Well, if you go all magic, you won't need melee skills. If you go all melee skills (or substitute chosen discipline here) then you won't really need magick. The force college is handy for damage, harm is good if you have a high magick aptitude, conveyance is just very handy overall, I wouldn't be a mage without investing in conveyance :smile:. The fire college is pretty good, although several NPC's use it - Geoffrey, Jormund and Perriman Smythe at least - so, I'd probably invest in something else to round out your skills. Perhaps necromantic white, because Virgil seems to hate healing your followers.
You can also invest in time college: being a meele master with haste + tempus fugit activated is devastating...
Im a half orc, and I cant do any level 5 magic spells. But my dad's char (half ogre) can and so can my old (level 50) Half Elf. I think maybe it's because of my being a Half-Orc or something... any help would be apreceated.
If you can't learn any level 5 spells, then your willpower must be too low. I don't know of any racial penalties that cause a half-orc to not be able to learn certain magics. Get your willpower up to 18 and your level up to 15 and you should be able to learn any lvl 5 spell you want. As for the original post, melee and magic go well together. Start out with agility of fire, strength of earth, and shield of protection, along with some melee skill. Right off the bat, you'll be able to kick ass. As soon as you can, get haste, and continue to build up the important stats (STR, DEX). The quicker you get to 20+ in those stats, the better. Build up Melee and Dodge, and get at least expertise in Backstab. Then you can get double damage with a pyro axe. That with a 25 speed and haste means you can kill damn near anything in the game in one round. Then get bored and restart as a gun-thief because the game's not even half-done yet, and you can completely own any monster for the rest of the game. :sad: