I agree, bows will be able to do a lot more, and with added effects, they should be able to take down dragons easier than one would think. Not too easy, but it would be a good fight.

I like the way you think.

Daggers = blade skill, yeah?... so grab yourself a longsword instead, use it's damage/length along with the rest of a stealth character's ranged/agile arsenal... plus the added epicness of Dragon Shouts... and you'd be pretty good to go, eh?

Personally, my stealth characters will never be without a longsword, just makes sense to have around when the going gets tough. Regardless, I'm sure Bethesda has something good in store for us.

I haven't seen any references to spell-runes in this thread yet (sorry if I missed you!)- these seem ideal for tough encounters, a bit like mines in FO3. It looks like I will finally be able to play a decent version of my avatar. :chaos:

Did you play Dragon Age: Origins? R.I.P Riordan. I'm sure there will be some perks directly pertaining to Dragon fightin', Beth wouldn't make a whole avenue of play useless in one of the biggest aspects of the game (or so it seems).

Good luck with that bow tactic... you can't run backwards as fast as you can forwards like oblivion. So have fun with getting eaten by a dragon hahaha

On topic, my guess is poison sneak attack... then lots of running away until poison wears off... cast invisibility, rinse and repeat haha. Although my stealth character will have the option to dual wield short swords, so I won't have this issue

Hope there's a dragon shout that can only be obtained through stealth.
Like it's in a dungeon or something and if you trigger a trap or get caught it is sealed off forever.

you could always go with the starship troopers way and climb a ledge or hill and hop on its back and stealth kill it to the back of the neck. would be cool if you could mount it like a horse and ride it lol.

I thought they changed it so that daggers were in the steath category

Dragon nests should absolutely be incorporated as a self-contained minigame-like mechanic.

Warriors would be incapable of the sneakiness necessary to murder the thing in its sleep without stumbling all over those clanky gold trinkets and magic wards and stuff, and so would fight the things out in the open, away from those protecions.

Stealth characters, meanwhile, can't deal with straight-up combat, so they could bypass the face-to-face fight by sneaking through the pimped-out nest of traps, each of which would wake the dragon, which would then proceed to kill the crap out of you.

well said!

Well, being slightly cynical, if Skyrim is like other tes games, most stealth Characters will also be pretty decent warriors and mages, so it shouldnt be an issue

Stealth does not limit one to light armor and daggers/bows. Magic is is always a viable option, and then there are magic weapons.

Not to mention, nowhere is it said that all builds are equal. If you choose to make a sly-talking thief with no combat specialties, then that is your own fault.


Personally I am going to make a mid-armor assassin that uses both magic and swords. (Stealthy Swordmage put simply)

i think people were saying there wont be med armor

and id be pretty pissed if i cant kill a dragon using only evasion, a dagger and bow and arrow . . . i dont expect every class to have equal difficulty when fighting a dragon but id like each pure class to be able to defeat one

Many of you seem to be talking about bows, but I think that they will be less of a stealth weapon in Skyrim. Not to say you wouldn't be able to use them, but I think that daggers will be the new prime stealth weapon.

Based on my past experience of Oblivion and Morrowind, stealth characters often tended to get a bit of a raw deal when it came to taking down powerful opponents. If you didn't have access to a decent level of magic, allowing you to effectively vanish back into stealth or to not appear fully in the first place; fights against tough opponents often ended up as a death of a thousand cuts style fight. You could kill them but you had to take an incredibly long time doing it and it really tested your ability to dodge spells and blows, owing to the fact on many occasions you couldn't get close enough to get a sneak attack without being detected or you'd only manage to get that first initial attack then would have to dodge and chip away at them for what in some cases seemed like an eternity.

It was in truth, one of the things that always annoyed me as I loved to play Thief like characters who would naturally not be as capable in combat(at least not until the higher levels of skills when I was able to combine a nice Chameleon spell with Sneak skill for repeated sneak attacks). I remember earlier on in Oblivion that the first time I encountered an Oblivion Gate as a thief like character I got myself chewed to pieces because the area was too light to allow effective sneaking and my Illusion skill hadn't reached the point that I could pull off an effective enough Chameleon spell to help it. This forced me to spend a few hours dungeon crawling and doing some guild quests and raising combat skills before I could continue with the main story; those other activities were things I would have done anyway but I did object to being forced to do them in that order because Bethesda hadn't fully considered thief/spy characters when they were balancing the main story at lower levels. Especially when the tag line for TES has long been to 'play the way you like', this situation was rather contradictory to the policy in forcing stealthy types down a limited number of avenues to have a decent chance of success.

I'm hoping that these issues won't be quite so painful in Skyrim and from what I've seen so far there will be a greater degree of flexability with spells and dragon shouts etc to help counter these situations. Though I would be lying if I said I wasn't concerned that Bethesda were going to do exactly as they have in Oblivion and Morrowind and make certain stages of the game almost impossible for thieves/spies to do at the appropriate level. Dragons are counted quite high amongst these concerns.