As much as I love slashing and smashing and even casting spells to get my way through the game, I'd really like to be able to play as a character, who never engage in combat.

As far as quests, goes, nearly all quests leads you to fight someone. I wish your could persuade and influence your enemies through the game to solve problems without ending up hacking eachother. The speech skill had so much potential, and could have had so many possibilities, but is basicly just useless. Maybe even be able to be a "trickster" and or be able to deceive other npcs and enemies.

Maybe there is a mod somewhere that enhances the bard or merchant playstyle.

Am i the only one, who had hoped to be able to play like this?

[Edit] Forgot the word "wish" in the title.

Would non-violent options be welcome? Well, yeah, sure, any added tools, especially those that enhance RP, would be welcome. BUT, I have a major problem with what a lot of people hope these tools to do. For example, the tower on the road from Whiterun to Iverstead (forget the name). It's too profitable a position to "clear" by talking the inhabitants out of it. It just wouldn't make any sense at all. Talk your way PAST it, without having to engage, yeah, sure, but not complete the quest to clear it. And how would one, say, complete a Companions quest to rid home X of beastie Y? Talk the wolf out of the house? On SOME level, you are, as a non-violent character, going to have to avoid some quests. You're going to HAVE to say no, for instance, to the MQs. Period. Swaying either side in the CW is impossible, and Alduin, well, "Um, please don't eat the world Mr. World Eater," just isn't going to work, ever. So non-violent characters would have to avoid quests that are inherently violent. Being that combat is such a large part of RP (and RP mechanics), we also can not expect entire games catering to non-violent solutions. And, you kind of have to realize that you're in an extreme minority to want such things, even if they would be nice for you, for the PC you want to play. Thankfully, you CAN play a merchant all you want, picking natural goods, searching for ore veins, mixing potions, farming, cutting wood, transmuting iron into gold and smithing it into fine jewelry, etc. These things aren't terribly exciting, no, but that's kind of my point. A completely non-violent character isn't terribly exciting to begin with. To each his own, but quests will always, and should always, have en element of danger to them and some (like clearing bandits, slaying dragons, vampires, etc.) should require violence. You can mostly complete the entire TG questline, for example, without "killing", but you WILL need an NPC willing to kill, and you'll likely be doing a LOT of running and healing of that NPC.

Good point.

Though I think Bioware did it greatly in Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 1. There mant quests and tasks with danger that could be solved even through dialog. Of course there has to me some kind of battles, but lets say you could prevent some of the fighting by tricking or persuading enemies. To make it more realistick enemies could require you to sacrify something that will gain them.

Once you get a decent sneak, you can sneak past almost anything. Unfortunately, there are a number of scripted events in some quests where some bozo auto-detects you, gives a speech and charges you. Still, you can do pretty much the entire TG quest line with only one or two kills. I suspect that you can also use Illusion to get some extra leverage.

Sorry, but if sumone calls me a milk drinker they're askin for a slap!

i liked the fact that i could go through the TG with pretty much no fighting, but it is just so annoying that there are this scripted fights that you can't avoid.

stupid that even the TG has scripted fights, because you can do the other stuff without fighting at all. if you never fight, you don't get any fighting skills and if you got no fighting skills you have a huge problem in scripted fights.

i had to fight for years in scripted TG fights, because my weapon skill was like in the 20s and i think my lvl was nearly 30.