Skyrim has no classes, but...

[Charlemagne]

I've always played with a class mindset and I think most of us do. For example, in this playthrough I'll be a mage, or a thief, or a warrior. So you invest most of your perks in skills worthy of your choice and use armor, weapons and skills appropriately. Sure eventually if you max out the character you will have total perks in all skills and then will truly be a master of everything, but let's think early to midgame.

This comes up because I decided to be a spellsword, modeled on that class of the old games (Morrowind and Oblivion). Someone who is a magic user but also uses armor and weapons more or less on a half and half basis. Investing more or less the same in magic and in combat skills, and spreading my points in Magicka, Health and Stamina.

Well I'm level 15 and already smelling disaster. My character is neither a good mage nor a good warrior. He is mediocre on both counts. Doing much worse than if I had concentrated in being just a squishy mage, or just a sword-and-armor warrior. So, even though Skyrim has done away with classes, they're still there under the hood if you want to do well.

[Swordgun]

Ordinator + Apocalypse + Aurora will give you pretty much endless possibilities.

[Charlemagne]

Sure, but you still need to concentrate early on on being a specialist. Even more, it is a good idea to concentrate for instance in being a destroyer or a conjurer, and even further down choose between being a fire mage or electrical mage, or between a necromancer or an atromancer. Later on you can learn everything else. Ordinator and Apocalypse actually seem to promote this.

Other choices, still in the vein of the old Oblivion classes, are being a Sorcerer (a mage who uses heavy armor but otherwise is only magical), or a Battlemage (a mage who also is good with a sword but nothing else and wears no armor, something like Gandalf). It is the Spellsword who disperses his efforts too much trying to be a mage AND a warrior and investing perks in magic, armor, weapons, block, etc. I think this class wasn't a good choice in Oblivion either.

Supposedly, Skyrim did away with the imperfect leveling problem of its predecessors, however it is still quite possible to get a weak character if you level up by the wrong skills, for example a mage doing smithing or a thief doing too many enchantments. Or my Spellsword.

[Gig-Ass]

Why limit yourself by picking a class in the first place? Skyrim is a game full of freedom and opportunity. You can be a cat man with vampiric powers wearing armor made from dragon bones and summoning monsters made of lightning while brandishing a massif daedric blade and the ability to set people on fire by yelling at them. Why would you want to stick with just 1 measly class?

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by drug dimmadome:

Why limit yourself by picking a class in the first place? Skyrim is a game full of freedom and opportunity. You can be a cat man with vampiric powers wearing armor made from dragon bones and summoning monsters made of lightning while brandishing a massif daedric blade and the ability to set people on fire by yelling at them. Why would you want to stick with just 1 measly class?

One phrase answer: Jack of all trades Master of none.

[ayrtep]

Originally posted by drug dimmadome:

Why would you want to stick with just 1 measly class?

To allow you to play at higher difficulty levels.

The more generalised you make your character, the weaker they become.

Unless you are playing a static world mod like Requiem or YASH2 then the opposite is true for skills, but you still need to focus your perks if making a strong character is important.

[Swote]

Had this exact problem, so i downloaded the experience mode.
Quests, cleaning dungeons and stuff like that give you experience and all skills are capped depending on your level. That means you can level pretty much all the skills without leveling too much. Difficulty scales better.
Edit: Here it is https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17751

[Gig-Ass]

Originally posted by ayrtep:

Originally posted by drug dimmadome:

Why would you want to stick with just 1 measly class?

To allow you to play at higher difficulty levels.

The more generalised you make your character, the weaker they become.

Unless you are playing a static world mod like Requiem or YASH2 then the opposite is true for skills, but you still need to focus your perks if making a strong character is important.

i mean, its not like i waste level up slots on useless crap like speechcraft or blacksmithing at lower levels. im talking about being able to use any weapon or spell i want whenever i want. my character is a warrizassin nord who uses whatever she can find as long as its powerful enough. (unless theyre robes)

like for example, sometimes im a spellsaber (i prefer the term spellsaber because it just sounds better) who uses a sword/axe/mace with the combination of either fire magic or healing magic, sometimes im a 2 handed user with this super good greatsword that i downloaded from a mod, sometimes i use a dwarven rifle that i also got from a mod that pretty much works the same as a crossbow but with different ammo types for different tiers of enemies. and wenever i do a theives guild or dark brotherhood quest i use a dagger and an invisibility spell of some sort.

and besides, you can just give all that class crap to your follower.

[Charlemagne]

Classes have a roleplaying appeal especially for those of us old enough to have played pencil and paper Dungeons and Dragons. Morrowind and Oblivion followed this tradition (even to the extent of wearing armor being bad for mages). Skyrim streamlined this for practical reasons, however the perk system still encourages one to follow a certain let us say philosophical approach to the game. Ordinator makes this even more logical to accomplish.

