From memory those three gardian Stones aren't the only ones there are,
I recall that we were told in the E3 Demo that there were a lot of other different ones.
I'm sure they've catered for someone who wants to level their stealth skills at the same time as combat skiills, you just have to find the right gardian stone for you thats all!

Daggers are part of stealth and the multiplyer is significant....like 10x I think todd said. Add poisons and you can take NPC's out. I am concerned about dragons. Unless we have throwing weapons.

Yea a recent preview said there's a stone that gives the power to raise the dead, so it looks like there will be a wide and varied range of them.

Who says you cant "do what you want, be what you want" ?

Be a stealth character and use a bow... who's gonna stop you?

What he said you define yourself in this game

I always made my own class anyway

Ninjas are stealthy warriors. Just saying. :toughninja:

Oh I agree I would love that, I would find it extremely irritating to keep running back and forth over and over...

I could imagine that a stealth character would be about on par, or even better in normal combat that a magic or combat oriented character, as the stealth bonus on weapons, as well as poisoning and pickpocketing can all play an effective role. However, it would seem to me that this all goes out the window when you're facing a dragon, how does one sneak up on a dragon? doubt one could be pickpocketed either. seems like stealth chars will be forced to pick a skill from another tree if they want to stand a chance.

Dual wielding daggers... High dps low defence, 1 high dmg burst.

Should likely still be viable against dragons, just same tactic as warriors cept maybe bring a few more potions.

This is exactly right, daggers may not be the most powerful weapons, but by the time a warrior has swings their 2 handed axe, you will have already swung your daggers 4-5 times, now add on to that a range of poisons, whether they be something that applies a DoT, or drains stamina to make them slower, using 2 daggers you should even be able to add a different poison to each one, I have no doubt dagger users will be able to hold their own just fine, I plan too

I don't think this is really that big of a flaw. First, you might raise your skills slower, but the rate of increase of your thief skills is merely a perk and not something that is required. Is it kind of silly that the stealth skills don't get a way to attack? Maybe, Marksmen was always considered a stealth skill in the past.

But I don't think this will hinder a stealth character in anyway. Instead you will just need to focus on using Alchemy for poisons. Pickpocketing will also allow you to put poisons onto foes, as well as taking their weapons. Marksmen will level just fine without the boost, it will just get supplemented by the poisons and the access to better items early on from thievery. Which I am sure is their logic in this decision.

Putting Marksmen as a warrior skill was likely considered as something for a pure warrior that doesn't want to use magic to be able to take down a dragon if it doesn't want to get out of the air.

In TES, you can be a super stealthy rogue in heavy armor if you focus on skills. This isn't a drawback, with archery's movement to fighting.

If anything, it's a boon for simplification.

Pretty sure stealth gives bonuses to daggers, without need of the "one-handed" skill

I heard this to. Dagger perk from Stealth > One handed skill.

So much so that for a high level stealth guy, daggers are more powerful than any sword.

You are worrying about nothing.
There is no more classes, just skill categories which are Magic, Combat, and Stealth
and all that means is that certain skills fall under a certain category. So yes, you will need combat skills for combat, and stealth skills for sneaking and thieving, and magic skills for magic-ing stuff and such.


edit: It only makes sense for a 'backstab' perk to be set in the Stealth section, backstab/sneak attacks can do monstrous damage, it wouldn't make sense for standard warriors to get
to take advantage of that while stealthy types do not. it is supposed to represent a suprise attack or ambush, something a sneaky sneakface would employ.

Anyone know if poisons are still a "I stab you once and the poison needs to be reapplied" thing or will they have an increased amount of hits this time.?

I'm pretty sure than I'm not going to choose a guardian stone... I'm not exactly sure why, it just seems better to have the sets of skills I want levelling at the same rate, and I could probably do with the extra bit of difficulty....

The whole stealth/mage/warrior breakdown is weak. TES should be about bunking that crap.

This. Daggers are governed by Sneak, not One Handed.

im sure sneak skill tree like pickpocket poison perk will have someing like dagger back stab or sandman perk to kill the sleeping or stealth kill x damage

I'd say that this is correct. You're worrying about nothing. The only real flaw I see is your inability to deduct that Stealth does indeed have OFFENSIVE OPTIONS. Granted, you might slowly raise a weapon skill along with those offensive options, but is that really an issue? To me, that's akin to non-combat specialized characters running or swimming in the previous games. Running or swimming in the previous games increased Athletics. Did your stealth characters not run in the previous games?

As for Guardian Stones, only three have been revealed. For all we know, there could be a Guardian Stone that increases the skill up rate for your selection of stealth skills and weapon skills.

At this rate, I wonder how long is it before "Warriors" start complaining that combat specialized skills don't have a way to open locks for better loot.

PS.
+30% means absolutely nothing when we don't what the base number is. I.e. 1.0 -> 1.3 or 10 -> 13. The only time any of those percentages meant anything to me was when it was concerning Athletics. Why? Because that skill is a pain in the ass to raise manually, taking 70+ hours of swimming without any specialization or major skill increase.

Agreed. I'm not sure why they're insisting on using these arbitrary categorizations in a system, that's purportedly about character freedom.

I think this complaint has been raised. I'd say the majority of the forum here does want some means of brute-forcing a lock.

Pickpocket is an offensive skill, you can poison NPCs with it. In addition to daggers in the sneak skill getting huge damage bonus.

If you are going to say to yourself "my character will only use skills that are described, rather arbitrarily, as stealth skills", but still want offensive capability, that is not a flaw in the game, as there is no reason not to use offensive skills, rather less arbitrarily described as combat skills, as well. Why the hell would a mage not use alchemy? It's now a stealth skill. No, it's a skill whose constellation comes under the influence of the thief. Doesn't mean a thing.

Alright, let me use a better example. At this rate, I wonder how long is it before "Warriors" start complaining that combat specialized skills don't have a way to sneak around or use magic.

PS.
I figured the Daggerfall crowd would have something to say about my last comment on my previous post, but I got lazy. *Shrugs*