In Oblivion, leveling up was all it took to master an ability completely.

But now it depends on how many perks you have to spare, which usually is only enough to master about 4 skills.

You may get to the other ones you want, but only much later in the game. They won't be part of your style during most of your experience.

There are all the perks you want to play most styles you want. You don't have to have EVERY perk in a skill tree to use it well, Having most One handed, light armor, sneak, and pick-pocket makes for a mean thief, with a bit of smithing or alchemy. Two handed, heavy armor, or one handed and block, plus smithing and a bit of enchanting makes a great tank.....Most magic perks, but tailoring them to your play of magic and you have a good mage. No you can't have a guy who does everything without mods, until late in the game, or if you grind a skill to boost your level. I don't consider that limiting, I consider it making reasonable playstyle choices much like having to choose your character class does in Oblivion. Not having a character be able to do everything early to me encourages replay of the game to try out different classes and races.

But you'll still need over half anyway.

And in some skills, nearly all perks are essential as it is the case with conjuration.

I wonder how damage scaling/reducing/etc. perks automatically given to you once you reach a specific level like back in Oblivion would affect the game's already terrible balance.

I guess it depends on how many skills you level at a time and how you level them. On some characters I never had enough perk points to go around but with others I had more perk points than I could spend at the time.

I guess that also depends what you mean by "mastering" a skill. Clarify, yo.

We had perks in Oblivion, too. But Oblivion's perks were handled even worse than in this game. Oblivion issued the same four perks to every character who used a skill, whether it made any roleplaying sense for that character to have that perk or not.

As flawed as Skyrim's system is, it at least gives us a small amount of choice and affords each character a small opportunity to be a little different than another character who uses the same skill.

no it doesn't

what it does however is to have overpowering characters that can even kill the biggest dragon or ugliest draugr overlords just by looking at them

the perk system isn t much different than the perk system in fo 3 /nv except in skyrim they are nicely ordered into skilltrees and you can only acces them if you dedicate time and effort to level up in that skilltree

it forces the player to think about how and where to invest these perks

TES would loose much of its immersion if you could have a level 20 character that can kill a dragon in one chop with his battle axe or would fry anything else with his firestorm spell all the while staying perfectly invisible because of perfect sneal skills

Bethesda has fault for not including a instant I WIN button

I've never felt limited by the default perk system.

Well, consider this as an opportunity to think about what you don't -really- need. But I also believe you're indirectly asking what you did wrong so, what you was trying to do anyway?

Skyrim's perk tree may be bad, but it is 1,000x better than Oblivions Auto Perks.
I hate Acrobatics and Athletics skills and really don't want my characters to gain the "benefits" from leveling them, but thanks to Oblivion's Auto Perks.... I have to accept the fact that I can't choose to avoid getting those perks.

What I think is needed is a system where you unlock the perks when you reach the required level but don't need to pick the lower level perks first.
If you get to level 100 in a skill and only want the level 100 perk, all you need to do is pick that perk instead of picking the lower level ones to get to it.

You don't have to take every perk in a skill tree.

Here's the current build i have:

One-handed: 8 perk points (Armsman rank 5, Dual Flurry rank 2, Dual savagery)

Light armor: 5 points (Agile defender rank 5)

Restoration: 5 points (Novice restoration, Regeneration, Necromage, Recovery rank 1, Avoid death)

Alteration: 8 points (Novice alteration, Apprentice alteration, Adept Alteration, Expert Alteration, Atronach, Magic Resistance rank 3)

Smithing: 4 points (Steel Smithing, Elven Smithing, Advanced armors, Arcane Sminthing)

Enchanting: 9 points (Enchanter rank 5, Insightfull enchanter, Corpus enchanter, Extra effect)

Lvl 40 character, can kill anything Skyrim have for this level (Legendary difficulty).

For instance, I want my future thief/assassin to have some magic on the side, but I can't.

Not if I desire to be a full fledged one. With sneak, pickpocketing, light armor, one-handed and archery, there is no room for a mage skill as they're all perk heavy.

