LOL I somehow see streetwise making our characters sound like the beggars in Oblivion.

I tend to agree with a lot of your points. Many others do too. But this issue has been discussed before and it appears many of those who agree with you are no longer here and I have lost the energy for debating. I'm playing with the Requiem mod now and it offers its own unique solutions to many of these streamlining issues.

If folks enjoy playing the game by becoming a "master of all," who am I to suggest otherwise? Play however you want. It doesn't affect me.

Oh, I agree, absolutely. We should all play any way we feel like playing. I myself play "pure classes" now and then. They can be great fun. I am playing a "pure" Mage (no physical armor or weapons) in Oblivion right now, as a matter of fact. But I do it not because I think it is roleplaying, but because it's a nice change of pace from my more rigorous roleplaying characters.

I do think there is room in genuine roleplaying for the occasional, eccentric, specialized "pure class" character in TES. One character might have an irrational hatred of magic; another might look down on physical weapons with disdain and adamantly refuse to touch them, ect. It can be done. But to my way of thinking it does not necessarily make much roleplaying sense within the context of the game world.

What I object to is the notion that specialized "classes" are the only true legitimate form of roleplaying and that a jack-of-all-trades character is some kind of lesser, casualized, inferior form of play. There are those who even suggest that it is not roleplaying at all. I have seen this incomprehensible attitude expressed more than once in these forums. And it has turned into a pet peeve of mine. My comments were not directed specifically at you.

Yes, I agree. I find it is slightly harder to make a jack-of-all-trades character in Skyrim than in earlier games.

When you use words like "in society" in the present tense I can only assume you are referring to our present-day society. So, yes, in that case you are correct. Nowadays we do specialize. I hold a specialized job, you hold a specialized job. Together our jobs forum a working society.

What I am proposing is that this model does not apply to our characters in an Elder Scrolls game. I am suggesting that our characters have more in common with French fur trappers in 18th Century American Midwest, with frontiersmen like Jedidiah Smith or William Sublette than with the city guards, blacksmiths, carriage drivers, and clothing merchants we see in towns and cities in the games.

They are part of your society. We, as lone adventurers, exist outside that society, for the most part. We roam free through the world we explore places no one has ever been before, we live by our own wits when we are out adventuring and not by a civilized support system of other people with specialized jobs.

Just as frontiersmen and explorers had to rely on themselves alone when they ventured out into the wild, so do our characters when we venture away from Balmora and Chorrol and Whiterun. When we are out there, we are on our own. And that is why I think that a jack-of-all-trades character is valid roleplaying in an Elder Scrolls game.

This is the core of the issue. Time and Effort. The time and effort committed to anything in TES, or RPGs in general, is highly accelerated at the best of times. When you're able to accomplish decades worth of expertise and proficiency over the course of months, the justification for real-world specialisation sorta becomes moot anyway. The usual justification is that heroes are special, though it's ultimately just a gameplay mechanic... But that doesn't change the fact that the only way resolve the inherent open-ended options afforded by the idea is to impose strict and often artificial limitations on what you CAN do.

The alternative, of course, is to do what Bethesda has already started doing. Offering far more choice that de-emphasises the ease of Skill Progression, and requires more effort to 'Master Everything'. You're no longer a Master Swordsman just by hitting Blade (an obsolete skill, but using it for example) 100. The use of Perks, which are linked directly to level, help create a more varied progression curve. You can become a competent swordsman rather quickly, but to be a 'Master' you have to focus a considerable amount of resources into Skill beyond just swinging a blade around, and every moment of divided attention slows your progress.

Their issue tends to be balance, because many of the Perks are highly situational or outright useless... But the current dynamic emphasises specialisation far more than previous ones, without strictly imposing it. Which i think is good.

In general, Skills have also become more generalised concepts. Smithing is a really good example here, because it covers a rather wide range of otherwise specialised skills. Leatherworking, Armouring, Blacksmithing, Weaponsmithing, Gem Cutting... In 'conventional' circles each of these would be a Skill all on it's own, even if many of them use broadly similar basic techniques. Skyrim doesn't do particularly well in emphasising this, but using Perks to highlight specialisation within the broader categories of Skills is part of what makes the current dynamic so much better than previous ones.

I know I said I didn't have energy to debate this but I will make one comment. There is a completely different way to look at this. Yes, a backwoods person needs to be self reliant which may mean becoming marginally proficient in a number of skills.


But there is also the the idea that different people are born with different strengths and weaknesses. One might have the subtle touch it takes to make and place a snare and another may have the hand eye coordination to shoot moving prey with a bow. Most people are not going to have the capability of being the best at everything.


None of the games are perfect in portraying this. In my view the prior games were a little better at it though since they allowed creation of characters who started out different and could remain different depending on how you play. Whereas in Skyrim every character starts out pretty much the same and only becomes different after you have leveled a bit and invested perks. But even in Skyrim, if you play long enough and use Legendary skills your characters will eventually have nearly all the perks and will end up the same.


Personally I mod both Oblivion and Skyrim pretty heavily to address some of these issues. They each have their own issues in how the character building process works.

Depends. By time you "end up the same", its irrelevant. The content has literally petered with next to no content around, and even then, there's no viable challenge to be had. Its the exact same thing if you try and go out and level everything just to try and max out your character, that you're already a far and away more powerful then everything else.

The problem is during the journey of actually becoming a master of something. In Skyrim, with either useless skills like Speechcraft that have no real impact on gameplay, or Skills that theorectically should require investment in order to be effective, like Sneak or Lockpicking, don't, because its heavily weighted in the players ability to manipulate the controls. There's no reason for no character to not try their hand at lockpicking or sneaking around, even though we, regardless of Skill level, should not be particularly efficient in those tasks. Skyrim suffered further in this by not having the ability to actually manipulate how our character starts out, which does create the sense of sameness as you start off the game, regardless of who you are. That's more of a problem.

I do think the games should bend around and try to encourage more diverse build options in how the player approaches certain situations, be it one build being more effective in combating certain enemies over the other, or that you can attempt to accomplish the same goals with different methods, both having different consequences. Of course, in normal gameplay. If you try and master everything throughout the course of the entire game, your character should be far and away weaker in those respects then a character of a similar level, because they're spreading their Skill leveling and perk distribution so thin across the board. By the time you actually get to the point you're truly effective in everything, you've basically already hit the end game. And, in an ideal world, the amount of investment to truly master a certain Skill is still beyond your reach until far into the post-game.


Its about prioritizing, and even though its perceived to be a problem, its not a difficult issue to workaround or partake in if you so choose. There should be consequences by trying spread everything out in the actual game, making more versatile with many more options of play, but not being as effective either. By the time you become a self-perceived master of all, so could the other builds if they so choose.