» Thu Jun 07, 2012 2:02 pm Each character was giving three skills to focus on, dividing the 18 available skills between the six characters. At least one of the skills for each character would be combat-oriented so One-Handed, Two-Handed, Block, Light Armor, Heavy Armor and Destruction were set apart so each character would have at least one of these skills (I also had archery among these skills, but since that makes seven in total I randomly picked one of the skills that would be in the remaining skills category).
I also randomized the characters race, gender, disposition (good-evil) and loyalty (stormcloak-imperial) to give each character a different approach to their playing style.
This is what I ended up with along with some comments on how the different builds fared in the world of Skyrim:
1. Redguard/ Destruction-Illusion-Alchemy
This female character with a generally good and heroic disposition was obviously to be a heavy spellcaster. I really enjoyed illusion and she is a very good dungeon-cleaner with excellent crowd-control. Haven′t developed alchemy that much so far, too much grinding involved and I didn′t want a character at level 20 with 6 of those levels consisting of purely alchemy. I figure I will eventually pay to train alchemy up to 50 so I can discover more ingredient effects and then start grinding out potions (along with some bonus to alchemy items that I can pick up along the way).
Main Advantage - Taking out large groups of enemies without fighting (Fury-Fear from hidden position until only one remains and then finishing off the last one with destruction magic).
Challenges/Disadvantages - Strong and tough bosses that are too high level for illusion spells and can take a lot of damage before going down, not enough magicka to defeat them before they get into melee combat (but she can usually survive and fend them off by using enchanted weapons, frost enchanted daggers are strongly favoured as they slow down the enemy and allows her to get away to blast them with magic again).
2. Nord/ TwoHanded-Conjuration-Lockpicking
Another female character but with an evil approach and strongly loyal towards the empire. The combination of conjuration and two-handed pointed her towards making use of bound battleaxe from early on. She does a lot of damage and is deadly in combat, the standard approach to any combat is having dual magic available and summoning an atronach with her right hand and a bound axe with her left hand. The atronach usually draws most attention while she runs around finishing off enemies with power attacks. Lockpicking is a very odd addition to the characters main skills, and not very useful, I try to lockpick a little more than usual in order to raise it and keep with the spirit of the approach but it doesn′t add much to her diversity or strategy. Teamed up with Vorstag who wields enchanted weapons, since she uses bound weapons with the mystic binding perk she can easily keep all enchanted weapons charged.
Main Advantage - Use of conjuration to summon/raise allies and a companion means she rarely takes a lot of damage herself. High damage dealing ability at mid-level.
Challenges/Disadvantages - Skills level slowly as other allies do a lof of the damage and she rarely strikes more than once or twice at each opponent.
3. Bosmer/ Block-Smithing-Alteration
Seeing the above combination of skills instantly set this male character on the path of becoming a tank. Ironflesh combined with high blocking and superb armor and shields. This character has done a lot of adventuring alone, joined up with the companions and likes exploring dwemer ruins for building material. Smithing advances very quickly and at times it was a bit challenging to avoid having problems with leveling enemies as his other skills leveled much slower.
Main Advantage - Damage resistance and the effeciency of shield bash, very good against single strong opponents.
Challenges/Disadvantages - Not as strong against magic wielders and can get overwhelmed by crowds of enemies as it takes him a bit of time to kill each enemy with his relatively weak one-handed weapon.
4. Argonian/ Light Armor-Enchaning-Speech
An odd combo for a noble, stormcloak-loyal male argonian (strange that he would be loyal to the stormcloaks as the nords of Windhelm aren′t exactly very nice towards argonians). Uses double-wielding fighting style with a preference for axes. Despite not focusing too much on one-handed he still deals a lot of damage quickly. Versatile character that is also adept at sneaking and using bows. Speech takes a lot of time to develop, have started training by paying for training and pickpocketing to get speech up, but pickpocket levels much faster than speech with this method. Don′t really see the point with having high speech either. Teamed up with Uthgerd who provides the heavy muscles up close while he kites around enemies dealing swift blows with his dual wielding.
Main Advantage - Versatile, enchantments becoming very strong later in the game.
Challenges/Disadvantages - Needs a companion to be effective, not as strong in one-on-one melee situations.
5. Breton/ OneHanded-Restoration-Pickpocket
An evil healer that serves the stormcloaks, this character's skills really point in all directions, yet they somehow combine to make a strong build. Obviously he can deal damage in melee with his one-handed focus, but his main fighting style involves letting his companion, Jenassa, do the fighting while constantly keeping her health up. Restoration is fairly cheap and he can easily keep casting healing hands throughout a very long battle, often waiting until the end before he gets involved and delivers a couple of swift killing blows. Pickpocket is very easy to level, and I basically stopped at 50 in order to not have his pickpocket abiltiy raise his level too much. At 50, with the available perks he still pickpockets just about anything at 90% so there′s not much point in raising it much more.
Main Advantage - Does well in long battles, restoration keeping both himself and his companion going for a very long time. Also has good damage and magic resistance due to the Breton-Lord Stone combination.
Challenges/Disadvantages - Well...battles tend to get very long when only one person is dealing damage. Slow progression of melee combat skill since Jenassa does most of the hitting.
6. Imperial/ Heavy Armor-Archery-Sneak
Left for this imperial servant was the archery/stealth combination. I am sure many have already explored this build and found its' many strong advantages. Probably the strongest build of all of the characters, uses two-handed weapons as backup when the arrows don′t take out all opponents before they can get to her. Has done most of the exploring and adventuring herself but recently added Endarion as her follower.
Main Advantage - Sneak and archery combo is very powerful, already at sneak 55 she can stand right in front of an enemy, shoot him in the face and not be discovered.
Challenges/Disadvantages - Heavy Armor levels slowly since most enemies never hit her, will often intentionally let enemies get close and attack her so that her armor ability gets a bit of training.
So those were my builds, with six different characters exploring in different ways I hope to experience most of the game without feeling that my characters are making very odd choices just to get quests. Hope it can inspire people to experiment with different combinations, I play on adept level and at that level pretty much everything works as the game is never so difficult that any of the builds become hopeless.
