I want to make an interesting character concept that feels real and is fun to play. I remember one person here said that he likes his characters to have great strengths and even greater weaknesses. I remember Acadian has his character capped at level 20 and never levels endurance, I think he's got other quirks and restrictions as well.

What are some interesting things you do to your characters to make them more interesting?

I will typically give my characters a narrow focus in a certain area. For example, one only used frost-based spells, another only shock. Some of the fighter types would use no magic other than a healing spell. Aela was a mage who only summoned Aedra (with a mod I made), and used restoration. Teresa was a no-melee archer/conjurer. Nykteria was a conjurer who only summoned undead.

Of course taking the Apprentice birthsign for a character gives you an instant weakness. Especially if you are playing an Altmer character. Not for the faint of heart.

Well, let's see. None of my Oblivion characters have ever done any enchanting. And none of them have ever used any enchanted weapons either. Only one of them has ever used pre-enchanted armor, and even then only for awhile.

None of my characters have ever worn a helm.

I almost never take a Birthsign that alters stats in any way. In fact I once made myself a mod with a blank Birthsign just to do away with Birthsigns altogether.

I use only custom races. Vanilla starting Attributes add up to 340; I lower mine to 250 (I use custom races partly so that I don't change the stats of NPCs when I do this). When I play a character who starts in prison (or one who has been idle for a long time for whatever reason) I lower that character's starting speed to 5 to simulate being out of shape. I'll often give these characters lower strength and agility than I normally would, too.

I never raise Luck or Intelligence on any character.

Most of my characters equip whatever weapopns and armor suit their personalities, regardless of stats. This often means playing a character who wears iron or leather for an entire game. One of my warriors took a shine to a particular dress and would not be talked out of it. I ended up playing a claymore-wielding warrior with almost no AR (I think she had about 10 or 15 AR at level 20). needless to say, this made for some exciting wilderness encounters!

I'll probably think of a few more things after awhile.

As you noted, Buffy (a mystic archer) leaves endurance at its base value - along with strength and luck.

The only weapon she’ll touch is her bow. She doesn't run and shoot at the same time. Her quiver only holds 25 arrows (although her mare's saddlebags carry extra arrows to refill it). She won’t use a lock pick. She has entirely too many clothes to enchant any of them and dresses for fashion only; this generally results in a single digit armor rating.

She travels everywhere by horse. Those who use horses realize that this is indeed a limitation. A pair of rings that combine to 360 feet of detect life and having the fastest horse in Cyrodiil however go a long way toward keeping her and her precious mare safe however. Things like saddlebags mods and waterwalk on touch spells go a long way towards making horse travel more fun. Our horse's RP requirement for fresh water every day does provide some challenges that are not required by the game.

We also ‘split’ differing abilities within the various magic schools. Note that we do this via RP/self limits. Examples:
Alchemy. Buffy’s poisons are deadly, but her potions svck. She also doesn’t carry alchemy gear with her and can only brew her poisons at a mages guild or alchemist’s facility.
Destruction. For Buffy, destruction basically means weakness to poison – and she is very good at that. Her abilities with the elements however are pretty much only good for cooking mudcrabs or chilling an ale.
Restoration. This, along with illusion, form her primary magic skills. Yet she is blessed and cursed that she can heal only by laying on of hands (like a paladin or priest). The advantage is that she can diagnose her patients very precisely and even divine some of their nature while joined by the healing bond. The downside is she heals by touch only and empathically must accept/absorb some of her patients’ pain to heal them.

Buffy’s typical tactics are to identify targets from very long range (detect life) and snipe (usually with poison). Crowds are thinned by ‘command’ type illusion spells and survivors are shot by bow. Her primary panic button is a combo spell where she disappears and a summoned distraction appears in her place. If cornered, she will immobilize her foe with an illusion spell and open fire with her bow. Under water, she’ll shield her bow by spell so it is not damaged by blocking and use a combo paralyze/absorb health spell to kill.

Putting it altogether, the glass cannon elf can strike like a dragon but she crumples like a butterfly. Very fun, but a cautious and slow play style is required.

