I find it's powerful but not game breaking if you have a build that makes sense.

My sneak thief has the backstab perk (entire sneak tree is filled out). But has NO one handed or smithing perks and only carries daggers to compliment her bow (none of which can she smith to "Legendary"). She also only wears Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild armor so it can NOT be smithed since you need smithing perks to alter that gear.

So my character, while "overpowered" when sneaking, can find herself in big trouble quickly when confronted face to face with a heavily armored, high health advasary swinging a two handed weapon or weapon and shield.

Stealth is a goofy play style anyways. If you can't stay stealthed and one-shot things you're kinda helpless and if you can you're untouchable.

Use a companion and sneaking through an entire fight will be nay impossible.

Exactly the right point. You are supposed to become a legendary character that when spoken of eons later will be held with reverence. If you are an assassin/thief, then those are the perks you take to make yourself a force to be reckoned with. The problem is that people think this gimps the game, but in fact, other creatures level up with you and should provide a challenge. The real issue when people say gimp your character is when you power level by sneaking around everything and everyone the whole time, giving you an unfair advantage in relation to your level.

How the heck do you get a sword to 550 damage? What exploit is that? I should stop hunting deer so much.

I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution probably had the best stealth gameplay I've come across, though the way they set up patrol routes made things a little too easy - nearly every situation had a path you could take without being detected, I'd have preferred more that relied on timing and distraction. It had one hit stealth kills, but the major difference was probably that line of site nearly always meant you were discovered. I think if that were tweaked a bit in Skyrim, you'd have a nicely challenging experience, since most of the dungeons are not laid out to provide a guaranteed safe stealth path.

It is YOUR game. Play it as you like.

Guess what ? If the perks you are complaining about didn't exist lots of players would complain they don't exist. Players are ALWAYS complaining. That is why I stopped modding for TES long ago.
Just wait for the SDK and you'll understand what ridiculously overpowered characters really mean.

Normally, you don't. If, on the other hand, you loop Alchemy and Enchanting so that you have gear with 4x+29% +Smithing and 4x+29% Alchemy, you can make +130% Smithing potions and more than triple the base damage of a given weapon between the gear and one of the potions. I have a Deadric bow on my Mystic Archer that does 562 damage before adding in the rating of the arrows.

Note that you need 100 in Smithing, Enchanting, and Alchemy to pull this off, so it will take some doing before you can manage it if you let them level 'naturally'. Also, anything less than about Ebony can't get that high as base damage drops significantly below that point (may be possible with Orcish, I haven't tried).

you could try using another weapon besides daggers like bows or swords... thats what i do keeps it fresh enough

Thats what he's doing, and his playstyle is ending up making the game trivial without exploiting at all.

That is the issue.

He is playing so as to trivialize it.

He didn't slip walking past the grinding stone and accidentally make a weapon that was grossly overpowered. He power leveled smithing, enchanting and alchemy to combine them repeatedly to maximize a weapon.

He combined that with other damage enhancing perks and enchantments to further inflate it. The only surprise would be if he wasn't overpowered.

If that much concerted effort into 1H damage didn't make him overpowered how would everyone else that didn't do what he did stand a chance?

If that much damage made it so he was only on even footing with the game's toughest encounters then what would happen to your average player when they encountered this same scenarios? They would be vaporized in an instant and complaints of impossible quests, etc would litter the boards.

If you work hard to make yourself a god don't be surprised when you find you have godlike powers.

if you focus on one thing only then it should be your privilege to be able to exploit the system to such a degree that you can 1 hit stuff. on fall out 3, people were ninja palming the giant mutant bosses and beating them up with melee attacks without even getting hit once. its just how u play the game.

Add a challenge.

My life-valuing Nord Thief has Nightingale Armor, max Sneak, max Pickpocket, and high One-Handed. Know what I did?

I forced him to ONLY be able to kill people with his fists, and RP him just knocking them out. He's essentially become medieval Batman. He pickpockets the enemy's weapons, and then beats them down with his bare hands if their one of the playable races, and it's IMMENSELY fun.

I have 100 Sneak and all the perks and the only time I can NOT be spotted by wild animals, even in total darkness, is if I use Invisibility.

You're far from invincible. There are creatures you can NEVER hide from (Dragons), and if you stealth past everything, slitting throats, you won't have leveled up your armor skills to give you any protection in case you screw up and don't backstab; or if you backstab a person in a crowded room and everyone immediately knows where you are.

Thats right - if I want a super duper "me win" button then give it to me. Better yet, I don't want to have to type cheap cheat codes into the console. Let the normal game mechnics allow me to be the godlike. Thats right - you may have crafted mega Daedric armor - BUT I have crafted 100+ mega iron daggers. And then enchanted them with fire damage + 1. Therefore I can craft armor to rival the gods themselves! All tremble before my uberness.

Why ask the devs to make the game a challenge?! That is up to you - the player!

