Hi all been lurking on these forums for a long time now and figured its about time i registered. :hehe:

Between the PC/PS3/360 i reckon i've clocked over 1000 hours in the world of Oblivion.

I have sold my PC (didn't use it enough and a netbook was more practical.) my PS3 went kaput so now all my gaming is done on my 360)

I really enjoy reading the posts on here, Especially Acadians posts (love how you let your character dictate what you do) and thats the level of role playing i have just started to implement with my latest character.

I only allow fast travel between stables.
I eat/drink sleep at inns etc.
Carry very little, only what i think my character could realistically carry.

A bit about my current character.

Name: Lizarious
Race: Argonian
Birthsign: The Apprentice
Favoured Attributes: Intelligence/Agility

Majors
Blade
Block
Conjuration
Destruction
Illusion
Light Armour
Marksman

Completed the main quest and is head of the Mage's Guild.

Character No No's
1) Invisibility/Chameleon
2) Paralyze

Won't use either of the above 3 spells as its to tempting to overuse them and they make the game far to easy.

Currently own the Cheydinhall House and Rosethorn Hall - fully furnished (no cheating, just over a hundred hours of looting & selling).

All majors expert or higher (no grinding).

Prized Possessions.

Elven Bow/Dagger: (self enchanted), they look so cool against my arch mage's robe.

Mundane ring. (in over 1000 hours this is only the second character of mine that has found this ring, the last was a Breton who i wouldn't allow to wear it because i felt it unbalanced the game. (being ultra powerful and damn near invincible is not near as much fun as it sounds)

Ayleid Statue:

Currently having a great time trying to get inside my characters head and letting him lead me, He has already turned his nose up at the DB questline and thieves guild, He prefers to spend his time exploring Ayleid ruins searching for anything of Arcane interest. (none of my previous characters have ignored quests before but i figured that as i have done them all at some point my current character has no need/desire to do them all again).

I have a feeling that he may reject many more quests yet as some of them are difficult to justify in terms of role playing without bending the needle on his moral compass.

Sorry for the long post, i tend to ramble :snoring:

Welcome to the fourms. :icecream:

It sounds like your character should serve you well. I think you are wise to listen to him. Since you have already done all the quests, it should be easy to accept if your character is picky. Like you it seems, I have found the game becomes easy with experience so my characters tend to deal with some rather significant vulnerabilities and quirks that seem to make life harder.

Enjoy! :foodndrink:

Welcome to the forums, Lizarious. Have a http://www.uesp.net/w/images/images.new/c/c4/Fishystick.jpg It's always great to see another roleplayer join.

Thanks for the welcome, And the fishystick :liplick:

Quick question, As i am already well into my current characters development, what is the best way to gimp/impair his abilities to make his day to day life more of a challenge ( turning up the difficulty just makes it take longer to kill enemies rather than make it a great deal harder).

I'm looking for a way to make me/him more aware of his mortality (forgot to mention my OP that i play dead is dead) but as i have played Oblivion for so many years it seems almost impossible to get killed even at lower levels once you know what to expect.

I guess the best way would be to start a new character and deliberately give him/her a few majors that i would never actually use and use that method to control my level.(seems theres not much point going higher that level 30ish anyways)

Hi, and again welcome, and hope you have fun here, and while playing Oblivion.
As you are on a console one suggestion is to just put 1 point in any stat when you level up, rather than the 3 to 5 when you get them.

Or make some enchanted outfits with weakness' with an alter of enchanting.
My Dunmer has some modded clothes, so he regenerates health and manna slowly, fatigue fast, also he has 75 absorbtion due to his Birthsign and items.
At the expense of being 100% weak vs magic 50% weapons and 25% shock so if he gets hit often he loses health rapidly.

You should really be asking your character that question, not us. Think like your character. Get inside your character's head. When you inhabit your character your character will tell you what is appropriate and what is not.

I do not believe in meta-gaming, personally. And I see making rules that cover all characters as meta-gaming. The set of rules I follow in any particular game are made by that particular character (with input from myself). I tend to argue a lot with my characters, but eventually we come to some kind of consensus about what we ought to do next and how best to accomplish that goal.

Some of my characters do not go near anything related to magic. Other characters do. It all depends on the character. If I want to gimp a character I often try to get them to equip armor and weapons that are lower than their current level. I tend to like the look of the low-level weapons and armor best anyway, though some of my characters disagree, violently. One of my favorite instances of this was when I downloaded one of Korana's wonderful dresses. My female warrior balked at first but eventually liked wearing it. It was a hoot seeing this claymore-wielding woman cut through crowds of Goblins wearing Korana's exquisite dress. I love whimsical little touches of weirdness like that...

