Is enchanting five pieces of armor with 20% chameleon considered cheating?

Since it is a single player game, the judge and jury for this is you. Perhaps the better question is do you find that using it makes your game more fun or less fun for you?

I suppose many would say that since it is completely and easily doable in the vanilla game, it is not cheating.

I also suppose many would join me is opining that it removes too much challenge from the game. That again however, is for you to decide.

My character does not use chameleon gear. Your mileage may vary. :foodndrink:

Yeah it is too easy now. I think I am going to create a new character. I beat the main quest without using the chameleon trick but I didn't allow my character to level until after the main quests. So I think the whole character game was screwy lol. Thanks for the quick reply!

For me, it is. I use only the Ring of Khajiiti another chameleon enchanted ring and potion if needed, max ~60%, more than enough with high sneak skill. It was fun for a while to move completely unseen, but since there isn't any chance of being detected, it isn't too fun in the long run.

I don't think its cheating in many of the meanings ( sic How people fool themselves into thinking somethings right ).
However I do think it gets very boring very quick, especially if you combine it with the lowest difficulty setting.. ( something else that some may consider cheating ).
As Acadian posted it really does not matter what you do as long as it does not cheat someone else out of their fair (/ ish) chance.
As Oblivion is single player that will never happen no matter what you do.

It's not cheating, as you can find all the ingredients in the game. It's extremely boring though. I tried it once. Never again.

Like moving the slider all the way to the left, no it′s not since it′s part of the original game mechanism

My opinion:

No. Not really. It does make the game boring in my opinion though. So I only switch to 100% Chameleon when I'm on the run from guards or something. Other than that, I stick to 101% Reflect Damage and 100% Spell Absorption. At least then I can get the satisfaction of things hitting me back, even if they do kill themselves or regenerate my magicka.

I've found that there are several things I can do in the game that are like "cheating myself." "100% Chameleon" is one of them, as is "Efficient Leveling." The game mechanics allow a lot of flexibility to players, so we can all decide for ourselves what is "fun," but for me, it's not fun to play a character who is too godlike.

As far as moving the difficulty slider, I'd point out that all it really does is change the balance between damage done and damage received in combat. My practice is to set the slider to a point that seems "realistic" for the situation. If it takes fifteen whacks with a longsword to kill an unarmored archer, my character is in the wrong line of work! :wink_smile:

No, it isn't cheating because it is in the game, after all.

One good way to use it that doesn't make it too overpowered is simply to use it for training skills. You can summon stuff (Conjuration) and train melee skills wearing 100% Chameleon gear and the summons don't see you. Yes, you can also protect yourself without 100% Chameleon... so, what's the diff? None as far as I can see.

In addition, frankly, Oblivion gates and the entire random loot mechanic is incredibly boring. Therefore, using 100% Chameleon to speed up the "rolling of dice for loot" is not at all cheating as far as I can see, not when your character has already proven more than competent at completing tasks in much more lengthy and boring fashion with the same result. Going through your umpteenth Oblivion gate just to roll for the sigil stone at the end without any of the stuff inside the gate mattering (and being a repeat of gates you already closed, to boot) rather than just running through it with 100% Chameleon simply makes the process time-efficient.

Well... most technically, since it's a single player game, it's impossible to really "cheat." Some might argue that you effectively "cheat yourself" by using gimmicks like 100% chameleon (and I'd tend to go along with that), but that's a somewhat different use of the word "cheat." "Cheat" implies that what you're doing is dishonest, which it isn't really, since you're the only one playing and you know that you're doing it and it must be okay with you or you wouldn't be doing it.

But 100% chameleon does diminish the game experience, in my opinion. To me, a good part of the point of playing any game is to challenge yourself and succeed, not because you learned some gimmick to use to give you an advantage, but simply because you possess the necessary skills to succeed on the game's terms.

For instance, just the other night, I finished The Ultimate Heist with a recent character. He made it all the way through the palace, in and out of the library, then back out of the palace, without once getting caught, relying entirely on sneaking skills-- no chameleon and no buffs of any sort. He made it because he moved slowly, kept track of the guards, stayed in the shadows, hid when he had to and moved when he could. That was an accomplishment and was very satisfying. It couldn't possibly have been anywhere near as satisfying if he'd first done some enchanting, then had just brazenly walked through the place. That, to me, would've been just as dull as walking through the Market District.

And to me, the same holds true for pretty much any similar things-- pretty much anything following "100%" -- 100% spell absorption, 100% reflect damage or reflect spell, 100% resistance to magic..... I just don't see the point in fighting something that can't hurt me. There's no skill involved in beating an opponent who can't hurt me anyway, so there's no satisfaction in doing it. For that, I might as well just open the console and type "kill."

