I think you're confusing some things. You're not forced to do anything. In fact, you're not even forced to use Guardian Stones. If you want to metagame and min/max, you might be "forced" to do certain things to effectively metagame and min/max. But that's your choice.

So this isn't even about the Stealth Specialization at all, is it? It's about Guardian Stones and a class system. First, you don't know what all the Guardian Stones will be. For all you know, there could be a Guardian Stones that has the selection of skills you want to increase.

And Stealth Specialization does have combat options. How is a skills that can augment combat not combat options? What kind of absurd logic is that? Destruction stays in Magic Specialization because... It's magic? O.o ... How is the game penalizing you? It's not. Before? There's MANY ways the game could penalize you. Now? As far as I know, there's far less ways.

How would you even begin to imagine what type of "play" Skyrim encourages? You a man of the future?

You know what? Why don't you do yourself a favor and pretend those skill rate increasing Guardian Stones don't exist. Tada, you have your ideal system.

Explain why leveling bonuses to arbitrary skill groupings is better than leveling bonuses to a group of skills selected by the player.

Having to reply to 6 different arguments to your own should show there are at least a few flaws in your points. Arguments over pretty much!? Orr I could result to wahh wahh my warrior can't fire arrows not an overly stealth thing more a open warfare thing but oh it's so unfair that my warrior has to have a stealth skill to dooz stuffs waaahhhh wahh wah. It's likely sneak contains critical bonus for a few weapons. After all the skill is in the sneaking, any moron can cut a guys throat from 6" away it's the getting there and doing it unnoticed that's important.

Not really, two were the same argument and the third (yours) I has already addressed earlier on the page. You're acting like "stealth" or "thief" as a concept is so well defined that it'd be crazy to have any direct combat options within the category. It's not. Killing a target is just as valuable to a stealth or thief character as it is to a melee character.

ITT: You can only use skills from one archetype.

The way Skyrim has it setup, I'd say it's better in terms of immersion and flexibility. Nothing is set in stone (o.o ...). That means you can switch between the many Guardian Stones that Skyrim has whenever you want. We only know of 3, but we've been told that there's more. Furthermore, it's not implemented in a way that's immersion breaking. It's subtly implemented as a gameplay mechanic rather than UI that pops up where you fill out your resume.

In addition, the first three basic stones do not contain a very significant bonus. From my perspective, it appears as though you would be able to do just fine without them. They seem like a little bonus. Extra credit work, if you will. Nothing too significant.

We've only been told of 3 Guardian Stones, however. For all you know, there could be custom Guardian Stones. Possibly 18 other Guardian Stones correlating with the 18 other preset classes of Oblivion. Surely you will be able to find something to suit your needs.

Now here's a thing. I will be forced to use a Guardian stone, for role playing purposes. Why? I would prefer to actually level more slowly, memories of Fallout 3, and not gain any experience bonuses. But my character, that's a different matter. Would she activate the Mage stone? Absolutely 100% yes. Nothing to do with metagaming, or what the actual bonuses are, but for role play reasons. Is it a problem that she will not use conjuration, but will do lots of alchemy. Not at all. To her, it's the mage stone, and she's a mage. Done deal.

Lets pretend that the Stealth Specialization skills or the "Thief" archetype doesn't have combat options. Lets pretend that the Sneak skill of the Stealth Specialization skills doesn't have perks relating to increased dagger damage and increased critical sneak damage. Lets pretend that you can't make alchemical poisons with Alchemy, which is under the Stealth Specialization skills. Lets pretend that Thieves don't have a Light Armor skill to defend themselves, in combat, in the Stealth Specialization skills.

Just mix in blade as a major skill when you make your character - solved

I can think of a bigger flaw. Stealth based dragon shouts. How in god's name will that work? will you linger in the shadows then shout "YOU CAN'T SEE ME!" and it will magically work. Or maybe while pickpocketing you can shout "LOOK OVER THERE!" and that will give you a bonus to pickpocket.

My proposal requires nothing be set in stone. I'm not talking about classes, I'm talking about preferred skills as designated by the player. You can implement that any number of ways. Keep the stones if necessary, while simply allowing the player to define precisely which skills are covered by those stones, or simply allow them to select any preferred skills anytime they want. I really don't care whether or not another person selects however many preferred skills immediately and sticks with them through the entire game or changes them up every two minutes.

Even if there exists a guardian stone to cover every class previously present in past games, they will not be able to cover the custom classes designed by players. Only by allowing the player to specifically choose each preferred skill can the range of possible character options be covered.

Sneak attack damage bonuses mean nothing unless they supremely trump any lack of weapon skill you may have. Alchemy can be used to reverse pickpocket poisons apparently, something I can't imagine being especially effective in actual combat situations with multiple enemies present. Light armor is exactly my point. Why is light armor considered a thief skill but weapon skills are not? Thieves only get attacked, never do the attacking?

The point is not that Beth can't arbitrarily categorize things anyway they want, but that the argument that combat skills do notbelong under the umbrella of stealth or thief is ridiculous.

To put the stone bonuses into perspective, an Oblivion major class had an xp bonus of 67%, a major with specialisation a huge 122% bonus. 30% is nothing special. As usual, the best way to increase any skill is use it, often.

As for the reasons why the designers chose this system instead of the old birthsigns bonuses, I could probably write a whole essay but there's not much point. In TES you have guilds for mages, fighters, thieves and assassins. I think these are styles lots of people play. With Skyrim they have decided to make the skill system highly symmetrical around the first three of those categories. However customization options ought to increase from everything I've read. For this guardian stone thing specifically, it basically just adds another variable to the algorithm. If you just pick your six most-used skills to increase faster, it is more like turning up the overall speed as opposed to adding another filter to the pattern.

