So it's not officially confirmed but it would seem, through pictures and what the Game Informer issue has said, that there will not be attributes in Skyrim (strength, speed, endurance, agility and so on). So if that's true, how is this going to work? How will I get faster or stronger? Will there be encumbrance? Will EVERYTHING be based on skills? It seems to me that this gets rid of a lot of detail on the RPG side of things, especially considering we've already lost a few skills. Losing three skills is not a big deal if the attributes are still in but if they aren't, what then? Perhaps the new skills, the ones we haven't seen, will make up for this somehow. Perhaps we DO have attributes but they will just build up on their own. What do you guys think?

We dont know... All we can do is wait until some confirmation.

We may have lost attributes but we have gained perks. Perks + skills + health/magicka/stamina are enough to calculate encumbrance, move speed, damage, regeneration rate.

What can't be done without attributes? How much different would it be if attributes were stored but completely hidden and simply based on your skills (kind of like nGCD but with the attributes menu disabled)?

There are already threads discussing this.

Oh, I'm sure there is a workaround, I'm just wondering how it will go if it's true that there are none. It seems like a weird thing to get rid of. It wasn't like it was a restrictive system or a pointless one like classes were.

The Thread discussing this has reached its post limit Thread is legit.

what do you mean with the pictures? there was ONE picture that probably was the skill menu and why would there be attributes in the Skill menu, why else would there be progress under the skills, it is a skill menu, not somewhere where you would find attributes

It was pretty restrictive in a way. It forced you to stop whatever you were doing and go practice in order to get 5x multipliers on your stats.

Sure, they could've gone the nGCD way, but how is that different than the situation I mentioned above?

Yeah, with what MK said, its a hot topic.


Good luck on everyone keeping their heads this time through.

Like i said in the previous thread i think we wont see the abilities but they will be there and hidden. we will get to increase them by increasing our skills. they will increase automatically at each level according to what skills you leveled up

Attribute still affect things with nGCD, while no attribute mean you need to find a something to:
- Determine encumbrance level
- Determine magic resistance level
- Determine starting health, magicka, stamina
- Determine character speed
- etc

But these will all be static, while attributes can be drained, stunned, damaged, etc... Also, each race had different starting attributes (male and female at that), without attributes races are just a starting "perks list".

That's my best guess as to how they might be handled.

I think people are assuming this because the screenshots we've seen of the skill/stats menus haven't shown the attributes, but with a almost a year left until release, there's still plenty of room for change, and if anything is easy for them to change, it'd probably be the menu screens like the skill/stat menus... but who knows?

No, I never ever did this. You can figure out how each system works and if your trying to make some kind of uber-character then you're going to have to work in a restrictive manner no matter what game you play but when I played, I roleplayed. It seems to me that if you are just playing to beat the system then your going to have to organize everything you do before you do it no matter what. Normal players were not restricted by the multipliers at all and saw them as bonuses.

[censored]'s not confirmed. This is all speculation. I hope attributes are still in the game.

How will you raise luck? Hmmm?

I really do hope that's true. There IS only one picture and it's highly likely that we just haven't seen the attributes yet, which makes a lot of sense. It was odd, however, that there was no mention of them at all in any form. Maybe it was just assumed that we would think they were in like usual but with no mention of them while the article mentioned most other basic information it just seems fishy to a lot of people. Maybe it was so obvious that they are in that they didn't feel like they needed to mention their existence and they certainly didn't mention anything that meant that they wouldn't be in the game.

No more luck.

Well, if it's true that there is no more Attributes.

it didn't mention a lot of thing you cant explain an entire video game in just 14 pages, especially one like elder scrolls, I am gonna go with it was obvious, I mean hasn't than been in all the elder scrolls games, not to mention fallout 3 and NV

A lot of the things like encumbrance, running speed, magicka pool, etc. can be elegantly handled in ways which don't require attributes. To my mind, the best case for keeping attributes is their effect on multiple skills which play a similar role. For example, compare two characters, both of which have a low Blunt Weapon skill: one also has a high Blade skill, whereas the other doesn't. It seems that the character with the higher Blade skill should have some sort of advantage with using Blunt Weapons (does more damage, perhaps?), and this is nicely handled by having attributes. The character with the higher Blade skill will, typically, have higher Strength, and the Strength attribute can provide a bonus to all skills it governs (in this case, at least Blade and Blunt Weapon). It's also easy to come up with examples using magic (it's a little less intuitively plausible for the stealth skills, which are more of a grab bag of thief/ranger/sweet-talker type skills).

I'm predicting that attributes will increase passively as you use skills. But that's not with a whole lot of confidence.

Well, what I mean is that they mentioned all the character building systems other than attributes. We know the ten races are back, skills were mentioned, we were told the class system was removed and we were told about the health, stamina and magicka systems but there was no mention at all either way about attributes (or birthsigns for that matter). See what I mean. Sure they left out all sorts of things that us [censored] are clamoring to know but all the basics were covered other than attributes.

A game without attributes would be like... inappropriate undesirable situation>

Edit: Saving us from misconceptions

Edit2: lol at first edit

This is an issue if attributes are still in, but increase passively by using your skills.... How does using your skills increase your Luck?

I wouldn't be unhappy if you couldn't increase luck in the same way as in (vanilla) Oblivion and Morrowind. It seems a little strange that you should get more lucky by improving your skills - after all, isn't luck that element of random contribution towards your success or failure, which is beyond your own control and ability? But on the other hand, if there had to be some way or other of increasing Luck... I'm not sure what the options are.

Two things:

1.) Everyone seems to be assuming that attributes have been removed. We have no proof of this, purely speculation.

2.) Even if attributes have been removed from the leveling process, that doesn't mean they will necessarily be absent entirely. Bethesda could easily be going for a more natural progression of attributes, something akin to GCD, where attributes are tucked away in the game's background and simply raise based on the character's use of skills, without the player having to do this at level-up.

Also no attributes mean absorb, damage, drain, fortify and restore attributes spells effects are gone and diseases need to be reworked (most of them affect attributes). Also, burden and feather could also be gone, depending on how encumbrance works.


Attributes are way too much integrated into the Elder Scrolls game mechanics to just be replaced by "perks". External elements can't affect perks.