Is it just me, or is there really not too many possible builds in Skyrim?

[258789553873]

It seems like every build fundamentally falls into one of three categories: warrior, mage, stealth.

For warriors, they only differ in theme and equipment choice. Fundamentally though, they all offer the same gameplay experience.

Mages a bit better in terms of diversity (even if most people just do the generic destruction mage). For instance, besides the cliche destruction mage, you COULD make a conjurer that uses bound weapons. I've never tried this myself though, though I did see ONE video made by a guy who clearly played such a character to a high level (he was using a bound bow while wearing archmage robes AND had two storm atronochs out). There's also the equilibrium-centered mage, which I'm about to try out myself. Though I'm not expecting it to be much different from your standard destruction mage (minus the fact that you don't have to worry so much about magicka, and you're having to maintain a balancing act while playing this).

For stealth, you only really got two options. Dagger or bow. Most of course choose bow. And yeah, there's the thief character, but let's face it, you need to use a weapon anyway so you're still fundamentally an assassin.

The only real skill that changes things up at all is illusion, but even that still requires offensive skills in some way (you need to have SOME way to deal damage to finish off the last guy).

Of course, making hybrids of these three are also theoretically possible, but in practice these seem to be lacking. Its hard to do a stealth warrior for instance. Heavy armor isn't good for stealth, and really if you go this route you're just a stealth character that can fight in the open when they get caught. I've never had much luck with warrior-mages. They just seem to become to fragile around the time I get to level 10 (probably because I invest equally in health, stamina, and magicka, causing my stats to all fall behind). The only real hybrid class I've gotten to work is a stealth-illusionist. That, honestly was rather fun, since it essentially had 4 or 5 different playstyles I could switch between. If I got bored with one, I could switch to another.

For builds, I used to watch fudgemuppet all the time for their skyrim builds. Near the end though, they all started to look pretty much the same. The warrior characters, most notably, only really differed in equipment and backstory. And all the others were also fundamentally just destruction mages and stealth characters. And then there were silly things like the witch (which only had two skills: illusion and conjuration, and only had necromancer robes and the skull of corruption for equipment), which was later followed by another mage that had both those skills and a few extra. Most of their classes were essentially just 'mage/warrior/stealth', but with 1 or 2 extra skills to make them a bit more unique. Near the end, it seemed like they were running out of inspiration (and on top of this, I got REALLY sick of slogging through their increasingly long videos just to get to the build part). I mean, seriously. what's with the super-long backstory? Why not just leave it open so we can make our own, like they did at the start? Now it seems like they've re-done every possible archetype so many times, there's no point in making anymore. They tried dabbling ordinator builds, but I have no idea if that really resolves the 'there's only three characters to choose from' problem.

Honestly, it all seems to make the character creation system pointless. I mean, why have a class-less system with all abilities available to you when you can only really be one of three things? It seems pointless. The game almost feels like it may as well be using a class-based system with only three options. Its nigh impossible to find a build that really breaks the mold at all.

[fauxpas]

Todd is on the record as saying his design philosophy is to simplify everything he can. Thus is the result of said philosophy taken to its natural conclusion.


However I disagree with some of your conclusions as in Skyrim the end result is everyone ends up as a sneaky tank mage, and there is no reason to wear heavy armor over light as it's easy to hit the armor cap.

[alexander_dougherty]

You can make this arguement about a number of RPG games, most have clerics as well, some add monks and some add druids. Ranger is a druid warrior hybrid, paladin is a cleric warrior hybrid, and some would argue Ninja is a monk warrior hybrid with a different ethic.

The point is you can only do so much before you end up with weird classes, like the conjuror classes, which can only summon allies and very little else.

Skyrim has taken it to an extreme, and we can only hope they add more complexity for the next TES game, or it won't be worth buying.

[fauxpas]

I'll be surprised if Beth is still producing games by the time TES(6) rolls out given thier current track record and refusal to admit that thier engine is well pass its expiration date.


Now, I hope to be pleasantly surprised with Starfield, but I expect it'll simply be FO(4) in space AT BEST, and FO(4) in space simply isn't good enough for me.

[Janthis]

Stealth archer is probably the most OP build. Tanky warriors are good until you start running into stupidly overpowered enemies who have much higher hp and damage than would be realistically possible.

The only build I haven't tried is a conjurer who relies on summons, but I've heard it's a lot of fun.

[Perplex]

Originally posted by ionutz1280:

The only build I haven't tried is a conjurer who relies on summons, but I've heard it's a lot of fun.

It is fun if you enjoy being afk while the game play for you. Hide behind a corner, summon your stuff, wait untill they die in combat, cast them again, repeat untill enemy is dead.

[258789553873]

Yeah, when I was playing my stealth illusionist, I would only use my conjuration spells when I didn't feel like fighting stuff. Of course, that witch build I mentioned earlier looks like it would have a fairly unique play style. Sadly, I never thought to use both my illusion AND conjuration spells in the same fight when I was playing my stealth illusionist. Though I should note I mostly just used illusion for invisibility (never really did make much use of the 'mind control' spells for some reason).

[Jaehaerys]

You want some variety in the builds? Get on YouTube and find the channel called FudgeMuppet. They have a large number of builds with backstory, what RP is possible and the main perks. Also, get mods like Live Another Life or anything by EnaiSaion as both can help with roleplaying, and if you add in Enai's reworking and additions, you have far more options for playing the game. For example, making the Standing Stones more useful, making the races actually work differently with minor quests involved, adding religion, expanding the magic potential and completely reworking the perk trees.

