The Mage: Attributes

Attributes

Spells are your livelihood as a mage, thus your magic score is essential. Magic directly increases your character's spellpower score, which determines the potency of all spells.

The prerequisite for the various schools of magic begins at 18 magic, but goes as high as 36 magic, so put most of your points here to unlock crucial spells.

Magic also determines how effective potions, poultices, and salves are for characters; your mage will gain bigger benefits from lyrium potions and health poultices because of your affinity for magic.

Mage Attribute Bonuses

• +5 Magic
• +4 Willpower
• +1 Cunning

Willpower works in conjunction with magic. The more points you throw into willpower, the larger your mana pool and the more spells you can cast.

If you have a party member with good Herbalism, you may be able to stock up on lyrium potions to offset a lower willpower score, but you definitely need to spend as many points here as you can afford.

If you have a good tank who holds threat well, and you don't get hit much by monsters in melee, sink all your extra points into growing your mana pool.

After magic and willpower, your attributes will go more according to your play style. In general, you may want to add a little constitution. Every mage, even if they don't plan on beating mobs over the head with a staff, needs health and resilience.

The more you have, the longer you'll stay in a fight, and if your tank fails to hold a creature's threat and it comes gunning for you, that extra constitution and health bonus will make a difference.

Cunning contributes to learning skills, and it's huge if you take Coercion and want to persuade NPCs. If you don't invest in Coercion, then feel free to spend these points in constitution and dexterity.

Dexterity has limited use for most mages. It can be helpful to dodge incoming blows, and an arcane warrior mage may want some points in dexterity for accuracy while wielding melee weapons. If you do spend points, spend only a few.

Because you shouldn't be engaging foes physically, strength means very little. There's always something better to spend points on, so leave this attribute alone.

If you're worried about combat damage, it's probably best to spend the points on constitution instead.

During character creation, feel free to choose a race based on overall story possibilities. It's much more important to enjoy the origin story for your character than it is to worry about a point here or there in your attributes.

However, if maximizing your mage stats appeals to you, choose an elf. An elven mage gives you a starting 17 magic and 16 willpower. A human mage offers one fewer point in magic and two fewer points in willpower.

Most of your points are socked away in magic and willpower, so later in your character's evolution you'll need to spread out the points to other attributes. Dwarves cannot be mages; if you want to play a dwarf, you won't be casting spells.

Mage Starting Attributes

Once you choose your mage's race, you begin with five extra points to add to your attributes. That's almost two "level ups" worth of attribute growth, so spend it wisely. Most builds require you to spend all, or most, of your points in magic out of the gate.

It's important to unlock spells early, and because magic is the main prerequisite for spells, you must reach the 25–30 magic range to gain the better spells.

If you don't care about reaching the upper echelon spells soon, then think about a 3/2 split between magic and willpower, or a 2/2/1 split among magic, willpower, and constitution.