Once you've played Oblivion for long enough, you learn all there is to learn and it doesn't pose much of a challenge anymore. Which is why many of us "gimp" our characters, to create the challenge that we seek. Often these characters are very different to the normal "Warrior/thief/mage". It's these characters that I play more than any other, and I wanted to have a thread where people could share their concepts/builds.

Anyway, here are a couple of mine.

Altmer Apprentice Illusionist (that is, using Illusion, and one or two other magic schools). This type of character poses quite the challenge when fighting other mages as it would be quite easy to be killed with a well placed fireball. To get around this, you are forced to rely very heavily on Illusion (my favourite magic school) which requires some thought.

Healer. Some of you may know that my favourite character is Helena Aurelie, a Breton Healer born under The Apprentice. Her main magic schools are Restoration, Illusion and Conjuration (only Daedra) though she uses a few spells from the other schools. She won't deal any direct damage to any living thing (except Necromancers). I like this as it leaves a few options that might otherwise not have been thought of. For example, Helena sometimes infiltrates forts under Invisibilty, sneaking past everyone. Other times she commands her enemies to duel between themselves, so she doesn't have to do anything.


So...share yours!

I may have mentioned Buffy a time or two over the years. :blush: She is what I call a mystic archer. Her basic premise is a glass cannon that backs up and supports her bow with magic instead of a blade. She is stealthy and good with a bow, and uses magic for many things, including the following: Poisons, detect life, opening locks, draining speed, weakness to magic, commanding crowds to kill each other, disappearing, summoning help. Her bow is her main damage dealer; even at close range, she prefers to immobilize her foe and open fire with her bow. So about the only direct damage effect she uses is absorb health for underwater fighting.

Her favorite schools of magic are illusion and restoration. We cap her at level 20 (via several 'never use' major skills).

Some of her gimps include never increasing endurance or strength, never using melee weapons, staves, fists or lockpicks. She also insists on traveling everywhere by horse and dresses only for fashion. She is also smaller than her Bosmeri counterparts, which slightly effects her speed and jumping ability; in fact she rarely runs even in combat - as Kud-Ei tells her: "Illusion means never having to run."

My current character is an Altmer / App. She is a master in all the schools of magic. They are all Majors. I traded Alchy for Blade, as the seventh Major. She is somewhat capped at 39. Only to gain another level by the natural increase of Blade, which is currently 27. I maxed out her Intel and Wis as soon as possible. Only investing in those Atrbs, along with Luck. Once Intel and Wis reached 100, I continued to invest in Luck. Putting a single point in either Str, Spd, or Agil, at each level up. All of her other Atrbs, are the same, if not lower, than when she came out of the sewers. Wearing a few, very powerful items, has dropped her Str to 20, her Pers to 27, and her End to 5. She is running with a diff bar set at 75-80%. I'll soon be raising that to 100% before long.

EDIT : Had to stop for a bit. So here's a few of her strategies. She uses Illusion ( a lot ) and Conjuration. Summon Dremora Lord is her most used. I can't post her name for him. Lets say it rhymes with, bass pole.

She has a dagger that is enchanted to kill, just about ANYTHING, with 4-5 strikes. This is done, even with a blade of 27, as the enchantment does all the work. So a high Str or Blade is not needed. This is only used when she is running low on Magicka, or is just feeling like bleeding something out.

She only uses lockpicks for underwater chests.

Grouping up a crowd, with a Frenzy / Rage spell is a fav for humans, followed with a few large AOE Weakness to F/F/S and Magic, and then dropping a custom spell, known only as "The Nuke".

She also has a custom death touch spell, that does 100 damage or drain for 1 sec, from 7 different spell types. It is a very expensive spell, to say the least. Her large Magicka pool of almost 700, capable of being buffed well over 1000, allows her to one-shot anything, with the exception of only a few, and have plenty Magicka left to recast her Inviso / Light / detect spell.

Pacifist. On 100% difficulty. 'Nuff said.

The Illusionist challenge is very easy, a couple of frenzy spells here and command spells there, then there's the best, invisibility.