Hi!

I was wondering if it's possible, or rather effective, to play as a full time criminal/bandit? i.e. stealing and murdering your way to succes? It seems like a fun way to play the game but my I don't think it would work all that great because you wouldn't really be able to go into or near towns/cities. Anyone with experience?

Thanks

I have not played a bandit yet (though now that you put the idea in my mind I'm intrigued and may try it) but I have played many characters in all of Bethesda's games who rarely (or never) enter cities. Hunters who live in the wilds are one of my favorite types of characters to play in Bethesda's games. They will occasionally return to civilization to sell their pelts, but they spend 95% of their time living off the land.

I have played a few totally feral characters who stayed far away from civilization for an entire game. I actually love doing this too. I use mods to make this type of character more feasible, though (when I did this in Oblivion, for instance, I would greatly increase the number of repair hammers).

You don't say if you are on a console or PC. If you are on PC there are alternate start mods that may help in playing a bandit. A bandit would be a bit trickier on console, I would think. On console you could roleplay that your character was an outcast or a loner of some type, to explain why other bandits continually attacked you on sight. I'm sure would be possible, using a little ingenuity.

On PC, with the Alternate Start, Live Another Life mod, you can start as a member of a small bandit group in the wild (with a bounty in that hold.)

As for the "attack on sight" thing, RPing that your bandit was trying to take over the entirety of the local bandit groups would cover that maybe.

I've never played a bandit - I'm totally law-abiding IRL AND in any games I play. Just how I am. But with LAL as glargg said, you have a ready-made startup, if on PC.

That's a very interesting idea. While I have played the sterotypical thief (breaking in homes, stealing , pick pocketing, etc) I've never tried a pure bandit. I too am intrigued.

If you're on a PC you can definitely play as a bandit. I don't remember the proper code right off, but the UESP has code that will allow you to join the bandit faction through using the console. I made a personal mod built up that fort near the Western Watchtower of Whiterun, added a fence and a blacksmith, and we were a very merry little band. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be all that many people available to rob on the road, so I had to resort to robbing my competitors or attacking Imperial and Stormcloak camps.

Really, it was a lot of fun... but It would be more fun if somebody would make it a regular mod and add in dialogue for an armed robbery though. The only way to actually rob people in-game is to either pick their pocket or kill them. It would just be so much better to be able to say something like "Stand and deliver" to folks like those headed for the wedding.

What they said...lol

IF on pc add in Immersive Patrols and immersive Citizens .. more people on the road.

Question: if you're part of the bandit faction do no bandits whatsoever attack you? That would be pretty stupid if so and not really a good solution.

Yes, they won't attack you. I did the same with my Dragon Priest and Dragons. The dragons just flew by.

Coincidence... or fate? Just saw a mod review today that featured the "https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=480576460" mod - might be worth checking out. There's also "http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37545/?" for a different take on the whole bandit thing.

I have no idea how either of these play. I literally only discovered them this afternoon.

I - couldn't ever do the Highwayman one.... I've remembered since I was very young http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43187. Some things - well.... hmm. Just can't go there.

Loreena McKennitt set Noyes' poem to music in the 90's. Have you heard it, Serethil? Her rendition is very beautiful and very sad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvKBPr71dhA

Yep, just found it - love her, bought the whole album and downloading now. Looks like a HUGE dl, I'm gonna be in trouble with wildblue....

Thinking back.... which for me is 5+ decades.... This poem was included in a twelve or fourteen book set - a compilation of literature deemed suitable for children in the late 40s - early 50s. I had the whole set which included many of the original Grimms tales, plus Scheherazade (the original - well, okay, NOT the Burton original) and many other northern European fairy tales as well as the whole extant Mother Goose. I wish my mother hadn't got mad at me over stupid stuff - because since she was angry and unhappy, and since my books (those included) were in storage in their garage, she gave them all away.... including an entire set of Nancy Drew first editions. If one only knew....

I can't recall the name of the set now, which is really too bad (oh wait - Childcraft! Took way too long to find it....) I'd like to "recover" a full set - because the one thing that's amusing is how.... not.... dumbed down it was. It was pretty raw.... For me that worked fine.

Anyway.... I'm happy this came up, because I just found a first edition set on ebay - and it's affordable, so Happy Mother's Day to me!

I did once, kind of. She was a Breton that began her life in High Rock. She ended up in Skyrim because "circumstances" (it's a long story) where she got taken in by a clan of bandits. She befriended a member of the clan who happened to be a former Forsworn who became disallusioned with the struggle in the Reach and he taught her the ways of sword, shield, and bow. It was during a raid near Darkwater crossing that her small clan got caught up in the ambush the Imperials laid for the Stormcloaks. The Imperials killed the other members of her clan and she was captured and restrained during the fighting. That's how she starts the game, but lacking any real bandit content, she has to be satisfied with waylaying travelers and joining the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood.

If you use the Live Another Life bandit-start, you are only "friendly" with the small group of bandits where you start. You are never a member of the bandit NPC faction.

I'm kinda wondering why bandits would be attacking a bandit except some kind of turf thing. When I played as a bandit, the other bandits didn't attack me... until I attacked them, and really I had no problem with that.

Oh, and of course dropping out of the faction takes one short entry into the console, so if you aren't "at home" you can easily go experience normal banditry in action.

As Falstaff lamented in Henry IV Part 1: "It stinks when there’s no honor among thieves."