I'm playing with OOO, but I'm sure even in vanilla oblivion you'll encounter this:

I was wandering somewhere and found a fort. I enter, then I find a room with 4 marauders plus a warlord. How will you even survive that assault?

If you'r a warrior, sure you can tank, but a 5 marauder attack will be hard, with them holding warhammers and axes.

If your a mage not adept at casting illusion spells, you're in even bigger trouble, unless you can one shot everything.

If your a thief, then you'r going to have a hard time at them not detecting you while poisons do the work.

What do you even do? Drink all healing potions you have?
btw, I get past that kind of situation with a frenzy spell, and I think that's the only way you beat mobs.

My mystic archer uses hundreds of feet of detect life and never 'stumbles' into things. When she approaches a crowd, she stays as far back in the shadows as obstacles will allow and commands one or more of the mob to fight for her. She then hides, ready to disappear if things don't go her way. She repeats until there is one wounded survivor, whom she congratulates with a poisoned arrow from the shadows. This works superbly.

If disovered by one of the mob, she commands him to return to the fight, only on her side.

If she truely gets swarmed, she casts a combo spell that brings forth a clannfear and causes her to disappear. She then quietly sneaks far enough away to be overlooked and waits until she can safely try again.

She doesn't even know how to use a melee weapon or staff, so she has developed what is required for her to survive.

The tactics that will work for you depend on your character of course. For those who like a more direct approach, a master alchemist could drink four homemade potions, then walk into the crowd and let them kill themselves trying to get through her 100% reflect damage I suppose. The destructionist could toss in a massive long term area of effect fire bomb, chase it with a summon and disappear until the damage is done, ready to repeat if necessary.

If you play a big dude with a sword and no magic, you'll have to ask whoever suggested such a silly thing. Lol. When you hear folks sing the praises of illusion and/or alchemy, it is for good reason. In general though, everything goes better with magic.

Well yeah, that works. I was wondering how you would survive WITHOUT illusion. Pretty decent challenge, don't you think?

My characters run. In the words of Demosthenes: ""The man who runs away may fight again."

I agree that it is a fine challenge.

Again, without illusion, an alchemist can reflect 100% of the damage directed her way with lethal results. A mage can fortify herself into a blademaster tank without illusion and tank with the best of them if desired. As I said, the destructionist does not really need illusion. One can safely hide or escape with merely good sneak skill and summoning a distraction and getting some distance. There are loads of ways to face some of the challenges the game offers. I suspect the elephant in the room here is when you say you are using OOO, for I'm sure that boosts the challenge greatly. :foodndrink:

Playing OOO/Fcom:

I ditched a illusion-free archer, shie dies too often. Never played a illusion-free mage. so I can't comment on this.

I do have however an illusion-free warrior though she's quite skilled in conjuration, which helps a lot. And she's fun to play. Some notes on her playstyle:

You will get mobbed, disarmed, knocked down. It's inevitable.

She either tries to find a choke-point indoors on dances around outside trying to minimize the number of opponents who can hit her. If badly outnumbered she either conjures a bound weapon or switches to Light of Dawn to prevent disarming. Nothing annoys her more than running down from the top of a sigil tower to the bottom to (hopefully) pick up her weapon again.

Other than that: Poison, poison and more poison. Nearly exclusively 'damage fatigue'. At higher levels the dangerous mobs (dremoras, reavers) spam power attack after power attack thus accelerating thier collapse.

It's definitely possible to play without illusion. You are of course right: with illusion the game is approx. 100x easier. For that reason my chars either don't use illusion or a nerfed form (disabled custom spellmaking for invis. and command xxx in the CS)

Sometimes this but Venera will also sometimes will go down putting up a good fight of course.

Ok then. The challenge is to play a character WITHOUT magic skills, then playing with FCOM/ OOO.

I hope Skyrim isn't like that. You have to rely on magic just to survive.

Also, imagine getting mobbed with 4 dread zombies. Happened to me earlier, a clannfear has 0 chance of beating them. Good thing a dart trap was there.

Depends on the warrior. I've roleplayed a couple of them not to use magic (except Restoration). I play Dead is Dead in the vanilla game. Minors as majors (so leveling is kept in check) but I never touch the difficulty slider. I've had a couple of fighters die over the years. They just get overwhelmed.

My longest-living warrior-type character (Dyan phor a Cauz, the paladin) uses A LOT of detect life and sheild spells. She's got dozens of detect life and sheild rings, too. She generally does okay against multiple enemies. If not, she runs. As a paladin, I also roleplay her Restoration abilities to be as good as she can afford. She usually has a litany of healing, invisibility, & fortify potions at all times. If she's out of potions (note this) she does NOT go dungeon-diving, unless the area she's going in is known to be stocked with a bunch of weaklings like imps or low-level undead.



When both my mage characters were not adept at higher illusion spells like Invisibility and Command, they'd simply avoid such a scenario. We'll get 'em next time. Or they'd hide themself somewhere and conjure a zombie. Zombies can take a lot of abuse for their masters.



