Thief on the Side – The Fighter/Magic Thief Combo
By: Strider
Morrowind House of Thieves

Hello everyone.  Well until now my job at the House of Thieves has been webmaster but now I’ve decided to contribute an article.  It’s my first so I’ll try to do my best to make it useful and informative.

I first began my initial ideas for this character when I had a huge accident with my first full thief character.  My brother had been playing Morrowind but had left and left the Xbox on, so in an effort to be kind I decided to save his game before I played just in case.  The only problem was…for some reason my brain must’ve left me for a minute because I saved my brother’s game over MY save file.  As could be expected, I wasn’t very happy. Well I realized that not much could be done at that point so I decided to make a new character.  Since I had just made a full thief and done almost all of the Thieves Guild quests, I thought it would probably be boring to do another like that and do the same quests over again.  Therefore, this article is about a half fighter, half mage build I did that is first and foremost a fighter.  You might ask,”Fighter/Mage? Why is this article on a Thieves site??”   Well the answer is that this article is for the person who loves being a thief but wants to play other parts of the game while still being able to steal effectively.  As for the Mage part of my character, I have no offensive magic.  My sword is my main attack, and the Mage half is for thieving and healing.  I just started this character so I’m not sure exactly how it will turn out.  But so far I think it should do ok.  Ok so let’s move on to the build that I used…

Race: Dark Elf

Specialty: Combat

Favorite Attributes: Strength and Agility

Major Skills: Long Blade, Light Armor, Athletics, Illusion, Mysticism

Minor Skills: Restoration, Alteration, Speechcraft, Mercantile, Block

Ok well basically I chose Dark Elf because they have a good mix of the stuff I was looking for except for Illusion and Alteration bonuses but that can be made up for later.  I specialized in combat instead of magic because…well…I guess its mostly personal preference but I decided that the route I will take is to specialize in Combat so they level up easily on their own and then I will use money to train up my magic skills. 

One of the things I always wanted to do as a thief was have high Long Blade so I could wield more powerful swords so I decided to go with that here but keep the light armor because I like moving fast.  A few of the others are self explanatory but now we move on to the thief part of this character. 

Thieving with Magic

Ok so I didn’t want to be in the Thieves Guild because I had just nearly completed it on my former character that tragically got saved over and didn’t want to replay all of them again right now.  And usually a straight thief that is in the Thieves Guild relies on Stealth and its skills like Security and Sneak.  Also, to be successful with Security later in the game you have to be able to get Secret Master lockpicks from Hecerinde and you have to be in the Thieves Guild for that.  This character is in the Fighters Guild and the Mages Guild so the way of thieving is to use the schools of Illusion and Alteration magic, as well as some Mysticism.  With Illusion you can cast Chameleon or Invisibility, with Alteration you can use lock opening spells, and Mysticism is good for Telekinesis and Mark/Recall.  So the strategy is to cast Chameleon or Invisibility instead of Sneaking, and then using a lock opener spell instead of a lockpick.  It is rather simple and the only drawback is making sure you have enough magicka and getting the skills trained to where they will cast as often as possible.  But it’s different and it allows you to explore other parts of the game while still being a thief.

Tips

Ok this is my idea of how the character should be run.  Since I think Combat is the best choice for specialty, don’t use money on training skills like Long Blade and Light Armor because they should level up quickly enough on your own.  To become an effect thief with magic you are going to want to use your training money almost all on the four magic schools in the build (Mysticism, Restoration, Illusion, and Alteration).  So what you need to do is get as much money as possible by looting houses (killing the owners of houses in Seyda Neen and stealing every item in the house works good), getting moon sugar and skooma from the mercenary cave outside of Seyda Neen and in the Census and Excise warehouse (you may not be able to break in it though) and selling that to Ro’Virr in Balmora.  When you have a good amount of starting money, train Alteration and Illusion up to decent levels where maybe they cast 50% of the time and steal more valuable items to get more money.  Rinse and repeat.  Use the new money to train.  And while you are doing this you can be a member of the Fighters and Mages guilds which was nearly impossible as a full time thief in the Thieves Guild (nearly impossible for the Fighters that is, not really bad in the Mages). 

Credits and Closing

I’d like to thank myself for being an idiot and saving my brother’s game over mine so I would get the idea to make this character and write this article.

Well this has been my first article.  I hope it was enjoyed maybe helped someone out.  Do not hesitate to send me any comments or suggestions through e-mail or on the forum and I can use the feedback to assist my future writing ventures.    So now go have fun with your warrior and satisfy your greedy hands at the same time!

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