So I have made a new character that I have never tried before, I have made a warrior mage thief hybrid my stats are
Blade
Block
Heavy armor
Restoration
Conjuration
Alteration
Marksman

I sneak everywhere and make poisons with Alchemy. I would like to roleplay but am not really sure how to.
I was thinking about walking around with no weapons drawn and only conjuring my bow and blade are their benefits to doing this. Am I going to be able to conjur stronger blades and bows?

Any thoughts post em.

conjuring weapons would increase your conjuring but i don't think there is really any benefit to it i guess if your a low level a conjure bow or sword might be stronger then anything you can get and i think your conjured weapons increase when you get stronger i think i don't usually conjure

I hope that you picked a Bosmer archer. They are without doubt the strongest class in the game!!

Conjuration and alteration are handy to use but the best skills that complement an archer are illusion and mysticism.
Illusion gives you invisibility, paralyze, night -eye and demoralize. These spells are the best friend of an archer build.
Mysticism gives you Life detection. Very handy if you want to see what is ahead and aim that bow shot.

Do not worry if they are minor skills, they both level up really quickly.

The best bows in the game are the ones you make yourself in the Uni. I would rather have one with Shock enchantment, demoralize or drain speed.
The key is to stop the enemy from swamping you. Put Soul trap on the bow and use Azura's Star to recharge.
Conjuration bows can only do so much. It is better to build your own.

For Role Play use a mystic archer that goes through the Mages Guild quests, or an assassin archer that goes through the DB.
Or maybe something like a Imperial forester that hunts in the wilderness and helps the travellers.

First of all, Sneaking will work best if you have Sneak as a skill. You also need no armour or light armour.

Otherwise its like an Atronach trying to sneak through Chorrol in the middle of the day.

On conjuration, yes you can summon blades and swords, and I think they level with you (they are also Daedric, so good against undead), but to get Swords, and Bows you have to pay a visit to Chorrol or Raminus Pole -- and they will charge you alot, also you will need a Conjuration of at least 50, usually 75............So not good in the short term. Get a iron bow.

Make sure you increase Strenght stat when you level as much as possible, if you train Block and Blade alot that will help. Alteration? Use it for Shield spells, but its worthless if you are going to use HeavyArmour.

You said about making potions, but you have no alchemy skill. Swap out Restoration/Alteration for Alchemy.

Then you should be fine.....phew.

Think about considering acrobats, very helpful and regular summons are great for distractions too. Wether to put them in majors is up to you, if you want to roleplay don't worry about leveling and just go with the flow and if things get hard slide dwn the difficulty bar. You should worry about what you raise but not to much that your not having fun.

Attributes to oick would usualy be

Agility of course
Speed is good
Intelligence and Willpower if your considering conjure because summons cant take abit of magicka.

Very basically, "roleplay" means to play the role of someone. Typically it's another person, but I've found it pretty interesting to roleplay as though I was the one who woke up in that jail cell. In general, you go through the game doing what would make sense for the character -- so far you have someone who's sneaky, but what else? Would he join certain guilds, or do certain quests, or even just keep to himself? You could play AS the character, meaning you'd think as though you were him, or you could just follow him around and see how his story unfolds.



Based on game mechanics, Alchemy doesn't need to be a major skill in order to make potions, and it can level fast enough just by making poisons. If Restoration is going to be used, it needs to be left in because it levels much slower.

Conjured (or bound) weapons can work, but they have some pros and cons. They all take a step of valuable time to conjure that could be spent attacking if you had a real weapon. They are unenchanted. They do not level with you. All bound weapons are weightless. They look like their daedric counterparts but have different (usually worse) power stats.

Bound bows are of medium quality. They are weaker than their daedric counterpart. You still have to equip real arrows - the bound bow does not include any.

Bound daggers are medium quality; also weaker than a daedric dagger.

Bound swords are only of one type - claymore. They are actually a touch more powerful than their daedric counterpart. Like all bound weapons, they are weighless meaning they will not reduce your fatigue.

Dear me, a little disinfo in the above.

1. Only the weight of your boots has ANY effect on sneaking, and that is only until lvl 50. Aside from that you can wear any armor or none at all, your choice.

2. Skills are skills are skills. Major skills cause you to level as they increase and they increase faster than if they were minor skills. Sneak and Alchemy both increase pretty quickly so no need to have them as majors unless you want to.

3. Conjured weapons, armor (and pets, for that matter), do NOT "level with you". Where did you get that idea?

4. Raising Block gets you credit for Endurance raises - it does nothing for Strength (the manual has this one wrong). For a marksman the prime stat is Agility. Speed is also useful. Strength is nice for carrying stuff especially if you're wearing heavy armor, but if you enchant/poison your blade you'll do a lot of damage even with low Strength and mediocre skill.

