Do my eyes deceive me?

See, I've played a pure mage and a pure warrior and had tons of fun. I thought I'd plan a pure stealth build (all skills limited to that school) when I realized the stealth school has no offensive ability! Archery, one-handed, two-handed, conjured weapons, destruction magic, etc. are all in other schools.

Well, that's pretty tough to work around.

I could see just wearing clothes and not using magic, but no weapons of any kind? Just punch everything to death (on Legendary difficulty)? Just hire muscle constantly and let them do the dirty work (seems kind of boring).

What do you guys think:

1. Is a pure Stealth school build (no skills from other schools!) viable? (I say no)

2. If you 'cheat' and add a weapon proficiency, what's more natural for a thief who doesn't smith or enchant: a physical weapon or a bound weapon?

May, or may not, play as Dragonborn, on Legendary difficulty, on console so no mods.

Thanks much!

Dear Brother, let not the absence of warrior perks offend thy senses. Members of the family are all well versed in Stealth means to assassinate our marks. 'Back stab' with a small knife is very efficient and stealthy. Assassins Blade more so. To utilise these stealth bonuses requires a dagger 'tis true, but then archery requires a bow does it not......no one would expect someone using the archery tree to do so without a bow. And no one expects a stealthy backstab to be performed without a dagger.

Sharpen a small blade and carry out the will of Sithis my brother........

2. In Morrowind and Oblivion marksman was a stealth skill.

In Skyrim, Archery will still level faster under the Thief stone not the Warrior.

Since the sneak tree has perks that increase damage for both bows and one handed weapons, I'd say you can use those for pure sneak builds, but if you are being a purist, you would not perk one handed or archery for a pure stealth build. But you could still use them.

That's a good perspective - you can use the skill, just not perk it. Even though the build won't smith or enchant, there'll be enough enchanted gear in loot that she'll have a passable offensive capability. Throw in full-blown alchemy and you've got something!

Poisoner perk falls within stealth. Though on legendary I think you'd have to poison someone many times to succeed. And anything undead is immune to poison.

It is going to be difficult against strong enemies that have have the super detection sense. Those draugr deathlords see you even if you have a high sneak skill. And you can't poison them either.

Only if you're not on PC and using the Unofficial Patch, though.

Kami is on Xbox 360, so archery is governed by the Thief Stone. Problem solved?

I still think archery is part of the thief skillset, and not warrior.

Crossbows are best though. Regular bows are more fitting for assasins or actual archers, but I can't imagine a thief becoming proficient with a bow.

You know, stealthing your way through a whole dungeon (with a bit of crossbowing) to get to the boss chest is loadsafun.

It is for reasons like this that I pay little attention to Bethesda's combat archetypes. If I were doing this, I would invent my own "thief archetype" and play that. Why accept somebody else's idea of what constitutes "pure thief skills?"

Besides, they're apt to change the rules from one game to the next anyway. It's a bit too arbitrary for me to take seriously.

I agree with Pseron. No need to get put into silly boxes that I'm sure the devs never intended. If you don't use any skills except those in the 'stealth family' of skills, you will simply not be able to fight. Just as if you only use warrior skills (or only mage skills), you will not be able to buy/sell things (speechcraft). Limiting the skills your character can use is great fun - my elf only uses half a dozen skills. . . but limiting yourself to the administrative restrictions of what family of skills the game has assigned each to is not going to work out so well. If you make silly choices in character building, you get silly results.

I hate the whole idea of limiting what your character can do. I prefer to customize them by limiting how good they are at certain things (by which skills get perked) and if I could I would set certain skills to not increase no matter how much I did something. My weak, clutzy mage could run around hitting things with swords all day but would never get any better at it. My strong, but fairly stupid warrior could mumble the few basic spells he managed to memorize all day but would never understand enough to learn higher spells. I really hate that skills go up even if you don't want them to. They could at least ask if you wanted the skill increase.

Here you go, The Burglar: http://tamrielvault.com/group/character-building/forum/topics/character-build-the-burglar?xg_source=activity
Pure stealth, no combat skills.

Weren't short blades also a stealth school skill in Morrowind? Not sure about Oblivion as I have not played that much at all.

Otherwise, I agree with Pseron. A "Stealth Character" is what you make them, using stealth. The game may not "agree", but so what?

[EDIT]

Just remembered! Stealth School also has the combination of Pick Pocket AND Alchemy! Reverse pick pocketing can be quite offensive

Choosing some perks from the warrior archetype does not make you a warrior. Same for my barbarians that using light armor they are still barbarians and not Rogues. Same for my warriors that spent two or tree perks from the restoration school, they are still warriors and not healers nor mages.

Of course my warriors know that surviving need open mind and thinking outside the box. The need to survive coming first so all this staffs, potions and spells are fair game.

True story: I'm playing Skyrim non stop from the day it came out and i just find that detect life can detect Falmers inside their nest/holes. It would be plain wrong if i want use this knowledge to find the falmers before the sneak on me because i'm playing a warrior class, both as a player and as the Dragonborn. You see, in my mind its canon that the Dragonborn is a fine and intelligent person.(Yes i know that i just butcher english as a pro)

Thief carry bow.

Never play the Thief series? Garret carries a bow that's used for distraction. Noisemaker arrows and the like.

The thieves you com across in random counters dual wield daggers. The thieves that demand some money or they'll "gut you like a fish". So why shouldn't you be able to use daggers at least?

You can get your sneak level up really quickly. That said, take the assassins perk on the right side of the tree, then sneak up behind your enemy and slit their throats. Still on the offensive and you don't have to put any perks in one handed. Same could be said with archery.