I remember playing this game many years ago and enjoying it quite a bit. I always wanted to play as a mage, but then I would have to give up on that and switch to weapons. Is there a way to make magic viable in combat? If so, what am I missing?
Yeah but not in a manner you would expect, the strongest Schools in the game are Fire and Arcane imo, I have a build which is crazy strong and mixes with unnarmed attacks but you need some minor setting up which is quite easy all things considered.
Step 1) Go to Ralph's snacks and buy the Gryphon paté/food which costs roughly 1.1k without discount.
Step 2) Make a potion which makes you into a lesser or greater Gryphon with said food (they have 45 Arcane and 50 physical iirc, one of the strongest racial buffs in the game if you ignore the Dragons) preferrably turn your legs into taur based (it's a suprise tool which will help us later)
Step 3) Buy Flame Cloak from that Wolf Girl who doesn't know what consent is
Step 4) You must become strong, train under Hannah at the gym (wait till she is in the gym, train, and spam shower, she will only leave work ONLY if you leave too when she is supposed to be off)
Step 5) As long you use Flame cloak your attacks should be doing roughly 150 to 230 ish damage on latter levels if you are non-taur, gets even strong if you have fire elemental.
Really, all you need is to like transform into a Gryphon, you could maybe do some tattoos with kate and enchant them to make your arcane attacks stronger but it's quite pricy and too enchantment taxing.