

These games have nowhere near enough (read: zero) reactivity or interactivity to make me care about any of that shit.

 

[Cryomancer]

reactivity or interactivity

Very little reactivity but the setting is interesting and the dungeon crawling good.

Anyway, imagine Morrowind if was launched today, in a world where HP is "canceled", we live in a world where any shit more right wing than a woke social democrat is "fascist", 99.9% of the British and American soldiers which fought fascists in WW2 would be called fascists and JKR which agrees 99,9% with Baizuo's got canceled by Heresy over the 0,1% which she disagrees.

• Bretons start the game with 50 INT and Redguards, with 30.
• Redguard is clearly based in Africans and Bretons in Europeans.
• In Mages Guild, every single higher up is male, there are females in lower ranks but they deal mostly with restoration magic and alchemy not destruction magic and dangerous daedric conjuration.
• God's Fire/God's Frost, the strongest non custom destruction spell is so mana expensive that no redguard could cast it with his base magic, only if he has help from items to get more magic than he has.
• There are a powerful mage in Telvanni house which clonned himself into female daughters and uses his daughters as sex slaves and are his "brides".
• The rival of mages guild, the house Telvanni build towers with no accessible way to reach their quarters without a spell(or potion) of levitation as they don't wanna to be bothered by lowly people that can't cast this spell. They literally sees themselves above everyone else.
• They also practice slavery
• One of their quests involve quelling an slave rebelion
• Dark Elves have Dark Skin due a literal curse by Azura.
• Everyone is very racist in the game

Not defending, just wondering the massive polemic if such game was launched today.

Usually when I've custom classed in Morrowind, my classes end up pretty close to nightblade anyway.

My custom classes are quite close to battlemage

 

[Funposter]

Sorcerer is the most interesting as an archetype, and the Stunted Magicka associated with the class in Daggerfall can be implemented in Morrowind by taking the Atronach birthsign. A heavily armoured mage who focuses on summoning Daedra, hoarding enchanted artifacts and who can't generate his own magicka is a great fit for Morrowind if you play as a Telvanni character. Nightblade is also cool. Just the idea of a magical thief/assassin is a lot of fun and has so much potential - one wishes for a version of Oblivion that included spells like Slowfall and Levitate, combined with the drastically improved stealth mechanics and NPC schedules that improved thieving.

 

[deuxhero]

reactivity or interactivity

Morrowind

• In Mages Guild, every single higher up is male, there are females in lower ranks but they deal mostly with restoration magic and alchemy not destruction magic and dangerous daedric conjuration.

???
Edwinna Elbert, Ranis Athrys and (while you'll likely never realize she's so highly ranked due to her lack of quests) Malven Romori are three of the top six highest ranked members.

 

[Cryomancer]

Edwinna Elbert, Ranis Athrys and

Yep. I should have said MOST higher ups.

But you got the overall point. In a world, where freaking Harry Potter is """problematic""", imagine having any TES games, and yes, this includes even Skyrim. Being able to join Ulfric Stormcloack would be heresy nowadays. And I din't said everything about Morrowind. Imagine Divayth Fyr which created multiple wife daughters by cloning himself.

A heavily armoured mage who focuses on summoning Daedra, hoarding enchanted artifacts and who can't generate his own magicka is a great fit for Morrowind if you play as a Telvanni character.

I honestly don't like much this "can't regenerate magicka", sure, can be a interesting limitation for some characters, imo damage from holy places from Daggerfall fits the idea of a "unholy caster", having at least one weakness vs a element too. I know that you can use the disadvantages and advantages in Daggerfall to create your extremely optimal pun-pun build. But also can make a custom class which represents mechanically a custom character theme.

 

[Lemming42]

There's definitely no intention on the part of the writers to display sexism in the Mage's Guild. Sexism in general doesn't appear to be a major problem across most of Tamriel (there's a couple of odd and out of place references to it existing in Skyrim that are contradicted within the game itself, but then again, that's Nords living in a shithole two hundred years into a crap future).

I don't think anyone would realistically find TES "problematic". The racism, slavery, imperialism and ethnonationalism are all portrayed as unnerving and weird features of an often-horrible alienesque world, and characters in-universe criticise them. You're not supposed to celebrate the violent racism of the Stormcloaks any more than you're meant to celebrate, say, the racial supremacist views of the Thalmor (or the Khans raiding Shady Sands in Fallout). It's just something that's happening that you can intervene in one way or the other.

The series also cultivates the atmosphere of everything being seedy and amoral anyway, with the player often taking part, hence the player character being able to join the Dark Brotherhood in three out of the four games that feature them.

The only reason Harry Potter is suddenly problematic is because of the views of its creator, which have sent people scrambling back looking for reasons to disown the work itself. Prior to Rowling publicly putting forward her feminist views, the only people who found Harry Potter problematic were American Christians who freaked out about the portrayal of magic.

 

[Cryomancer]

Yep. But for modern day Baizuo's, there is nothing wrong in allowing PC's to join Dark Brotherhood. But allowing then to join in House Telvanni or Stormcloaks, is the ultimate heresy.

But you are right, TES is a great game exactly cuz the world is not perfect and the PC can do evil stuff.

 

[Cliffworms]

I enjoy playing thieves and burglars, even if by default the burglar has the wrong armor type for forbidden material : leather. So the burglar who's specialized in not waking up a soul while breaking in is wearing a full plate mail.

I just enjoy playing a thief who can't win most fights but who can run away quickly from danger.

 

[Zeriel]

Is interesting how at moment, except by the kc option, at moment, everyone voted for the magical/melee hybrids. I also play mostly with custom classes in Daggerfall and Morrowind. But some times wanna challenge because lets be honest, mainly in daggerfall, custom classes are broken op.

I don't find it that surprising. Outside of some heavy roleplay impulse, magic and the spellmaker was such a big feature of the early TES games that not using it feels like missing out on a lot of what you paid for.

I think if there was a big opportunity cost (like being able to use magic meant you couldn't steal or be a rich trader or whatever), you might have seen otherwise, but there is zero opportunity cost in TES's skill system, so...

 

[Cryomancer]

Makes sense, Zeriel. In Skyrim which doesn't have spellmaking, most people play as stealth archer or nord warrior with a bit of restoration.

But Battlemage in Arena is amazing. With offensive magic, he is better even than mage as offensive spells cost half for him.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Battlemage. I like the versatility both in playstyle and roleplay (even if some of it is headcanon) I have a stable of characters I choose from in games that have character creation or at least let you name your character. Some of my favourite characters to roleplay fall under the battlemage archetype.

 

[Cryomancer]

What I like about TES universe is that when you look into "academic" mages, they tend to wear robes, now, the war specialized mages, tends to have armor. Without spell failure or any other excuse, there is no reason to not wear armor as an caster.

Anyway, Daggerfall is pretty playable with the worst possible class ever. So many worthless advantages, worthless skills and crippling hindrances :

 

[Decado]

There are no Bulgarians in MW, what the fuck are you talking about.