» Sat May 25, 2013 6:26 am So, you are given 18 skills, weapons, armor, spells, and items, and cobble them together into a character who murderhobos his way around Skyrim, fighting dragons and draugr, bandits and bunnies.
Using those skills and tools earns your character experience, which translates into gaining levels, which allow for increase in attributes and perk allocation.
However, along the way, there's a lot of stuff your character does which is completely unconnected to his advancement. Shouts fall into this category - they're fun, they're useful, but they ain't skills and they don't help you level up. But the great big granddaddies of 'stuff that seems cool but is absolutely unrelated to your character build' are the two alternate character forms: Werewolf and Vampire Lord.
I wonder if anyone else has trouble justifying using these forms, when the entire rest of the game revolves around making a character that shouldn't need them in the first place.
Dawnguard's addition of perk trees for WW and VL seemed to tie the power of these forms to some kind of advancement, but again - it's separate from your 'normal' character. If you're great at swinging swords, why would you need to grow fur and start swinging claws?
Yes, there's always the 'It's fun, lighten up!' line of reasoning. I'll admit I've had some fun as a werewolf - but the only way I could justify it was to make a melee character who wore no armor and fought with 2-handed swords - a guy who could take on one or two foes at a time, but would need beast form in order to fight larger groups.
In other words, I tried to integrate the alternate form into my character design from the outset.
Now, I've never tried Vampire Lord. Hell, I've never been a vampire in Skyrim. There's lots of folks who seem to enjoy it, and quite a few character builds I've seen over on the skyrim blog make use of it.
So I'm curious about your take. When you go vamp, do you plan a character who would use the form at a particular time, or just wing it? What about beast form for werewolves?
Does any of the above make sense? 
