Very recently, I started a new playthrough. For whatever reason, I decided that I wanted to play a House Hlaalu kind of character, a smooth merchant type of person. After much brainstorming, I came up with a character concept that I found really exciting.

Thus, I created Genevieve, Breton female, the adopted heiress of a fairly successful trading company in High Rock. Thanks to some shady dealings on the part of her jealous older brother, she ended up imprisoned in the Imperial City, and... Well, you all know the rest. What intrigued me so much about this idea was that Genevieve was not the adventurous kind of person at all. Except for the occasional caravan she had to accompany in order to establish a new market, and apart from token magical training and a tiny smattering of martial skills her father insisted she learn, she's spent nearly her entire professional life in an office. Mulling this over, her skills ended up like this:

Major: Speechcraft, Mercantile, Alchemy, Unarmored, Sneak.

Minor: Short Blade, Light Armor, Alteration, Mysticism, Enchant.

Now, I know that alchemy can be a tremendously powerful skill, but I've never used the infinite intelligence loop, and I'm actually using a mod that prevents it. So no god-like potions of power in Genevieve's future. I'm also thinking she's probably ethically opposed to using Mysticism's Absorb Health effect. I mean, you're draining someone's life-force and adding it to your own. As far as I can remember, the only enemies in the game that use it on you are vampires. A little creepy. My one concession to convenience was having her born under the sign of The Thief, rather than The Tower. She's got a duplicitous streak in her, so I figure they both make sense.

Now, you may be saying that this a horribly ineffecient build, but I am here today to tell you... that you are absolutely right. Her skills with alchemy are quite respectable, and she has an easier time raising money than any character I've ever played, sure. Her trouble is that she can't fight her way out of a paper bag. She's not a pacifist, and if she's attacked, she will defend herself up to and including killing, she's just quite terrible at it. She can just about take a rat or a kwama forager, but against humanoids, she's useless. Already several quests lay unfinished because they required combat of some kind. A mod that I use, Starfire's NPCs, adds in randomly spawned muggers in cities that will attack you and beat you to death. A posse of four of them spawned right outside Caius' house on top of which is my character's rented lodging, and there is no possible way I can deal with them. To come and go, I've had to evade them by making use of a Jump spell to hop from rooftop to rooftop. I also decided very early on that Genevieve is deathly afraid of insects, and thus she won't get within ten feet of a silt strider. The Imperial Cult has her going all the way to Gnisis to collect muck, and from the Caldera Mage's Guild, she's walking the entire way.

In short, I'm having the time of my life.

For me, this is a completely different way of playing the game. For any other of my characters, random street thugs and monsters on the road pose no problem whatsoever. No creativity or thought involved, just kill them and move on. It's also been throwing into sharp relief for me just how many quests and objectives in Morrowind that don't involve any kind of combat. If you don't want to, raiding dungeons and killing enemies doesn't have to be a huge part of the game at all. And I don't think I've ever walked the roads between Caldera, Ald'Ruhn, and Gnisis before. I'm experiencing the world in a way I never have before, through the determined but fearful eyes of someone who has not spent most of their careers preparing to deal with danger. This makes her much more reliant on consumables like potions and scrolls, and with a very small inventory capacity, I have to manage what I carry very carefully, especially since every bit of weight decreases my ability to run away. Many of these things will change as she rises in level, of course. A respectable Short Blade skill will go a long way, and Enchant will cover a lot of gaps. But I feel like it will be a lot more satisfying to get to that point.

So this has left me to wonder, has anyone else in the community tried something similar? Used a less-than-ideal character build for the purpose of roleplaying or extra challenge? What were your favorite stories and experiences?

I've actually experimented with this concept a few times, with mixed success.

One of my favorites was an Imperial chap named Erastus. He looked like this:

Major: Illusion, Marksman, Mysticism, Speechcraft, Unarmored

Minor: Acrobatics, Alchemy, Athletics, Mercantile, Hand-To-Hand

No real complicated backstory for this guy, He was a small time peddler/storyteller/entertainer type back home. Loved to participate in archery and marksman contests, dabbled in the "mystic arts" to play up the mysterious storyteller angle, did tumbling, foot races, and Pugilism (fist fighting) contests at various events as a means to support himself and have fun. As a means to supplement income in the slow times, he would hunt for alchemy components, brew a potion on the rare occassion, and peddle stuff from town to town.

Pretty fun character, he just got too powerful too fast for my tastes. His skills were almost all ones that are trivial to raise quickly, So he leveled to about 15 or so before I even got halfway through my first guild.

A lot of fun while he lasted, though.

Best,

One character was reasonably proficient with a bow, but had no melee skills to start. He learned to use a spear to fish and hunt small crabs (Abot's Waterlife), but was never good at it. Things played out really well for 6-8 levels until he got into a quest situation that I couldn't get him out of, and rather than backtrack several days to a previous save before the mission began, I kind of diverted into another game for a few weeks. By the time I got done with that, I had "disconnected" from the character and ended up restarting.