When we develop a character, there is no rule which skills we should use and which skills we should not use.

The classes and attribute dependencies of skills are removed, and we are finally *free* to use any skill anytime we like.

The three archetype categories that the skills are placed under, are just for visual purposes in the sky, and we are not restricted with them.

So when you start to develop a stealth based character, you can pick skills that you like, and use them, and the skills can include "Archery", "One handed", "Illusion", or even "Heavy Armor" if you like, as well as "Sneak" and "Pick Pocket".

Finally in Skyrim, we are free to develop any character that we like, without restrictions, and no need to develop restricted or additional skills, in order to follow classes, or fulfill attribute bonuses in the level-up sessions.

We really likes it.

it is a stepping stone, I won't argue with you there. But as far as crippling your character, I don't think that will be an issue. Your combat skills will still level up, though not as fast, but I think the reason beth went that direction is because the stealth bonus attack plus a faster combat xp gain would be slight OP. And as far as your concern with fighting dragons, I think the best way to bring them down will be strategy, not power. It seems to me that a with a beast like that, it wouldn't much matter how hard you can swing your arm. And don't forget to add the shouts to your arsenal, I'm sure they'll come in handy; they might even be one of the only ways to bring the dragon down. And at the end of the day, a person who usually gains victory from the shadows and knives to the throat wouldn't fare well against a fifty foot dragon coming straight at them, so it adds to the realism of the role playing aspect, if it were a problem at all. But in the end I trust bethesda's judgement and since they've been at skyrim for a couple of years, I'm pretty sure they thought of every possibility.

Edit: ps: I'm pretty sure that in the playthrough on g4, he said that those three stones weren't the only three, and that you find more as you explore. So there may very well be a stone with all of the skills that you're looking for, who knows?

How do you know if there will or will not be custom Guardian Stones? You a man of the future?

Anyhow, I find it rather funny how you continue to stubbornly ignore the Thief archetypes combat options and them claim it has none. Why is light armor considered a thief skill? Probably because somewhat who's more into direct combat will be in Heavy Armor and because it's also easier to sneak and utilize stealth in Light Armor.

You're just a boon of negativity. Complain to complain. Assume negatively and illogically to try to superficially strengthen your argument. From what I've heard, the Sneak attack damage perks are quite potent. In fact, the dagger perks in the Sneak skill, that increase damage, is the most potent damage increasing perk there is in the game (If I recall correctly). Poisons were quite potent in Oblivion. One can only assume that they will be even better or just as good in Skyrim, if not, at the very least, potent.

The options are there. Obviously if you continue to stubbornly ignore them, that's on you, not on the game.

Yeah.

Are we really going to do this [censored] again? The last time we pvssyd was another giant argument over semantics. It's perfectly clear what is meant by combat skills. Skills that deal direct damage, do not require partner skills to be of value, and can effectively kill an opponent in a combat situation. That's clearly been the definition in effect since the original post. If you want to insist on saying, "Nuh-uh, X is right there," when I'm clearly talking about Y, then let's just end this right here.

If a "Thief" type is hellbent in not improving any non thief type skills, he can always punch things to death once all his usual thievy options failed.

Mr. Man Of The Future, what I stated does not REQUIRE partner skills. If anything, it just requires weapons. Yes, using those weapons will increase the weapon skills associated with said weapon, but the skill numbers themselves are not required. Just look at some of the potent poisons of Oblivion. They sure as hell didn't require for the weapon skills to be high.

Yes, the Thief archetype doesn't have weapon skills. However, that does not mean that it doesn't have combat options. Lets see if you can actually stop being in denial.

People the point he is making is that you don't get the 30% exp gain for killing someone with either magic or warrior weapons so stealth characters might level up slower than others, becasue they won't get that boost. Killing is one of the main exp sources so this is totally [censored] things up...

Killing is one of the main experience sources? What? ... I'm not even going to bother giving a legitimate reply to this dribble.

No. For a pure thief, sneaking should be your main xp source.

Simple, as they said, they don't want to tie anyone down to choices they made at the beginning of the game, hence no classes. If I play this game as my first TES game (so not), and choose skills and then upon entering find I don't like those skills, but only after having played 4 hours, I now have to either deal with a gimped character or go start over again?

It works a lot better, for a system needing to work with new players as well as old (yeah surprise Bethesda wants to get as many people on the TES train as possible, and changing things can help with that) to just incorporate the Guardian Stones. I won't be going out of my way to find the right one. If I do, then fine - it won't match all of my major skills likely, but that is also fine.

Your system where you simply choose preferred skills works well for you. You must realize by now that you are not the only player that Bethesda cares about, no?

Archetypes (Warrior, Thief, Mage) do not affect the game, they are just for categorizing purposes.

I seem to remember a movie clip from the trailer where they were doing some type of stealth kill. If this is the case, then it is quite an advantage as it is.

People are missing the OP's question/concept....

He's not saying "I want to play a Thief! Only those six skills! How dare they force me to use a Combat skill!"

He's saying "If I have the Thief stone active, my Combat skills will increase too slowly! When I'm level 25, and the monsters have scaled to level 25, my -30% Combat skills will be too weak! I'll get slaughtered in combat / gimped! The game is forcing me to keep running back to switch to the Combat guardian stone so that I can keep my Combat skills up to par!"

So yeah.... most of the stuff you guys are arguing about has nothing to do with the original thread topic.



...for the record, I think he's over-worrying, and that there won't be any problem like that.