`Precisely. The game lets you use any build you like, then someone goes and puts artificial restrictions on themselves, then they complain they are being restricted. My fighter can't pick locks. Why not? I said he can't, and now I'm annoyed about it.

Weapon skills will probably go up plenty fast without a guardian stone because they will be more heavily used than most skills. In fact, it may even be desirable to pick a guardian stone for the skills you use least so that they get maximum gains when you do practice them. In Oblivion, I ended up using mods to slow experience gain significantly because you leveled too fast normally, and in Skyrim leveling will be even faster. I'm not sure increasing the experience gain in the skills I'll be using most will be what I want anyhow.

The problem is really the stones. You either have to forgo speeding up skill gain rates or you have to take out of the way trips back and forth to swap between different stones. Either intentionally gimping your character or dragged out grinds using guardian stones. Wasn't this the problem with attribute multipliers at level ups? I don't see this as substantially different.

They should have just provided players with a means to select preferred skills which level at faster rates and be done with it.

I don't see the problem? Just use bows and one-handed weapons.

There's archery, daggers, sneak bonuses, poison, enchantments, and reverse pick-pocketing
On top of that I assume there will be perks for the blade/marksman/sneak skill.

These here Guardian stones, they offer a 30% bonus, that is significantly less than the bonuses for having a specialised major skill in Oblivion. If your character does not get this bonus to exactly the mix of skills you want, it's hardly going to be game breaking.

Think about it.

Does stealth -really- mean fighting?

I mean, i'm a combat/subtlety class type. I like to creep in the shadows, and open up when it suits me. A "real" stealth type will generally avoid conflict. Hell, thats the POINT of stealth. The sneaky thief still has plenty of nasty tricks thanks to their alchemy skill. A few well placed poisons and an entire mob can be decimated. On top of that, their "offense" is surprise. That initial shot coming from the shadows will vitally wreck the opponent. However...

Those who choose to be more of a combat rogue will need to *gasp* train in COMBAT! That means moving more over to the way of the warrior and acquire some fighting skills. But then, when your busy smashing peoples faces in outside your initial sneak attack, your not being very stealthy, are you? Even then, the ONLY thing training warrior skills is gana do, is make you better at what you were trying to get better at (killing things, right?).

So now you gata choose your character. Are you going to be the stand up rogue fighter? The one who slithers in the shadows wearing heavy armors and wielding great combat skills to fight and take down multiple opponents, while using deception and trickery like poisons? Or are you the subtle type, who will slip past unnoticed, only taking down a few key targets with your poison of silence and powerful sneak attacks. Sneaking in to steal the few great treasures inside with little or no resistance at all. When your gone, they'll never even know you were there.

As i said, i like to make things die, so i practice a lot in combat skills, but i STILL make full use of my stealth tree skills like lock picking, alchemy, and mercantile (this time i wont even feel bad for leveling it).

So no, its not really a flaw at all. Its just the nature of the game, and how it should be. A less consolised version of Skyrim would likely have separate weapon skills, with daggers/light blades under the stealth tree though. I'd like to see some perks somewhere that specifically augment the stealth-combat transitions, but so far that seems unfortunately unlikely.

They arnt assassin skills damn it they are thief skills a master thief kills no one. This get rinsed and reapeated. Archery isn't a stealth things it's a killing thing. Mix the skills, that's the point, thief warrior mix = assassin, warrior Mage mix = battle Mage, Ect.

People seem to want a stealth game. ES is not a stealth game, just a game that let's you be stealthy as much as is possible.

Sometimes you will need to fight in the open. If you want pure stealth, play Splinter Cell or Thief.

Killing things can very much be a stealth move. Removing your enemy's eyes is obviously conducive to your stealth. A successful stealth tactician does not necessarily avoid violence if it suits her. If artfully employed, the target of the violence won't have even realized they were killed.

Pure stealth character == Thief

If you want to be an assassin, you'll need to have some skill as a warrior as well. With the flexibility of the skills system in Skyrim this won't be a problem. It's natural that stealth characters are weaker combat-stat-wise, as they have the ability to hide and get around enemies undetected, as well as striking from the shadows which gives huge damage bonuses. If they weren't weaker combat-stat-wise then the stealth character type would be way more powerful than both Warrior and Mage style.

I hope that is true, it would fit my character concept perfectly.

I certainly hope there are birthstones for hybrid characters. For a game that is not supposed to have any classes, having these 3 birthstones that benefit playing 'pure' stealth/magic/warrior characters over anything else is kinda stupid.

I'd rather see none of that birthstone stuff.

So the stealth category should include sneak, lockpick, and... nothing else then, yeah? I mean, speech isn't very "stealthy". You're all talking to people and [censored]. Youre intentionally making yourself visible and engaging in pvssyr. Not silent at all. And light armor? What kind of thief are you? What you plan on being in a fight or something? Alchemy, too. A real stealth master don't need no steenkin' potions!

Or we realize that all of these things, including combat skills, have a very real benefit to stealth gameplay. The decision to remove any direct combat skill from this category serves only to make things awkward and cumbersome for stealth players who aim to use guardian stones (read: any players not set on intentionally slowing their progress).

In metagaming, min/max terms, the Guardian stones are bonuses fixed to a certain group of skills that may not match your desired build. In in-game terms, they are tied to the skills governed by a set of minor constellations, those groups determined by the influence of three greater constellations. Imho, any complaint about them is in those metagaming terms. In purely game world terms, they make whatever sense the writers say they do.

