The primary issue seems to me that your "broken" is another players bliss. If the ability to make an uber character is taken away, than your options have indeed been limited. You were never forced to become an uber character, and you would not have to do so here. Indeed, with athletics removed, it will be very difficult to build your strength and stamina unless you choose to put effort into doing so. And in all of the games, you could be a complete failure at sneak, at all of the schools of magic etc. All your choices. You could master one thing and be poor at all others. But if you put time and energy into become a master of all fields, then yes you could do it. That was your choice. And I for one don't believe that choice should be removed from one player, just so another player can feel that the game is more balanced. Play your game your way. If you do not wish to play as a demi-daedra or a demi-god. Don't. But don't tell other players that because you don't like playing that way, that they should be forbidden the option of doing so, or that they are somehow playing in a broken manner for doing so.

You have on the one hand a right ( so I have been told, I won't argue ) to make an overpowered mage who is untouchable, and in the other the need to make a challenging game. I would much prefer the challenging game, nothing wrong with putting the effort in to find loopholes, those builds that make a joke of everything the game can throw at you, but a system that forces you to make choices, that requires several plays through to work out a superior build, surely this is a good thing?
If anyone wants an uber character, go ahead, just give us a game that requires lots of work, and careful consideration to get there. Maybe it is taking away from player choice, but aren't players being short changed if ridiculously powerful character builds are glaringly apparent?
Personal opinion : choice between mage, warrior, thief, or a slower advancing, and unable to reach the heights of mastery in one discipline, multi-class character, gives you a better gaming experience, and more re-play value, than a game that gives you the chance to master everything.

That really doesn't make any sense.

With both systems there are around the same number of character archetypes you can get. They're all basically different combinations of thief, mage and warrior skills. With attributes you'll have to raise the ones that would help your skills the most. You could add extra points to other attributes but they won't contribute to much. An extra point in intelligence for a pure fighter won't matter much.
Without attributes you have just as many options as the skillsets are nearly the same, and you can pick perks that can help your skill of choice, or it's overall needed.
With both, you still need to pick the attributes that help your main skills and you can only pick perks in skills you're good in anyway.

But I do like playing that way... it was loads of fun and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

It was also broken

Do you get my point yet? lol

That we cannot make(or need) a broken supermage is the best thing that could have happened too the lvl system. No more grinding, and hybrid characters(like I like to play. I normally and up with a 70/30 balance of combat/magic) have to balance the choices.
I'm gonna try to balance it, probably something like this 1) health 2) Magica and 3) Stamina or 1) Health and 2) equal stamina and magica. Porbably the later.

hopefully we will be able to still get enough magicka, I don't think the amount of Magicka obtainable in OB was an exploit, to use any good spellls consistantly you had to have 500 + mana and it was only really possible to get your magicka that high at higher levels so thats about 50 hours of game play before you can use that "exploit"... can you really call something an exploit if it takes several hours to actually exploit?

Are you sure you're on the right thread?

This thread isn't about attributes - it's about the ability to create a "supermage" - a choice that's being eliminated, and which elimination I criticized as the elimination of a choice.

The whole premise of your post is flawed.
When a person levels up the following happens:
1. Your health goes up
2. Then you get to choose to increase one of the following: health (even further), magic, stamina

And with all the perks and the combinations with magic, being a mage looks promising. The only thing I'll feel bad about is no levitation.

Broken is just such a subjective term. It suggests that there is something innately wrong about having an enormously powerful character of rare ability, in a world of supernatural creatures, powerful heroes, powerful wizards etc. Part of the lure for many is being able to be a superpower. And even so, the player/character is not uniquely powerful, but it is not broken if the player is legendary not only in deeds but in abilities. Broken, to my mind, would be if your character instantaneosuly had all these powers at the start of the game, which has never been the case. Through long practice and steady use, and perhaps through mystic rituals, you are eventually able to build a player of uncommon strength and power. . . and if those uncommon abilities are truly awe inspiring. . . good. Isn't that as it should be for a player who chooses to take that path? I see nothing broken about it. A world that can produce the likes of The Underking, Tiber Septim, Penial Whitesnake, Umaril Unfeathered, Allesia, Vivec and Almexia, Divan Fyr and Mankar Cameron should be able to also produce an Uber You, without it being a horrible thing. Like them, you are a creature of rare blessing and phenomenal gifts, capable of legendary things. And that is a path you should be allowed to take. . . just as you should be allowed to be a common hedgewizard with no powers to speak of.

This is reassuring.