5. Shield spells can be very useful at early levels no matter what armor you're wearing. Once your AC hits 85 they're STILL useful since your armor degrades in combat.

Mara

This. I just enchanted a bow for my ranger/archer character with demoralize, 40 points of shock damage, and soul trap. It only has about 18 uses (hence the soul trap; thank you, Azura's Star!), but it's absolutely deadly.

The single most important part of successfully playing an archer is to play an archer.

Marksman increases very slowly, so you have to really concentrate on it to build your skill up to a high level. If you carry a melee weapon and freely switch to it, it's all too easy to come to rely on that melee weapon more and more and, pretty quickly, you're no longer playing an archer-- you're playing a melee fighter who happens to drag a bow and some arrows along with him.

Keep in mind that damage for archers is determined by both Marksman skill and Agility attribute, but Marksman contributes more so it's more important.

You do not necessarily want major skills that are actually what you use due to the leveling mechanics. This is true for any character.

Also, you want a build that allows control of leveling regardless of skills you are using most. For example, all three Intelligence skills are very, very easy to control, while all three Strength skills or Endurance skills are much more difficult to control and take much more effort to train.

You want Marksman at 50+ ASAP, and 75 is really the true goal. However, using low quality arrows and bows will get you to that point easily as long as you have good Acrobatics and snipe targets from on high (as suggested already).

If you wish to be more of a sneaky archer character, I would suggest not focusing on bows that are pure damage dealing because, well, that isn't really very sneaky, right? Instead, you may wish to focus on bow enchantments such as Frenzy or Command Humanoid/Creature (from Illusion) as well as bows with Weakness to Poison + Weakness to Magic (to enhance your final shot with a different, normal bow that has poison on it). Having enemies fight each other also has the added benefit of saving you arrows and thus weight/encumbrance (although it also has the effect of causing you to shoot less often and thus level Marksman more slowly).

Note that you can make spells that temporarily max your skills and stats so that you get max effect on your first shot.

My archer's major skills

Blade
Illusion
Mysticism
Acrobatics
Light Armor
Marksman
Sneak

In agreement with what Winter Wolf said earlier illusion and mysticism is a definite must for an archer

you won't really need bound weapons because by the time you are able to cast them, journeyman and up, you should be able to make and repair magic items anyway, and a custom enchanted bow is better than a conjured one.

illusion - Command your level +5 for 4-5 secs on touch or target

with that spell you can pretty much kick everthings but, or at least make them kick their own, and it won't matter what you major skills are.....

@Ramara, thanks for correcting that for me! :goodjob:

Now I realise why i svck at being a warrior -- all I do is block and that doesn't make be stronger! :facepalm:

I will place my character build below. I play on max difficulty with this build using Martigen's Monster Mod plus Francesco's (and several other things, too). No problems at all. I can develop her as primarily a mage or primarily an archer, and eventually she will be maxed in both (and other stuff, too, but I don't use melee). I normally specialize in Magic, not Stealth, but she can also specialize in Stealth (I'm doing that right now with my current play, actually).


Majors:

Blunt
Heavy Armor
Alteration
Mysticism
Light Armor
Security
Speechcraft


Marksman is easy to level if you (1) have at least 25 Acrobatics (so get it to 25 in levels 1-5) and (2) use the lower quality bows and arrows, especially the lower quality arrows. Jump on a nice perch and shoot away at any enemy. No problem. Higher Acrobatics is even nicer. First goal is Marksman 25 (not too tough, of course) next is 50 (primary goal) and finally 75 (takes longer, but not too long compared to some skills like Restoration or Athletics, for example). After 75, it's irrelevant; not much difference between knocking something down (frequently) at 75 or paralyzing them at 100, after all. By the time she's in the upper teen levels, she's very, very powerful and deadly.

Note that I normally do not do Kvatch until level 17+ so as to get the max quality sigil stones right from the first gate.

Also note that playing on max difficulty means that attack skills like Marksman are actually easier to level because you do less damage and thus must hit more times to defeat foes. However, there's this little issue of not being able to be hit due to the damage that foes do to you, especially since my characters do not wear any armor at all (except when training those skills, and they only do that in controlled conditions).

I should add that I have (extensively) tried builds where I put attack skills such as Marksman and Destruction as majors. Those builds were far more difficult for me to play than this one, though. It's counterintuitive, but this is what works for me. You may prefer something different, but you may also want to try out this approach.