In Morrowind, every humanoid character has a class, including your character and all NPCs. A character's class reflects their occupation, their position in society, or simply what sorts of things they are good at. In game terms, class comprises three different aspects of a character: Specialization, Favored Attributes, and Major/Minor Skills. Together, these choices have significant impact on the state of your character at the start of the game, as well as how they will develop as they increase in level. When you create a character, you will either create a custom class, or use one of the game's twenty-one predefined player-character classes, detailed below. NPCs also use these classes, and there are many NPC-only classes.
Class | Combat | Magic | Stealth | Attribs. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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![]() ARM |
![]() ATH |
![]() AXE |
![]() BLK |
![]() BLU |
![]() HVA |
![]() LBL |
![]() MDA |
![]() SPR |
![]() ALC |
![]() ALT |
![]() CON |
![]() DES |
![]() ENC |
![]() ILL |
![]() MYS |
![]() RES |
![]() UNA |
![]() ACR |
![]() H2H |
![]() LTA |
![]() MAR |
![]() MER |
![]() SEC |
![]() SBL |
![]() SNK |
![]() SPE |
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Acrobat | M | m | m | M | M | m | m | M | M | m | AGL, END | |||||||||||||||||||
Agent | m | m | m | m | M | M | m | M | M | M | AGL, PER | |||||||||||||||||||
Archer | M | M | M | m | m | m | m | M | M | m | AGL, STR | |||||||||||||||||||
Assassin | m | m | m | m | M | M | M | m | M | M | INT, SPD | |||||||||||||||||||
Barbarian | m | M | M | M | M | M | m | m | m | m | SPD, STR | |||||||||||||||||||
Bard | M | M | m | M | m | m | M | m | m | M | INT, PER | |||||||||||||||||||
Battlemage | M | M | m | m | M | M | M | m | m | m | INT, STR | |||||||||||||||||||
Crusader | m | M | M | M | M | m | m | M | m | m | AGL, STR | |||||||||||||||||||
Healer | m | m | M | m | M | M | m | M | m | M | PER, WIL | |||||||||||||||||||
Knight | m | M | M | M | M | m | m | m | m | M | PER, STR | |||||||||||||||||||
Mage | m | M | m | M | m | M | M | M | m | m | INT, WIL | |||||||||||||||||||
Monk | M | m | m | m | M | M | M | m | m | M | AGL, WIL | |||||||||||||||||||
Nightblade | M | m | M | M | m | m | m | m | M | M | SPD, WIL | |||||||||||||||||||
Pilgrim | m | M | m | m | M | m | M | M | m | M | END, PER | |||||||||||||||||||
Rogue | m | M | m | m | m | M | M | M | M | m | PER, SPD | |||||||||||||||||||
Scout | M | M | M | M | m | m | m | m | m | M | END, SPD | |||||||||||||||||||
Sorcerer | m | m | M | M | M | M | m | M | m | m | END, INT | |||||||||||||||||||
Spellsword | m | M | m | M | m | m | M | M | m | M | END, WIL | |||||||||||||||||||
Thief | m | M | m | M | m | m | M | M | M | m | AGL, SPD | |||||||||||||||||||
Warrior | m | M | m | M | m | M | M | M | m | m | END, STR | |||||||||||||||||||
Witchhunter | m | m | M | M | M | m | m | M | M | m | AGL, INT |
What Defines a Class
Each class has one of three Specializations: Combat, Magic, or Stealth. Each of the twenty-seven Skills is also classified into one of these Specializations. Your character enjoys a five-point bonus to their starting proficiency in the nine Skills that match the Specialization of their class. They also increase those Skills faster, needing only 80% of the normal experience points for each Skill level. In the table above, the shaded set of Skills for each class indicates their Specialization.
Each class "favors" two of the eight primary Attributes. Your character will start with ten extra points in the favored Attributes of their class, added to the values determined by their race and gender. The final column of the table above shows the favored attributes of each class.
Each class categorizes five Skills as "Major", five others as "Minor", and the remaining seventeen as "Miscellaneous". The greatest significance of this is that only Major and Minor Skills advance your progress toward the next level when they increase. Another benefit, however, is that your character's proficiencies will start at 30 in each Major Skill and 15 in each Minor Skill. Miscellaneous Skills start at 5. These are the values before any bonuses from race or Specialization. The experience points required to increase a Skill are only 75% of normal for Major Skills, but they are increased to 125% of normal for Miscellaneous Skills. In the table above, Major Skills are marked with a capital M, and Minor Skills are marked with a lower-case m.
Choosing a Class
Your character's class is set near the beginning of the game, when you first talk to Socucius Ergalla in the Seyda Neen Census and Excise Office. You have three options for how to go about it. If you choose to "answer his questions", he will ask ten questions and suggest a class based on your answers. See Class Quiz for details. If you choose to "give him the info", you will be able to select one of the predefined classes. The third option, "fill out the forms", will allow you to create and name your own custom class by selecting the Specialization, Favored Attributes, and Major/Minor Skills. You can try any of these options and still have the chance to change your mind and try a different one, but once you confirm all your choices with Socucius, your race, gender, class, and birthsign are fixed and cannot be changed.
Choosing a class is largely a matter of personal taste and style. Fortunately, your choice of class "only" determines the starting level and progression rate of skills, posing no strict limit to the opportunities available to you for character development, plot, or gameplay, only making some opportunities require more or less effort to exploit. For example, your character need not be a Thief, nor even a Stealth specialist, to join the Thieves Guild, but you may find the Thieves Guild quests to be more challenging if your class considers Skills like Security and Sneak to be Miscellaneous. The cost of training does not decrease if a skill is part of your classes skills, and the increase to a skill's starting level it provides will actually make initial training more expensive (a concern if a skill is being raised primarily to increase Attribute progression instead of direct use).
Therefore, creating a custom class has no inherent disadvantages, but it does require extra care and consideration. A custom class thrown together haphazardly has every chance of being frustrating to play. The most crippling blunder, arguably, is a lopsided distribution of governing Attributes among your Major, Minor, and Miscellaneous Skills. This can make it extremely challenging to get the best Attribute increases from each level up and cause some Attributes to lag far behind the others when you reach higher levels.
It's also very helpful to learn exactly what actions build experience in each Skill, along with the risks and obstacles to performing those actions successfully. If a Skill starts low because it's Miscellaneous, it can be very tedious or even dangerous to gain experience in it through practice. Beginning with higher proficiencies in some complementary skills can reduce this handicap. For example, it's less dangerous to wield a weapon you are not skilled with when you wear armor that you are skilled in. It's also less time-consuming and expensive to use the weapon repeatedly if you're skilled at repairing it yourself. Taking these things into consideration when choosing Major and Minor skills for a custom class can make your character more enjoyable to play, and allow you to rely on training less often.
One final consideration for custom classes is the option of choosing Luck as a favored attribute. None of the predefined classes available to the player do so, but it can be a significant advantage. Taking Luck as a favored attribute will effectively add 5 points to every attribute for the purpose of chance of success (but not derived status such as max health or carry weight), which makes your character better at everything both early on, and (since luck adds to success chance even when an attribute has capped at 100) late game. Since Luck can never increase more than one point each level, it will tend to grow much more slowly than the other primary attributes, which the instant ten-point bonus for a class that favors it substantially mitigates.
Pre-defined Classes
Acrobat
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Agent
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Archer
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Assassin
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Barbarian
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Bard
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Battlemage
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Crusader
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Healer
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Knight
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Mage
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Monk
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Nightblade
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Pilgrim
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Rogue
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Scout
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Sorcerer
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Spellsword
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Thief
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Warrior
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Witchhunter
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