IMO if you.. nevermind. Go supermages!

Thats not a supermage thats a warrior with all the magicka of a mage.

If they had balanced the system so a pure mage could actualy exist and made that have by far the most magicka this mess wouldnt have happened.

Now in skyrim they have completely changed things and balanced the mages to allow a pure mage with low health low armor and so on to actualy be playable. Thats why they have had to go through so much work on the magic.. up until skyrimn there werre no real mages in elder scrolls just warrior mages.

To the first bold: They always were playable. I never had a pure mage with high HP,or Armor.

X character is only as broken as you break them.

To the second bold: Er, no. Not to mention a pure Mage can turn into any build through restoration alone.

Oh realy? You made a mage and didnt raise endurance at all nor strength? Exactly how well did that work out?

Mind you I never exploited the screwup they made with weakness to magic so I guess I could have run a mage using that...

I'll mainly go more more magicka. For RP reasons. If there is anything in the game resembling the Atronach birth sign it would help more.

Worked out fine, I was a glass caster, like any pure mage should be. Why would I use any skill that would raise endurance or strength if I was a pure mage? Not to mention, you dont need to hard raise endurance and strength or any attribute for that matter, since you can soft raise it with fortify spells. Didn't exploit weaknesses or fortify Magicka. Sounds to me like you just couldn't stick with your build.

I'll likely play a Breton so I most likely won't have to fill my magicka at the start.

So, I will increase my health first. I'll probably take shields and strength perks a for the first ten levels. By then I'll know how things work so I can start to fine tune things.

I usually keep early saves of my characters in the event that the one I'm playing bites. I can go back to where things went wrong and start over from there.

With The Creation Kit and console commands, I can make my mage as powerful, as weak, or as balanced as I wish so the age of the supermage is alive and well.

respective magic, stamina, health ratio - 3:2:1

as much as I want to be a sneaky bow user my first playthrough, I'm a [censored] wizard and it's redundant to be archer and a magician

I'll be a solid sorcerer who's good with a shortsword...and I think I'll get into alchemy this time round

story until i unlock shouts, then pure guild/sidequests/dragon hunting/exploring for a long long time

I tried it but I kept dieing.. but then my computer at the time wasnt exactly fantastic... It always felt like they expected you to train strength and endurance at least to the high 60s fairly early in the game... by level 15 or so.

Thus the problem with level scaling, not the level system for characters exactly.

I've always played my pure mages with low health and no armor (and no weapons). That's what a pure mage is, and the games have always allowed you to do that. They've just never forced you to.

That's not true.... one of my favorite characters to play in morrowind was a pure mage...

Also the pure mage in oblivion was extremely easy to play as long as you thought about what you were doing and understood what the spells did.... actually my favorite way to play oblivion is starting out at level 1 as a pure mage with the difficulty setting on max. Very fun and very playable.

Often times in these forums i see people with fundamentally different views arguing over what should be in the game or how it should be done and they hardly ever get anywhere because they seem to not even be aware that the other person has different needs when it comes to gaming. In this particular post i see people complaining that the changes will allow for less customization among character types overall, and others say that it will not affect them therefore they don't care so the others should quite complaining.


Its funny how different we all see games. For me i like to customize everything about my character, make my own custom class, be challenged and explore, and if the game has high immersion value i will role play it too. When a game i love comes out (which is rare, The only ones I'm interested in or will be buying in the future are this one and diablo 3) I stay away from the forums so no one can ruin a surprise for me and i never look up any guides if it is single player, at least until after i have beaten the game on the hardest difficulty.

I also like to role play and when i find something exploitable in the game i try to ignore it. I don't mind playing an inferior character at all.For oblivion i made a separate character for each faction and another that was just for the main quest. For morrowind i made a separate character for about 8 different factions and quest lines so far (including a pure vampire! fun!) plus even more characters for many different reasons. All in all i have made over 20 characters in morrowind alone and I made another 2 this year when i played morrowind last month.

Then i have this friend who is totally the opposite. he makes one character and he often buys a strategy guide the same time he buys the game and uses it while he plays every time. He exploits like its his job and uses hacks/bots/cheat codes every time. I don't get whats so fun about that but more power to him you know. He can play his way and ill play mine... as long as there's that option.. see?

I have to agree with you there.. those who want exploitative content usually flock towards console command cheat codes anyway or over the top mods. Balancing the game to make each race and skill fun is what I want. Making something more difficult can make it more fun as well.

Whe I play my mage I'll pick breton and raise nothing but Magicka.

I <3 big magicka pools.