Dodge would work in a modern game, and I just found the solution tonight. It was from the game Dark Messiah. As I played it, I noticed the running backpedal didn't work as a tactic because the game didn't allow backward running. I think it made the combat more interesting without the ridiculous backpedal ability, because you couldn't back away fast enough from power attacks or kicks, so enemies were actually dangerous when using those.

Even if you (not you specifically Obxure) didn't like the idea of removing backward running, how is the dodge skill different from the armor skills? If you aren't going to be hit at all because of your player skill, then remove the armor skills.

I like having eight magic skills, and bring back Thaumaturgy is a good one. Necromancy would also rock. I'd prefer though to eliminate restoration to add those spells to thaumaturgy. Necromancy would be an intelligence skill like medical would be, so it makes a better pairing for them to employ that instead (not instant healing of course). I don't really want to see the game letting you chug health potions all day or keep casting healing spells on yourself, so I'd like to nerf Restoration quite a bit.

Schnell Olfy suggested replacing alteration with a school called Dynamism that uses alteration's "Force" type powers, like shield, open, burden, feather, and take telekinesis from Mysticism. It seems like a better grouping of abilities to me. Water breathing and water walking would return to thaumaturgy.

I'd like to replace Conjuration with the Daedric skill, letting you summon daedra but not undead or wildlife.

I have this idea for skills with limits, like your major skills you can level all the way to 100 your secondaries to 75 and finally your minor skills to 50 max. This would promote balance and enhance replay value while making character builds matter more.

More skills is usually better, as long as they are semi-useful at least.
I thought Morrowind did it well...

I'd like it like Morrowind's skill set, however I would like short blade, axe, spear, and long blade removed and instead impliment these skills:
Blades (short swords and long swords alike)
Polearms (spears, axes, and warhammers)

Basically have the skillset look like this:
1. Blunt
2. Blade
3. Polearm
4. Marksman
5. Hand to Hand
6. Destruction
7. Illusion
8. Alchemy
9. Enchant
10. Mysticism
11.Alteration
12. Restoration
13. Conjuration
14. Sneak
15. Security
16. Armor (Heavy, Light, Medium, and Unarmored respectively)
17. Athletics
18. Block
19. Mercantile
20. Speechcraft
21. Acrobatics

Something like this is ok. I don't know about throwable though - I dont think it would be worth putting points into it

I like the calendar with the festivals too.

Morrowind felt just about right. Definitely don't want any less than Oblivion.

Honestly, with all the mountains in Skyrim, I really hope they add a climbing skill.

I don't want to have large chunks of the map inaccessible thanks to steep slopes

Since everyone else is doing it, I'll expand on my FOUR specializations wishlist (knowing full well it's likely too late for THIS game):

(Primary governing attribute is colored beside each)

Combat

Long Blade - Strength
Polearm - Endurance
Blunt - Strength
Axe - Strength
Block - Strength
Heavy Armor - Endurance
Armorer - Endurance

Magic (heavily influenced by Shades - in parentheses I mark which Oblivion skills would lend some spells to each)

Destruction - Willpower
Daedric (Conjuration) - Intelligence
Necromancy (Conjuration, plus Soul Trap) - Intelligence
Thaumaturgy (Restoration, Alteration) - Willpower
Dynamism (Alteration, Mysticism) - Willpower
Enchant - Intelligence
Illusion (plus Detect Life) - Personality

Stealth

Short Blade - Speed
Marksman - Endurance
Acrobatics - Agility
Athletics - Speed
Sneak - Agility
Security - Agility
Light Armor - Agility

Layman/Vagabond

Speechcraft (Includes Language) - Personality
Mercantile - Personality
Unarmored - Speed
Hand to Hand - Speed
Medical - Willpower
Outdoorsman, which includes things like calming beasts, eluding pursuers (covering tracks) and hearing creature noises from further off) - Personality
Alchemy - Intelligence

Morrowind has the perfect amount of skills to me, but I wouldn't mind seeing a little more in Skyrim.

I think Mr. E's post has it pretty well.

Couldnt Climbing, Running, Jumping and Swimming be part of one skill (Survival or Athletics) BUT NOT the way Athletics was implemented in O?

Wait, I'm too tired... You don't get better at Climbing just because you swim 50 kms.... Bad idea - time to go to bad (4am).

I'd like as many as possible for variation in characters but as long as they are all relevant skills. If some of them are useless (like Speechcraft in OB) then there really isn't any point.

Rock on dude. I like the skill list. If they wouldn't use mine, I'd want them to use yours here.

Two gripes though, don't pay them too much mind if you don't agree: One is that I think Marksman (concerning bows and arrows) is the most strength intensive skill there could be, and the size of bow you wield would really depend on your strength attribute. Some of the best archers in mythology were supposed to be really strong, like Hercules, Apollo, Robin Hood, and Marduk.

