Oblivion: from mage to warrior in one character?

The way Oblivion's leveling system works means that you can start out as any class and completely retrain yourself to be something different. There are no penalties of any kind for this. A strength of 100 is a strength of 100 in the game, regardless of whether you started out with Strength 5 or Strength 50. Similarly, 100 Destruction is 100 Destruction, regardless of how high you initially started out.

The only difference between the different classes is how high the initial values of your attributes start out. With practice and/or training, you can max out all your attributes and skills. An Orc Warrior can end up with 100 in all of his skills and attributes, as can a High Elf Mage by the end of the game, and they will be functionally identical to each other.

The short answer is yes, you can start as a Mage that becomes a Warrior, and you will face no penalties for doing so other than having to spend more time practicing your warrior skills than a character that started out as a warrior.

Thanks for the help. I think I will just be a warrior first and study magic as I progress later. It seems like this game would require a lot of strength at the end :)red_shock

Actually, the enemies level up with you, so having more strength towards the end is pretty much irrelevant because you'll be facing bigger, meaner bad guys.

The best advice I can give you is to level up slowly. It sounds counterintuitive (especially compared to most RPGs) but levelling up slowly is better. Only your major skills will count towards levelling up. When you get ten skill increases combined in those seven skills, you'll level up. Levelling up your minor skills doesn't count towards levelling your character up BUT they do provide a bonus for increasing the attribute that governs them.

It might not sound like much, but getting a +5 attribute bonus to say, strength, each time you level up makes a huge difference compared to getting a +1 or +2 attribute bonus each time. It means you'll hit Strength 100 at much lower character levels, when your enemies are still comparatively weak. I tried to level up my first character quickly and it was a disaster. Crappy attribute bonuses made him relatively weak at high levels. My second character is actually a lower level than my old one, but he's basically a god because I levelled slowly and got great attribute bonuses.

It's hard to explain - Gamespot has a really good guide to levelling, so search for it and read it before you start.