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My first post here, hope someone can help. I'm playing a Breton Apprentice on max difficulty. Was doing Brush with Death at Lvl 1 with summon skeleton and Invisibility. The 5th painted troll got stuck behind rocks so I took the opportunity to hit him with the Skingrad recommendation fireball and went from lvl 18 to Lvl 25 Destruction without killing it. Troll was turning my summon to scrambled bones.

My question is : If I had a scamp and helped out by casting Weakness to Fire, is that spell also crippled ? If it was Weakness to Fire 60% for 6 sec would my actual damage be Weakness to Fire 10% for 1 sec ?

No, it should still be Weakness to Fire 60% for 6 sec.
Difficulty setting is only supposed to affect actual damage done directly by or to you.
Your Scamp will be doing full damage plus the 60% when it uses a fireball.
*You* would do 1/6 damage plus 60% when using fire.

Also bearing in mind that Trolls regenerate health it wouldn't surprise me if the Fireball spell you get from Skingrad Mage Guild is completely incapable of killing Trolls on max difficulty.

Painted Troll regens 2 Health per second.
Weak Fireball = 5 pts/sec x 1.5 x 1/6 = 1.25 damage per second.

Cheers

Thank you Lord Timster. It would have taken many hours to discover if this strategy would work. I appreciate your fast reply ... Cheers to you as well.

Think I'll drop the Breton and spec a new character. I watched some of a YouTube video by Ninja Flips playing a Altmer Atronach on Max with no exploits. My last character was a Altmer Atronach , KOtN finished before Lvl 2 for the +5 Endurance blessing, Felldew @ Lvl 25 , Lvl 46 has all minors at 100. Because of 100% chameleon, console gifts and Scroll dupes it feels like a hollow victory. That's why I want to try a max difficulty run.

I tried a few max difficulty dead-is-dead runs with a Breton, Mage Birthsign. I got to about level 22 with one of them (before I started getting bored of the grind) - so imo Breton is a safe choice and works well for max difficulty. iirc I was mainly summoning a Clannfear and then using Drain Speed on enemies so they just stood there and got kicked to death. Quite entertaining actually.

Never used Atronach, though I've found Apprentice to be a pretty risky choice. I had an Altmer Apprentice once; I shot a Scamp with some lightning, triggered its Reflect Spell and ended up one-shotting myself... Back to the Breton for me.

But yeah Oblivion is not an easy game to get the challenge levels right. I ended up going back to normal difficulty and using loads of house-rules (eg no chameleon, no invisibility spells, permanent magical resists capped at 50%) to keep the gameplay fun.

I prefer a fighter race + apprentice at max difficulty. They don't get killed as easily as Bretons and they have enough magic for conjuration. Orcs are the best if you don't mind being ugly. With that combo (orc apprentice) you have the huge benefit of having Weakness to Magic right off the bat, and the orc give you Drain Speed as well.

I read about "Black Tom" in the "post your character" thread. You and Lord Timster know a lot about this game. I think of Personality as a useless attribute and the Orc female has personality of 25; lowest in the game. The Orc 25% resistance to magic should be a big help and their greater power is a good one too.
Like you, I like the White Stallion Lodge and use Mazoga to help me find the mine outside of Cheydinhal and Erthor's cave before going to Telepe. When doing the Anvil recommendation I like to wait until a Imperial patrol comes down the road so he's next to me when I'm confronted by the rogue mage. The guild battle mages always seem to hit him and he kills them in addition to the rogue mage. This way I get two zero-weight hoods. I used to save Erthor's zombies to train block & armors but at max-difficulty they would kill me too soon. I would not last long with a house rule of "dead is dead". I don't see how I would survive KotN's bear attack either.

For the last week I've been playing a Breton male Custom class called Marukhati (something Glarthir said) with Strength and Endurance, Apprentice, combat specialization; Blade, Block, Blunt, Hand to Hand, Heavy Armor, Mercantile and Speechcraft. I named him Eville.

Playing this way is interesting. It makes me use skills I didn't use much in other play-throughs. I did like Skyrim but didn't like how dumbed down it was. Oblivion was dumbed down more than Morrowind but Morrowind had stupid combat. I used the spear all the time. I like that Oblivion is voiced and there are combat moves. I haven't used combat moves (perks) in past play-throughs but Oblivion seems to favor one-handed weapon and shield where as Skyrim encouraged you to be a stealth archer and Morrowind encouraged you to use a spear.