Mage Weapon

Mage Weapon is one of UO's most influential item properties — it converts a sorcerer's Magery skill into the weapon's required combat skill, subject to a small skill penalty. A Magery 120 mage holding a Mage Weapon −22 swings the weapon as if they had Mace Fighting (or whatever combat skill the weapon uses) at 120 − 22 = 98. The property turns a pure mage's spellbook-and-staff into a viable melee weapon, opens up the Mage-Warrior hybrid template, and is the foundation of any Magery-Wrestling-Resist-Spells PvP build that wants to weave melee swings between spell casts.

Penalties typically range from −29 to −21 on randomly-found items, down to −15 to −10 on uncommon artifacts, and as low as −0 on the rarest Mage Weapon artifacts (effectively no penalty — your full Magery skill maps directly onto the weapon's required combat skill).

How Mage Weapon works

The Magery used in the conversion is your active Magery skill, including:

• Base skill from the skill bar
• Magery bonuses from items (jewelry, talismans, etc.)
• Magery from Jack-of-All-Trades / Deadly Aim racial bonuses

This means a low-Magery character can still wield a Mage Weapon by stacking Magery jewelry to push the effective skill into useful range.

What Mage Weapon does NOT enable

• Special Moves: Combat skill inferred by Mage Weapon does NOT count toward your ability to execute Special Moves. To use Onslaught, Pierce, Stagger, etc., you need real combat skill — the substituted Magery does not qualify. This is the single most important Mage-Weapon limitation: you swing the weapon, you damage the target, but you cannot apply special moves.
• Spell-blocking on hand-equip: Mage weapons are NOT immune to the standard rule that hand-equipped weapons unequip on spellcast. The exception is the Mage Weapon + Spell Channeling combination, which allows a sorcerer to cast spells while engaged in melee/archery combat without unequipping. Wand-class items typically have both properties.

The Mage Weapon + Spell Channeling combo is the basis of the pure Mage-Warrior template — a character who can melee with one hand and cast simultaneously without weapon-swap delays.

Mage Weapon Artifacts

The known Mage Weapon artifacts (and their skill mods):

The −0 artifacts (Staff of the Magi, Staff of Pyros, Swords of Prosperity, Shugenja's Wand, Kotl Black Rod) are the holy grail — full Magery → full weapon skill conversion with no penalty. Their drop sources span the full game era: Pre-AoS, AoS, Stygian Abyss, and Eodon. At least one −30 Mage Weapon item is rumored to exist (a single named drop), making it perhaps the lowest-penalty random-drop ever recorded.

Imbuing Mage Weapon

The Mage Weapon property can be imbued:

Imbuing 5/10/10 for −20 is one of the lower-cost imbues in the game, making custom Mage Weapons accessible without artifact farming.

Skill-gain on a Mage Weapon

A unique property: wielding a Mage Weapon lets you gain in Magery skill by hitting opponents with it, provided the weapon's base required skill is lower than your Magery (including racial bonuses like Jack of All Trades or Deadly Aim).

This is skill-gain by combat alone, with no spell-cast required. Normally Magery gain requires casting; the Mage Weapon route uses melee/ranged hits as the gain trigger.

The skill penalty applied by most Mage Weapons also helps training: you can gain off lower-level spells (which have less demanding casting time and mana cost). Combined:

• Below 25 skill, you gain off nearly all spell attempts (successful or otherwise).
• With a Mage Weapon, you can extend this perk: a −29 mage weapon (heavy penalty) lets you train low-level Magery up to 54 skill (25 + 29) before losing the "auto-gain on any attempt" bonus.

Combined with Necromancy

It is not officially documented whether Mage Weapon affects Necromancy-specific damage scaling. The original UOG note: "The author is unsure if the property has any affect on Necromancers." The property is named for Magery and the documented behavior is Magery-based; for Necromancers, treat as Magery-only and pair with separate gear for Necromancy damage.

Build templates that depend on Mage Weapon

See also

• Magery — the skill substituted by Mage Weapon
• Spell_Channeling — the property that pairs with Mage Weapon
• Imbuing — modern source for custom Mage Weapons
• Staff_of_the_Magi · Ember_Staff · Shugenja's_Wand · Kotl_Black_Rod — Mage Weapon artifacts
• Wand — class of items that natively carry Mage Weapon + Spell Channeling
• Power_Scrolls — extends Magery cap to 120, increasing Mage Weapon ceiling
• Necromancy — debate over whether the substitution applies