Warrior Priest Creation

[wspahn21]

Ever since my first ever RPG and MMORPG experience I have loved to play the warrior priest role. You know a healer who can resurrect and yet still bash enemies with a mace or warhammer.

Now I was thinking it would be cool to try and figure out a way to play this class in Skyrim, and would like your suggestions.

I was looking at the restoration tree and going either two-handed or one-handed with a shield, since it isn't hard to go to favorites and select a restoration spell.

I am not sure how practical this character would be though, as most warrior priests are used as group healers and that isn't a part of this game. As a role playing character it would be different though, I would just avoid the Dark Brotherhood and Thieve Guild quests as they don't fit in with the idea of a priest.

So for sure:

Restoration
Two-handed or One-handed with Blocking
Smithing
Enchanting

What else should I pick up? A damage dealing line of magic? Your thoughts in general?

[Lunatic]

Interesting idea. If you want to be a warrior priest, why not have a companion that can soak up a lot of damage, and deal it back, while you assist in fighting and keeping him or her alive? That might be a good idea for both gameplay and role-playing.

[Syrkin]

What Lunatic said. On my paladin, I often let my follower fight while I sit back and do Grand Healing to heal us both.

During the Civil war quest, when you go to collect the Jagged Crown, you have 4 to 6 guys with you: doing Grand Healing helps keep them all up and alive.

Unfortunately you can't always do that. Get a follower, grab Barbas the dog and don't finish his quest, and be an off-tank and healer class.

[Lindai]

Any warrior needs some form of protection. Light Armor, Heavy or Alteration is the question.

[Armid]

I'd go with one-handed and shield, so you can heal while blocking. I'd also grab an heavy armor, that way you can keep your magic for what matters: healing your buddies (or yourself!).

[vorenus73]

I'd go with one-handed and shield, so you can heal while blocking. I'd also grab an heavy armor, that way you can keep your magic for what matters: healing your buddies (or yourself!).

was just going to say the same thing. 2 handed limits you having a free hand. with enough smithing, you can get incredibly powerful one handed weapons.

[Dark Spark]

I wonder how cool it'd look if you hotkeyed a one-handed and a two-handed sword, with a spell defaulted to the off hand.

Imagine this: you'll fight with the greatsword and when you need magic you'll hit the hotkey for the other sword. The sword jumps into one hand and the spell blooms from the freed hand.

It would sort of look like you took your two-handed greatsword and shifted it to your right hand, ready for casting spells. When you need to block again, you shift back to the greatsword and it appears as if you're merely grabbing the same sort of blade with both hands once more.

The downside is your experience with melee weapons (and the associated perks) get spread over two skill trees instead of the one.

POST Script: You can nick that idea. It'd only work if your weapons were mapped primarily to the left hand rather than the right. Transitions between weapons held in the left hand are more or less instantaneous— but weapons switches involving the right hand will force the character to draw the new weapon from its mount.