Didn't they say 12 is the lowest number of perks in a tree?

haha now its even more difficult to come up with 2 more skills XD

Security/Lockpicking could be folded into Stealth, and Merchantile could be folded into Speachcraft. I'm really hoping we see some 'new' skills in the stealth tree, because at the moment it is looking a little bland. A tracking/survivalist type skill for archer/ranger builds for instance.

Cooking?

Edit: Hmmm.. Nevermind. I guess Woodcutting, smithing, fishing, cooking, farming, and mining aren't really skills.....
Otherwise there would be 24 skills...

Smithing is a skill, it's the warrior crafting skill.

My opinion is that one of the skills will be Athletics. But it will not be completely the Athletics from previous titles. This time it will encompass everything related to manouvering around the battlefield and landscape, i.e. running, sprinting, jumping, dodging, swimming, climbing (fingers crossed) etc. It would make sense to put it all in one skill and even more sense to put it in Stealth, cause let's face it, rogues need to move around to survive. :shrug:

The other skill is a mystery.
It could be a revamped Security skill, given new purpose through interaction with traps and puzzles.
It could be a Mounts skill (heck, why not?).
It could be a Chores skill (cooking, woodcutting, fishing etc.), but that's unlikely.
It could be an Exploration skill, which affects fast travel, your map, your carrying capacity and other exploration-related perks.
It could be a Hunting skill. If we can roast animal meat, then it stands to reason that we should have a skill related to obtaining it.
It could be a... um... I'm all out of brainfarts :shrug:

I'm guessing security and ... climbing? :woot:

Archery is probably powerfull enough even out of stealth that it does not need huge sneak perk bonuses.
Stealth will have asasination perks for daggers which will make them do more dmg than any other weapon..

Like I said security is most likely to be just security at this point although my favorite for that spot is Mechanics (locks, traps even devices)

There is no way they are going to keep light armor and add dodge, although dodge instead of light armor being separate from heavy would make much more sense.

With there being no class choices at the start of the game, it doesn't really matter which category the skill falls under. The only thing that it does influence is how you can use Guardian Stones.

Most likely the last two are security, and mercantile. Or maybe dagger?

I'll most likely be specializing in 1-handed, block, archery, sneak, light armor, speech craft, and restoration.

The first will probably be security since there is the lock picking minigame
maybe they will make it more important by letting you set or disarm traps.

The second could be a combination of athletics, acrobatics, climbing they should call it DEXTERITY.

So I'll say mercantile and security, since there needs to be some skill in haggling in the stores and attempting to pick locks of various qualities. Of course, and ths has most likely been mentioned already, this would make the stealth area underpowered compared to the others since there is no apparent attack skill. In Morrowind, Short Blade was there to address this as was Marksman, but since the two afforementioned skills would be silly to miss out, we are in a dilemna as to what stealth oriented characters can utilise in their preferred category to defend themselves.

A return of short blade would be nice, affecting how well you use daggers and/or shortswords which are pretty useless to warriors, and also the oppurtunity to make sneak and short blade a great combo in the introduction of back-stabbing (like what we see in the gameplay trailer, this gives me hope on this feature). Illusion would also nicely fit in with stealth since that kind of magic could also be a very powerful skill for a thief, and in Oblivion, most of its effects I found to be extremely useful when cornered.

What if instead of lockpicking, it's a Mechanical skill. This would cover lockpicking as well as trap setting/disarming. Of course I'm just (pointlessly) wishing it's a throwing skill so I can throw knives and hatchets...

Come to think of it you could still call it Security but it might now also cover traps to make it more useful.

It appears you're misinformed... or you just don't get it. The skill categories Combat, Magic and Stealth no longer have anything to do with what type of character you play, they're just there for tidyness. So the answer to the question "what skill would stealth-oriented characters use to defend themselves" is the same as it is for all types of characters - One-Handed (or Two-Handed, if you're very imaginative). Also, we know for a fact that sneak-kill perks for the dagger are under the Sneak skill, even though the raw damage is affected by One-Handed.
So if you want to play the sneaky cutthroat, just pick up a dagger and start stabbing people from behind. That's the way everything works now: who cares what skills you use as long as you get to do what you want to and improve at it as you do it.

If smithing is a skill and the other "profs" aren't, that leads me to believe smithing is a much more useful profession. Like an upgraded "Armorer" skill.

I'm pretty sure they said it was streamlined into Speechcraft, for purposes of sense, but I'm not sure what else they would have...

I guess it'd have to be revolvers. :whistling:

Edit: Seriously, though, I'm guessing Block/Dodging.

Block is already a seperate skill under Combat. Dodging is probably something we will see in some form.

Beth already said they merged speechcraft and mercantile. So I'm guessing security and some athletics mish mash skill.

The problem is that it is difficult to come up with enough perks for Mercantile and Security. Security can only exist on its own if something is added to it like traps. Even then it seems like a stretch. Mercantile is in the same situation. It is too small unless they flesh it out with fencing type perks (Lower the chnace of a item being recognized as stolen by 10% and so on).

It just feels like there needs to be some sort of skill that holds all of the missing jumping/speed/hand-to-hand related perks. If they based it off of fighting such as using evasion moves in combat (keyword in combat, such as when the music is playing in Oblivion) and fighting without wepaons they could level it up while still avoiding the jumping around the coutryside to level up acrobatics problem. Even without using the actions themselves to increase the skill, they could put in a set of perks that improved running speed and jumping height. Two reasons for this is that it would be worth hiding this if it were a combination of unarmored and hand-to-hand, and that Stealth needs something combat related. Combat has weapon skills, magic has destruction, what does sneak have? Poisons? Is that enough?

As for the second it depends on how big traps are. If player interaction with traps is big, then security will be the skill, if the interation is limited to pausing and activating the trap while standing to the side (the pressure plates and triplines in Oblivion), then I would guess that a Mercantile type skill will be the second.

Yes, every game needs a revolver! Muhahaha!

It's clearly security (lock picking, trap disarming, puzzle solving) and conditioning (sprint, acrobatics)

People bring that up, but what is the source for that? I'd really like that to be true.

If security involved the disarming and making/rearming/setting of traps aswell as lockpicking then it could stand alone as its own skill, but hopefully mercantile is included in speechcraft.

http://www.g4tv.com/videos/53441/The-Elder-Scrolls-V-Skyrim-E3-Gameplay-Demo/?quality=hd

Go to 4:11, you can see that the skills are....

Magic: alchemy, illusion, conjuration, destruction, restoration, alteration, enchanting.

Combat: smithing, heavy armor, block, two-handed, one-handed, archery, light armor.

It's seven skills in each, not six. We just can't see the stealth skills. Apparently both archery and light armor are now in the combat category, and alchemy is still in the magic tree.

1st post on these forums ... im gonna have to say archery, (as being a good archer in the real world requires stealth) and agility (being sneaky takes a great amount of agility IRL)

We know there will only be 18 skills, so it's 6 per class. We also know that Alchemy is in stealth now.