[258789553873]

Did you even read the thread? I've known about fudgemuppet for years, and played some of his builds. Though I should note, they're really hit-and-miss. The paladin build for example is just not doable. It requires you to wield a two-handed mace, while wearing cloth and relying primarily on restoration for survival. Yeah. The puppet-master build worked far better though. I haven't play too many others though, so I don't know which others work and which don't. Though I would assume the more traditional ones (like all the warrior characters) probably work fine; its the more creative ones you need to worry about.

As for live another life, I've had that installed for years too. How does that change a build? It only lets you skip the Helgen sequence, and place yourself in the world with more or less the equipment you want to start with.

[Mrvecz]

Kinda

There are many gameplay possibilities but not all are at the same time practical or fun. I cannot fathom playing a mage who just spams summons while hiding behind a tree stump. Its practical ? Maybe, but no way fun.

Since i am playing with things like OBIS, Ordinator, Wildcat i have enough to care about in combat already for those "practical classes" like warriors, assassins and mages.

Speaking of Paladins, while i know Fudgemuppet exists i rather assemble my own classes, like from other games. So my Paladin is Warcraft paladin, so heavy armour, shield and restoration, alteration and rarely fire magic. True to to its material ? Yes. Practical ? Yes, strong self sustain and quite versatile. Fun ? Yes, since it combines the fun of battering people to a red pulp in melee, with flashy magic on standby.

[ColorsFade]

There are basically three archetypes: Stealth, Magic, and Melee.

But within those three archetypes there is quite a bit of variety.

[LukanGamer]

There is only 1 build in Skyrim ..... the DragonBorn Master of everything and evetually Master of everything 1-100xs over.

[marstinson]

Originally posted by IXBlackWolfXI:

you COULD make a conjurer that uses bound weapons...

Did that and it was a fun playthrough. If you want to keep it semi lore-bound you're looking at a Redguard sword singer (Ansei). The "semi" part is because the Ansei were gone by mid-2E and they're basically myth by the timeframe of Skyrim. The build is essentially a 1-handed warrior, but you could mod in a bound greatsword (there are several bound weapon mods on the Nexus) to make it a 2-handed warrior. I'm not aware of anything in the lore alluding to an Ansei who used anything other than a sword, but sword-singer lore focuses more on larger-than-life figures like Frandar Hunding than on the individuals who followed him, so perhaps it's one of those "lost to history" sorts of things. Just be careful with weapon and rebalance mods or you might find yourself being overwhelmed by comparatively lower level bandits who can one/two-shot you.

[Siddha]

I have never had a character that ended up as a tank mage

A classless system allows players develop their character as they like on the fly
But actually the class system in the older games didn't stop you doing that either
it just gave you a different starting emphasis
If you are min/maxing there will be optimum choices (this is not a flaw in the game imo)
But if you are role-playing there are many possible ways to go

[ULTRA]

TBH there's really only one "build" in Elder Scrolls games since Morrowind at least and that's the build of the exploiter

[258789553873]

Originally posted by Mountain Man:

TBH there's really only one "build" in Elder Scrolls games since Morrowind at least and that's the build of the exploiter

Exploiter builds involve abusing the necromage perk (which btw the unofficial patch fixes), or abusing the fortify restoration effect to make insanely over powered enchantments (like the alchemy exploit in morrowind, except with enchantments), or just using console commands to make yourself invincible, you get the idea.

Yeah, okay, the crafting skills aren't exactly balanced (even without exploits), but they're not necessary to play this game I assure you. All the other skills, however, are pretty well balanced. The only really useless skill in this game is speechcraft, since its not that hard to succeed at any dialogue checks even without the perks, and the money perks are also useless since this game showers you with far more gold than you know what to do with. Besides, the game doesn't offer a way to really grind it, so you're not really going to be leveling it much unless you investing in training (or if you have a mod that makes using shouts level your speechcraft, but we're talking about the unmodded game here). And personally, I've never really used training much, just because its so dang expensive, and if you really want to level your skills fast, MOST skills can be grinded up to 100 within half an hour (assuming you know the proper techniques for doing this). In practice though, the only skills I really grind are the crafting skills, (mainly enchanting since you can't really do anything useful with it until you've gotten all the perks and access to grand souls).

As for quick grinding, only the combat skills require an exploit (horses won't attack you if you hit, though there's other targets you can choose for this too). For smithing, for instance, you just run around finding the most valuable ores to work with (in my case, mainly gold, silver, and dwarven, the latter because you can get ALOT of it in that dwemer ruin in markarth). Enchanting, well you just have to collect a lot of petty and lesser souls (easily done by simply playing the game with a weapon enchanted with soul trap). Alchemy, get high-value ingredients or just buy the entire inventories of alchemy merchants, then make a lot of potions and sell them back (in my experience, doing that requires you to fast-travel through all the cities in skyrim two or three times just because you have so much potions to sell). Alteration DOES kinda require an exploit (casting detect life in a heavily populated area, though you can use a true exploit and just fast-travel across the map while holding an item with telekinesis). Enchanting makes leveling magic skills easy, but that's just because enchanting is broken (you can easily make enchantments that allow you to cast spells from TWO schools of magic for free).

Yeah, the game's too easy, and there doesn't seem to be much the modding community can do about that (though I'm surprised no one's made mods to nerf the crafting skills).