I like the idea of charging magic up to cast, similarly to how Fable 2 did it. But for TES the higher your skill is, the faster you can charge. The higher your wisdom is, the more you can charge at a time. The higher your intelligence, the higher your capacity to cast spells (magicka).

Cyrodiil is obviously based off of Ireland in that regard.

Couldn't agree more, Mr. T. How can the player expect to roleplay a character when the PC is good at everything - as is the case when playing Oblivion at high levels. I know I'm stating the obvious but the essence of roleplaying is the playing of a "role"; a fighter, thief, a mage or some combination of these. The fact that one has to choose (agonise) at each individual character development stage which skills to develop and which to forego, ultimately adds to the immersive experience of playing, as one plays a truly self-defined role within the context of the game. The ability to specialise in "everything" undermines the replayability of the game, and compromises the opportunity to craft truly unique avatars within the game.

This, of course, would have spin-off effects as, if one chose to play a pure (more or less) fighter, this would decrease the chance of the PC rising to the upper hierarchy of the mages' guild, due to having to sacrifice the advancement of magic skills in order to pursue the martial arts. Conversely this will speed their advancement through the ranks of the fighters' guild. Therefore the game is dynamically different for each character build. Of course, if the PC was a 'jack of all trades'-type character, advancement to moderate levels within each faction might be possible but due to the lack of specialisation in the requisite skills, head-of-guild staus might be unobtainable barring some special circumstance.

This whole issue is with the entire Elder Scrolls series, not just Oblivion. Becoming a master of everything is possible in all TES games. Changing this would change the series. I would be fine with just having skill requirements, as in Daggerfall and Morrowind, but I want Daggerfall's player development back. While leveling up, I want to be given a set amount of points to distribute to my skills as I want.

Actually, with high levels in Oblivion, I'd roleplay more. When every goblin was a war chief and every dremora a Valkynaz, or whatever they were called, I'd stick to my big guns. If I had high destruction, I'd use that. If I had a high blade, i'd use a sword. Otherwise, using skills in the 20's would take forever.

Yes, skill requirements should definitely be required to join a guild. There's one possible loophole though, and that is if you enchant your apparel to fortify different skills that you have not chosen for your class. Although it may not be a problem, if you cannot enchant something to fortify a skill too much, and I'm fine with that.


Yes, but there's no restriction in Oblivion. It bugs me that there are starter spells added in the beginning of the game, even if your magic skills aren't your major skills.

Fallout 3 added restrictions, to lockpicking and science skills for example. That was a major step-up.

Simple solutions to that. The guild checks the base attribute, not taking into account fortifications on that skill.

Yep, there you go.

But there is still attraction to me to be able to choose to enchant apparel to fortify skills, and be somewhat a jack-of-all-trades. But I agree that if your base skill isn't high enough, you shouldn't be able to join a guild.

I've only played Morrowind & Oblivion - with MW you couldn't join every guild in the first place. It may change the series but wouldn't it be a good change? Arena was created by a group of D&Ders wanting to translate their tabletop experiences into a CRPG - well that's what I understand anyway, so effectively if the change occured it would be a case of the game acknowledging its roots....

Definitely don't want to take away the freedom of being able to choose what I want to do, no matter what type of character I am.
If I'm a pure warrior, I want to have the ability to cast spells, just so I can learn. And that's what it takes. Learning. Practice. Just like in real life. Taking that ability away would be a terrible mistake.
I do agree, however, that being able to be the Grand Assassin and the Archmage and the Master in the Fighters guild and whatelse not, is a bit stupid.

That was due to skill requirements, but in Morrowind, you still could increase all of your skills to 100 and join every faction, if you wanted to(except for the great houses).

I'm not saying if you don't choose any magic for your class, you absolutely will not ever be able to cast a spell. What I say is that I agree with learning, but if you're trying to learn magic for example, if you don't have any magic skills in your class, then it will take much longer to learn- by having to train and read skill books. And still, it wouldn't contribute to leveling up either, as only your chosen skills would.

