What skills and perks would help build a classic Assassin build?

Blade, Marksman, Illusion, Light Armor, Alchemy, Sneak

Perks to choice, focus on stealth and damage. Get the 15x damage dagger sneak attack. Make poisons. May never even need to use illusion, but see what it offers.

Depends. Will paralyze be in Skyrim? Both for practical and roleplaying reasons i consider paralyze to be THE assassin spell personally.

If poison is your thing, a small investment in Pickpocket. If getting through doors is your thing, maybe Lockpick.

Security is crucial.

I was thinking of assassin but seems stealth hasnt changed much since oblivion

One Handed
Archery
Alchemy
Light Armor
Stealth
Pickpocket
Illusion
Lock picking

Up to you which you want to select out of those.

It was prohibitively expensive in Oblivion. Couldn't get it until past 50 skill or so.

Paralyze is under ALTERATION now.

aww

Archery (if you can, kill your enemy without getting close to it - it's easier to get away latter), One-Handed Weapons (you may never know when a dagger might come in handy, and it will), Sneak (derp), Alchemy (poisons, every assassins dream, making non-lethal wounds become very lethal ones), Lockpick (don't expect all doors to be open to you), Pickpocket (just slip a poison in your targets pocket and be on your way), Speech (being able to persuade a guard to look the other way even for a second may make your assassination be much easier).

Don't know about which perks you should pick since I don't know them all.
Also, you could always use Illusion to make yourself invisible, but that's just lame and takes all the sport and flavor from it.
Light Armor is only optional, but I still wouldn't recommend it since normal clothes will allow you to blend in with others better.

In my mind, a classic assassin build is about the instant stealth kill. Poison and Illusion just help facilitate the process; because of this, I designed a build with perks focused in the core skills affecting the base damage of attacks. This is as raw as it gets in my optinion; Sword/Dagger, Bow, and Sneak.


It has four major skills, two minor skills, and an incredible total of 10 miscellaneous skills (None of them perked, but all of them useful...especially for gaining a maximum number of perks on the major and minor skillsets). The 10 miscellaneous skills are to be used whenever, on a whim, but they are not considered crucial to the build.


Telvanni Assassin ( Health 300 / Stamina 500+ / Magicka 200 )

Race: Dunmer

Name: ???

Perk Total: [51-72]

"Because this assassin works for the Telvanni, he is very comfortable with enchantments as well as
all 5 schools of magic. However, his true skills are martial in nature. Since most of his arcane
targets are so well attuned to magic, anything but mundane arsenal is inefficient. This has led to
his mastery of urivaled swordplay, marksmanship, and stealth. He will, however, utilize
unsophisticated magic skills in order to mitigate the wrath of his adversaries, so his attention
to Magicka is never completely abandoned."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Major Skills:

1) One-Handed (15 Perks focusing on "Swords"/"Dual wield")
2) Archery (16 perks on everything)
3) Sneak (13 Perks on everything)
4) Light Armor (7 Perks on "Agile Defender"/"Unhindered")



Minor Skills:

5) Enchanting (0-11 Perks focusing on "Weapon Damage" and "Armor")
6) Smithing (0-10 Perks focusing on "Weapons")



Miscellaneous Skills: [No Perks]

~Block
~Speechcraft
~Lockpicking
~Pickpocketing
~Alchemy
~Illusion
~Alteration
~Destruction
~Restoration
~Conjuration

Is it possible to have all these?


STEALTH

Sneak

Stealth (1-5)
Backstab
Deadly Aim
Assassin’s Blade
Muffled Movement
Light Foot
Silent Roll
Silence
Shadow Warrior

Alchemy

Alchemist (1-5)
Physician
Poisoner
Concentrated Poison
Benefactor
Experimenter
Snake Blood

Pickpocketing

Light Fingers (1-5)
Night Thief
Poisoned

Speech

Bribery
Persuasion
Intimidation
Allure
Merchant
Investor

Lock picking

Novice Locks
Apprentice Locks
Quick Hands

Light Armor

Agile Defender (1-5)
Custom Fit
Unhindered
Wind Walker
Deft Movement

COMBAT

Archery

Overdraw (1-5)
Eagle Eye
Steady Hand (1-2)
Critical Shot (1-3)
Power Shot

One-Handed

Armsman (1-5)
Bladesman (1-3)
Dual Flurry (1-2)
Dual Savagery
Fighting Stance
Savage Strike
Paralizing Strike

I'm... not gana try and count those, that can be your job. Use a spreadsheet ,start row 1, go up to row 50. If you've followed the perk tree's you should be fine.

Also, consider this...

An assassin needs to be an expert of being able to eliminate a target, unseen, unknown, and with out a scuffle. They are the silent killers that will be able to deal death in any situation no matter what their mission, no matter what the circumstances. They have all the tools and resources they need to accomplish this. No one will ever know they are the assassin, some may even think of them as "friend".

This said, your setup looks good. Strike from afar, strike from up close. Poisons to silence and paralyze. Sneak in the shadows, lockpicking/pickpocket to gain entry. I personally would toss speech, from a gameplay perspective. And i would loose 3 perks of light fingers just to master lock picking, otherwise those master locks will just svck to break through.

Looking again, your list seems to big. Specialize in 4 skills, and support your self with another 2-3. You seem to be trying to go full tree in more then a few...

Great points...

So here's what I was thinking:

[MAJOR]
Sneak
One-Handed
Light-Armor
Alchemy

[MINOR]

Archery
Pickpocket
Pick lock

And yes, I was unsure just how many perks we can choose from- 50 you say?

Eliminate One handed and light armour skills entirely, for an assassin.

No need for Light Armor if you wish to be a true assassin.
For a true assassin, best skills are Alchemy (just poison aspect of it) and Speech.
One-Handed Weapons/Archery, Lockpick, Pickpocket and Sneak are actually more of a backup plan.

Reason for that is because clothes make you blend in better with the crowd and makes you look less suspicious.
Speech is actually best way to get close to the target since the target may start to think of you as a friend and will let it's guard down (a silver tongue is worth gold).
Only in case you can't get to the target in a peaceful way and slip him poison in his food/drink/whatever or in it's pocket, then you resort to actually sneaking up to the target and killing it with a weapon.
So basically, just replace Light Armor with Speech and you're fine imho.

I disagree. One handed is for the daggers. Light Armor on the other hand could be traded off for Enchanting both clothes and weapons for extra damage and protection, however seeing as this is mainly made for assassins I think that would change it up to a night blade, which I am not sure if that is wanted.

Yeah, but we all know how these games work. Even if you want to 1 shot some one, you might not. Specially late game, i remember when my sneak attacks stopped consuming half of peoples health in oblivion. We cant say if it wont be the same this round.

If he wants to survive the hit, he'll need to either drop the difficulty or use some protection.

This. Potions may make up for lack of armor, but I doubt they may be enough. Alteration and Enchant are alternatives, but as I said before that is more of a night blade than an assassin.