Morrowind:Unarmored

Skill: Unarmored
Governing Attribute: Speed
Specialization: Magic
Increase: Hit By Opponent: +1.0

The Unarmored skill lets one avoid or reduce injury during combat while not wearing any armor by evading, deflecting, or absorbing blows. Those versed in this skill are better defended while wearing no armor (see Bugs).

Character Creation

The following races receive bonuses to their Unarmored skill:

• +5 bonus: Argonian

The following classes have Unarmored as a Major skill:

• Acrobat, Monk

The following classes have Unarmored as a Minor skill:

• Agent, Archer, Barbarian, Healer, Mage, Nightblade, Scout, Witchhunter

Factions

The following factions include Unarmored as one of their favored skills:

• Aundae Clan
• Berne Clan
• Imperial Cult
• Quarra Clan
• Tribunal Temple
• Twin Lamps

Trainers

Main article: Unarmored Trainers

The Master Trainer of Unarmored is Khargol gro-Boguk at the Vacant Tower in Dagon Fel. The only other notable trainer is Caius Cosades at his house in Balmora (up to 70).

Books

The following books will increase your Unarmored skill:

• The Wraith's Wedding Dowry
• Charwich-Koniinge, Volume 1
• 36 Lessons of Vivec, Sermon 11
• 36 Lessons of Vivec, Sermon 15
• 36 Lessons of Vivec, Sermon 34

Notes

• At Unarmored 100, you get an armor rating of 65 on each body part that lacks armor. That's a lot less than the armor rating you'd get at Light, Medium or Heavy Armor 100 with good equipment.
• Omitting armor means you don't need to worry about encumbrance nor repairing the armor, and get less fatigue, but since armor could have been worn on top of clothes (except for gloves and shoes), you will have less equipment available for enchanting.
• While this skill is rarely the focus of a min-max melee character, it remains useful to shore up the armor rating if you omit some armor pieces for role-play or fashion reasons, or go barefoot to avoid Sneak penalty.
• Consider raising your Unarmored Skill above 100 with some constant effect enchantments of Fortify Skill, to reach a much higher AR. This is because the armor rating for Unarmored is Unarmored skill level² × 0.0065 for each body part, and thus fortifying Unarmored to 200 (100 point spell from the basic max of 100) results in an armor rating of 260, comparable to Daedric.
• It may be advantageous to train your Unarmored skill if you are playing as a Beast race (especially Argonians, as they are the only race that receives a bonus to the Unarmored skill), since they are restricted from wearing a full faced helmet or boots.

Bugs

• Also worth noting is that the unarmored skill has no effect unless you are wearing at least one piece of armor. If you are completely unarmored, the game treats your armor rating as zero, not the value that is shown in the inventory window. Bound Gloves for example would work to counter the bug.
  • The Morrowind Code Patch fixes this bug.
  • OpenMW fixes this bug.
  • This bug appears to only affect the player character, not unarmored NPCs, including followers.