The fact that guilds exist would seem to also suggest that one can be a "mage","thief", "assassin" or "warrior", although in the end you will probably end up being the master of all the guilds. This was similar in Oblivion, however I think I remember that in Morrowind you couldn't be in all the guilds, some were mutually exclusive, which makes sense for a roleplaying-oriented game. There was a certain mystique in choosing and following one class.

[Gig-Ass]

The only reason I would ever play as a specific class is if Skyrim allowed multiple saves and didn’t overwrite all the freakin time.

[Boboscus]

Classes? What is this nonsense? All I know of is a stealth archer...

[mister_lobos]

Originally posted by drug dimmadome:

The only reason I would ever play as a specific class is if Skyrim allowed multiple saves and didn’t overwrite all the freakin time.

what?? is that sarcasm?
am i confused or are we playing different games?? because skyrim obviously does allow multiple saves, and if you don't use multiple saves you should always always have atleast 3-5 saves for each character in case either you make a mistake, someone important dies and you don't notice, or the game glitches.

as for the actual topic i very much like not being locked into a class..
yes often i start a new character with a theory of what i want to do, being something like a specific class.. but i don't always stick to it, in fact i think i rarely do.

my latest character i started after i added complete alchemy and cooking overhaul back into my game, so logically i wanted to be using alchemy.. a poison using sword and shield somewhat stealthy (so i can reverse pickpocket poisons) kind of character..
yet somehow (mainly based on the random item drops) i've been going more and more magic based with this character. last time i played i was planning to be a spellcaster, and ended up an archer somehow.

[MysticMalevolence]

The only time I've failed a character because of classes was the one time where I trained all three weapins skills, both armor skills, all magic skills and sneaking as evenly as I could. It was because I wanted to level faster for more perks, but as it happens, more perks doesn't make up for the level scaling. No idea why your spellsword failed last year.

When I make a character I like to make a character sheet. I write out three to five major skills, like Morrowind has; these are the skills I plan to use the most and to get perks in almost exclusively. Then I add three to five minor skills, skills that I will use occasionally but not get perks in until I'm out of major perks to take.
However, I then set criteria for "unlocking" more minor skills, in case I want the character to use those skills. An example would be visiting Angi's Camp to unlock archery. That way my character can still branch out later.

Funny you should mention the guilds, since the Companions is such a soft introduction that I frequently forget it's supposed to be a fighter guild.

[Bassdeff]

A dual class character is definitely feasable. You just need to really focus on a few select skills.

[Charlemagne]

My favorite build, which I use almost always is like a Battlemage from previous games. An "archmage" (a mage who uses all schools of magic) who also is really good with a two-handed sword, but wears no armor (to take advantage of magic perks and spells designed specifically for squishies under Ordinator and Apocalypse). Being proficient in a weapon does not detract from your overall mage effectiveness, because it helps in killing enemies. However a mage shouldn't diversify early on (learn 2H, 1H and archery at the same for instance), but pick only one type.

The problem is gaining levels by doing too much smithing, enchanting, alchemy, sneaking, talking, and other "useless" stuff. Not useless in itself but in excess it makes your character "broach" and gain levels while his effective combat (either magic or weapon) skills are still too low, and they will have to confront tougher high-level monsters. Some can't be avoided; speech goes up when you sell stuff (essential), and lockpicking, unless you don't open any locks which doesn't seem like a good idea. Another source of unwanted skill levelups can be books. If you really want to avoid unexpected leveling it would be advisable to avoid reading those from skills you don't want right now.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by Charlemagne:

My favorite build, which I use almost always is like a Battlemage from previous games. An "archmage" (a mage who uses all schools of magic) who also is really good with a two-handed sword, but wears no armor (to take advantage of magic perks and spells designed specifically for squishies under Ordinator and Apocalypse). Being proficient in a weapon does not detract from your overall mage effectiveness, because it helps in killing enemies. However a mage shouldn't diversify early on (learn 2H, 1H and archery at the same for instance), but pick only one type.

The problem is gaining levels by doing too much smithing, enchanting, alchemy, sneaking, talking, and other "useless" stuff. Not useless in itself but in excess it makes your character "broach" and gain levels while his effective combat (either magic or weapon) skills are still too low, and they will have to confront tougher high-level monsters. Some can't be avoided; speech goes up when you sell stuff (essential), and lockpicking, unless you don't open any locks which doesn't seem like a good idea. Another source of unwanted skill levelups can be books. If you really want to avoid unexpected leveling it would be advisable to avoid reading those from skills you don't want right now.

Skyrim doesn't do Battlemages and Spellswords (and similar) as well as Oblivion and Morrowind. If you want to do a magic using class you need to focus on magic skills. Having a mage who uses a sword is one way of doing it, and probably the only way to maintain class balance.