Not exactly. Everyone is at equal playing field. If they don't have mages, then they always have something else added to their army to have great advantages; either natural environment (Black Marsh disease or Skyrim Coldness), brilliant or sly commander, a stompy robot, the gods, or even the PC. Gun is not really needed as many of these alternates already exist (and make sense in the ES world).

Training the troops and producing enough guns, gunpowder, and ammo to provide a "huge advantage" would be costly. Furthermore, besides the Legion, there are no standing armies in Tamriel.

Ultimately, I find guns too real world and too boring. I would much prefer that some mage in Tamriel made limited-scale tonal architecture into a viable weapon, allowing retroactive null-scale attacks against the opponent.

If one thinks about it, training a mage is much much cheaper than producing weaponry, and then training soldiers to use said weaponry. Once a mage is trained, there is no upkeet cost, no ammunition, and no trouble moving it around. Mages are a million times more mobile than, say, a cannon (considering teleportation, flight, etc), and far more useful. A mage can allow an entire army to walk across water if need be. A cannon can't do that.

My sentiments

Can I at least set up a perimeter of explosive traps so that I can defecate in peace without worrying about a band of extra-horny minotaurs spotting me? Is that so much to ask, the means to defend my self from inter-species erotica?

There is no resistance against the MANotaurs. sixy time will be had, whether your nether regions find it pleasing or not!

Let me put this in perspective, leather armor was the most used armor for the first 3000ish years of recorded history. Recorded history is about 4000 years. Nirn has advanced from leathers to metal in over 3000 years. Pelinal's armor was considered THEE most advanced [censored] ever seen during the first age. In addition, the bow is considered really advanced. Look to Auriel's Bow, that is supposedly the best piece of firearm created and used, a bow from a god that hurled the heart of Shor into the world! In short, Nirn advances extremely SLOWLY technologically, and sometimes regresses.

The most technological race, the dwemer, where technological for a reason, it was religious. They saw the world as a bad construct, like the altmer, and decided to move backwards asap, without all the eugenic breeding the altmer practice. They took the laws of Mundus, and retuinly gave it the finger, and constructed a giant golemn in order to fuse themselves collectively to become the god they believe they used to be (not far off from myths). They didn't advance technology for technology's sake, but in order to mythically "move back in time" to be gods. Hell, there have been no records or drawings of any guns from the dwemer. Not even the dunmer make crude accounts, like they had sticks that had a big bang and killed someone. They wore heavy armor, used giant ballistas, crossbows, and melee weapons.

*shudders* First the Gatekeeper and now this............

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d32mjnvLnYs

Just use an invisibility spell or potion.

Warrior classes need variety too, you know. Traps, grenades, mining charges...........all materials for gunpowder being excavated out of Skyrim's mountains.

So you would much rather set a perimeter of traps, grenades and mining charges before dropping a deuce instead of just swigging some potion? Sounds like a lot of planning and prep work just to use the loo, IMO. To each their own, I guess. :shrug:

Well, by that logic I could just down a potion that makes me not have to go, or learn a teledefecation spell so that I never have to stop.

Well, why would chameleon-cloaked Argonians bother with fire arms? Fire arms are heavy, slow and very noicy. As far as I know, Argonians are decent in the use of magic (some four or how many local guild heads in Cyrodiil are Argonians and that sais something). For stealthy character magic is much better option then a fire arm


Fortunately, TES does not limit the player and does not force restriction on us. Even if you are a warrior, you can use magic. Why to make a new skill like Fire arms or what not, if every single character you make can use already established skill of Destruction instead?

I kinda think the opposite after thinking about it.

Training a mage is a lifelong study per say, as there is always more to find and something to improve. Even if there was a standard where someone was deemed "trained", there is always an upkeep cost! You have to pay to keep them on retainer, and spend time to keep them interested in working for you. With all those skills, you can't afford to let them start freelancing their skills everywhere or letting someone else hire them after you've spent years training them. If they know mysticism, they can teleport away from you when they're unhappy. If you teach them illusion they can turn invisible and diddle your wife. You can only wrangle so many of these mages to your side at a given time because they're expensive in all the worst ways.

It takes half an hour to teach a group of peasants how to load and fire a gun. They won't be crack shots, but with those guns, it'll never be an issue. You stimulate the hell out of your economy by buying lots of weapons and getting some good trade going. With those guns you could obviously tear the hell out of any army of similar size against you. Situations like the Last Samurai aside, if your troops already were trained for melee and you handed them these guns, they could take out the first few rows of the enemy's best troops before they made their own charge. And you can salvage all the broken guns to make new ones.

If you get a mage drunk before a battle, he's worthless. If an assassin kills your mage before you fight someone, you're out of luck. If your mage has bad information, you have a Firsthold Revolt situation on your hands. If your enemy hired a better mage or two than you, you're screwed.

