You dump sneak,call it stealth,and have it govern lock picking and sneak.

I agree completely on this list! The perks will make up for only 18 skills as they have announced and these seem to be the most probable set of skills.



I am pretty sure acrobatics and athletics are merged but we don't know what they are called.



Mercantile and Speechcraft are most likely merged and under the name of "Speechcraft" this time around evidenced from the cut off "aft" in the skill screenshot.

Daggerfall: 35 skills Morrowind: 27 skills, OB: 21 skills, Skyrim: 18 see a pattern. Just hoping that you can branch off while leveling these skills, say for two-handed you can specialize in pole-arms. Armour specialize in light and heavy, hoping medium armour comes back too, but unlikely.

Regardless there should be more skills not less.

Eight of Daggerfall's skills were languages.
Why should there be more skills? With one-handed having separate perks for blade, mace and axe, and perks for sneak dagger strikes being in stealth, it seems more like eighteen skill groups, with different takes on each skill according to perks taken, surely this is a deeper system than having more available skills, but no way to personalise them.

problem solved

Over half of them in Daggerfall was to prevent enemies from not attacking you like impish and these were worthless.

your forgetting the perk tree. think of it this way, with each skill you can specialize it in a certain way so im really good at fire in destruction and bad with ice...i didn't like it at first either but it makes total sense you can make your character more specialized to you..most of the skills in daggerfall were useless so they took them out and made perk trees if anything there is more versatile with this system than in any other TES game

I think You are wrong. BOTH ACROBATICS AND ATHLETICS are gone because Todd said he didn't like the way this 2 skills is a easy level-up and this way are cheated by the players (Just run and jump, run and jump, run and jump...)

Mercantile (skill to doing business) with crafting objects, mining ob, farming ob. and so on, is IN, is not a perk, is a SKILL (like Speechcraft)... Todd said that they will be more attention to comunication skills, and we all know that economic in Skyrim will be a stronger feature too.

+1



Hopefully they've done it in such a way that on high levels we can unlock more and more, and not get stuck playing the same way over and over unless you start the game aaaaaaall over again...
Which is most likely what is going to happen.
You play it 5 times, in general the same quests over and over, different spec's. Good game.. But then you're done. It's up on the shelf.. Never to be seen again. Just like oblivion...

I want to play and play, and never stop. Constantly expand my character. A journey that never ends. Not some cool journey i play a few times then never again.

They have said clearly that mercantile is combined with speech. There is no reason for them to be separate. There will be a armor skill, they would never take that out completely. Leadership? That is not going to happen.

I just would like to share with everyone how I got this list, and show how at least most of it is right for sure. All of the magic skills have been confirmed multipliable times, and you can see them all in the skills screen shot they have out, so there isn't much debate there. In the podcast one handed, two handed, smithing, sneak, archery, and alchemy where all confirmed. Speech, or something to do with speech has be confirmed in other official sources. Block has not been confirmed but it's obvious that as long as there are shields there will be a block skill, so that is in for sure too. This means that I have 14/18 right for sure, or 77% right. I'm not saying this to brag it's just the way it is. So that means that only skills that there can still be speculation on are as follows.

Hand-to-hand
Armor
lock pick
acrobatics

Now keep in mind there has to be at least one armor skill, and if you disagree with any of those four skills you have to say something that can take it's place.

Uh no they didnt say anything like that in fact todd said clearly that there were communication SKILLS as in more then 1 so as there were only 2 to begin with there has to be 2 now mercantile and speechcraft.
I know I for one would have loved to see them combined but it doesnt look like they were.

Now if you have a link to them saying they were combined id be happy as can be. Then again I suppose a leadership skill could be concidered communications.... babble.

every game has to come to an end and i do agree with OB..i played it 5 times through and now i get bored after 5 hours because its just the same stuff..however i believe SKYRIM will be different. there has never been such a contrast between a warrior,stealth, and mage player than there is in skyrim.. We in our heads chose and said hey this time around im gonna be a mage but there was no different quests at all.. this time you choose to by stealth by the way you play and the more stealth you are the easier those levels go up and the more perks you get within stealth as well as different missions compared to a warrior.. every game ends up on the shelf eventually..but this one could last for a long long long time

Sorry for not really joining in the discussion but I made a possible skill list including perk trees (based on that every skill has 3 perk trees (mace, blade, axe)
BTW how do I add spoilers, it just takes to much space!


one handed: axe
blade
mace

two handed: axe
blade
bigger mace

smithing: repair
crafting
resources and mining

defence: heavy armor
ligth armor
medium armor OR no armor

shield: buckler (effective when bashing)
kite shield (effective vs melee)
tower shield (effective vs missle)

hand to hand: tripping
disarming
hitting

STEALTH:

sneak: moving unseen and unheard
stealing and pickpocketing
backstabing and sneak attacks

marksman: trowing weapons
bow
crossbow

security: opening and locking locks
disarming and using traps and the like
crafting traps and the like (think smoke/poison gas bomb)

speech craft: speech
mercantile
language (similar to language skills from daggerfall)

athletics: running and sprinting
jumping, rolling and other flashy movements
climbing (unlikely, I know) OR swimming

alchemy: potions
poisons
ingredients (gathering, eating and known effects)

