What I love about this game is the vast number of character builds that can be created to keep it fresh. We've all seen the skyrimblog builds and have created many of our own to creat success, but I wanted to hear from you about the builds you've tried that were failures and why. Im a Chess guy, and a way of studying and learing about chess is to study what and why things go wrong, in addition to what/why things go right. I think our fellow members here who hear about failed builds, can figure out how to make them work, or, just avoid those altogether.

My Failed Build: Samurai / Samurai Ronin

As a martial arts instructor and historian, I thought creating a samurai warrior build would be great Use Restoration like healing meditation or Zazen, Blades swords/katana and Blades armor to look the part. Specializing in duel wielding swords (like Miyamoto Musashi), archery, and smithing. Would be on retainer serving house Stormcloak serving Lord Ulfric until dismissed where he would then become a ronin roaming Tamriel for adventure and renting his services to those in need.

Why Failed: He became just an Orc in Blades Armor

What were some of your failed builds?

Ive had two that I can recall. The first was a basic Orc barbarian focusing on two handed and heavy armor. I got bored with him around level 20. This was of course before I started RP'ing.

The second was a little more recent. After reading the Skyrim Blog I was intrigued by the Deathknight so I made one. Again, got bored with it. I think the downfall for these characters for me was the use of two handed. That just seems very boring to me, no matter what RP my character is doing.

Any Orc I've ever made has been utter failure. I don't exactly know why - but in both Oblivion and Skyrim, none of my orcs have ever panned out. Maybe I just don't like them?

Also I've always been really enthralled with Argonians, but the only one I made in Skyrim was a flop. I started out OK just being a thief, but ended up adding too many extra skills like resto, illusion, and one-handed. Couldn't balance them all out.

My current character, a female nord, started out as a dark mage warrior with short dark hair and dark eyes and whatnot, focusing particularly on destruction magic. I just eventually got kind of bored with her style and appearance after level 30 or so, so I had her "find the light" in a sense and turned her into a paladin-type character with longer yellow hair and blue eyes, ditching all offensive magics and focusing mostly on restoration magic, with the occasional illusion and alteration, so long as they're only supportive spells and not offensive. I like the character even more now and I think the character change added a sense of progression through her character and the story.

I tried an Altmer pure mage and found it boring, I only like playing Dunmer (destruction, illusion) or Breton (alteration, conjuration) mages.

I also had a fail Orc with two handed: 2h, conjuration, hvy armour, enchanting-it sounded cool but it felt unnatural to be this big barbarian dude and break off combat to summon things.

But my favourite warrior class PC in Morrowind was an Orc.

And just to add my favourite build so far has been: 1h, block, heavy, smithy, alchemy with 0 magic

I had a character build fail terribly just a few weeks ago. I recently got Dragonborn for my Xbox and was needing a new fun idea for a playthrough. I hadn't played a conjuration mage yet, so I decided to create a battlemage character with skill in destruction and conjuration - specifically, conjuring weapons. The kicker was going to be using Become Ethereal to close the distance while swapping from ranged destruction spells to melee conjured-sword attacks. Well, little did I know that casting Bound Sword while Ethereal causes the spell to fail (Flame Atronach also fails, I assume all conjuration spells fail while Ethereal. Boo!). That was the first indication that things might not go as planned. Not only did my cool idea flop, but the animation to cast/draw a conjured sword takes FOREVER. I normally play on PC so I don't know if this was just an Xbox thing but let me tell you is not cool. At all. This basically ruined my build idea. I tried to patch together a new direction for the character to take, but I had already spent perks and it was generally a huge mess. I deleted that character and started up Morrigan instead. She doesn't use magic.

My first Khajiit character.... his build was good, 1h dual daggers, light armor, archery, sneak, alchemy, illusion. I was actually having fun til I got to Riften, with the plan on joining the TG...made sense.

Talked to the caravan merchants, talking in 3rd person doesn't work for me. After speaking to them, in my head it just didn't seem right that he wasn't speaking in 3rd person and I couldn't keep it strait in my head. I didn't think enough about his backstory, If I had I would have RP'd that he was raised at an Imperial orphanage or something.

I tried a Gandalf-style mage - robes and staff with an emphasis on fire magic, but threw in one-handed as well. The lack of armor made him too squishy. The limitation of the weapon type to Skyforge steel made damage too low. It probably would have worked if I had advanced the destruction magic to the point where the baddies could be severely weakened and then finished off with the sword. I plan to try a pure mage soon (currently doing a pure warrior with only the innate healing spell for magic) so we'll see.