As someone said already the grouping isn't "stealth" but "The Thief". Here is some lore! "The Thief is the last Guardian Constellation, and her Season is the darkest month of Evening Star. Her Charges are the Lover, the Shadow, and the Tower. Those born under the sign of the Thief are not typically thieves, though they take risks more often and only rarely come to harm. They will run out of luck eventually, however, and rarely live as long as those born under other signs."

It will be hard to be "gimped" in Skyrim as they took out the attribute system. So even if you have to make a choice over which constellation to focus on, I doubt it will cause pwning problems.

And any complaint against attribute modifiers at level up in past games is only in metagaming terms. Except, that doesn't invalidate the point. It's dumb design. Beth removes all of these stats that allegedly result in character mistakes and force grinds and whatever, but then they go and implement arbitrary distinctions like this that go ahead and encourage that same sort of grind.

A role playing game should encourage role playing. That means designing systems that make it attractive for the player to role play their character. If they are constantly presented with choices like, "Role play? Or stronger character?" If the player is forced to fight against gameplay systems simply to play a particular build effectively, then Beth has [censored] up. Building characters effectively and role playing are not incompatible concepts.

So essentially you're complaining that you won't be able to have your custom selection of skills increasing 30% percent faster? Really now? Now it's not been said if there will or will not be custom Guardian Stones, but given the Guardian Stones we do know, this is a "problem" for EVERY "archetype". Quote-unquote on problem because it's only a problem to people who like to complain for the sake of complaining.

Like I said before, 30% faster, if we're going to go by the previous recent Elder Scrolls games, doesn't mean much. In fact, it's significantly less than what you could achieve in the previous games. This problem is a non-problem. You're just complaining to complain.

The Stealth Specialization has combat options, so the Thief Guardian Stone will do just fine for those who want to raise Stealth skills. It doesn't matter if a weapon skill that isn't part of the Stealth Specialization is getting raised. Level scaling isn't as terrible as Oblivion AND you won't get any level penalty for doing so. You won't miss out maximizing a level as you would in the previous games (Missing out on attribute multipliers). You won't even have to spend your perk points right away.

This thread just proves that people like to complain for the sake of complaining. Lulz lets complain that a weapon skill outside the Stealth Specialization will increase slightly slower than my main Stealth Specialization skills when I use the Thief Guardian Stone. O.o ... Really? o.O ...

So don't turn on any Guardian stone. Your skills increase at the rate you use them, and autoleveling of mobs keeps pace. If you were to assign a "xp bonus" to six different skills, all you are doing is causing yourself to level faster, more or less.

I plan to focus on magic and thief skills. Probably I will keep the Thief guardian stone up most of the time, and balance out by playing a Breton and maybe taking more perks in the magic area and raising magica more.

You do not need guardian stone bonuses, or pay any mind whatever, to the archetype distinctions, to either role play, or progress a character with an effective build. The bonuses to certain groups of skills is there if you want it. Don't take the bonus is deliberate gimping? I agree only insofar as initially you will miss out. Personally, finding a more interesting stone will be a priority, one that goes with my character. So whether these early available bonuses are well thought out or not becomes moot at that point.

Sounds like your complaints are really a disguise for complaints of the class-less system and decrease of attributes system that Skyrim has.

You know, I'm going to make a character that only raises the Speech skill and then complain that I can't excel in combat. That's how you sound like. Seriously. The only dumb thing here is your logic.

Ok... Backs up...you do realise the set of skills is the thief not stealth or assassin please read the post you reply. Do the thief guild rewards the character for not killing not being noticed. You want the dark brother hood( by the sounds of it your already in the mind set. ) assassins are stealth KILLERs you'll need some stealth some warrior kills. Tag the theif stone you'll soon level your combat kill if you really plan on killing lots of ppl.

Absolutely. If I can accomplish the exact same thing in seven minutes instead of ten, how is that not always preferable? There's no loss in content. I can always travel the world killing a billion nameless monsters and I can still complete all the quests. I'm just forced to tediously grind certain skills that are not covered by guardina stones or make tedious trips to a few different guardian stones to adequately level my character.

What, at all, is good about this system when Beth could just as easily implement a system in which I simply choose preferred skills?

It encourages a grind. The fix is absurdly simple (it shouldn't have needed a fix to begin with). What does the size matter? If you have a hangnail, you don't just leave it there to bug you because it's not a big deal. You clip it off.

It doesn't have combat options. It has skills that can augment combat, not combat in itself. Mages of destruction, should that be moved to the "combat" category? The issue is with creating a tedious experience, not whether or not you'll be penalized after all is said and done. The game is penalizing you now.

You don't, obviously. Just like how you didn't need x5 attribute modifiers in Morrowind or Oblivion. But the game absolutely encouraged that type of play. That is not the way a role playing game should be designed. It should be designed to encourage and foster role playing. It will always be less successful at that if it's constantly incentivizing grinding out your character stats.

This is what I'm talking about. A game that fosters role playing rather than one that encourages grinds.

That's not what I said, like, at all.

What does being a thief have to do with whether or not combat skills are included? Or, why not then also exclude things like light armor speech and alchemy as well? The thieves guild has never completely shunned necessary or unavoidable killing. They are a band of thugs who rob people. Things were slightly different in Oblivion, but even then the no-kill order was waived on occasion.

Well, if you did bother to talk around the Dark Brotherhood headquarters in Oblivion, you'd see at least one of them wasn't anything like a STEALTH killer, just a plain killer. Although you might argue that he needed some stealth skill check to hide in that cake, all the rest of his behavior was that only the killing part mattered for him and that was all he'd bother with.

That kind of eliminates (or hardens) the possibility to play a pure-thief, which is no problem to me. I never play a pure archetype anyway.