A classic Morrowind style Nightblade is powerful but challenging. Sneak + Illusion + Blade are the only real essentials. Then take a look at Alteration, Mysticism, Alchemy and/or whatever else you think goes with the scheme. I prefer to go without armor for this class, and also not use Marksman because it's brokenly powerful combined with Sneak.


Another option is to choose race/class randomly, keep rolling until you get a weird or interesting combination, and then just make it work. My current character came from that, an Orc Battlemage.

I tend to "gimp" my characters in some way. My current main character, Silvonwe, is Altmer with the Apprentice sign. She uses no weapons or armor, and has never trained up any Strength or Endurance skill, other than what you get from the occasional skill book. At level 21, her Strength is about 33 and her Endurance is not much higher.

My number two present character, Fitzie, is "nearsighted," meaning that she doesn't use any kind of ranged attack at all. She has a variety of touch spells. She's a Necromancer (she conjures only Undead), and carries a short blade weapon.

My other present character, Barb-Ann the Contrarian, believes her life in Tamriel to be a dream, and tends to take wild chances. She doesn't sneak, as a rule, and barges in anywhere she feels like. She often drinks cheap wine while in town, which keeps her personality so low that merchants and citizens generally dislike her. (Some of the negative comments are the most amusing.)

As a general rule, I also play dead-is-dead. All of the above characters are d-i-d.

Generally, when I play a mage or stealthy character, they go mostly unarmored. Fighter types use armor, but usually no magic other than the basic novice healing spell. All of them dress for appearance more than utility, although I use appropriate enchantments where possible, especially for mages.

I have two characters at the moment

Altmer Apprentice. Strength and Endurance are still at the same starting stats for this character. Altmer Apprentice.... nuff said. He stopped leveling at level 20, by choosing only 3 out of 7 majors.

Imperial Knight. Strength is capped at 70, Endurance is capped at 55. He will stop leveling at level 30, by choosing 4 out of 7 majors.

The knight is a Dead is Dead character, the altmer is not. The Altmer has died more times than all my other characters ever. Ever. But it's the most exhilarating play yet.

I really wish Bethesda would go back to the advatages/disadvantages (or in this case, strengths/weaknesses) system of Daggerfall. That way you don't have to artificially altar your character.

Wouldn't matter. We'd probably do it anyway.

Are you saying that you would rather have a game developer impose its ideas of limitations and balance on you rather than carefully crafting your own? Some of the unique characters and strength/weakness combinations we see here would simply not be possible without the stunning degree of freedom that Oblivion provides. I find choosing to not abuse that freedom is a small price to pay for the creative benefits. Your mileage may vary.

I like to impose limitations on magic. For example, even if my Nord battlemage could stomach the thought of manipulating minds, Illusion spells are just beyond him. He is a Master Alchemist through constant practice making magicka potions (Atronach sign), but he is hopeless with poisons. With his careless technique he would likely kill himself while mixing one.


I have no problem imposing these artificial limits. They spring from the character, and for me that’s what the game is about. I mean, how could the game anticipate everything about a character that I create? I prefer to have the flexibility.

Gimping attributes is an obvious one. For example, it's amazing how choosy my current mage character has to be (with only 35 strength and limited alteration skills) deciding which loot to take or supplies to carry.

Every character I play is choosy about which skills they use. Actually I like uncappers for this reason - I end up with a character that's really specialized and really good at 1 or 2 skills while keeping some skills at 5 or 10.

Almost all weakness come from role-playing, one way or another and the best ones aren't stat-driven. Two of my best examples are:

I have a good samaritan character who feels compelled to stop and help any npc who needs help. This causes some pretty massive delays in most of the quest lines.

I once made a Nord with low personality who, on principle, beat up anyone who insulted him. He spent a lot of time in jail.

I have not gimped Lothran in any way other than lowering some of his skills via console. He is a curious being, and thinks the best way to survive is to know alot of things. This means he′s very good with almost all types of weapons and spells and he can even outrun most foes.

