Returning player with questions and template advice

Howdy, @Bram, welcome back! I'm not very familiar with PvP so the following info is from point of view of a PvM player.  There are currently three kinds of PvP:

What would be your purpose in having 50 magery?  If it is mainly for the Recall spell, then Chivalry would be a much better choice. (Its Recall is called Sacred Journey, but it doesn't force you to drop your weapon when traveling.)  Chivalry was designed for fighters.  Also, it offers a Remove Curse capability, which can free up the Resist Magic points for use on some other skill.  You'd likely want at least 60 points of Chivalry though, and 80 would of course be even more useful.  Having Archery on your build in addition to Fencing does give you ranged damage, but two attack skills makes for a tight template.  You might also be interested in reading up on Bushido and Parry.  In particular the Perfection capability offered by Bushido is useful in a number of different templates, but its actual moves and stances are very effective as well.  And with Bushido you don't need to carry a shield to Parry!

Note that a character needs neither Recall nor Sacred Journey nowadays.  Runebooks can be charged with Recall scrolls, allowing any character of any race to Recall with a charge.  Runebooks can hold from 10 to 20 recall charges.  A Runic Atlas (think three runebooks in one) can hold up to 90 charges.  Even if you don't have access to a scribe, recall scrolls can be bought from the mages in New Haven.

Ninjitsu is fun, but it leads to a tight template.  With <weapon>, Tactics, Ninjitsu, Hiding, and Stealth, you've already used up at least 500 points of your template.

You didn't mention the Focus skill.  It offers half the mana regen as Meditation, but is fully functional with any armor.  Also it offers stamina regen.  Each 10 points of Focus is another level of stamina regen, while each 20 points is another level of mana regen.  Skills like Bushido, Chivalry, and Ninjitsu use mana.  Note that armor can have mana regen as well, so Focus and Meditation are not your only option.

Concerning Poisoning, it is possible to have the skill on a trade character, but it is more effective if the user has the skill:

You are welcome, @Bram.  I hope others chime in too.  I'm a returnee myself but have been back for a couple months.  Still, there are a lot of things I do not know yet.

Concerning Resist Magic, it no longer has any effect on damage spells except for reducing severity of poisoning.  Now it primarily functions to reduce or avoid various kinds of curses.  There are a lot more now; half of a necromancer's spellbook is devoted to curses.  Damage resistance is now part of a character's armor, with 5 types, each of which can reduce damage by up to 70%.  The types are physical, fire, cold, poison, and energy.  (There is also "chaos damage", which is just a random selection from the other five.) In addition to "being poisoned", a weapon or spell can do one-shot poison damage which your armor's poison resistance reduces.  That said, Resist Magic remains useful, just not vital like it would be if it were the main way to minimize magical damage. Other methodologies are offered to reduce impact of being poisoned and cursed, such as potions, the Chivalry Remove Curse spell, the Mysticism Cleansing Winds and Stone Form spells, etc.

I have a character from way back who has both Swordsmanship and Archery.  In all honesty, if I were to start him over I'd drop one of the weapon skills in favor of another ability.  But he has greater than GM skill in both, and I'd hate to eliminate one now.  (I could store a skill in a soulstone or soulstone fragment, and I still might do that.)  If you enjoyed being a Poisoner, I'd suggest going for it.  I've heard that Poisoning has limited use in PvP because prepared players can quickly swallow a greater cure potion.  (Of course, not all foes will be prepared.)  In my experience it is useful and fun in PvM play, however.  Since there are no mace weapons with the Infections Strike move, Poisoning and Mace Fighting are not a good match.  Since Fencing has the most weapons offering Infections Strike, most melee poisoners choose that.  Archery offers the Serpent Arrow special move, which is boosted by Poisoning skill, and Magery and Necromancy also offer spells which are improved by the caster's Poisoning skill.

If you like melee fighting and would be happy with a mana-less build, you could consider <weapon>, Tactics, Bushido, Parry, Healing, and Anatomy.  If you can't afford power scrolls to get those 6 skills to 120, a 7xGM build would add Resist Magic.  Bushido does use some mana, but armor and jewelry can give you a lot of mana regen.  Also, just as leather armor is better for magic users, non-leather armor is better for fighters because it offers extra stamina regen.  Another viable warrior template would replace Anatomy and Healing with Chivalry and Focus, at a greater mana expense.  However, you would have Focus to help with the mana usage.  Either build could drop Bushido and replace it with Poisoning or something.  (Poisoning instead of Bushido would completely eliminate mana dependence from the first build.)  If Bushido were dropped from the 2nd build, Mysticism is a fun alternative, with Focus its necessary support skill (like Eval Int is necessary for Magery).  You could also keep the Bushido, and substitute Mysticism instead.  The downside to Mysticism is a fairly high mana load for the advanced skills, and a dependence on a spell channeling weapon.  (All Mysticism spells except Enchant would cause you to drop a weapon into your backpack.  At 80 Mysticism though, Enchant gives any weapon you carry the spell channeling capability for about 90 seconds.)

