I've completed Arena and I'm going to take a bit of a break from ES for now to avoid RPG burnout, but I'm going to start a Daggerfall playthrough at some point. Since the last time I asked about character creation here my character ended up pretty much exactly what I wanted, I'm hoping for the same again for my custom magic character! :D

So, here goes.

1) Which skills are NOT worth it?

So far, my plan (which I briefly tried out) was this

Primary
Destruction
Long blade/Axe/Blunt weapon (see below)
and something else, maybe Running

Major
Restoration
Mysticism
Thaumaturgy

Minor
Alteration
Mercantile
Streetwise
Etiquette
Jumping
Climbing (?)

I've read that Restoration isn't worth putting into a Primary slot because the really high-level healing and regen spells are expensive and overkill. I put Running as a Primary to help me get around the world faster, but would I be better off putting another magic school or something else into Primary? Also, Climbing seems kind of finnicky and useless. Since I'm a mage, can't I just... levitate or something?

2) I want to play a custom magic character with one functional weapon to help me start. Not really a "battlemage", I'll severely limit my armor and shield choices, more like a Mage with a melee weapon. From an RP standpoint, I really, REALLY want to use an axe or a staff. But those skills' governing attribute is Strength. I have to min STR to max INT/WIL and AGI so I can dish out magical death and not get hit. Does STR just affect the damage of axes/staves or does it affect to hit as well? In other words, will I be swinging at air with an AGI of 80 since STR governs Blunt weapon/Axe? I tried Long blade with 80 AGI and it seemed to work quite alright, but like I said, I'd love to play Axe or Staff.

Side-question: how far can I drop STR and still be... serviceable in melee combat? I went as low as 35 and I managed to do OK.

3) One of my favourite things to do in RPGs in general is talking my way out of conflict and one of my favourite things to do in Arena was haggling. So naturally, I'd take the personality skills (Etiquette/Streetwise) and Mercantile as minor skills. But it seems to me it would take forEVER to get it to a functional level. Are these worth training at all? I've read somewhere that Daggerfall merchants are cheapskates and that it's better not to waste time.

Another thing that bugs me is that the governing attribute for all of these is Personality. I've read that Personality is more or less useless and you can play the game with a Personality as low as 30 and get normal responses from NPCs, so a lot of people min it in favor of maxing other stuff. Should I do that or should I try and keep Personality at least around 50?

Thank you for reading this wall of text, I appreciate any and all comments!

Restoration: The problem isn't the cost of the high level spells, but more the fact that you can make a spell that regenerates a high amount of hit points per level per round that isn't that expensive to cast, hence low Restoration is good enough for that purpose.

Levitation can realistically replace Climbing and Jumping, provided you learn to control it. Other skills that can be replaced nicely with magic include Swimming, Lockpicking and Medical. Just watch your spell points, particularly since potions that restore them are not readily available, unlike in other TES games.

According to UESP (IIRC), the Dodging skill is bugged and should be avoided (it makes it easier for enemies to dodge your attacks instead of the other way around). Having high Lockpicking will make more difficult locks appear, including magically held locks that I believe you can't pick (though I don't know for sure, especially since they're pickable in Arena). Also, language skills aren't that useful. I don't really know if WIL is useful at all in the game. In Arena and Battlespire, characters with innate Spell Absorption need it to absorb spells, but the trait seems bugged in Daggerfall (it seems to only let you absorb your own area-at-range spells, making the trait useless for its intended purpose and massively exploitable at the same time).

I don't know if STR affects hit chance but I am pretty sure that AGI does. Also, if your STR is too low, you can always use Fortify Strength spells to boost it (though, unless your Restoration is near max, you aren't going to cast the long duration Fortify spells you could easily cast in Arena). I am pretty sure that different melee weapon types don't have different weapon dependencies; STR affects axes just as much as it affects swords and daggers, for example. (In fact, STR might be more important when using daggers than when using axes.)

High STR also comes with a couple disadvantages: Your weapons will break faster (not likely an issue for axes, particularly when you get stronger axes, but could be an issue if you have a high STR dagger user), and I believe that enemies get your STR bonus to damage. (At least that's what I observed when using a certain artifact that can temporarily boost your STR above the normal limit.) Haven't really played around with this part of the game that much, but you can use a Fortify Personality spell to temporarily boost your Personality to deal with merchants.

One thing to note: The Charm spell effect can't target friendly NPCs (as they don't behave like actors in this game, unlike later in the series), and I believe it doesn't do anything to enemies.

I think it affects the chance for a spell to successfully land as well as chance to defend, since I remember starting my first build and my default "Shock" spell would just NOT do any damage. When I boosted WIL up to 80 to begin with, it hit almost always. And for a starter spell it hits pretty hard too!

I have tried out my build several times now and staff/sword/axe all behave the same regardless of STR. So high AGI is still king.

What did you mean by "if you can learn to control" Levitation?

To be honest, I don't think it means that much, though (IIRC) I believe you need to use the Page Up/Down keys to move up and down, which might not be obvious.

I do know that the controls are the same as underwater.

Also, Leveitation can only prevent falling damage if you cast it *before* you are in the air; if you cast the spell while falling, you can still take falling damage, so it might be good to have Slowfall handy. (This is especially true if you've just fallen through the floor in a dungeon.)