In retrospect, perhaps I should have made him a bit differently. Given him some more serious limitations.

This is awesome.

I had a Redguard female who was illiterate (can't read books, potion bottles, or scrolls) and whose only "skills" were picking locks and running. She was a kleptomaniac burgular, but could not back this up with fighting skills (other than some meager H2H stuff) if she got caught and accused.

Though she rarely picked fights, she lived in the Imperial City, almost always had a bounty, and did lots of things a standard quest-taking character would probably have avoided.

@ mirocu: Nah is right! That dear Lothran is a powerful and enduring all rounder is simply more testimony to the flexibility of what Oblivion's wonderful freedom and lack of constraints can allow!

I don't see it as 'artificially' altering my character when I do this. I see it as altering my character by means of roleplaying. Roleplaying is all about self-limitation. I see roleplaying as the creative application of self-limitations. I can't speak for everyone, but when some of us impose restrictions on our characters we are shaping those characters. Just as my personal limitations affect what I can and can't do in real life so my chracter's limitations help define them. And I prefer to have as much control over these things as I possibly can.

In my view, handing over control of my character is like an author handing over control of characters to a publisher. Just as I would not want my publisher meddling with my characters so I do not like a game telling me what my character can and can't do. One of the primary reasons for this is that, increasingly, my characters tend to change in response to the events they experience in their games. In order to accomplish this I need as much flexibility as I can. Locking me into iron-clad, written-in-stone advantages and disadvantages hinders my character's ability to evolve and grow over time.

This debate, I think, goes straight to the heart of a major division between gamers who play roleplaying games on the computer. Some of us want to use the game as a platform to excercise our imaginations; others require feedback and direction from the game. Or, as I've said elsewhere, some of us want to tell our own stories, some of us want to be told a story. I think, probably, that the needs of these two groups will never be reconciled with a single game. However, I think the Elder Scrolls series is about as close to accomodating both 'roleplaying world views' as any game or series of games I've ever seen.

I have characters that never engage in combat. (or if they do, they're horrible at it and do all in their powers to avoid it or get someone else to fight for them) But apart from that, I don't really gimp my stats or anything. I always make the character semi decent and capable just in case.

You said it Pseron.

Hi Pseron, i agree with this statement. I ike to roleplay in these games as well. I've been playing since the Arena days. But, i also really enjoy spending time creating my character. And i'm not talking about his/her apperance. I'm talking about choosing skills, class, race, ect..That's what i miss about Daggerfall. I love the advantages/disadvantages options. I'm the type of person that can spend hours just creating my character. It probably has something to do with playing D&D back in the day. I understand about putting limitations on yourself. I also do this in some ways. But, i want to see consequences to my decisions. It's like when people eat/drink/sleep. I like to see my character suffer in some way if he/she doesn't do those things. That's why i use mods. Because my character is penalized for not doing those things. I don't want to pretend that my character is suffering. I want to actually have my character affected in some way. I guess i just don't have a good enough imagination.

Trust me Darnoor, there are times when I want a mod, because my imagination doesn't cover all the bases. Sometimes I do just fine though. I love love love creating my characters. I always intend to play for a long time, so each character is crafted lovingly from skills and attributes to appearance, even if the character is a DiD play. For example, I wish I could lower the collective feeling of the Fighter Guild, in regards to my character, a member of the White Stallion.
So my "mod" for this, is to talk to those members with a weapon out.

On-Topic: my character has never leveled her endurance. She can deal some hefty damage, but as an unarmored mage a few hits can kill her. I've given her some shield enchantments to help, but basically I'm always keeping an eye out for enemies getting close. That's Eleanor's only limitation, really.

Off-Topic: see, I'm different. I can't stand being forced into things, like choosing a weakness or having to eat/sleep.
I'll do these things myself, through roleplay. I'm given greater freedom that way - what if my character overcomes his/her weakness? Why should my character face a penalty for staying up past her bedtime? I'm a bit odd like that - I like to force myself to make my character eat/sleep, but I hate being forced to do so by someone else.