The Tavern

So, with shield, and heavy armor, i often can't succeed at casting spells... training shield skill, armor skill, specific school skill, and spellcasting skill, all improve that... but my question is which improves it the most / what's the ratio of improvement...


ie: in my train skill window, i see "the cost to increase armor is .8 while the cost to increase necromancy is 5, and the cost to increase spellcasting is 4.2 and the cost to improve shields is 1.8"

so I guess, which will get me more spell success faster, the inexpensive armor skill, the twice as expensive shield skill, the 5x as expensive necromancy, or 4.2x as expensive spellcasting

for detailed calculations: see wiki, because it varies situationally


general rule of thumbs:
- average relevant school level worth 4 times of spellcasting
- for heavy armours, your STR is a very serious factor in decreasing spellcast penalty
- effect of shield skill is linear with shield skill level, and shield penalty becomes zero at 4/15/25 resp., changing with species size
- for heavy armours, armour penalty becomes never zero

If you are really interested to know correct answer in specific situation, you can use wizard mode with a copy of your character I believe, at least this is what I did.