I hate classes in RPGS. I much prefer the open ended let me play as a I want with any form of hybrid I desire.....

In Oblivion, and in Morrowind, I had characters whose major skills were combat skills and whose classes were melee-warrior classes. They became very powerful mages but mediocre warriors, though they were never mages.

Oblivion classes speed your progression in your selected skills and skill group, and classes tie your level not to your overall power, but to your progress in your class skills alone. They do nothing else.

My Skyrim characters have strong classes defined by their chosen pursuits and reinforced by their chosen perks. They don't get a class-inherent bonus to their rate of progress in their selected skills, but there is no reason why anyone should get such a bonus. My characters' levels unfailingly correspond to their actual ability, not to some mere fraction of their ability as levels do in Oblivion. As far as classes go, Skyrim feels very much like an RPG to me.

I prefer the open class system in skyrim, although maybe the stat system from oblivion mixed with the class system in skyrim would be best. IMO.

Although you can change, you cannot change completely freely. Perks are finite and those points you put into magicka, after you stoped using spells won't refund themselves into more useful stats.


Skyrim allows you to roleplay a warrior that at some point in his history decided to drop the way of the blade and dedicate himself to the way of magic, dropping the armor for the mage robes and using no physical weapons anymore. That's a lot better than a very rigid and unrealistic class systems that are extremely linear and leave no room for unexpected evolutions.

In what way to do you mean "held by your choices"? are you referring to consequence?

As much as I don't care about attributes being gone...... his example's a good one. "Know how to work a gun" =/= "be skilled with a gun". You can teach someone all the technical aspects of how guns work, show them all the proper techniques for firing, etc. And if their Strength or Dexterity is too low, all that knowledge won't be very useful if they can't hold the gun up & keep it aimed and steady. There's a physical aspect to using a gun that's separate from the informational aspect.

(In this case, the difference - in Fallout:New Vegas - between a character with 8 Strength / 8 Agility / 100 Guns and one with 3 Str / 3 Agi / 100 Guns.)

I am not having that issue in Skyrim. My Glass-armored Sword+Board khajiit with bonuses in Restoration is completely different from my Forsworn-Armored Greatsword-and-bow-using khajiit with a few stray points in Destruction - They're even the same race, yet are completely distinct from each other.


Have you heard of something called "Multiclassing"? When I play D&D and other class-based games, I am not "held" to my choice as a character. The difference is that TES has an intra-level skill system, as opposed to a point-buy-on-level-up (Which it still does have). Your mage that decides to start shooting a bow in TES levels up just as fast as a Mage that kills his enemies with a bow in D&D (Because you get XP based on encounter level, not how you handle the encounter), and can choose to increase your bow-using ability on level-up by taking a Bow feat or multiclassing into Fighter or Ranger. I'm not seeing your point here.

Also, previous TES games did not "Hold you to your choices" - My fighter became just as powerful a mage as my Mage did in every game except Daggerfall, where I opted to abuse the "Cannot use Magic" disadvantages (That NO pre-made warrior or stealth class have) to get a wall of hitpoints and immunity to everything. However, in Skyrim, I am held to my choices. My two-handed warrior will always be able to dual-cast Destruction spells, because she does EVERYTHING two-handed.



That's because the character isn't skilled with a gun. No amount of explanation, teaching, or bookwork can improve a skill to even a fundamental level. The only way to get skill is to use that skill. You can show someone all there is to know about wiring an electrical cabinet, but unless they've had prior experience, they will take forever getting it hooked up right and mistakes will still be made. With a gun, you can show someone how to shoot it and how it works, but they aren't skilled until they actually start using and applying that skill.

The "informational Aspect" of anyone's skillset is generally less than 1% of the total "skill" - it's all about practice and conditioning. It's why reading the Skill Books in any TES game will not automatically send your character's skill to 100, even if they know "how" to do something from an informational standpoint. Skill has jack [censored] do do with "knowledge". Skill is at least 90% practice and Conditioning.

No it isn't metagaming. Metagaming is letting player knowledge govern a character's in-game actions. If the character no longer wanted to be a thief, then it's not metagaming. If the player got bored and went over to the shiny-shiny, that would be metagaming. Walkthrough guides and tips are metagaming.

Role playing is taking on a role (life) that is not your own. Okay, basically it's just 'playing pretend' but with an advlt name. I RP on play-by-post forums which feature no stats, no dice and no DMs. The only restrictions are built into the lore of the settings and the rules set down by the admins. Some people LARP, which adds 'dressing up' to the whole 'playing pretend' deal.

But that's the wrong way to look at the "gun skill". If you teach someone everything there is to know about guns without having him ever touching one, at best you can get him a small bonus to his "gun skill" but it'll never make him good with it.

Someone that has a high "gun skill" HAS trained with one intensively and so, he ALSO has trained the corresponding attributes in the process.

I have issues with that claim, considering that all my Oblivion characters were played off their Minor skills. I only used my Majors for leveling, not for actual play.

You could use and level any skills you wanted in previous TES games. Class was no restriction at all.

When I started reading this thread it looked interesting.

Near the end, my brain is mush and I'm drooling into my keyboard, thanks, Andaius.

Also, stats in Oblivion meant nothing, it was way too easy to get most, if not ALL of them to 100.

This^ and not only that, in Skyrim, you don't need the perks. Once you hit level 80 or higher in the skills, you are already uber-powerful and the perks are completely superfluous to the strength of the relevant skill.

Tell that to all the people saying the skill is useless, all the power is in the perks.


