I think Bretons have a reputation for being a little underpowered compared to other races. I want to explore why, by how much, and how to fix it. Diving right in we’ll start with:


Gift of Magnus: 10% Max Magicka
This one is completely fine. Balanced compared to other similar passives, like Altmer’s 10% Mag, or Imperial and Redguard’s 10% Stam.


Spell Resistance: 3960 Spell Resistance
This is a useful defensive bonus, and with the upcoming changes to shields will be even more beneficial. For light armor builds, this works out to 7-9% reduction in incoming damage from spells. Heavy armor builds get a little more out of this one, and can see up to 12% reduced damage from spells. Since resistances are effectively increasing your survivability by this amount we can approximately compare this passive to a health bonus, like Imperial’s 12%, Argonian’s 10% or Nord’s 9%.

For incoming spells these are all on par, but Breton’s does nothing against physical attacks. For lore reasons this is a good design, but I think the magnitude should be adjusted to make up for it. Simply doubling the spell resistance to account for it only covering half of damage would be too much IMO. I would recommend only a 50% increase, to give 1980, 3960, and 5940 at ranks 1, 2, and 3. For a typical light armor user this would mean about 12% reduction in damage from spells. Another interesting comparison here would be the Nord’s damage reduction passive, which is a flat 6% to spells and physical, so this proposed buff seems balanced.


Magicka Mastery: 3% Spell Cost Reduction
This passive seems to exist so that Bretons can be a sustain race, like Redguard, Argonian, and Bosmer. However the numbers do not work out favorably. Looking first at other races, Redguard’s main sustain passive returns 158 stamina/s. Argonian’s potion passive returns
103 of all 3 resources per second (as well as a 3% Magicka bonus on the same passive).

Now Breton, in a best case scenario for this passive, a Magicka skill is cast every second, no heavy attacks, avoiding boss mechanics, and no cost reduction glyphs are used (they diminish effects of % reductions). In typical DPS rotations, this results in an average of 2000-2500 Magicka drain per second (before any % cost reductions). This means Breton’s 3% results in 60-75 Magicka/s saved. This could easily be doubled to 6% Magicka cost reduction (giving 120-150 Mag/s) and still be on par with other racial sustain passives. Even just going to 5% would go a long way toward making Breton stand out for sustain.


Overall, I think Breton’s are a well designed class. I’ve gotten to the point where I like the unique flavor this class brings, and I don’t think the solution to their shortcomings is to slap on a % magic damage increase. Some minor adjustments to the existing passives would be consistent with the lite and previous games, while making Breton more comparable to other races in effectiveness. Thanks for reading.