I started going through my head of all the skills that the player would inevitably use during the game. Magic skills require you to actually cast spells to level them so it's easy to keep them low. Don't want enchanting to go up? Don't enchant anything. Same for smithing and alchemy. You can skip locked doors and containers if you absolutely have to, though you'll never know what's inside. Weapon skills are easy enough, stick to spells or go hand to hand. Armor skills? Don't wear armor. Don't sneak, don't pick pocket.

So I think that just leaves speechcraft. It seems to me that if you plan on buying or selling anything then this skill will inevitably go up. The only thing I can think of that would keep it from going up would be to keep the barter slider at zero. Assuming there is a barter slider. No one's talked about bartering as far as I know. Any thoughts?

I think there are speech challenges that; if you pass, will increase your speechcraft, though this is just a theory.

-Mr. Maric

Would it really matter that much? Mercantile was a total pain to raise in Oblivion, so maybe it will raise slowly enough here if you are not going out of your way to improve it, so I don't think it will be outstripping your most used combat skills, and so contributing too much toward levelling, And of course if you don't take any perks for the skill, it won't take anything from your character, unless you specifically want to level slowly.

Why would you want to keep speechcraft from going up? It's not like we have annoying attribute multipliers when leveling up.

And yet that was supposedly pretty much the entire reason athletics/acrobatics were removed.

If you dont take speech perks, why would this matter at all?

Play a Nord. No successes at Speechcraft = no increases.

Q: How do you identify a Nord diplomat? A: You can't; there's no such thing.

I really hope there's some option to "attempt" to influence an NPC or not, rather than another irrelevant mini-game, or where you always do it automatically.

Does anyone actually know how speechcraft will work in Skyrim? To my knowledge speechcraft diddnt raise merely by talking to people in Oblivion or Morrowind so I would assume that this would also be the case in Skyrim.

Use Charm :icecream:

I say RP a mute.

HEY! I plan on being a Nord diplomat!

There are Nords that can be very diplomatic with other Nords... just not that much for any other race.

quote removed

There is nothing wrong with role-playing, I walk everywhere with my mage for example to keep him from getting too athletic. Having control over something like that is nice, if you automatically got better at speech-craft only by talking to someone then every goblin or giant should in theory be capable of being a master bard.

I doubt Bethesda will force a speech-craft skill increase on you in Skyrim every time you talk to someone but if they did and I wanted to be a savage repulsing Bosmer for example then I'd be pretty bummed.

I think they have it like Morrowind where you can persuade, joke, intimidate, admire, etc (not as a wheel) to increase someone's disposition towards you. If you don't want to increase it, then don't do those things.

The only other thing would be if selling items would increase speechcraft on account of bartering now being an element of it. I hope that is not the case, as it would kind of force you to increase your speechcraft, but my impression is that bartering prices are affected by your reputation with a group/vendor (like in Fallout New Vegas) and perks you choose to boost it.

They've never had Speechcraft go up without you deliberately using it. Don't see why you expect that to change.

As for Mercantile, just don't barter. It only raises your skill when you get a good deal.

Problem solved.

Well I was kind of thinking it would be more efficient for certain builds to level as few skills as possible but now that I think about it it doesn't matter too much. Speechcraft could only contribute to level gains, even if only by a small amount, but it wouldn't detract from it. Still it would be nice to choose whether or not to use the skill as with the others.



Mercantile and speechcraft are the same skill now.

As I understand it, Skyrim is made so that you don't have to worry about leveling up attributes on level up. The attributes have been completely removed, so just play the game and don't worry about it

(just so i fit in)

Good question OP and it brings up some other interesting points that i had myself:

Is there a cap on how many skills you can train each level in Skyrim? If so I can see it causing frustration for those who don't want to number crunch their characters but still want to get the most out of their training each level.

There's still the issue of perks requiring a certain skill level. You might accidentally level Speech up more than you intended, meaning your other skills are lower and you can't get the perk you were after because your skill level is too low. Of course you could just save the perk, but it's still a valid question.

You level up when your skills improve enough, not attributes (in OB).

I do see the problem that the OP is making though. I'm playing OB now and before buying or selling anything I play the stupid circle game and max out the person's opinion of me. While doing this my Speechcraft skill improves. When I then buy or sell anything (I don't adjust any sliders) my Mercantile skill improves. This isn't a problem in OB as I didn't pick those as Major skills.

However, if Skyrim's leveling is based on the increase of any skills, and you like to hunt for stuff, pick flowers, find stuff laying around, and sell it, you might be increasing a skill that will cause you to level. Leveling like this, without using any real combat type skills could cause a problem. Thing is in OB you can avoid this by not Majoring in skills like this, but in Skyrim we don't have that option.

but there's also the lower skill = slower contribution to level up in the equation.

even if you raise the speechcraft skill a bit, if it's still lower than your more used skills and you aren't constantly doing the actions that raise the speechcraft skill i don't think you have anything to worry about.

I'm going to assume that bartering doesn't affect speechcraft (mercantile) anymore. That way, hopefully, the speechcraft game is more viable.

Disclaimer? I'm totally ill-informed. Thus assumed.

Don't talk to people or buy things. It's just as realistic as never using any of the other skills.