A little off topic here but how will perks be distributed? 280 perks and 18 skills give 15.56 for each skill. However I can see far more useful weapon perks than alchemy perks. more so as one handed cover long and short swords, daggers, maces and axes.
Security is another weak skill for perks, even if you put pickpocket under security.
Armor skills sounds even weaker.
We will also probably have some non skill based perks like in fallout.

I don't see how one can make good perks for a merged armor skill set, not mentioning keeping them split! But also, I don't see how you can force sneaky players from leveling in combat just to wear leather armor.

Besides, the "fully passive" skill that is armor doesn't work well for my taste. I think the armor skills are (or should) be removed entirely. Unless someone manage to find non bland perks and someone manage to find us a better way to level armor skill that getting hit over the head again and again by a rat (a very nimble rat I must add if he manages to hit your head)



As for Hand2Hand, I think it might be possible to merge it with acrobatics and call the resulting skill "Martial Arts" which does NOT exclusively mean kung fu style fighting for that matters.

Yeah I don't expect to see more than around 9-12 perks per skill, maybe ranks keep it a nice 12 granting 216 skill perks and ranks total, leaving 64 perks to be spread as challenge perks, companion perks, racial perks and whatever. 64 for the rest sounds not like a lot though.

See this screenshot: http://www.news.scrollstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/The_Elder_Scrolls_5_-_Skyrim_Screenshot_1.jpg
where Destruction have 11 (or 10?) stars, whereas the Restoration seems to only have 9 and Conjuration 10. Maybe it can be read as the origin star being the skill itself instead of a perk, in which case you can subtract one perk.

If so that could leave us with a nice even 10 (11 for Destruction, grrr) perks for skills, totalling at 180 (or 198), leaving 100 (or 82) for the rest.

Another could be 3 "major skills" (one in each arch category), that got 11 perks, 6 "minor skills" with 10 perks, and 9 "misc skills" with 9 perks (174 perks total) leaving 106 for the rest.

Its simple we know for a FACT speechcraft and mercantile are in because todd talked about them as when he said combat skills magic skills stealth skills AND commuication skills ! He wouldnt say that if there was just one.

We also know alchemy moved over and we know acrobatics is gone as trhey confirmed that... so that leaves us with enough slots for all the old stealth skills minus lost ones plus alchemy... so UNLESS they added a mystery new skill we have our skill set there.

As for combat we have a bugger of a time figuring it out because again from what they say athletics is gone and hand to hand is gone.. in an interview todd listed the ways to kill stuff and he detailed the non magic skills and hand to hand wasnt there.

Also we cant be sure armor is in at all because they went out of thier way to say they dont like skills like that because of the way you gain xp in them

We do know block is in because we know a block perk and the fact they went and made block an ACTIVE skill not passive and not something you can just hold down a button to gain.