I always felt the sneaking marksmen were a little underpowered in TES, which svcked because that was the build that I enjoyed the most. I never found a real game play advantage in relying on a bow when, even at high levels with custom enchanted gear, I could rarely get through a dungeon without falling back on a sword. With the huge popularity of snipers in games like F03 and FNV (amongst others, and even though a lot of people complain about them being over-powered), do you think they’ll beef up (within reason) the “sniper build” in Skyrim?

And before you start blowing me up for daring to suggest such a thing, I’m not suggesting anything, just asking...

the only thing that annoyed me with marksman in Oblivion was that you could shoot 20 arrows or more into a Bandit and he\she would still be alive :brokencomputer:

That really irked me too, OP!

I feel like I should enter a dungeon with a few arrows, and proceed clear it of monsters with no commotion (as long as my skill is high enough). I hate having to get my little "sneak" attack bonus, alerting every npc, and then riddling the troll or w/e with about 55 more arrows while I'm running in circles, and finally giving up and switching to magic or a sword.

Planned marksmen attacks should receive huge bonuses, as well as take locational damage into account. I'm not saying develop complex anatomies for everything, but head or heart on humanoids shouldn't be too hard..

I loved playing with The Agent in Oblivion and, thus, having to rely only on a bow. It wasn't until a very high level and using enchanted, poisoned equipment that I was able to sort of kill a man in one shot. It would be nice if they did something like in Fallout with the anatomical differences, injure an opponents arm shouldn't do the same as sending an arrow through his head, you know...

Sounds good to me, but if they do this they have to make sure you can't sprint backwards and pepper your enemy with as many arrows as you have.

I have found the bow to do too little damage, but i always had blade as a skill to so i could throw 4-5 arrows then charge in dagger ready... it used to be a spear but they arent cool nemore

Also, you should be able to hide again if you shot your first shot at the bandit. God knows how they figured out I was behind that stone! :brokencomputer:
Maybe they should go check but not automatically start the combat xD

My way to “fix” it would be this…

1. Give a big’ol damage bonus to any character that successfully completes any attack while in sneak, but give an even bigger’ol bonus to marksmen attacks. So someone has a real incentive to choose that has their primary play style.

2. Give sneak/marksmen penalties to players wearing heavy armor. So yeah, my lightly armored sniper can do a lot of damage in sneak, but if he blows his cover, he could be in a lot of trouble.

I mean they already did most of that stuff, just not enough. My heavy armored axe swingin warrior type could get the same marksmen sneak bonus as my lightly armored assassin, so why bother?

I think enemies and players should have much less health than they had in Oblivion so that arrows have more of an impact on health. I also think that there should be a damage threshold so that full plate will shrug off damage from arrows but you will sustain fatigue loss as a result of being battered by arrows. There should also be different types of arrow, for example; a barbed arrow that causes more damage but cannot penetrate armour as well; a heavy arrow designed to penetrate armour and knock down opponents; a hunting arrow that is more accurate but less forceful; and finally flaming arrows that do not have to be enchanted to cause fire damage (but they can have magical effects bound to them).

I think both ideas are really good, especially if there was some anatomic bonus difference as well (difference between hitting a guy in the arm or shooting an arrow through his head).

If that was to be, PC's ought to have less health as well. Which isn't a bad idea in my opinion either..

I hope to see different kinds of marksman weapons again. Crossbows at the very least. Then there's the possibility of throwing knifes,stars, darts...

Agreed.

aye, the crossbow should be more accurate to the untrained user and do a little more damage, but a [censored] to reload

Crossbows should be less affected by marksman skill than longbows. Therefore if you are a low level character a crossbow will be more appealing as it will not be affect as much by your low skill. This would reflect the real life preference for crossbows by unskilled marksmen and the preference for longbows by skilled marksmen.

I actually found it extremely easy to with marksmen 100 and sneak 100. Not because I killed the enemies quickly, it took ages. But because they never saw me, i was pretty cloes to invisible. Anyway, I think they should reduce the health of everything or notch up weapon damage. Melee weapons in oblivion also took a billion hits to bring down some of the higher level monsters, and as we all know, that was all you would be facing above level 20

Marksmen in oblivion was OP with poison. Well that and any weapon with poison in it, and it happened because I think poison ignored the difficulty level...



+2. But of course marksmen can't kill with 1 or 2 blows, even the first being a sneak attack. I think they should be more worried about not putting OP stuff like oblivion poisons (not with the damage they did), levitate in morrowind, very strong enchantments that are easily recharged with azura's star, etc...

Word,

That has mostly to do with the enemy leveling system in Oblivion which, in I think almost everyone’s opinion, svcked ace.

No, no it mainly has to do with higher leveled enemies having way too much health.

That’s what Im saying. The way the enemies leveled, health included, was some svckness.

The closer to the target you need to be to execute the sneak attack the harder it gets. So giving marksman higher sneak multipliers than for example blade would render blade useless as a sneak skill except as a last resort defensive skill for the marksman. The incentive to use marksman as your sneak skill is that it is easy to get the multiplier and even if you don't kill your target he shouldn't imminently know where you are. The incentive to use blade is that it has a higher multiplier and is better for stealth as a falling body should create allot of sound but if you use blade you can catch the body and put it down nice and silent like.

I've always enjoyed the marksman ability in Oblivion. My bow skill is 100, my blade is 5.... I second an above poster, if I fire into a crowd while stealthed, the rest of the gaggle should react to their buddy falling over dead. Currently, I can take down two out of four while sneaking and with a bow, before anyone figures it out. Too OP.

I really liked using the Marksman skill in Oblivion, but I certaintly do hope that it becomes a bit more powerful, too often I just found myself back-pedalling while spamming arrows at the enemy while doing next to no damage, it often got frustrating.

they better beef it up,

in oblivion the arrows were slower than mud crabs, the damage was too low, and the skill was too much to level up.

Things that need fixing:

1. Arrow trajectory
2. NPC's with heat-seeking arrows.
3. Greater damage
4. Area specific damage (a shot to the neck will hurt more than one to the shoulder, if not an insta-kill.)
5. restrict marksmanship to long range attackers. The bow was not designed as a close quarters weapon, have npcs switch to a melee weapons when they get close (no more backwards run-shooting).
6. Poisoning system. (a whole bottle for one arrow, really?)