My character primarily uses Bows, but supplements with Daggers and Shortswords for close-range combat (however, he is much more skilled with a bow). He will never use anything else, Bosmers are petite and not at all suited to swinging heavy objects. If Dere tried to swing a Claymore, his body would likely hit his opponent harder than the blade. :shakehead:

Really isn't that hard.

I typically use longswords, but I've used only maces on my current character just for something different.

I prefer this:



Frenzy only works on NPCs; even then if they are closer to you, they will happily attack you. I find command humanoid/creature much more useful for starting fights among foes. Just be aware of the Magnitude to Level Conversion Stuff that UESP talks about here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Magical_Effects#Magnitude_to_Level_Conversion

Claymores and bows.

Just wondering, has buffy ever tasted defeat? :ninja:

At the beginning levels it would be a pain in the ass since you're weak as heck and you don't exactly have the best spells at your fingertips. At the later levels pure mage is the most powerful thing in the game I know that. Even then I would think they would use staves instead of nothing.

She has never been killed.

She has run in fear, peed her buckskin greaves, been severely wounded and knocked unconscious. All more than once. http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv43/Acadian6/Cho%20Bk%201/ScreenShot624.jpg

Admittedly we play a very cautious style due to her many designed in weaknesses, but nevertheless, she can go anywhere and do anything she sets her mind to. She is very fragile, so she has had to learn how to be very very good at what she does.

All of my more generic characters are always the sword and shield type with longswords.

Recently I've become quite fond of h2h characters (both in Oblivion and Morrowind.) It's pretty awsome to kill a heavily armed warrior with nothing but your bare hands. Makes me feel like Bruce Lee

I've made a few pure mages that used nothing but spells to do damage. It's actualy much easier in the early levels than later on. At least untill you can make your own spells.

Off all of them I love archery the best. I think it's mostly because when I started Oblivion I was coming off of Morrowind, in which archery was much less effective IMO.

Kat is fond of the longsword or shortswords while using a touch of magic to slash her opponents up into meat slices for the goblins.
Chris Treewick is a Mobboss, so he uses the M16 bow mod to shoot people n stuff. Not much to it.
Tyrone Converse is the brother of my first character, who is the Champion of Cyrodiil, and he joined the blades after getting out of jail for accidentally taking a case of beer w/o permission. The system is strict of course. He is now serving as a blade with his cousin Baurus. And stuff

Lol interesting perks.

I disagree with this. A beginning mage has Absorb Health, one of the more potent Restoration spells. You also start with Cold Touch and Shocking Touch, so you already have the elemental Destruction magic covered. You have a summon (skeleton) and Turn Undead.

And you have Soothing Touch, which is much more valuable than you might think. A low level mage doesn't have to stop to fight every critter that attacks on the road. Just hit it with Soothing Touch, and run on. If the creature follows you, that highwayman hiding in the bushes is going to yell "Stay away from me!" instead of asking you for money. :wink_smile:

A mage can hit an enemy with a couple of Flares before they can move, slow them down with a summon, and finish them off with a couple of touches of Absorb Health, which heals the mage as it kills the enemy.

In the later game, the mage is going to use a combination of Illusion, Restoration and Destruction, and will be able to kill on touch much more effectively than any weapon can.

An unarmed pure mage, at any level, should be able to stand toe-to-toe with a fully armored marauder swinging a claymore, and walk away from the fight with barely any loss of health. It's just a matter of hot-keying the right spells and potions, and knowing your enemy's weaknesses.

They do not need a weapon.

Fists + Magic.

There was this rule someone came up with on this forum, that basically stated that their character couldn't raise any minor skills. I decided to do this with my character.

Then I realized I had no attack based major skills- Illusion, Alchemy, Acrobatics, Speechcraft, Security, Armor, Light Armor. (Okay probably illusion would help in the future but I have no experience with it other than Light and Invisibility. )

So I let her use her fists, Flare, and Heal Minor Wounds since she automatically comes with those things. I see no reason why she shouldn't be able to use them.

Also, she can only kill undead and necromancers. (Needless to say, she spends a lot of time being smacked around. On the bright side, I've never had light armor improve so quickly!) However, there is no rule against, oh, say, leading some bloodthirsty bandit over to a guard or letting a bear chase her all over a hillside until gravity gets the better of it.

Depends what sort-of character I'm playing, but if I didn't choose different skills and personalities for different characters, I'd always go with a Longsword or a Katana.

For my current character I use a claymore, and occasionally a longsword when I want to show off a shield. I think the claymore looks really cool strapped on her back as she sprints across Cyrodiil.

Sword for backstabs

Twohander for normal combat

Spear.

This is a tricky one for me. RPG wise, my avatars invariably favor bladed weapons, preferably a longsword of some sort. Yet during this play-through of Oblivion (my second), my avatar finds himself wielding a mace much of the time... the Mace of the Crusader, to be specific. It's certainly not the best weapon out there, but even the best blunt weapon. Why then does he carry it?

As to blade vs. blunt, its a matter of enchantments. We possess a very nice Amulet of Axes that not only boosts blunt decently but grants 33% damage reflection! There is an equivalent bladed version called, I believe, Necklace of Swords. Should we find that he'll likely switch over to blades in a heartbeat.

Fielding the Mace of the Crusader is a role-play choice. This play-through, far more-so than the first, we take his various honorifics and their implied responsibilities very seriously. His first major accomplishment was becoming Divine Crusader, in which capacity he helped end the Oblivion Crisis. He has since largely abandoned the regalia of Crusader for that of Champion. But his Imperial Dragon armor came sans weaponry. The mace is a constant reminder that while he now works for the Legion and Elder Council, he must perform his various assignments in a manner befitting the Nine's representative on Tamriel.

(During our first play-through, he ended up wielding an uberish mod-provided quest-reward sword.)

-Decrepit-

It can be done but its hard. Try doing the hardest difficulty with just magic and then get back to me.

Bumpedy bump bump. Not surprised that Sword and Bow and Arrow are the most popular.

Thanlen uses a bow, like any other self respecting Bosmer, but he does carry a short sword just in case he has to do some 'wet' work.

Hardest difficulty affects melee more than magic. Your weapon is only one-sixth as effective at max difficulty as it is at normal. On the other hand, summonses and commanded enemies are not affected by the difficulty setting. A mage who uses mostly Conjuration and Illusion will only have to take extra precaution against being hit; otherwise he is unaffected by the setting.

Ya I know, but I still think it would be very hard to complete the game on hardest difficulty without dying and without ever using a weapon and without using equipment to make you untouchable.

I'm really trying to stick with melee, but it's so tempting to just machinegun the hell outta everybody so you don't get hurt in the process =/

Do both. Unless you are playing on Normal difficulty or lower, you usually need a combination of melee and some magic at least to support.
You can kill people in 2 shots if you have a high enough destruction but its no fun.

Yeah, I just installed OOO, that was a wake up call! I'm struggling to kill anything now, so I start out peppering them with arrows and destructive magic and then switch to my trusty Debaser once they get close. I wasn't suppose to use magic just yet, but I think I'll have to now.