Whatever your build, even mana-less, you should consider having at least 40 INT.  The special moves require mana, and some special moves require 40 mana.  Having Parry and/or Poisoning can reduce special move cost by 5 or 10 mana.

Cool.  Note that if you want to try archery, you can go to New Haven and get it to 50 very quickly.  You can buy it to 40 from the Archery Instructor located in the warrior's fort.  He can also give you a quest in the nearby area called Old Haven (lots of undead there who don't attack unless you attack them).  While in that area, the quest will give your Archery accelerated gain to 50.  That means instead of 0.1 skill gains, they will be random at 0.2 to 0.5.

If you don't actually want to spend additional money for the 5x90 thing, you can also train the five skills listed to 50 in exactly the same way as Archery.  There are many clueless NPCs in New Haven willing to pay you 500 gold on short "bring me to" quests, such as "bring me to the bank" and "bring me to a fisherman".  This will also help you learn the layout of New Haven.  I don't know about the Classic Client (CC), but the Enhanced Client (EC) will make it very easy to find the places they want to go.  You'll need the extra gold to train skills to 40.  (It costs 400 to buy a skill from 0 to 40.)

If you think you will add Poisoning to your template, note that this is one of the skills for which New Haven does not offer an accelerated gain quest (AGQ).  If you were creating a character in the traditional way, I would advise starting this skill at 50.  (Nowadays you can start characters with a 50/50/10/10 skill level, instead of the old 50/49/1 paradigm you might remember.)  Only start a skill at 50 when there are no New Haven AGQs.  The other skills can easily and quickly be bought to (usually) 40 and trained quickly to 50.  See the UO Wiki Accelerated Gains page. Other skills which lack AGQs include Throwing, Mysticism (both of which can be bought to 40 in Ter Mur, however), all the bardic skills, Taming, and Tailoring.

Since you mentioned a trade character in your OP, I'm going to go on a tangent. The lack of a Tailoring AGQ is particularly puzzling, because there are AGQs for Mining, Blacksmithing, and Tinkering, but not Tailoring, Carpentry, nor Lumberjacking.  Also note that the Arms Lore skill has been recast as a craftsman's associated skill (like Eval Int is for Magery).  When you craft exceptional quality armor, weapons, or shields, Arms Lore will make the item even better.  Each 20 points of Arms Lore adds one point to the exceptional bonus.  Exceptional armor begins with 15 points of extra resists (randomly added), exceptional weapons begin with 35% increased damage, and I forget what bonus shields get.  So with 100 Arms Lore, your armor would have 20 points of extra resists, and weapons would have 40% of increased damage.  There is no AGQ for Arms Lore, but there is a skill check any time you successfully create a weapon, shield, or piece of armor.

One more thing.  Don't bother starting a character with Focus, nor train it.  It goes up on its own so quickly, spending skill points or gold on it is silly.  There is a Focus AGQ which you should accept, though; the reward is a Blessed bracelet which grants you +1 to both mana and stamina regen. (You'll eventually find a better bracelet as loot, but its worthwhile as a starter piece. It doesn't have a durability rating, meaning it doesn't get damaged.)  You'll likely already have over 20 Focus by the time you speak to her, and as your warrior and/or magic user does other AGQs in Old Haven, Focus will be the first to reach 50.  I think you can be doing up to 10 AGQs simultaneously.

Another more thing. Don't begin accepting AGQs until you have bought all the skills you want to buy.  Once an AGQ has been accepted, you are unable to buy any other skills until the quest is complete.  You can also drop AGQs and accept them again multiple times, until your skill level reaches 50.  I've had to do this frequently.  I think I've gotten all the quests I wanted, then realize something like, "Hey, I know my template doesn't include Anatomy, but it's going to go up anyway as I fight.  I might as well AGQ it to 50 so that my character will be doing extra weapon damage until those points are needed elsewhere."

wow that's a lot to take in but very informative.  i really appreciate the info on trades since i had no clue about armslore and would have passed on that and the agq's will save some time. 

 just when i thought i had my template down and was ready to start you give me more to think about.