I've been playing Daggerfall lately to try and get into the good ol' TES feel, and have noticed that Bethesda has left out some great skills from Morrowind and Oblivion concerning the "Linguistic" skills. Wouldn't it be great to have perks such as Etiquette and Streetwise and perhaps even a Language tree in the Speechcraft Skill.

For those who don't know, Etiquette was a skill used to speak to Nobles more successfully (speaking charmingly, politely), streetwise was a skill used to speak with the rabble (blunt and informal). The languages skills were even cooler, they allowed one to be able to "speak" the language of certain more intelligent monsters so as to not be attacked by them.

I think the addition of these perk trees to the Speechcraft skill would greatly improve the RPG elements of the game. Imagine being a bard, capable of swaying the rich folk's decisions to your favour, perhaps being able to talk your way out of a fight with a Giant etc. Or perhaps your character was born an ignorant, uneducated orc that is quite loved among the townsfolk, but snobbed by the nobility. I don't know seems like it would be pretty cool.

Mercantile is the one that I can't really think of many uses for other than simply haggling...



What do you guys think? Any cool ideas that Bethesda could do with these perks/skills.

P.S. If I am wrong about one of the skills and their use in Daggerfall please don't get all smart, I apologize before hand, I have only started playing it a week or so ago.

Also I apologize if this has been posted before, I looked around and could not find anything substantial.

I don't really like the idea of talking to creatures (you are the dragonborn, not the wolfborn or trollborn), but everything else is great. I would love speechcraft perks that would allow you to have additional dialog options with certain social classes or races. Also, I'm not sure but I think that mercantile will be merged with speechcraft. It would make sense, anyway. Maybe there will be speechcraft perks that help with mercantile (say, access to shopkeeper's personal collection of rare items?). I hope mercantile perks aren't just "10% higher chance at haggling" or something.

This would go great with the bard topic. I think it's a wonderful idea.

Well, no one would really go far by trying to talk to a wolf, or even a troll for that matter. But there are creatures that do have language skills (whether they be in their own language or in cyrodillic). I was thinking more on the lines of speaking to daedra, giants, spriggans, perhaps even the draugr... although it would be very hard to implement (It wouldn't be right to talk about "Latest Rumours" with a draugr haha).

As for the mercantile suggestion you gave, that would be really cool. Certain merchants would allow you to have access to rare items, perhaps even buy/trade smuggled goods such as moonsugar and skooma. If that is possible I'm definitely becoming a khajit skooma dealer/ smuggler haha!

Always thought that goblins should be a little less instantly aggressive. Be nice to come across a goblin settlement and maybe be able to gain their trust and trade a bit. After helping them solve some issues with rival tribes or something. Or maybe some Dunmer refugees intruding on their territory.

Mercantile perks I can think of....

The packrat and strong back perks of fallout would fit perfectly as perk lines in skyrim. Add in a series of perks to boost what stores buy and sell and how much money they have and bingo.

packrat packmule packhorse packmammoth... increases carry cap by reducing the weight of certain items .. small for rat medium for mule large for horse and huge for mammoth.

strong back.. just increase carry cap by x lb each.

You know...thats sounds pretty plausible, but you have to remember, you choose only one perk per level, and the perk cap is in level 50. So you end up with 50 perks, and many of them would have the purpose of specializing your character in his/her chosen playstyle (since there are no weapon based skills, getting good with axes will probably take quite a few perks related to the axe). Im almost 100% certain there's going to be perks for haggling (justifying mercantile being merged to speechcraft, which makes sense and is done that way in most games), but with 50 perks to choose from, I wouldnt hold my breath for many varied perks like you are suggesting. I guess perks are going to be more practical (armor bonuses, weapon bonuses, stealth kills, ect.)