That's how Oblivion's system works. Minor skills take more work to increase and they don't contribute to leveling up.

My suggestion allows a natural mechanism for not being able to attain all those with a single character. It's not about disbarring a fighter from casting spells, more about acknowledging that if you choose to specialise in one thing, by necesity, you sacrifice the opportunity to pursue another. When I went to university I couldn't choose to study everything, although in my first year I had to study a broad base of subjects in order to have the knowledge to study my major. Same sort of principle here. Nobody's saying that pure fighters should never be able to cast spells, more that they should not be able to be as effective a spellcaster as a pure mage. Isn't that just logical?

Yep. But the difference I want, is that in Oblivion for example, you could cast low-level magic skills even if you didn't have any magic skills in your class. For ESV, if you haven't chosen magic skills for your class, then you cannot cast any spells. You must learn through different ways. This applies to alchemy too.

• Also, Bethesda, please... please balance alchemy. It's incredibly easy to make huge loads of money. It shouldn't be like this. To fix that, make potion bottles a requirement for making potions. These potion bottles should be mildly expensive, and have them scattered throughout the world as well. Make player-created potions much less valuable in terms of money, but make them more potent and useful.

heck no,that would destroy TES V to me ,i love jack of all trades characters.

Then you just don't know the definition of a true role-playing game.

I kinda agree. I think being able to learn whatever I want, without having to take ridiculous measures such as only being able to level up through training/skill books is what I want.

It wouldn't preclude JOAT characters - I think you miss the point. See my earlier post.

:rolleyes: :facepalm:

If you want to be limited in the skills you can take, then play Dungeons and Dragons or any BioWare game. Just because you prefer that system of skills does not make it a "true roleplaying game" anymore than a game that allows you to try anything... just like the real world. Sure, you might not do it well, but you still have the potential.

Why? If you don't like failing spells, use a spell that you know you can't fail on. You'll likely be able to cast anything you could cast in Oblivion at 100% chance.

It's not impossible to make it harder to be a jack of all trades without removing the option. The goal there is finishing the phrase; master of none. The combination of Oblivion's few skills and nonexistent failure made pretty much every character a master of all, even from the beginning. Any skill could still be performed competently, despite low level, and you didn't need anywhere near maximum in a skill to pretty well cover any needs for it the game had, causing characters to all quickly blur together. The idea isn't so much to remove the jack of all trades option, as to keep it from being the inevitable only option.

My suggested solutions to that were to make skills require both training and experience to increase (removing inevitable mastery from casual use), greatly slow skill increase but raise the significance of higher scores (making it far harder to be master of anything, let alone everything, and helping to keep mid-level scores from being all you ever need), and to make miscellaneous skills ineffective to start. Instead of 5 they'd start at 0, and just what "ineffective" means would vary with the skill. Magic schools would start with no spells and couldn't learn/use any, weapon skills would have a chance to miss due to sheer incompetence, etc. The character would need to train a miscellaneous skill up to 5 in order to start using it normally. All of the above would significantly divide classes, I think, without putting hard invisible limits on anything.

Random thought; one suggestion that has floated around is the return of advantages/disadvantages to character creation. "Jack of Trades" could be an interesting one for those who want to be truly classless. You start with no major or minor skills, but all the miscellaneous start at 5, and with a somewhat higher increase rate (somewhere between Minor and Miscellaneous).

unnamed merchant would be good, to kill them and steel their stuff. for evil characters

Nobody's saying that you shouldn't be able to try anything. Rather that a character should not be able to SPECIALISE in everything. As Betrayer pointed out, being the head of every guild is a little far-fetched....



Well put.... :foodndrink:

Sorry, but the idea that not being able to be a jack of all trades and master of none makes a roleplaying game a "real" roleplaying game is pretty laughable. That's not what I was saying at all, and I think most people would agree that being the head of every faction is pretty unrealistic. I am not sure about it being entirely removed, but it should be quite difficult to do that.