It's been a while since I played Daggerfall but I remember a few things

spell absorbsion does work against enemy spells but only if you can fully absorb the spell's cost (the spell's cost might be based on either your skill or your enemy's) i.e. you need enough 'room' in your manapool
high str will make you str based skills improve faster (not 100% sure about this)
languages are close to useless (I think you can only use them to make hostiles peaceful but so does a sword)
ettiquette and streatwise aren't very useful
mercantile isn't that useful either because an hour of raiding tombs will quickly fill your cart and soon money won't be an issue

In my experience, that's true for the spell effect, and true for the item effect, but not true for the class ability.

(I think the class ability is *supposed* to be incapable of absorbing your own spells, but they got the check wrong. Remember, in Daggerfall, you can't expect things to work correctly, as that game is rather infamous for its bugs (even with the final patch, which the GOG version includes).)

I wasn't planning on taking Spell Absorption as an advantage at all. Will I be in for a rough time as a caster?

I think I'll skip etiquette and streetwise then. Any idea what I should put as minors instead? I was thinking of Medical since, because of my lack of Spell Absoption, I'd be resting a lot. And Swimming, just so I have movement covered, even though magic should carry me over (literally).

To me, Mercantile isn't that much about getting more money, I just enjoy haggling. In Arena, it was fairly straightforward. I'm just wondering how on Earth you're supposed to level it.

Restoration magic really makes the Medical skill obsolete, even if your Restoration is low.

Also, you can get accessories with a passive Spell Absorption effect, which does work properly (it can absorb enemy spells, but of course isn't 100%).

The class ability is supposed to absorb spells and works just fine. You just need enough room in your mana pool. Don't expect to absorb any spells when you're (almost) full.

training medical is frustrating. I'm not sure if you can train it without a trainer and a trainer will only get you to 50%
training mercantile is extremely easy. just sell your loot 1 item at a time and watch your skill soar.

as for restoring mana, you can join various guilds/factions that offer potion makers and sellers. I've tried making them myself but gathering the right ingredients is a pain in the rear so it's easier to just buy them.

swimming skill can only be trained in flooded dungeons. you don't get skill advancement from splashing about in towns.

Since you claim it works, one question: What was the WIL stat you had with the character(s) who were absorbing spells? In particular, was it high or low?

(I note that, in Arena and Battlespire, the chance of absorbing spells with the class ability is based on WIL (INT doesn't seem to matter despite some sources saying otherwise), and I am wondering if it's a factor in Daggerfall, and if so, if the developers reversed the check, as seems to have happened with absorbing your own spell.)

At this moment in my current playthrough my WILL is high (82) but I think it works with low WILL too.

Is there some other attribute that you tend to have high or low on all your characters?

(Wondering whether the game is even checking the correct stat. Given how buggy Daggerfall is known to be, and how there's definitely a bug when it comes to absorbing your own spells, I'm wondering if maybe the game code is fetching thr wrong attribute for the check.)

I think the game only checks skills for spell absorbsion. I *think* it checks your skill for the spell to be absorbed to determing how much mana you get. So if and enemy casts a destruction spell at you the game checks your skill in destruction and if it's low you'd get a lot of spell points as long as you have room for all of them.

That seems backwards, as it means that raising your skill in one school means that you are less able to get spell points back from absorbing spells of that type in order to use them in other schools.

The mechanic made more sense in Arena, where all spells decrease in cost uniformly (though it breaks when a certain enemy uses a spell that damages your SP, making that spell's effects harder to offset through absorption at higher levels), and in Morrowind, where spell cost is fixed for any given spell. (Oblivion makes absorbed magicka not dependent on skill level, but that means that absorption is over 100% efficient at higher skill levels, which leads to an exploit due to the fact that you can absorb your own Telekinesis spells IIRC.)

Anyway, my question wasn't about the amount of SP absorbed by the spell, but the chance of that happening.

Imagine if there were a bug that made it so that you can only absorb spells if the spell would put your SP over its maximum; that's the sort of bug I would expect in the game (though this isn't actually how it works).

By the way, here's how the class ability works in Arena and Battlespire, where it seems to be reasonably well behaved, as well as my understanding of how it works in Daggerfall:
* Arena: Chance to absorb is based on WIL. Amount absorbed is base cost divided by level (same as the cost to cast the spell if you were to cast it). Absorption is possible even if it can raise your SP above its maximum (contrary to what the manual says). Can absorb your own area at range spells with the usual chance. Stacks with other sources of spell absorption (you get two chances to absorb each spell).
* Battlespire: Chance to absorb is based on WIL. Amount absorbed might be based off skill with higher skill meaning less absorbed (but Destruction isn't worth it in Battlespire anyway). Can't absorb spells that would put you above max SP. Can't absorb your own area at range spell ever.
* Daggerfall: Chance to absorb based on ?. (is there a bug here? That's what I'm trying to figure out.) Amount absorbed is again based off skill, with higher skill meaning less absorbed. I believe you can't absorb spells that would put you above max SP (but remember that you can't always trust the manual in these games). 100% chance of absorbing your own area at range spells. (I am quite sure that this is a bug, and that the chance should be 0%.) Does not stack woth other forms of spell absorption; equipping an accessory with the effect helps against enemy spells (in my experience), but causes your own spells to not always be absorbed.