Ok, so. Perks are a lot like D&D feats with some key differences. Feats are generally not attainable at every level, and some feats require other feats as prerequisites, and are more powerful. So, instead of each perk being independent of each other, some perks would require other perks before it. For example, a whirlwind attack perk (attack multiple enemies with multiple melee attacks simultaneously) you might need to already have a similar but less powerful perk, like a knockdown/powerful blow perk.

I always liked that because a single character could never get every feat(perk) so it upped the replay value with different characters and character types, and some really powerful abilities took longer to get to but once you were able to get them they were very rewarding.

Oh, also, many feats didn't require other feats, but rather a certain ability skillset...an example of this in TES would be needing to have a certain rank in a weapon skill before being able to access an ability related to that weapon.

Aren't perks basically feats already?

That would be pretty cool

I don't know how they handle in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but what you are describing is more or less what was implemented in Falout 1 and 2.

I'm a big fan of D&D, and these are like feats though everyone gets the same amount unlike D&D. I don't mind Bethesda having it's own uniqueness and perks are their thing. They can't be like D&D's feats though because this game has no rolling, for the most part not even behind the scenes.

That's what it sounds like to me.

Yeah... All that was already implemented in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas and I'd be surprised if they didn't move that over to the Elder Scrolls. Sorry to burst your bubble dude!

I like perks with prerequisites like that, and perks that you can gain multiple ranks in. I don't think this should cover the majority of perks, I'd rather see skill prerequisites than other perk prerequisites, but having some high-level perks like this would be nice.

I also think it would add a lot of many perks came with penalties when first taken but these could be removed with an additional rank. It would take a lot of balancing to get something like this to work well, if you are balancing good abilities with penalties you don't want to end up with characters that can take lots of good abilities and balance them with penalties that don't affect them. This was a big problem in the Daggerfall character creation system, if you weren't planning to use magic you could take the critical magic penalties and the overlapping lesser magic penalties and end up with tons of points to put towards combat abilities.

This is what I expect the perks to be like, at least some of them.

I was under the same impression.

Yeah, that's pretty much how they are in F3 and FNV, I would expect them to be fairly similar in Skyrim.

I bet, other than being able to pick a perk every level, those perks are already like that, and each perks would require a minimum of its related skill and might require some other perk as well.

If you look at the tree-like structure of the skill constellations, you might reach the conclusion as well.

What you described is basically what I took from the way the described perks in the GI mag.

I like this idea, but what would make the game amazing, is if they have a metric assload of perks.

I mean...more then you could ever use even with three different playthroughs, so then the replay value goes through the roof. Thats what I want.

Funny that you mention this, I was actually just building a DnD character the other day myself. I already am hoping however that Skyrim's perks will be more like feats than Fallout's perks. But I wouldn't mind being able to pick a particularly specialized (i.e. weapon focus) perk every few levels, or even at character creation.

That's how D&D is, at least if you take into account the supplemental source books...easily hundreds of feats, and no one character could ever even come close to mastering all of them, even a mage who takes as many magical feats as he can will only make a dent in the total list of magic feats.

I thought you gained perks at every level and that they were independent of each other, i.e. no one perk depended on you either a) having another perk already B ) certain skills at certain levels c) a combination of a and b. So, DO you need to already have certain perks to unlock other perks, or have certain skills and strengths to unlock perks? If so I guess I need to play the FO games again.