have been wondering if it would be possible? no doubt i'm an idiot for asking,but i would be interested in anyone who has played such a character,and how you dealt with enemies e.t.c non lethally :thumbsup: EDIT i play on 360 :wink_smile:

Well, no. You can flee from everything, which would get really weird and unrealistic eventually. But sometime, if you're playing the main quest especially, you'll come across some quests that you have to destroy or kill a certain person or thing. You can always work your way around it by letting a NPC do it for you if he's traveling with you and if you don't do any quests I suppose you don't have to kill anything.

But I think battle is way to frequent and necessary to be able to play it without fighting/killing and still have a good, long savegame.

Someone is actually doing a pacifist playthrough. There's a thread floating around here.

Of course, he has to rely on Frenzy and fleeing towards guards to survive.

It depends on the semantics and assumptions you want to make, and those are likely to be different for different players. For the way I play and assumptions I would make, the answer is yes, you can have a fine game without doing direct damage (like from arrows, blades, fireballs, etc).

Disappear to avoid what you want to avoid.

Don’t insist on doing every single quest (I wouldn’t with any character anyway), although with some skill and creativity, most can be done.

Summon a helper when you need one.

Convince foes to kill each other.

Consider enchantments or spells that return damage.

Realize that things will be tough early on. The tutorial could be a little rough. Use fast travel if necessary to get into the Arcane University, then study, practice and develop the spells and tools you need. Design the character to stop leveling at a reasonable point (between 20-30) so your conjured summons aren’t fighting huge pools of hitpoints.

As Acadian says, there are different interpretations of "pacifist." My own belief is that coercing anybody or anything to kill a Troll or Wolf for you is philosophically no different than killing the Troll or Wolf yourself. If a crime boss orders his enforcers to murder a rival crime boss, he is considered to have had a hand in that murder even if he didn't physically pull the trigger. When a soldier kills another soldier on the battlefield I, as a citizen of the country for which that soldier is fighting, am implicated; when the state executes a prisoner I am implicated in that execution. And likewise in the game, if I order a summoned Brown Bear to kill a Troll or Wolf on my behalf I feel I have had a direct hand in killing that Troll or Wolf and am just as guilty as the Brown Bear who actually did the job.

Having said that, I also want to say that I believe everybody should play the way they want to. It's just a video game and we're here to have fun. But if I am asked "Is it possible to play Oblivion as a pacifist?" my answer is, "No."

Pseron, I'm so glad you posted! Your interpretation is exactly the counter to my post that I had in mind when I caveated about semantics and assumptions. I think anyone reading my post and yours will see the full spectrum of possibilities and complications. Another complication is the quirky, inconsistent and imperfect way in which the game calculates such things as assaults and murders. I greatly respect your rather purist views here and, again, am very glad you added them to this thread! :foodndrink:

It's possible to "play the game" without killing. It's not possible to play through all the quest lines without doing so.

I have a character names Paxelle, who is a no-kill mage. She has managed to finish all the mages guild recommendations, plus a couple of additional MQ quests (she has a mage's staff.) She is also the Hero of Kvatch (some hero; the Kvatch Guard did most of the work, and as for Oblivion Gates, all you have to do is a combination of sneaking and sprinting.) The hardest thing is getting items that you'd normally have to kill for, like keys -- as it happens, you can loot people who are paralyzed, without hurting them. Invisibility helps a lot.

But most quest lines have some point at which the player-character is obligated to either kill something or abandon the quest. That's just the way the game is designed. And even if one can find a way around that requirement, the complications get so silly and unrewarding that it's just not worth the trouble.

I still load Paxelle and play from time to time, but we have no illusions that she's going to complete a lot more quests.



I agree with you. In most instances, Paxelle's practice has been to take the matter to the police. That is, she runs to the guards when somebody attacks her, and lets them handle the matter. The contortions of "non-killing" that were necessary to get through the Skingrad Recommendation were so bogus that it eventually soured me on the concept, and it became a chore to get through that recommenation. It was one of those challenges that you take, realizing that you're not really role-playing, just to explore the limits of the possible.

Glargg, I am trying Paxelle’s approach with my healer, and she ran into big problems in that Skingrad quest. She had to get the job done herself with spells from Restoration. I think that will be the only one like that, though. Or she’ll just go back to her daily business inside city walls, no more quests.

My pacifist is different. As long as my hands were not the one who directly caused damage, or if the imaginary kill count in game hasn't been violated, I'm a pacifist.

I say it's possible, exploiting loopholes, but not all quests will be finished, like the Dark Brotherhood, which should be obvious.

Arena is actually possible, though most people wouldn't agree with my method, but it's m rules and I didn't violate it.

Illusion is a must.

REAL pacifist would intent :

-Dont even ATTACK anyone, not any beast, not anything
-Dont even defend against anything if it attacks you.. you always just run away.
-Dont do anything that does ANY harm to anyone, or anything (like placing an enchanting mage hat on them that will kill them)
-Dont intervene with the liberty of others (so NO mind-mending illusion either)
-Dont break any locks, not steal any items, thats aggresion too.

Trade, talk, walk that would be about what you would be allowed to do..
and I don;t see how the game can be played like that.