Also with some statistics: Mages in Oblivion were 8% of the population, but considering the make-up of the game and severe lack of grounding with the population demographics, I think it's completely fair to say that there would only be 2% or less of the people who were well trained in some school of magic. Even fewer would be good in multiple schools. How many people in Tamriel can be trained to operate a gun in half an hour? 98%.

This is why I don't want gunpowder in the games.

Right, but human technological development in the modern sense only began in the past several centuries as well, and once it did, it accelerated dramatically. I'm not the most knowledgeable person ever with regard to the lore, but I don't understand how "They haven't gotten there yet, so they aren't going to get there" is a valid argument, especially in a fantasy world where the real-world rules don't necessarily apply. I'm not saying that we should be playing Call of Duty: Modern Elder Scrolls or anything like that, but looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_weapons, it seems obvious that the fantasy aesthetic of the Elder Scrolls series isn't incompatible with at least primitive gunpowder technology (look at the chainmail on that page, for example).

Stop right there. Having our tech improve so fast in the last 100 years doesn't matter, we still have advanced what took 3000ish years in a matter of centuries when we compare items of warfare and timeline. And the people of Nirn already had some sense of how to build weapons and armor from the get go.


Like the fact that most technological advancement in the Elder Scrolls is done through magic, in a world where myths are real, and the gods make themselves definitely present. Also, there is a general abundance of metals floating around (even when you factor out OB's level scaling), so there hasn't been a giant pressure to make something else; no necessity.

Also, you need to factor in the fact that every so hundreds of years, the empire collapses, and there are hundreds of more years of chaos. When this chaos is around, technological advancement does go through a screeching halt.

I wouldn't want to see any handguns or muskets of the sort, just because in a place like Tamriel their explanation wouldn't make much sense. Since everybody seems to possess some level of magical potential or can otherwise rely on scrolls and enchantments, there would be little incentive for someone to waste their time and money pursuing technology that could still never prove to be as devastating as a well-trained magic user. With all the temple and Mages' Guild doctrine, they probably wouldn't receive any sort of sponsorship nor endorsemant - they'd probably be met with outward public opposition.

Now, I think siege tech is perfectly acceptable - ballistae and possibly cannons on ships, but nothing more.

Ah yes, the Ottomans. I already mentioned them once in this thread, I think. Cool dudes. Used to kick butt with them in AoE III.

A hell of a lot of dwemer ruins did sport ballistae, but that uses ropes, pullies, tension, and so on.

Actually, I would argue that times of political instability would be when you see the most advancement in technology. If most everybody's united under one banner (and there's no incentive to invade those who aren't), then there's no need to develop new military technologies, as there's no real threat to your rule. Competition between rival factions would actually, I would argue, accelerate technological development, as everybody's racing to have the best gear so they can emerge on top. See the Cold War and what it did for nuclear arms development (not a positive change, but still a change).

Actually, the most likely way I would see for gunpowder technology to enter the Elder Scrolls games would be through the Orcs. They've already been shown to have less aptitude in general for magic (with a few exceptions), and I'm sure that there are those in High Rock who would take advantage of the political strife to try to win back "their" territory. The Orcs have already been shown to be talented craftsmen, and the development of even primitive, rough guns/cannons would give them an advantage against invading armies.

EDIT: @Stonefrog-- thanks for proving my point What race is most used to "outward public opposition"?

Who needs variety when they're swinging the Sword of the Crusader(or some other powerful artifact, for non-paladin types)?

i don't like the idea. it's bad enough that in Oblivion "Blade" weapons and bows were the only weapons worth using. add guns and that would turn into "why bother with anything but the gun?" the only way i would want a gun is if only one was available. that way i could opt out of it and not worry about enemies having them, putting me at a disadvantage simply because i chose to use a sword.

No guns in TES at ALL! Look how silly and stupid it looks for Fable 3. I loved The Two Towers of Lord of the Rings, but when Saurman was making gun powder, I groaned and it took away from the moive a bit. Imagine LotR with guns, would be crap, just like it would be in TES.

No if I wanted guns, I would play Fallout 3, wich I am doing now. So no guns in TES at all.

I think you should be shot for even thinnking of something like that LOL. :gun: :gun: :gun:

*edit* the only gun I would have in TES is by brining the cross bow back from Morrowind. I can't remeber what they used in Daggerfall, but I want the cross bow back. That would be the only acceptable gun in TES.

@Hadez- So your solution to the lack of variety is to not include a greater variety of weapons? Also, I use blunts about as often as I use blades, and I'm certain I'm not the only one.

@Davor- I s'pose we should agree to disagree. I liked the guns in Fable 2 and 3, and I think whether or not the presence of guns in an RPG is "crap" is based entirely on how it's implemented. Also, BTW, a crossbow really isn't a gun