MAGIC:

destruction: fire -- damage
frost OR weakness
ligthning -- elemental

alteration: shielding
weigth manipulation (burden, feather, jump, levitation)
opject manipulation (open/lock, water breathing/walking)

conjuration: summoning daedra OR summoning
summoning undead -- necromancy
turning and/or dispel daedra and undead

illusion: thaumaturgy (charm, dremolize, command)
consealment (invisebility/cameleon, silence)
detection (enchantment, key, life, unlife, daedra etc.)

restoration: restoring
fortiflying
absorbing

enchant: creating enchantments
using enchanments (possible bonnusses for staves etc.)
soulgems (soultrap, recharging enchantments and magicka, affects power of soultrapped soul)

No because perk trees would then lead off into specialisation for light of heavy. You only need the one skill as the category. Armour.

Heavy Armor (Combat)
Light Armor (Stealth)
Lockpick (Stealth) same as Security in OB
Mercantile (Stealth)

Acrobatics will be under Sneak
Hand-to-Hand will be under 2 Handed

Archery will be a Combat skill, not Stealth school anymore.

Hand to hand can't be under 2 handed, because it can be used even while holding a sword in your right hand. It can act both as two handed combat and one handed combat. It can fit under both styles, depending on how one wants to play. Because of that it has to have it's own skill, because it can't completely fit under anything else at the moment.

I'll add my list of speculated skills for each tree

Combat Skills:

• One Handed Weapons
  
• Two Handed Weapons
  
• Block
  
• Smithing (craft and repair weapons and armor)
  
• Hand-to-hand
  
• Heavy Armor

Stealth Skills:

• Athletics (includes Acrobatics)
  
• Security (includes Sneak and the use of lockpicks; maybe mechanical traps?)
  
• Marksman
  
• Speechcraft (includes Mercantile)
  
• Alchemy
  
• Light Armor

Magic Skills:

• Restoration
  
• Destruction
  
• Alteration
  
• Illusion
  
• Conjuration
  
• Enchanting

You know, i think you right...

So in that case will be:

Armor (Comb)
Hand-to-Hand (Comb)
Security (St)
Mercantile (St)

and Archery returns to St. school... Make more sense anyway from previous TES... So Light, Heavy and Unarmored will be under Armor (or Defence or another word)...

Acrobatics for me is 90 % OUT, unless BGS find a way to fix a problem from a easy level-up just for jumping around Skyrim, and T.Howard said that too. Mercantile will be in-game, whether we like it or not, unless the idea that we can doing business from town to town and ?We can ruin the economy in any city? is just killing all the people in that city or reduce the economics buildings to rubble, and this no make sence for a gameplay like we have in TES...

And another problem with the speculation about the Skills is that we do not know how many attributes will be in-game (0,6,7,8,9,10?) ... 0 is almost unlikely... And 8 attributes like the previous TES no make mathematically
sence for 18 skills (at least for me)... Unless Skills and Attributes no longer related to each other... So many Doubts, J.C.!!!

Combat Skills:
One Handed Weapons
Two Handed Weapons
Smithing (craft and repair weapons and armor)
Hand-to-hand
Armour
Dragon Shouts

Stealth Skills:
Athletics (includes Acrobatics)
Security
Sneak
Speechcraft (includes Mercantile)
Alchemy
Marksman

Magic Skills:
Restoration
Destruction
Alteration
Illusion
Conjuration
Enchanting

Major difference: block is out. Shouting is in.

Armour goes under a skill tree which branches at maybe level 15/20 to Light/Medium/Heavy armours.

By shouting do you mean, Dragon Shouts? Dragon Shouts are going to be like Greater Powers where in Oblivion. There like spells that you can do regarudless of your magic skills. It makes no sense that they would have a skill just for that. However, this does bring up the point that all the unknown skills could be something completely unexpected.

Yeah, Dragon Shouts. Not much has been confirmed/said about them, so who knows what will happen. Maybe even something else to do with dragons... Mounted combat even... Who knows...

Thats how i had my list a while back
But,do think it's possible that armour could be one skill,that then will lead to light and heavy through perks ( not 100% on that,but it did make me re-think a bit ).
Also like you i had security and sneak combined,it just makes sense to me,they fit with each other. And as i've said before,i'm not sure security would warrant enough perks as it's own skill ( or at least good perks ). I want to know more about the game,but at the moment i have a need to know the 18 skills,i'm iching to know them for sure...i really want hand to hand to stay in,it's a worthy skill,if it's done properly and not just a crappy punch,it would also warrant alot of great perks in my view.

I think there will be 4 skill categories: Stealth, Combat, Magic, Expertise.

Expertise being Crafting, Alchemy, Smithing, Farming, whatever. At least i hope there will be.

That would be cool, but they confirmed that there will be only 18 skills. With three categories thats only six skills per category. With four categories it would only be like 3 or 4 per category. They have hinted at things like wood chopping, mining, and farming, but at best these things will just be mini games. At least there're going to have stuff for people you like to make "average Joe" characters. And by the way, Smithing is crafting so it's already included. This is the skill I'm actually looking forward to the most. I'm going to make some pretty pwning weapons!