Hi, I'm Jeedmah! and I'm new to these forums. I'm trying to get into the role-playing element of TES IV and want to play some sort of Assassin, Thief, or general Criminal. How would I justify that in the context of the MQ? :biggrin

EDIT: I've gotten my ideas thanks to Kalarn. This is still open for discussion.

Because your own power is the only true power. That'd be my reason

Assassin - You were born to abusive parents. They beat you down every day in drunken rage. One night during your teenage years, you dreamt of watching their throats get slit and when you woke up it happened while you sleep-walked. Ever sicne, you've thought about that night. You kill people for a living, but not anyone, only people who have wronged others.

Thief - The streets have been cruel to you your whole life. You were orphaned at a young age and were forced to survive in the Waterfront as a peasant. Over the years, you learned the tricks of the trade. You don't steal to be malicious or because of greed, you steal to survive, because in the end that's all you've got is the fact that you're still breathing.

General Criminal - Organized crime has been your game since you were a young adolescent. Your famiyl was poor, your mother was ill, and your father's body was broken and abused from years of labor in the ebony mines. You supported the family by helping out the Thieves' Guild with whatever they needed. Your parents thought you were working as a merchant's apprentice, but you knew the truth behind it. You were a thief, a murderer, a criminal, you always would be, but you didn't do it for you. You did it to free your father of the labor of the mines.

Any more?

I like those ideas. Especially the first two. Thank you.

No problem, buddy Always glad to help a roleplayer in need.

I thought the point of roleplaying is you can make up whatever reason you want for stuff? Its a big place, I always figured its just like real life in the sense that you can have the whole 'be whatever you want to be when your grow up' sort of reasoning.

Role playing is always fairly easy for any type of character. However, I find that I never seem to take my assassin through the MQ. It just feels wrong.
Not wrong from a RP point of view, but wrong from the limited light armor that the game gives you. The Stealth Armor doesnt work with the MQ and Chain, Mithril, Elven, Glass is plain horrible.

So, unfortunately my assassin sticks to DB and a little bit of TG. :verymad:

Well, I'm off to create my lich... My game has M.O.E. and a few other mods... I am especially glad to have the anti-leveling mod

I would agree that the point of role-playing is to play the character how you want, and justify your actions how you want. But if you are unsure of how to justify a less noble character doing the main quest, you should keep in mind that not every character necessarily has to do the main quest. If you really don't know how to justify your character doing the main quest, you can just ignore it. There are many other things to do as well.

Though with my current thief type character, she mostly delivered the Amulet to Jauffre because she figured that he'd just take it off her hands and take care of the rest, but then he gave her other tasks and even though she knew she was getting herself into something she would rather not be a part of, it simply did not feel right to stand aside and do nothing when the world might be in danger and others expected her to help out. Of course, I wouldn't necessarily call her evil, just not really an upstanding citezen of the Empire either.

Or you could delay the Main Quest until you have finished doing all of your killing and thieving. Then you could use the Main Quest as your characters road to redemption. As Selbeth said, you character is caught up in events that go beyond the mundane concerns of wealth and status. A lifetime spent in unsavory pursuits makes your character uniquely suited to the task of closing shut the jaws of Oblivion. Perhaps your character doesn't act out of some sense of heroic destiny. Perhaps he/she is only interested in self-preservation, or in stockpiling good will from those in high places.

Wow, great ideas Kalarn!



Link please?

Nice ideas, but I think the OP wanted to know how can he/she be evil and do the MQ at the same time. Because the MQ was clearly designed for good boy scouts.

This.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder

I think an evil character can go along with the MQ on the basis of looking for a way to profit illegally from the new regime. If you can get that naive monk installed as emperor, you should be able to play him like a puppet and really score. You're not being good, just deviously appearing that way.

Assassins aren't evil, they're just medieval guided missiles, so I'm really only discussing the other two choices. The thief will just be looking for entry to places with better loot, and the general evil character will have power-lust and being intent on hiding behind Martin as a stooge that takes the blame for anything that goes wrong.

Oh, BTW, if you're really evil, you don't feel the need to justify what you do, anyway, so I'm treating this as "Why would the evil character do the MQ"

Another way to view it is that you might be a thieving and murdering bastard, but you'd still prefer to live in a world that isn't overrun by the daedric hordes.

Well, my Assassin character actually has a mental disorder of some sort. He feels no remorse in killing and no patience for anything else. He knows he's bad, and wouldn't mind going to jail, or even being executed.

Other than that, you could say he's taking his anger out on the world.

Or you could go with "if not me, than someone else" attitude. There's a lot of ways to look at it..

when my assassin did the mq, he assumed he was getting paid like any other job, also it was job security, kings always need to get rid of people and he was the type to make people disappear, Shame it didn't work out in the long run

As The Tick once said when asked if he had the power to destroy the world: "I hope not, that's where I keep all my stuff!" The whole world being destroyed while your on it tends to be a great motivator.

Survival is a good reason. Pursuit of power and/or influence is another one. Proving your power is a good one also. My Imperial Battle mage went on to make the empire his own, but got side tracked by the Shivering isles.