Sometimes lurker, in the mood to share my rambling with whomever wants to read. If you are one of those guys who kill dragon priests with the shiv from Markarth, move along. Nothing to see here.

Intrigued by the pacifist video everyone has seen I finally rolled a zero-kill Illusionist and have to say it has been a lot of fun. It requires a completely different approach to completing quests. i am around level 37 and managed to complete the Mages College and much of the Thieves Guild so far with no kills and no weapon ever used. My rules have been 1) no weapons at all; 2) no kills on the stats. I have steered clear of followers unless I am forced to take them because their kills count, and getting that hot-head Mercer through a dungeon without him killing anything was... interesting. Harmony helped except for a resistant Drauger death lord, so i stood outside the chamber with the door closed and cast Mayhem instead. Listening to the sounds beyond that door as the undead turned on each other and nearly killed the death lord for me was absolutely priceless... and that is why I can't call this a pacifist build in the true sense. Let's face it: the only true pacifist character is an itinerant trader/alchemist--Skyrim Sims. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I am aware that there are some quests I just won't be able to complete but still having fun with it. So far I gave up for now on Waking Nightmare in Dawnstar or killing Movarth near Morthal. Erandur stays in combat mode because he knows the other NPCs are there, so he won't tell me the next step to advance the quest. Movarth is too powerful for the others in the cave to kill him. I don't want to kill Grelod this time but I do want the unusual gem inside the DB so I may be casting Mayhem inside the orphanage, as wrong as that sounds. Then I got to thinking--could you complete the DB questline with 0 kills on stats? Hmm... Probably not all the way through that last quest but I bet you could get up to that point. I really hate the Night Mother and Cicero tho, so I probably won't do it.

I know dragons and dragon lore are a huge part of the game but I don't like the frequency of dragon attacks and how they kill blacksmiths and shopkeepers, so I decided not to do the main quest so far and have avoided talking to Balgruf completely. It is very satisfying to travel from town to town without being beset by dragons every 15 minutes. I wonder how of you have been on their way to some quest site and then suddenly you hear the drums and hear the roar and think, "oh no, not again." I do miss using fus ro dah and watching the npc fly off a bridge into a chasm, but that is a different build. I wonder if anyone else plays without the dragons. The dragon priests are still there and you still learn the words to the shout, and oddly you sometimes (rarely) find dragon armor in loot.