Focus on onehanded skill, don't take the generic "+xx% damage with onehanded weapons" if possible, put as many perks in the dual wield tree as possible.

Focus on twohanded skill. Only use greatswords. Get 5/5 of the generic "+xx% damage" perk mostly.

In both cases, take the sword specific perks obviously.

My bsometer just exploded, I got to pick the pieces brb.

Natural regression isn′t something the mechanic needs to model since the game does not involve such a large time frame. Moving on to the other aspect of wanting to play a character with such a background:

I could whip that character up for you rather easily. I would skill two-handed (if that was her former expertise) but keep the amount of perks low, instead I pick perks in block, armor, one-handed and crafting to reflect her experience and the versatility that this provides. Now I have a character that doesn′t power attack that effeciently or cause massive damage, but can instead block, disarm and rely on technique rather than force and has a vast knowledge of the quality of different equipment. No attributes, but just as unique and distinguishable from other two-handers.

But if you tie attributes to skills, you can't make that has-been Hammer master either, because the more you use said hammers the higher the related attribute (Strength, in this case) will get. If you don't tie attributes to skills, however, then the fact he only has, say, a 40 STR doesn't mean anything, nor does it contribute towards individualization of that chracter.

For attributes to have any point in being included they have to be linked into the system, and once you do that, the only way to have a low-STR/high-AGI swordsman would be through some rather odd linkages. That, in turn, would promote some equally odd behavioral patterns for said character, which is something to be avoided at all costs in a properly linked system.

There is no point to take Two-Hand and One-Hand unless you RP. You can and should already take 2H and Block Perks to Bash. Armor perks are decent, especially Stamina related ones but Armor contributing ones do not matter since you should not be getting hit ever. If you have it on Master especially, it is unforgiving even if you have a lot of DR and Health. There is no such thing as a well-rounded character in Skyrim. The less variety you choose and more you invest, the more effective you will be due to how shallow of a game it truly is with regards to combat.

Well depends, on how the attributes are governed in this case. With Oblivion's system you could infact Ignore adding Str increases, for example.

Honestly, I liked the traditional system of skills and attributes, they should have just left everything as it was in my opinion.

Thanks. I suppose you're quite right that I am thinking too much in terms of models with this or that relationship between variables and that arguments based on such thinking won't really mean much in what is indeed also at least partially a cultural question. Or maybe I should say a worldview question. As far as converting people, well, one can always hope.

I'm glad that I'm at least making some sense, though. Every now and again I can't help but wonder if I've forgotten the English language overnight.

Debatable.

Yes that's exactly the point of the limited perks system. To nerf the jack of all trades master of all from previous games which was broken.

Wait, what? What the hell are you smoking? You cannot make a godlike master of all chars because the rules try to impose some restriction and give you benefits to specialize and the game is shallow then?

You don't even need to specialize really. For example, if you aim for the best armor possible, it's overkill to master both an armor skill and smithing. First because taking both branches of smithing is mostly a waste except for RP reasons, and second because you reach armor cap "easily" that way. "Low heavy armor skill and perks + ultra high quality self made armors" is more or less equivalent to "Master skilled and perked heavy armor with some random steel crap found laying around"

That's exactly what you say isn't possible in Skyrim : efficient well rounded builds that are close to as good as super focused builds for some things.

I understand what you are saying, these are good points. My point is that there is more than one persons definition of a rogue, for example.

I built my rogue in Everquest, with almost all points on dealing more damage. If I didn't take them down fast, I was in big trouble. It was exciting.

In WoW, my rogue was completely different, and there were basically two main paths you could take, for a rogue build.

I understand that in Skyrim, you can dabble in this and that, like maybe alchemy, but I'd like to be able to devote more perk points into certain skills.

As it is, I would end up saving a lot of points until I get to a higher level, so I can max out one-handed and light armor. Once I've maxed out one-handed and light armor, I'm forced to put points in other things, like alchemy or enchanting, or something.

I'd rather be able to continue strictly improving one-handed and stealth, all the way to level 81, becoming very specialized. THAT would make my rogue very much different from someone who also put 20 points across enchanting and alchemy.