I don't understand the complaining. The [censored] point of the game is to be a pathetic loset at the start, then find out your a great hero (or some [censored]), then become a god or a demon and either save the world or kill everything/one you see (which is what I have been doing lol). The damn point is to become powerful. I guess people like the OP really like lvl scaling...I would love to be able to become lvl 255 and just destroy anyone I look at. I mean afterall, I did do a lot of hard work to get there

He did not use ench/alch/bs looping

Getting sneak high and getting dark brotherhood gauntlets isn't handwork or exploiting.

The game is stupidly easy for some select skills, without exploiting or working "hard" at all.




Is it too much to ask for a somewhat difficult play as an assassin? Do I really have to go out of my way to make sure I don't end up doing this?

Probably cause a well built level 30 character who power leveled the crafting skills for ten hours and focused on stealth sneak attacks will kick the CRAP out of level 80 character who played "normal"(for 100+ hours) and ignored exploits and overpowered skills. Fair enough?

You don't have to power level or exploit. You just need 1 skill and the db gloves :sadvaultboy:

I have a very similar assassin to the original posters. I was 1 hitting everything, no problem. Even mammoths and deathlords.

Then I was in the woods near riften at night, one hitting trolls and bears. I saw a flash, then more flashes. So I went closer to see several figures fighting. It was a Master Vampire and some vigilants. He was killing the vigilants then casting undead spells on them. I tried sneaking close to the battle and noticed I got detected, as soon as the last vigilant died the vamp came after me.... dead. I loaded and tried again.... he saw me and dead. It was pitch black, of course vamps can see at night so little that helps. I tried coming from behind, he still saw me, ice spears through the chest, couldn't move... then dead. One time I tried to escape with invisibility, I managed to barely get away. When I got close again(still invisible) he detected me.

I am one of those dead is dead players. So in my mind my character was dead, but I still wanted to take down that vamp. Never did.... That character, sadly, is dead. So 100 sneak, 70 one hand, and dual daggers is not the end all. It is the end all if no one ever sees you, but I swear that vamp had detect life or something, and then sneak is not very helpful.

Shadow warrior makes it hilarious. You can reduce any fight that you fail to sneak on, to crouch, hit, crouch hit, until it registers as a sneak attack. For an ability described as being meant to throw far off opponents from your trail...it doesn't seem to be working right when you can use it against a lone enemy. Using invisibility makes stealth even worse.

I oneshotted a Ancient Dragon with a sneak attack from my bow. Now thats op. At least you have to be close to the mob.

I have not tried it yet, but I was thinking a char who enchanted illusion spell costs to zero and focused on stealth backstabs could just invisi + backstab to win. Repeat over and over.

The thing is, that for an assassin build to work, you *have* to be able to one-shot things from stealth. Also, the game invovles fighting lots of weak opponents, and a few strong opponents. Most of the opponents you meet are never going to stand a chance on any build, unless you let yourself get zerged. And there are some scripted encounters (e.g. Potema), where I'm fairly sure that the boss always sees you as soon as you enter the room, regardless of stealth.

I have a feeling that the thing where some people are saying "100 stealth plus perks makes me invisible" and other people are saying "well, it doesn't make me invisible" might be a levelling issue. It's pretty clear to me that high level opponents are more likely to see through stealth than low level opponents. If you have 100 stealth in you mid-30s, then you'll mostly be facing opponents around that level, and they won't see you, but if you have 100 stealth at level 50, it may not work so well. Which is a slightly weird consequence of having levelled content.

What's funny is that I wonder what game it is you're playing.

Because I'm playing Skyrim on Adept difficulty, with my character at level 73, and numerous skills at 100: Enchanting, Smithing, Light Armor, Sneak, Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Speech, Alchemy, and I'm not getting these uber powerful weapons, and I'm playing pretty conventionally when it comes to whatever I craft.

I still get detected when I sneak. I still find enemies difficult and able to kill me, even with max armor rating, and I'm only one-shotting the low-level types.

But then again, maybe it's because I'm not playing my build to exactly one type of specification that emphasizes as much maximum damage output as possible? Kind of what an assassin is, especially when you're using the top-tier gear along with it, with all the requisite perks taken to further boost damage, you know?

Hell, I'm at level 96 on 2-Handed, using a warhammer with all the associated damage perks taken for it ( 5x Barbarian, 3x Skullcrusher) and with a very smithed glass warhammer, my damage tops out at 400. Unless I can solidly connect several power attacks in a row, only the low-level types are gonna fall in one hit.

Imagine that, making your character powerful is going to make him powerful.

Go back up to post 82, he explains how to do it.

I'm playing an assassin/thief/bow user. Pretty much been one- and two-shotting most enemies until about level 28. It's been getting more and more difficult as I'm getting deeper into the game and am level 32 now. I've only taken enchanting, and only added some damage to my bow. I've not put any points in it, nor in sneaking, lockpicking, and a few others. Saving my perks for archery. And it's very enjoyable so far.

This being a single-player game, in my opinion people should play the way they want to. You want to be "uber," go for it. It's your money, your game, your enjoyment.