As a rough guess, I'd say it's 50/50 between skill and perk with a small advantage for the perks. But it's an average. Many skills are very weak without perks (magic? unless you abuse enchanting, enchanting itself is useless unperked) while others work without them like Lockpicking, but that's because there's no penalty to failing at the task so you can try again nearly forever until you succeed.

The biggest issue with the new "play the character you want to be" style used in Skyrim is that your character can start out as a thief, and then switch to magic, but as grand as all that is, you're still carrying a lot of baggage from your previous playstyle. Namely, chances are you'll still have some perks in thievery and some high ranks in those skills - you can simply ignore that previous experience through sheer self-discipline as I would encourage, but it's still there and by the late-game virtually everybody's characters begin moving into that bland middle ground of well-rounded skill sameyness.

It'd be way more interesting if your characters' skills actually decayed from lack of use (though these "rusty" skills could be restored to their former levels more quickly than when they were originally trained).

Did I say I didn't use my major skills for leveling? They are the point of playing those skills for leveling, so you're not making sense there. Also, class is a restriction because what you choose as a class determined what skill would level relevant to that class more efficiently. Oblivion was so restrictive that you had to choose the correct minor skills to match the major skills along with the relevant race and class set-up, other wise, certain skills would take too long to level, even if they were your major skills. One complaint I had with that, though I appreciated it more because it held me to my choices, was Destruction. If I didn't have the correct minor skills to help level it properly, once I got to level 35 in Dest., it would be slow leveling after that. Keep in mind, that Oblivion's max level for any character is about 55. Can you level all skills in Oblivion, you sure can, but try leveling acrobatics to 100 and see thousands of hours playing just doing the relevant activity to see it get that high if it doesn't fit your class and race choices.

In Skyrim, just do any activity relevant to any skill and watch how fast it levels. You are not held to your choice of a character style. It really isn't role playing outside of your imagination.

Wrong wrong wrong. You do NOT have enough perks for that.

I don't find most of the perks particularly interesting - outside of the magical schools where there's some notable increases in spell potency (as well as the ability to strengthen the spell with both hands), I think they're all pretty vapid.

How the hell is it complex? You can add onto whatever you want at any given time with very little room for making any mistakes...Hell even the 1st perks on all the trees are generally the strongest, so investing into a skill you later decide you don't like isn't really a waste.

scow2-

i disagree.

yes, your light/1-h/block khajiit and 2-h/archery khajiit are 2 separate characters that you use to fight differently. however, there is nothing that keeps them from becoming exactly the same. there are no mechanics or unique customizations that flesh them out except your mind.

the differences between my nord 2-h/light and khajiit sneak/archer are shallow and cosmetic with each having the same impact on the world around them. how i fight is about the most meaningless difference i can have in a rpg/roleplaying game.

when everything can be exactly the same then nothing is stands out. i want more from my game then what my own mind comes up with. i want some mechanics that make my khajiit thief that specializes in sneaking, lock and pick to be different in the gameworld than my nord warrior. but, there are none and they aren't. the nord can become exactly the same as my thief.

they are shallow, simple characters without options and customizations and meaningful differences.

I don't need to tell anyone that, I actually experienced that myself. Seriously, without perks with one-handed being at level 90, 3 swings and a deathlord draugr is toast. Without using any perks for smithing, I can make armors that protect me and then enchant them to heal and increase my health and magicka, though I want to be a mage, being in constrictive caves doesn't help playing that role. Add that I can enchant other armors an d jewelry for other effects and I am good to go. Remember, I am talking ONLY about the skill being leveled high, they still work when using then without their relevant perks. Keep in mind, I am talking combat situation. Success or not in pickpocketing or lock-picking skills are not concerns in life and death situations.

Then I guess you really hated Morrowind and Oblivion because it was a lot easier to transform all your chars into near perfect carbon copy of each other with 100 everywhere.

With perks, that draugr would die in 1 hit or 2. Without perks in smithing, you cannot smith anything at all, you only improve stuff at half power and you cannot improve magic stuff in the first place. Without perks in enchanting, you enchant at half power and at 1/4 power once at level 100 due to the lack of "dual enchant".

Why are you saying that perks do not matter? If you find the game too easy, play on master.

I'd consider the ability to cleave through several enemies at once, slow time by drawing back a bow, and dual-cast Destruction spells vs. Bowl Everyone Over by charging around with a shield, restore stamina with my Healing spell, regenerate stamina in Light Armor, and slice-and-dice with a one-handed sword to be an insurmountable difference between the characters, given how few perk points I have remaining.

Then maybe you should try Action-adventure games? Because "How I fight" is the only difference between Thieves, Mages, and Warriors in every RPG I've played.

What? The Khajiit would have a much easier time opening locks than the Nord, and can steal the clothes right off his victim's back without raising any suspicion. The Nord, on the other hand, probably couldn't even get within twenty feet of someone without being detected, and can't even reliably steel an unequipped weapon without getting caught. That's a pretty big difference. There aren't enough perk points to do everything.

Now, if you turn your Nord into a Thief to match your khajiit, that's simply a gameplay choice and logical progression of events. Why should it be harder to learn how to sneak just because you swung a sword around a few times in your life?

Not only that, the game's NPCs don't recognize my character race properly. I am a Nord, but I am told by other Nords that I am a foreigner. I played a Khajiit, but I was allowed in Whiterun, where many say Khajjits are not allowed and everyone talks to me like I am a human. I defeated the Imperials in the SC/Imperial civil war. Walked up to a few imperials with SC armor on and nothing was said. I guess the sameness is an effect on all aspects of the game .

Welcome to the Elder Scrolls. Also, on the Khajiit/Whiterun issue, it's a lot more complex than you think