Hybrid classes do not bring much at all to the table. They are just not very effective in a lot of areas. In every case, there will be an optimal build with your true options for "classes" you can create extremely limited. There is the illusion of a custom system, but let's face it with the way Perks work, that really isn't true except for RPers.

Yes, however, hybrids are severly gimped in Skyrim. There is no point to say taking 1H and Archery Perks to create a "well-rounded" fighter. Stuff just does NOT synergize well in Skyrim. You would be better served picking and investing in one or the other and then supplementing those with Enchanting, Smithing, and Alchemy the holy tri-fecta. In most games, a Pure class will be excellent at one thing and severely hindered at others. This is NOT the case in Skyrim. As a Pure class, I utterly demolish everything. There is no upside for scattering my Perks.


Shallow of a game with regards to combat as you do not need to rotate your use of spells for optimal efficiency, there are hardly any spells, there are hardly any combat abilities, the optimal defensive tactics is "strafing" or sprinting away, chain staggering trivializes most content, AI is poor, and I never have to rotate my tactics which having a developed character or hybrid character would lend itself toward. Perks are nothing more than a method to raise your stats to kill everything in a hit. I have no advantages and disadvantages. I CAN easily create a god-like character. It is actually easier to do this in Skyrim than previous games as the only thing I need to worry about is Perk investment.

I think I've outlined the max defense build before. Armsman 5, 1 perk in everything in block, either armor type, smithing, enchanting, illusion, archery, and magic resistance from the alteration tree. You get plenty of perks to do all this and the end result is a character with great offense, great defense, decent archery, and zero-cost whop-ass illusion spells. Sounds like a godlike master of all character to me.

Of course, such a build isn't too RP friendly because it ignores all the symbolic but utterly useless perks that would symbolize this or that about the character. If attributes had been properly implemented then said build would of course not be able to get max utility from armor, swords, bows, and a school of magic. But they're not and so it is possible.

It has to be said, however, that it's not viable to try and do everything at once and the outlined character won't become master of all until very far into the game. Until that point, I'd very much recommend specializing as much as possible. First master sword and board with some archery, then grind smithing to max, then grind up enchant and illusion.

Naturally, the build I'm suggesting would also not be possible if most of the perks didn't svck badly and enchant didn't make magicka redundant. But try making a rounded build that doesn't take tremendous advantage of smithing, alchemy, or enchanting. Those three cracting skills are really the source of being powerful, and melee or archery without smithing is a complete waste of time.

Was the old female warrior that is past her prime with inferior strength supposed to be an optimized character?

Who plays such a character for any other purpose than roleplaying?

I was actually thinking of her as an NPC, truth be told, but given the backstory she'd also be possible as a main character, since the story says nothing about the age of the dovahkiin. Starting skills would have to be adjusted, though.

Back to the more interesting topic of how you implement attributes and when they evolve.

Leveling in relation to skill progression (earlier TES style) - Has already been tried and just leads to boring character behavior
Leveling and players get to pick - Uninventive and leads to the same boring character behavior, just make a couple of hundred iron daggers and you can raise your agility to max
Not related to leveling, through using the attribute in-game - Ok, so now I am going to stand and chop wood for a while so that I can gain strength, and then I am going to swim around Skyrim to gain endurance...boring character behavior again!
Remove skill progression and make a xp-based system where skills and attributes are raised when characters have collected enough xp - Todd Howard would be the most wanted man since Usama Bin-Ladin if they messed with the skill progression system.
Static - The only way it can really be implemented without breaking the rest of the game. Pick during character creation and that′s what you are stuck with.

What other brilliant ideas are you proposing?

I like my take on the semi-static model. Something aking to how it's done in the original Fallouts, and the later editions of D&D. Increases are Rare and can only happen after a handful of levels and perhaps is tied into skill use over that time. Another way would be via special encounters/quests and upper tier perks and such. So for example, ever so many levels in 4th edition D&D you get the option to raise a stat. In this case it woudl be perhaps something like gain so many levels in x type of skills you gain x attribute by a set amount.