Both of my thief chars are/were terrible fighters. They generally don't go into subterranean dwellings much. There's plenty for them to do in the game above ground; stealing loot and such. They always wind up with this huge amount of money for what amounts to very little work. "Who would want to go in an Ayleid ruin with traps and all sorts of monsters, when it's so much easier to rob a sleeping noble?" my thieves rationalize.



That's funny, I've never ever used Frenzy. I have no idea what it does, actually. :guilty:

Frenzy is very fun to use. Watch that Marauder Warlord kill everything and after that, severely weakened, summon a clannfear to finish the job. OR watch everyone in the arcane university kill each other.

I therefore conclude that it's impossible to finish the game with a pure warrior.

I have this idea though, you can go warrior but with a little help from destruction:
Playing an Orc to get drain attribute, I cast Drain Strength so that mobs can't do anything while I hack away at them, one by one. Drain intelligence for casters.
Drain is CHEAP, so I could probably get away with leveling my intelligence.

With a pure mage or mage hyrbid it's just spamming fireballs and frenzies at them.
With a warrior or warrior hybrid its just walk in and chop them a few times.
With a thief or thief hybrid its just poisons and arrows.

Simple stuff, yet effective. Very effective indeed...

Are you sure that would work? Imagine 5 marauders in a room with a warlord beating the crap out of you.

The first thing I do on a new character is to get grand soul gems, make them into black ones, learn soul trap, join the MG and enchant the weapon. Takes a while, but its worth it.

EDIT: Of course I might meet some on the road to the place... Whats its name... At a place with some of these strange altars, simply, and that makes me doomed.

My character just brings a mob of her own. Either via conjuration, in the case of my mage, or via friends like http://lovkullen.net/Emma/Vilja.htm for my mostly magic-less archer.

Well me personally, I just like to keep swinging/shooting/casting until everything in that general area that has ever moved before has now stopped moving for good. Could just be me, though . Though, I do like Acadian's plan with the "Mystic Archer". Very well thought out.

You can survive an awful lot with Absorb health in 10', just a few points for 5 or 6 seconds, and a stout shield. It takes a while sometimes, but they drop eventually, and hopefully you don't.

Get roided out on Alchemy and CHARGE!!

Emergency potions

I accept your challenge.

We talkin no magic at all, including alchemy? Can I by enchanted gear and potions? Sigil stones?

Depends on what you mean by "finish the game." Some would argue the game can't be finished anyway. But there are some quests which require casting a spell.

Assuming a "pure warrior" is allowed to use enchanted gear, the Main Quest can easily be done by a pure warrior. One of my Nords bashed her way through the MQ using mainly her Blades' Katana enchanted with Absorb Health (sigil stone) and the Escutcheon of Chorrol.

At level 10, my new, older, Angel, has 85% alchemy skill. Alchemy is one of her majors. She can make invisibility potions (no illusion skill needed.) She can make multiple damage poisons, and multiple restoration potions which include magical shields. She is still using a scamp for conjuration but she has taken on 3 headless zombies at once and two trolls in a narrow space with nowhere to run. I play dead is dead and if she ever dies in the game I will never again load her save game nor ever re-roll her. Right now, she is still going strong.

My advise for a pure mage without illusion is summon a helper (always have the best you can conjure in your spellbook), then, stick-and-run. Use ranged destruction spells and know which destruction is effective on your opponent and which is not. If they get too close, use poisons and magical shields (both spell and potion). Switch from ranged spells to touch spells which generally do more damage for the amount of magicka used. Never use healing spells in a melee situation; use restore potions instead. Make your own timed-restore potions but never take more than three; that way you can still take one of the instant-effect commercial restore potions, pop out of your inventory, pop back into your inventory and take another one; rinse and repeat.

A mage starts the game with a Detect Life spell. Angels uses hers constantly in those dark dungeons. The best way to avoid being mobbed is to know whats ahead of you.

Nice!



How do you define "finish the game", though? If you're talking of the Main Quest, it's certainly possible, but very very difficult to finish with a pure warrior who never uses magic. If you're like me, playing with a dead as dead rule, it would be impossible for me to play a pure warrior and finish the MQ. But if you're reloading saves after death, it's definitely possible.




Sounds neat. Lots of combinations to create in this game, for sure...

As a Nord Warrior using RBP I tend to use Blizzard to at lest drain the groups health down, its a very powerful racial that takes care of a large group of outlaws. However I do use tgm if fcom throws an unreasonable spawn my way and I get stuck in a corner or between three enemies unable to move and getting staggered every two seconds. But that's just because its a test character for now

Detect life prevents you from getting ambushed, not mob. Sooner or later you'll encounter a room full of marauders, or much worse, dread zombies + vampires.

A warrior is a person who uses brawn rather than brain. Giving it restoration turns him into a paladin.

They do not join the mages guild, because they are friggin warriors, not mages.

I guess you are allowed in game potions for healing, but not custom ones.

I never have problems with marauders. I usually(by that I mean always ) play a ranger-type character. I just shoot them in the back of the head.