Do you gain weapon skills by whacking those dummy targets in warrior guilds or by shooting at the hay targets?

Apparently the only way to gain armor and weapon skills is during actual fighting? It looks like there's no way to engage a "friendly" to spar with me.

Nope.

Yep.

Nope.

Hope that answers your questions

There are mods that add these things, though, if you're on PC.

There's a few ways to sort of help with that (without mods), but they are all pretty crude workarounds -

1. Summon something and beat on it.

2. Hit a big meat shield (trolls are great because they regenerate hp) with enough damage speed poisons to bring him to a complete stop. Then you can beat on him all you like with impunity, even healing him if you desire to practice your skills.

3. One of the Daedra Lords have some followers that are frozen/paralyzed and they will not respond if you hit them. There can be some problems with this though. More detail, including cautions here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Peryite#Notes

Lothran′s preferred method in fact. Many are the hours he spent whacking that poor, poor skeleton and if he were lucky, he could snatch the skeleton′s weapon before he vanished

I found a lone bandit to keep shooting arrows at my shield and improve my blocking. I back off, use the magicka heal, wait a while use the magicka heal, wait while, heal, okay go get shot some more, back off, heal, wait for recharge, heal, etc.

Then I realize I'm really wasting lots of time merely waiting for magicka recharge, for a critter I know isn't going to kill me. So why even let the health drop at all? Fine, TGM it is. Block, block, block, block....

Then I realize after a while I really don't need to be sitting here actually doing this. Just pin down the block key with a weight and come back in an hour or four when Block is at 60 or 90 or something.

Then I realize... was I playing a game at some point along here? Dunno.

Well, it seems to me if you′re doing it that way you might as well not play at all

The console commands do tend to take the game away. They're invaluable for testing, as I can adjust a character directly to any set of skill levels to try out a quest - particularly things like sneak, where too little skill can make you fail completely, and there are lots of other examples. But I'd only use them while playing to bypass bugs and glitches.

My preference in-game is the summoned creature. It's legitimate practice of the conjuration, too. And you can soul-trap them for extra mysticism as well as recharging your equipment.

Although attacking hay bales and dummies doesn't give exp, Battlehorn DLC adds a sparring partner who does 0 damage, can take quite a lot of damage and is essential, he is useful for training against.

However, there are some "workarounds" for instance. If you have Battlehorn Castle addon, there is a npc in the bottom, who will duel you, it gives skillups. Also, there is a group of frozen people at the Shrine of Peryite, you can attack them and give skillups, they won't fight back though.


Agreed. When I first got the PC version it was tempting to use them, especially for gold when I wanted to buy something. But I felt terrible after using it, eventually broke that habit

In Leyawiin you can start a quest Whom gods annoy and you get four permanent scamp followers until you finish the quest which you can kill repeatedly and they respawn, they would make good sparring partners I guess.

IIRC the fighters stronghold DLC allows you to recruit a trainer in Battlehorn castle, an Orc I think.

*checks wiki*

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Shagrol_gro-Uzug