The second is the darned armor skills, but I guess you know what I think about that. You could fill an endurance slot with an equestrianism skill, but they'd have to do a lot of work with horses and mounts to allow that.

Edit: I kinda like the idea of dropping mysticism too, as it is the red headed stepchild of magic. Would you agree that intervention spells should be put into thaumaturgy, recall spells would be put into dynamism, and daedric interventions would be handled by daedric? That gives a spread of teleporation spells, aside from the mages guild which could teleport you all over anyway.

(Quoting you because don't feel like digging up that list)

I still don't think Illusion should be governed by Personality. One might think that one would use Illusion because they aren't the most charming person in the first place. That and it seems like something more intelligent-based because your altering someone's mind with magick. I could be misunderstanding the mechanics behind the spells but Personality just shouldn't be placed with magick IMO.

I agree, I put illusion on the Willpower list. I don't think any amount of personality will make you physically invisible, or make light appear in front of you.

Exactly what I mean. Unfortunately I understand why they put it in Personality because of trying to fit 21 skills into 7 attributes, but I hardly think that justifies strange choices :laugh:

I concur on the first, and the only reason I listed it as Endurance and Block as Strength is that the former is a sustained effort whereas the latter is over a very short burst. They could easily be switched.

And on the second, I think I recall your thoughts (and Absinthe's too, IIRC)... Armor skills don't make sense because you're deliberately subjecting yourself to punishment in order to get better at them as Elder Scrolls does it, which is counterintuitive. And I see the point, but I still think they merit being there.

I'd personally put most of Mysticism into Dynamism, and the stragglers as seen fit (thus why Detect Life I count as illusion and Soul Trap as Necromancy).

A good second endurance filler would be Climbing.

Sure, sure. One favor that would be an easy change is to change the name of Block to Shield. The ability to block should be handled by every type of weapon skill you block with instead of a general skill, whereas a Shield skill would let you attack with the shield and perform faster coverage.

Also as I mentioned in another thread, dodge would get a fair shake if, like Dark Messiah, they didn't let your character run backwards. Running backwards in every Elder Scrolls title was a great tactic for avoiding damage, but it undercuts the roll playing. It's hard to justify armor skills or dodge skills if people can escape any attack by clever keyboard tricks. I find that preventing running backpedaling means that you're going to have tougher harsher combat because you can't fake your way through it.

I completely agree. I can't understand why they left it out of Morrowind when they had all those hills and mountains everywhere.

Can't stand the way Oblivion was dumbed down. Went from MW's Long Blade, Short-Blade, Axe, Spear, Blunt and Marksman to half that in Oblivion. I really want VARIETY. I want my two pauldrons to look different. I want as many different types of armour and weapons in the game as they feel they can fit on the disk(s). Really got depressed by the OBL armour progression: worst, next worst, slightly better, better yet etc.

I'm gonna have one more go at this, concerning some of the changes Shades pointed out. But please keep your list intact. Two of these will last longer than one, and we don't quite know what the armor situation is yet.

Origonal


Updated list:



and the list of all the changes:

As much as I would like more skills, it's also important that all the skills are useful and that they are different from each other.

By useful I don't mean that all skills need to be equally useful for every character, but every skill should be one of the most useful skills for one possible playstyle. For example it's perfectly fine if Restoration is more useful than Security for most character as long as for a thief Security is more useful than Restoration.

As for difference between skills Oblivion has a nice example of how do to it wrong with it's Balde and Blunt skills. There is no real difference between the two. Both skills have light & quick as well as heavy & slow weapons, and both have a similair damage output. Choosing between Blade and Blunt basically just determines which half of the melee weapons in the game you'll be using.

A way in which the two skills could be made different is if both had weapons that had roughly the same base damage, but blades would be faster while blunts would be armor piercing. That way a blade would be better against enemies with light armor and a blunt weapon would be better against heavily armored foes.

I want the ability to create more skills in the construction set and assign them their own stats, animations, and calculations. This way, we don't have to complain "hey, they didn't give us the spear skill". We can just create it ourselves with the know-how.

Final note: Equestrian can be dropped for Light Armor, Dodge for Unarmored, and Climbing for Heavy Armor in interest of having armor skills.
I will edit this into the post also.

A fine idea, but it certainly wouldn't be for the faint of heart... You'd have to set the conditions in which that stat gets raised, the speed at which it happens, etc. And while that may not sound too difficult, especially for something like "Flail Weapons" where you can just check for a condition on a given weapon isFlail=yes (or some such, I'm certainly no programmer), think of how much more difficult it could be for something like Sneak.

Though if it's at all possible, I'm sure there's people out there willing to exploit the CS to use it. It can't be any more difficult than hacking in custom animations, I'd assume!