Check this out! A thief with magical back-up.

Major Skills- Pickpocket, Conjuration, Archery, Sneak,

Minor skills- Light Armor

I know pickpocket and conjuration is a strange combination but here is the story- this character used to be an entertainer (magic tricks, sleight of hand, archery tricks, minor summoning etc.). Now with the civil war and dragons (OMG! Dragons) no one is in the mood for his services. He decides to join the thieves guild to make money. Mostly doing thieving things.

But I want him to also be able to fight when he needs to (if surrounded by draugr etc.). In that case he will summon atronachs and use a bow.

I have questions for my fellow forum users though-

should he use bound bow or regular bow? bound bow will work because I'm already invested in conjuration, but i'm worried about the casting time when I need it. If i decide to use a regular bow instead I will invest two perks to get arcane smithing to upgrade my bow and as an added bonus can upgrade the thieves guild armor. If using bound bow I will not get smithing perks, instead using those perks for the bound bow. This character will use only thieves guild armor and will use rings and amulets he steals. No enchanting or alchemy.

One more question- what race? I'm thinking argonian just because I've never used one before, but am open to anything.

Thanks for the input.

here is a possible perk spread if I go with the bound bow.

http://www.ign.com/builds/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim?d=0000000000000000000000000000000121110001111110000000000000000000000000000000000000

Casting time for Bound bow is not bad at all, and in addition it's actually faster than normal bows (shooting wise)

for the race, I was picturing a Khajiit the whole time, probably because of their stereotype but any race would be fine.


Edit: you're probably gonna want to invest in the Illusion perk (Silent Casting) if your gonna be sneaky with magic.
without it, once you use a spell your pretty much immediately detected.

This guy is primarily a thief and tries to get by without being detected. if he's got the bow out, he's already detected.

Neat idea!

I fully support a pure thief playstyle - you're not an assassin, but a thief. Having weapons as backup is fine, but going around one-shotting everything from sneak or slitting throats can get boring after awhile.

Anyway, you might want to consider bringing around a real bow - just so you can shoot arrows into walls to distract enemies. Distractions are great; they make it possible to sneak through areas you'd otherwise have to fight through. Sneaking past enemies adds that much more tension to the next obstacle... because if your cover gets blown, you'll have to run back through a dungeon of live foes!

Silent Casting would allow you to do the same thing if you're dead set against carrying a physical bow - but you'd just have to restrain yourself from the urge to shoot the enemies themselves.

I really like the backstory for this, though, what with the sleight of hand, magic 'tricks' and thievery. A good Speech, with some perks, would fit the concept as well. Maybe some Illusion... but just as a last resort; no Frenzy.

Hmm, this makes me want to try this!

I guess another version of this could be taking enough perks to get quiet casting and focus on calm spells. I kind of want to avoid illusion though (even though it could fit the story) because I want to keep the sneaking exciting. If you know you can just calm the enemy it seems to easy. My plan is, if I'm caught summon an atronach, summon a bow and start running around trying to get a good angle to take a shot while the atronach keeps the enemy occupied. I plan on adding mostly stamina and magicka for this build. This guy is going to be a really good archer too, so he should be able to handle combat archery with the help of his atronach.

The reason I came up with this build is because I've tried doing the thieves guild questline with different characters. At some point they always end up getting attacked while walking around outside and just get destroyed (eaten alive by bears, or torn apart by bandits, (I don't even want to talk about the spriggans)). this is my answer to the problem of making a thief that can actually defend himself while strolling outside. The conjuration and archery are both skills that allow my character to keep his distance in battle. Hopefully this character will be viable.

I've found it much harder to build a character that falls into two categories (out of Mage,Warrior,and Thief). It's a lot harder to spread points*.

But I think if you can stick to just those skills, you'll be fine. Also, if you use conjuration a lot, maybe you can wait until you have the bound bow spell to start using archery? Because I think it would be much easier to get into battle equipped with a summon spell in one hand, and bound now on the other. Rather then summoning and switching to a regular bow.

Yes, good thinking. the bound bow could actually be faster if I have enough magicka i can summon the atronach and the bow at the same time. I think I will be going with the bound bow then.

Conjuration is very powerful, especially once you hit expert and can conjure a Dremora Lord. I use those when hunting Dragon Priests, because they can't be turned against against you...unlike lesser summoned atronachs.

Being attacked by a Dragon Priest and your own Frost Atronach on master difficulty makes for a very bad day...