Here are some of the things I learned about my character that make life harder for her. You might get some ideas here, but hopefully your character will develop their own 'challenges'.
- She can't increase strength or endurance or luck - ever
- She dresses only for fashion. This typically means an armor rating of about. . . 6. It also means she has so many outfits that she can't be bothered enchanting any of them. It also means her inventory is full of clothes instead of useful stuff. . . .
- She will not use any weapon except a bow, and only carries one of those.
- She doesn't used destruction elemental damage spells except her original issue flare spell (mostly for lighting torches and cooking mudcrabs).
- She doesn't use any chameleon equipment.
- She insists on using a horse.

(Now, on the up side, she is awesome with bow, detect life, mind control spells, poisons, stealth - she truly is a 'glass cannon')

On level control, she has 4 majors she will never touch. This caps her at 20-23 - this is actually a good thing because baddies have fewer hp than if they were higher level, and she doesn't care a whit about leveled loot items - just as long has she has Azura's Star and a Daedric bow.

Good idea

Already do that, Very rarely wear any armour.

I'm going to do that with my new character and drop blade from my majors.

LOL :flamethrower: I like that.

Never have, Never will




Great ideas, thanks for the help everyone.

I'm going to start a new character, Either Altmer or Bosmer not sure yet, (guess if im not going to be blasting things with loads of shock/frost/flame spells and relying on my bow instead, a Bosmer with the Apprentice Birthsign and the following majors would be a good choice for my character.

Illusion
Mysticism
Marksman
Sneak
Mercantile
Security
Speechcraft

The bottom three being ones i would never actually use and alchemy levels quick enough as a minor so thats not a problem.

Thanks for all the input guys 'n' girls, RPing requires a total re-evaluation of how i approach the game, It's proving to be a lot of fun. :celebration:

Welcome :cookie:

Nice to see another Roleplayer around here.

You mentioned security as a major that you never use. I do exactly the same thing, using alteration to unlock things.

There are a couple drawbacks to this:

1. You cannot make an unlock spell on touch; this means you cannot open locked items underwater with your spells.
Options: Ignore the rare locked underwater items. Use the command console to unlock them. Try to find very rare open on touch scrolls. Unlock those items with a lockpick and accept the small amount of skill increase you get (using the Skeleton Key can reduce the skill you gain). Install a mod to fix the oversight.

2. You are likely to find more complicated locks faster than your alteration skill grows if you do not work hard on alteration. I keep it as a minor and work it up to higher levels pretty quickly. It is easy enough to level up with a training spell (like a weak shield on self spell).

I consider the drawbacks minor things to deal with and am delighted that my character uses alteration instead of breaking her nails on lock picks. On those rare occasions when my character really wants to open an underwater lock, she simply swims aside and asks me to use the command console thingy to help her. It's nice, actually, to realize that sometimes she finds me useful for something.

Yeah, I recently realised that a custom 'open very hard lock on target' spell also opens all locks below very hard, and i'll probably visit for help with the underwater locks.

For unlocking stuff, including underwater, you can also make a fortify security 100 for 1 sec spell. It's Restoration, and low level, so it works in place of an Alteration spell if you wish to use it.

For myself, I find that max difficulty requires different strategies at lower levels rather than merely making it take longer to kill things. If nothing else, it requires the strategy to be "don't get hit" whereas lower difficulties do not force this issue (well, not at around normal, anyway).

Better late than never, welcome. I'm glad Oblivions still holds some peoples interest, the fanbase has been shrinking. Have you played Morrowind? (the, ahem, best of Bethesdas TES games. IMO. of course.)

Yeah i still have it, its just about playable on my netbook (samsung nc10) as long as i don't install MGE i think that would melt my poor samsung.

I like morrowind very much and certainly the storyline with its political elements are far better than oblivion IMO but in all honesty i greatly prefer playing oblivion, its not just about the graphics its just a better all round game -IMO-,

I actually like the levelling system in oblivion and once you understand it you can work around its flaws (to some extent).

I would love to know how you personally work around Oblivions flaws, maybe I can implement them and find a new life in the game, and I absolutely agree that Oblivion is playable. Many people rap on the leveling system and such as its worst flaws, but thats one of the changes I don't mind. In fact, my only real problem switching from Morrowind to Oblivion is the loss of so much unique lore, unique items and unique locations, ect. In Morrowind, going into a dungeon meant both exploring an entirely new layout, and often finding a very unique item, both in ability and appearance. You felt "this item is really cool, i'll go put it in one of my houses," and sometimes the cave would inspire you, and you were able to up and turn the cave into the house, if you wanted. Oblivions dungeons seemed much more cookie cutter, the items and monsters re spawned, meaning you had an endless amount of generic wealth, but would rarely find a unique item, and could never turn the cave into a home because the enemies and loot would all respawn in 73 hours. Same for houses and shops in Oblivion, everything respawns, theres always loot, but you can never clear a place and take it as your own. I'd take limited loot and enemies over respawning generic loot any day. Fallout 3 did it right, they respawned some areas, but left most unique areas as they were.