That's extremely limited and requires a good degree of pre-planning that many players find horribly tedious. I don't want the game to be about levelling. Leave grind to yesteryears MMOs and focus on making the content fun.

This hasn't been done in previous TES games outside of user created mods. All previous titles have the player make selections at level up.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "boring character behavior".

Whats limited about it? It still leaves you room to do exactly what you want to do, it only now gives you C&C about how your character develops. Plus it's extremely simple, in that it has obvious answers for the simplistic player. Want to be a good warrior? dump it in str and endurance and so forth.

Didn't you play the mods? It just leads players to improve skills they don't use for the stat bonus they give for attributes they use. Kinda like Morrowind and Oblivion really.

Fixed attributes at start. Fixed at what? Why are they fixed anyway? I'm pretty sure that any regular joe that starts at 15 two handed skill and trains up to 100 which is a Master rank did greatly increase his strength in the process. So static attributes aren't a good idea.

I like how Fallout did it,(for character generation.) start at average levels you get racial bonus and a few points to start with. Then as you get more powerful you get options to improve it a little as you grow in power.

Right, but that's no different from Skyrim. The issue is not in how attributes are handled in those mods, but in how there is no hard limitation imposed on the player. You need stricter class systems if you want to avoid players using skills outside their class. If you're leaving benefits from raising non-class skills intact, you will always have players taking advantage of the opportunity.

My point is more that TES has established an organic, natural leveling system and things like perks or player selected attribute modifiers run against that system. Integrating them into a hands-off system would be better. Any other issues with leveling are separate discussions.
One could argue for fixed everything. Skills and attributes. That's generally the kind of system I prefer, though it's not something I'd really be expecting from a TES game.

Your "grind" remark doesn't make sense. Skyrim actually caters more to grinding than any of the previous TES game because one can level up any and all of the skill reasonably fast. All one has to do is grind on anything using any skill they please (Smithing and Enchanting anyone for a few hours?). In any case, grinding has been part of a leveling strategy since cRPGs have been out, it is nothing new. I really do not like the fact that I can level being a one-handed warrior, though I want to play a mage, just because I got into a situation where I was in CQC areas and was forced. If I had more magical powers (and especially the ability to create my own spells) like lo-level paralysis where I can get out, I can play my mage meme, but Skyrim doesn't really allow for this since it levels everything. At least the earlier TES games held me to my skill set level when I chose my class, sign and major and minor skills. If I chose mostly all mage type set-ups, leveling using blades, blunt and blocks took forever to level as it should, forcing me to stick with my choices. If I choose to be a mage, I want to be held to that from the outset.

No, you don't need stricter class systems to avoid players using skills outside their class. TES and Skyrim isn't a class based RPG system, deal with it and stop asking to transform it into a carbon copy class based system like there already hundreds of I enjoy those class based systems too but I enjoy more the variety the TES games provide. Stop uniformity.

If Skyrim system was broken beyond repair I'd be asking for something different too but the fact is, the system just works practically perfectly as wanted by Bethesda.

Why should strength and stamina govern a how a warrior plays. Why stats and not skills? Furthermore, what if a player does not want to conform to class systems? What if their concept isn't as straightforward as warrior? What if they want to specialise in other things as well the greatsword? Why should they be limited to the same tactics in every fight?

Not sure if serious :/ But this seems like a fairly nonsensical reply.


No, you do not have to live by any boundaries in Skyrim, since doing any activity related to any skill makes them level fairly fast, even if I go against what I want my class of character to be. I like playing a mage, but how does being able to make Smithing max out with the greatest of ease, hold me to my boundaries? Previous TES games held you to your choices of a character build when you set up the game. Skyrim, just essentially has you choose a race, then posits certain stats relevant to that race for leveling faster for that character's relevant skills. Yes, it does this, but outside of the intended stats for that race, one can still easily ramp up the non-race related skills with ease. I see no boundaries here at all. What makes it really bad, is that I can go to any of the Guardian Stones and change my race stats around to level up nonrace related skills faster, though they already level too fast anyway.