Pillars of Eternity: Must I Wear a Big Blue Dress?

[Realitycrash]

Another overly specific question coming your waaaaaay! (Waaay, waay, way).

To be brief; I love mages in RPGs (In fact, the best RPG out there is probably still Mage: The Ascension), but I loath the Big Blue Dress. Why must my master of creation and laws of physics be dressed in sack-cloth and wield a staff? So, I ask you this, if you know; When I create my mage, can I alter his/her appearance? Are all the stat-relevant outfits Big Blue Dresses, or can I actually wear (gasp) pants? Or a cool-looking cloak with a hood? Or actually wield a spell-sword or ANY other foci than a staff? You know, the way Neverwinter Nights 2 managed to pull it off?
For yes, the immersion is ruined by forcing me to look like a gandalf-reject.

 

[CrazyBlaze]

From the PC gamer review: "One of the ways Pillars plays with D&D standards is allowing magic users to hold their own in regular combat. A chanter can comfortably wear plate armour and wield a two-handed sword, meaning your party doesn?t have to be burdened by squishy mages who explode into a fountain of gibs when an ogre so much as looks at them."

Now as I have not played this is about the extent of my knowledge. A quick glance at the armour page of the wiki says that there no are no restrictions for classes though.

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Armor?cookieSetup=true

 

[Realitycrash]

From the PC gamer review: "One of the ways Pillars plays with D&D standards is allowing magic users to hold their own in regular combat. A chanter can comfortably wear plate armour and wield a two-handed sword, meaning your party doesn?t have to be burdened by squishy mages who explode into a fountain of gibs when an ogre so much as looks at them."

Now as I have not played this is about the extent of my knowledge. A quick glance at the armour page of the wiki says that there no are no restrictions for classes though.

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Armor?cookieSetup=true

Alright, awesome, thank you very much.

 

[mavkiel]

Although mages in the game suffer from other issues. Their spells are *very* low range. Most of the actual high damage ones are ae based (and can hit friendlies). Oh and pretty much every single buff is not only limited casts per rest, but can only be cast in combat. Oh and most of the spells that were really fun in D&D are gone.