Not even gonna mention smithing, which I'd want to get around to eventually to give her dragonscale armor.


Let's take a look at the archery tree.

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111129203850/elderscrolls/images/6/68/Archery_perk_tree.jpg

Everything on the left side is essential to be a master archer. And of course, the 5 ranks.

The right side is little relevant.

with all due respect but the way i am reading your post is that you do not have the patience to actually develop your character

you want it all at level one

I disagree with the perk tree being the thing that limits development. The main problem is a lack of attributes which allow characters to be different at the start. That's the biggest problem with character development in Skyrim. The perk tree is a small step forward in the right direction, I like the fact that perks are optional. It always bothered me that in Oblivion, if I just sold things, my mercantile skill went up and I had to take the perks. That then means I could sell any item to any merchant and that can cause money issues due to unlimited money which is a double edge sword.

I also like Legendary as well when it comes to perks, yes it's a cop out but it can also allow you to get to higher levels without breaking your character's roleplay. You won't need to use magic if you're a Knight, just use Legendary and say you broke your arm or something else.

What? I can get all of the perks I freakin' want. There's no limit there. I also love the fact that I can let perk points stack up instead of being forced to spend them at level-up, and that I delay leveling up at all if I choose.

If you want an end-game build for the whole playthrough you'll just have to grind at the start, delaying the questlines (or use the console on PC).

SkyRe's perk trees are far superior.

Definitely an element of planning involved. One that requires a general idea of what player level the skills you choose to develop will achieve. That, and enough experience with character type, skills, and perks to know where to invest and where to avoid.


I agree. For me, some things it just pays to grind. Archery is night and day different without its associated Ranger and Quick Shot perks, without which the archer is hopelessly gimped, virtually unable to dodge attacks and land shots without first being killed.

I agree for the armors only. Heavy armor especially. mainly for the useless perks needed to get one good perk.

I want it all before level 40. Before I've already done all there is to do.

Skyrim's perk system is good. I like it a lot and hope TES6 will have it as well but an improved version.

Mod it. Otherwise, prepare for level 55-60, depending on what exactly you have in mind.

As for running out of things to do, my current character is level 78 and completed the main quest two days ago. Before that, I had him occupied with the main land's side quests, Companions & the College. Civil War, Dragonborn content, Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood (which I plan to destroy) are still on hold. He's curently working on Dawnguard, as a vampire.

I think the perk system would work better with a traditional xp system and level cap. The current implementation feels a bit redundant and unnatural when you grind skills you don't use so you can master the skills you have already, you know, mastered.

This largely depends on what you've had in mind for your character.

If you was planning for e.g. the traditional tank with heavy armor, block, onehanded (sword branch) and smithing, you can have that character by level 48. If you want to add dual wielding, maces and war axes to complete the tree and put enchanting on top, you'll need to reach level 68.

To achieve that in the past, we would expand on skills the character wouldn't normally use. With patch 1.9 and the introduction of the legendary skills system, this is no longer necessary -not the perfect solution, but better than before.

True, but my problem is that for a focused character, its pretty much impossible to reach level 50 naturally. Thats when you usually have enough perks to really flesh out 4 trees. But you need a little over 6 trees finished to accomplish that. The system favors "dipping" into more trees, but not all skills function equally well with minimal investment. Smithing and restoration are examples of tree that show considerable power with just a few points. But illusion and alteration would be mostly useless.

I never liked having to pick perks. Would it be possible to create a mod that rebalanced the skills so just increasing the skill gradually included the benefits of the 20% and magicka reduction perks and maybe a few other perks and then just eliminate picking perks entirely? I am thinking something like this combined with the mod that brings back classes and attributes may be more to my liking than the vanilla game.

I agree. I hate that on my current build, to get conditioned in heavy armor, I have to get cushioned and fists of steel before it. Why? I don't plan to fight unarmed and I don't usually jump from high places. But if I want conditioned, I have to spend the 2 perk points to first.

Oh well.