For that, I might as well not bother playing the game at all.

'Least that's how I feel about it.....

It's not cheating, and I have characters who use it a lot, but it does remove a goodly portion of the challenge from the game. When my characters do use it, it is only because it fits the RP- one character is a master assassin and another is a master thief, so it makes sense they would remain unseen while plying their respective trades.

One side benefit of 100% Chameleon is that it removes 'nuisance' critters from the equation, which means you don't have to stop every 50 feet to fry a mudcrab or rat.

There are still ways of using 100cham that can remain a challenge

For instance if you have followers and a high restoration skill keeping them alive at a high level is enough of a task to justify it

Especially with kamekazi loons like Fargill

Yes I know

It is not cheating because it is an allowed feature of the game.

I would avoid it however, since the game becomes un-challenging, in my opinion.

I rarely get 100% Chameleon, and then with spells and potions, not all through enchantments. Slightly more specifically, I might use 100% Chameleon for a DB quest and a Daedric quest which almost require it to avoid arrest.

Although my char doesn't wear any chameleon items, she has a spell she made: chameleon 100 on self x 8 seconds. Since her spell effectiveness is 100%, it really does give her 100%. She very very rarely uses it though. I think she used it to complete Sanguine's quest in Leyawiin without getting caught. She may also use it to slip through a door undetected sometimes.

slightly ot: if it's the same Daedric Quest I'm thinking of, it's soooo much more fun if you don't avoid detection.

Yeah, I think I'm only going to use the gear for certain circumstances. But, for regular battle and majority of gameplay I am going to just play the game lol

I'd call it an exploit rather than a cheat, but to be honest I've never seen the point of it. It just kills the game really, although I can see it being slightly amusing for a while. And if you're only going to use it in certain circumstances, why not just make potions or a cheap invisibility spell?

Yeah, that would make more sense to create a spell or get a potion then do the work of collecting five black gems and enchanting armor. Definitely should have thought that one out lol. Thanks for all the help guys/girls

As many others have pointed out, it is not cheating. However, it does make the game incredibly boring imho. I tried it once, and will never do it again, just because it was too easy.

Can't really cheat in single player since you define what cheating is, but it makes the game uber easy which is no fun to me.

I'll offer another point on this in contrast to what some people say about 100% chameleon making the game "pointless."

Oblivion has many, many issues. For example, collision detection is horrible. That's only one example, but there are more too numerous to list.

My characters are supposed to be nature spirits. They should be faster than pretty much anything else in the game. They should be stronger magically than pretty much anything. They should be physically weak, but their agility and speed make up for that... or should, anyway. Also, they are antisocial, although they can be charming when they want to be, or if necessary. Finally, they are very tiny (half size of any humanoid sized creature/NPC), so the entire world is viewed very differently from their perspective, and almost anything in the world does not fit their standards or "norms" for usage.

However, since Oblivion's engine and entire system refuses to allow such characters to play properly as per the above-mentoned traits, I am always forced to attempt to find ways to get around the game's issues. For my characters, 100% chameleon is merely roleplaying for them, and allowing me to actually roleplay them for me. It gets around the idiocy of how Bethesda makes enemies move faster as I move faster (so what the heck is the point of improving/boosting my abilities?) as well as the terrible collision detection (sure, enemies can hit me from the ground when I stand on a rock 10-20 feet above their attack, right). It gets around the fact that my characters actually fly but the game will not allow flight. It gets around the boring rolling for random loot/enemies because almost every single part of the game is simply a random selection from tables rather than being anything that I can actually plan to do.

Do I use it all the time? No, of course not. However, my characters prefer to live than be killed or even hurt by the poorly implemented game mechanics/glitches, so using 100% chameleon (and other techniques such as spell chaining) to get around the game's limitations and errors actually enhances the roleplaying experiemce... or simply allows it where the basic game does not. For me, of course... obviously other people play other characters with other needs for roleplaying (assuming they roleplay since it's a roleplaying game, or is supposed to be one, even though it's really more of an action-fantasy game and many people play it as such rather than roleplay).

I don't use 100 % Chameleon or 50 % as I can't see the sword that well and that means everything to me because if I screw up my strike with the sword I'll be taking a lot of damage depending on the enemy.

I don't use Chameleon or anything I'd rather I'll use the Deathly Visage illusion spell.

I used it today with chameleon potions and spells, on a large group of modded uber vamps.
Yes I could have used something else, but in some places its just less of a head ache and saves rl time to just scythe through when concealed.
Though its still something I would rather fall back on than use as my only trick.