Question on fortifying characters

[Chicken Slayer]

I was reading around and gleaned that Bretons were not optimal for super spell use because their 50% inherent resistance to magic prevents them from super boosting their magicka with fortify magic spells. If this is the case, does it follow that an Altmer can be boosted more than normal because of its weakness to magic, Atronach birthsign is less valuable because of its absorbe magic trait, and Apprentice birthsign is possibly the best you can do because of its 100% weakness to magic?

[Dark Spark]

Fortify Spells are not classed as hostile magic, and Resist Magic affects hostile forms of magic. Now, if you combined a harmful effect to your Fortify spell, then it'd get re-classed as hostile magic and the Resist would kick in against all effects within that spell, the Fortify effect included.

Now, you're probably thinking "That means if I attach a weak damaging effect to a Fortify spell, then a character with Weakness to magic would actually magnify that spell! Cool!" And you'd be right, so long as you never updated Oblivion from the launch-day edition disc. That particular bug, the "Weakness to Magic + Custom Spell on Self" exploit, was the first major fix in the first patch.

[Chicken Slayer]

Hmmm, I was probably reading something from pre patch days.

So now (patched), if you are an Altmer w/ Apprentice sign and cast drain health on yourself you will be affected 2.25X more (Yes?, No?), but if you cast restore health on yourself you will only get 1.0x the effect like everyone else.

What if you put on your own torture hood of +5 shock damage?

[Dark Spark]

If you attach a non-hostile effect to a hostile spell, it'll "nerf" the hostile spell effect when it comes to Weakness to Magic. Fire Damage + Fortify Magicka on an Altmer Apprentice, and the Fire will hit that elf at only 100% rather than 225%.

As to the Torture Hood, that Shock will be delivered as an Enchantment, not a Spell. If you look at your active spells effects page for your character, you will notice words like "Spell:" or "Poison:" or "Ability:" in front of the spell effect. Those prefixes tell the game just what effects can or will be modified through Resist Magic, Resist Poison, or Weakness. Fire damage from a poison will not be reduced by Resist Magic because it'll show "Poison: Fire Damage 5 points", thus telling the game the Fire damage is coming through a poison, not magic.

Spell effects delivered as an Enchantment or Ability will be unaffected by Resist Magic/Poison. Wearing that enchanted hood means even someone with 100% Resist Magic and 100% Resist Shock will still be electrocuted.

[Chicken Slayer]

I think I got it.

A question about monsters with resistances...if you hit a 100 hp zombie* with 100 pts of spell shock, he only takes 70 pts damage, but what if the shock is from an enchanted bow or sword (or hood if you could get it on him)?

*Yes, I know zombies have 80 hps, but who wants to do the math for 30% resistance.

[Akatosh's Pug]

I think enchanted weapons work the same as you'd cast such a spell.
I'm taking Storm Atronach as an example; hit him with a shock spell or shock enchantment and the result is the same (s.atronach resists it completely due to 100% resistance to shock).
I think it's safe to say resistances reduce the enchantment's damage from weapons, but I think they don't reduce damage from constant damage of cursed hoods.

It is possible to test it on player character, from my experience health, magicka and fatigue damage calculations are same for the player char, npcs and creatures.
Creating 100% reflect spell on touch, casting it on something and hitting it with various spells and weapon enchantments could be a viable testing method (only in case I'm right with my guesss above)