I have never played as an assassin or female before as the idea of murdering people has never appealed to me. But for my next character I thought I'd try my hand at one and this is what I have come up with so far.

Race: Breton
six: Female
Skills: Sneak - Conjuration - Alchemy - Illusion - Alteration - Enchanting

Why conjuration?
It's always good to invest a little bit of perks into archery and maybe pickpocketing and lockpicking as well.

Then again I don't know your exact playstyle.

Wow, I play assassins about 90% of my characters, but nice choice on the Breton. I never liked Bretons until I made one recently and made him an old wizrd style guy who only uses magic and only has a dagger as back up. He can use a staff but doesn't have one yet.

Well the idea I had was that this assassin would only rely on bound weapons. I kind of liked the idea she would carry no weapons, who would suspect she was an assassin.?

No weapon skills at all? And with that no smithing? I would have thought an assassin would take great interest in the sharpness of their blades.

Edit, nevermind, said the bound weapons bit as I was typing.

Quite the opposite, assassins had Blacksmiths forge their own weapons instead of performing this tasks themselves.

Conjouration is weird. It depends if you want to be a 'Cloak and Dagger' type of assassin. If so, take the sneak tree if you want to be a PURE sneak character. If not, invest in Light Armour and Blades.

If you want to be an archer, then do archery and sneak. Light Armour is not needed here.

You can mix the two.

Sounds like a similar idea to my most recent playthrough, except I opted out of the bound weapons idea...no enchants on them!

What about your armor skill? Planning to use mage armors as well? Looks like you may be lacking survive-ability.

That's my biggest problem but I could get over it just for the coolness of an assassin that summons her own weapons. It's just an odd thing that I guess not many people have tried, I maybe wrong though. Plus from the RP side I could make quite an interesting story.

Good idea!!Never even dawned on me to have no weapons but the ones that I conjor up.But I would still pick either achery or blades cause these perk trees will affect your usefulness of said conjored weapons just like the actuall thing. May I borrow your idea for my next assassin?

I'm thinking of joining the college for the access to spells and teachers and the DB just because she'll be an assassin, and I've not done it yet.

You can do what you want, don't need my permission to make a character. Unless I patent it, then you do but I haven't so you don't.

Enjoy the DB it's one of the meatier quests IMO.

Mcleod, although I have opted out of the bound weapon idea for my assassin, I have kept other "flavorful" elements. I have to mine the ore, not buy, and hand craft all of my weapons and I have to skin/gather the leather or ore for my armor as well. I can only enchant weapons with Shock, just as I can only use shock spells/shouts, or neutral spells/shouts. Not as selfsufficient as the bound weapons idea we both had, but, it is similar. And as carrots said, be sure to pick up perks in your primary weapon skill, they apply to the bound weapon attacks.

My next problem is what stone I should use.

I always use the Thief stone for sneak bonuses, but if you are using mainly magic, then maybe the mage stone.

Bretons go naturally with Atronach. The stone bonus and the racial power stack to give you 100% absorption - totally immune to magic once a day. Dragon Priests can't hurt you, only fill up your magicka.

The only thing about bound weapons is that you lose the possible x30 backstab bonus because there is no bound dagger.

Both good stones, I tend to use the steed stone for the extra carry weight and the removal of movement resriction with armor.If I'm not mistaken it stacks with the perk "matching set".

You'll have fun with the assassin. I was unsure the first time I created one, but once you get into it, your dark side will rear its ugly head and everything works itself out.

Sounds like my recreation of the Witchhunter class (my favorite stealth class) from previous titles. I haven't gotten very far with her (also a Breton) as I cannot decide what skills to invest point into. My plans include perks for: Sneak, Conjuration for bound weapons, Illusion for silent casting and Destruction for rune mastery. Beyond that, I always get caught up in trying to decide between Alchemy or Enchanting and whether I should include Light Armor and One-Handed. I'm trying to simplify the build to six skills or less, but I want them all, lol.

Also, I'm following both the stories of Ertius and Figgin since earlier today.

Thanks for following. I appreciate it.

My favorite character right now is a Dunmer nightblade who only uses bound weapons (and other spells). It is cool, but without the ability to enchant OR smith your weapons, you may want to put some perk points into Armsmen. Otherwise, you may end up doing too little damage as you level up.

The quiet casting perk is a MUST for this build, if you want to be sneaky. Without it, enemies can hear you summoning your weapons. Other than that, there are a lot of options. I use the Muffle spell a lot but I am not taking the perk. Once my Illusion skill is high enough I plan to get the invisibility spell.

Yeah that is an absolute if I'm relying on bound weapons. Illusion in general is a good skill to have as it works well with sneak and archery.



Thanks.

I read somewhere that you only get EXP when casting bound weapons in a battle situation. So does that mean if I cast bound in a sneak situation I won't get the EXP for Conjuration.

Yeah you need to be in battle to lvl conj up. I highly recommend archery for an assassin build btw, definitely needed in some situations you'll come across where you just cant sneak passed to get the sneaky backstab. Also its just awesome popping groups of clueless mobs from miles away while they bumble about in vain trying to find you. Have fun, sneaky characters are definitely the ones i personally find most fun on TES games!

Slim down that build there.

It's easier to focus your perks on a specific few trees and expand into others. You have Sneak, obviously. Gun the whole tree except for the starter perk - level that only up to three. Illusion is an excellent perk tree, I highly recommend it. Infinitely useful for sneakytypes - muffle spells until you get the DB boots, Calm people that see you and sneak up on them to insta kill them, Fear on enemies too tough for a straight up battle, and Furies for lolz. Then a combat tree, go One-Handed + dual wield tree. Get, say, Mehrune's Razor and Blade of Woe and dual wield them. Or Archery, if you prefer long range sneak kills.

Then secondary trees. Alchemy, obviously. Maybe some Pickpocket to steal gold back from trainers and slipping poisons from Alchemy in to pockets. With maxed Stealth and Pickpocket, you can trigger Shadow Warrior then steal all their armour and weapons then punch them to death. But as an assassin going 30x Backstab would be just as good, but less LOL'y. Don't go Enchanting; you'll be using DB gear a lot. If you're on PC and grab a Disenchantable Unique Items mod it MIGHT be worth it. Conjuration wouldn't be useful at all. Just get Spectral Assassin if you want to get a decent follower without the actual drawbacks of having one.

Uhhh, what else...? Lockpicking is generally worthless, I grabbed it because some of the perks are actually useful, but sadly I have to waste perk points getting to them. You won't need Speech, don't get Smithing, you don't actually need it with 30x Backstab. Alteration... nah, don't bother. Restoration, yes if you want to get Vampirism for Necromage, Vampirism also buffs Sneak and Illusion. Archery or One Handed is down to preference...

So what about the forge in the DB HQ with a werewolf doing the smithing ?. I'm an assassin and a skilled smith its how you get the best weapons.