Hi everyone, I've never posted before, but I've been here a while just enjoying what everyone has to say and learning new and exciting ways to enjoy this magnificent game

As the topic states: What is your favorite class/character type? E.g. Ranger, Paladin, or something completely made up.

I really want to know because I am sort of stuck in a rut and want some ideas. I have just finished adding all the mods I want and now that I am finished I don't really know what I want to be...

I love to roleplay and I am excited to hear what you all have to say

My favorite charactertype is the Crusader. I base my Crusader characters on the Morrowind class description: Any heavily armored warrior with spellcasting powers and a good cause may call himself a Crusader. Crusaders do well by doing good. They hunt monsters and villains, making themselves rich by plunder as they rid the world of evil.

Assassin/Thief.

That's what my character is too. Blade, Heavy Armor and magic. No shields, I don't want to be that old paladin stereotype.
I don't have a lot of experience in Oblivion so I can not really compare different classes. But I can say that I always thought that classes were restricting character development. But if you remove them you need to keep such a system's diversity and choices. I think Skyrim dropped the ball there. They said they wanted to have the player's choices be done throughout the game instead of just at the beginning, but there's more choices at Oblivion's character creation than throughout Skyrim. You can't really define your character in that game. Sure you can specialize as a thief/warrior/mage or a combination of 2 or 3 of those, but you can never really be a ranger, an acrobat, a bard etc. You can dress as one, but not really define yourself as one. Though of course that's not easy to make as a developer, and I suppose I see the merit in a more strict and less flexible class system.

Mystic Archer. A no melee fragile glass cannon who backs her bow up with some magic (mostly illusion and restoration).

My first and current character is a Bard-ish custom class with some more combat skills added.

Spellsword or Nightblade. Monk is fun as well.

My favorite class is one that I build that gives great power, but even greater weaknesses.

I play all types, but I lean toward mages. I feel that, out of the three "specializations," Magic is the most perfectly developed in Oblivion. It's certainly the most versatile.

Stealth or Combat types, in Oblivion, tend to become "generic" as one levels up. This is because there are limited offensive and defensive options to those character types. There's only one Ranged attack available (Marksman), only two Armor paths (and leveling enemies force one to follow those paths), only one weapon skill favored by the game (Blade). Sneak, Security, and Athletics are obviously going to max out eventually.

This problem doesn't happen with mages. A Destruction/Restoration mage is just as viable as a Conjuration/Illusion mage. An Alchemist has access to effects from all schools of magic. It's even possible to manage as a mage on one magic skill alone; I've played mages who used only Restoration, or only Conjuration, or only Illusion.

Adventurer. Heavy on stealth, magic and most importantly exploration.

I like to play offensive mages. With a focus on Conjuration, Illusion and Destruction.

Witch Hunter, just remove one skill that you don't use and add light armor and it becomes incredibly fun

I play all types, too, difference is I get just as much satisfaction playing a stealth or a melee-based character as a mage.

Some of you may already know my answer, which is I can never choose just one favorite. So far in Oblivion, this is what I've come up with. These are (were) all my characters so far, starting from 10/24/08.

Lady Anne: ? I only played her for @ 3 hours. Delivered the Amulet, and totally abandoned her.

Renee Gade I: jack-of-all trades, master of none.

Renee Gade II: Rogue warrior (kinda like Xena)

Igodah Go^Pe: Pure Mage, started off good but eventually became evil.

Dyan phor a'Cauz: Lawful Good Paladin

Wanda Bone: former Slave, and a Thief (no TG quests, or any other quests whatsoever)

The Grey Wizard: Pure Mage, Chaotic Good

Luci Pheria: black-magic witch, Chaotic Evil

Lou Zehr: Thief

Eradi~Kate: started off an Assassin, became a rogue vampiress drifter

Lady Saga: Ranger/Adventurer

Ann Thraxx: currently a Peasant

....I think that's all my characters? I could be forgetting somebody. Hmph.

Battlemage is my favorite, by a very slim margin.

It would be hard to top a character like Jerric.

For a long time my favorite was mages with the atronach sign, but my current character (for over a year now) has been a rogue. Definitely my favorite now.

Severus Snape was a custom class 'Alchemist'. His magic skills centered around the basic destruction and restoration skills. He used light armor. As he progressed and his oponents became more deadly, he made heavy use of enchantments.

I mainly play Mages but they have not always stayed in the Mage paradigm. Sarrah was a standard class Mage born under the sign of the Mage. Around level 25, she decided she was bored. She loved dramatic things and there is very little that is more dramatic looking than Daedric armor. She donned armor and trained with dungeon rats until she was good at melee fighting. Then she started rampaging through Oblivion gates.

Angel is a child prodigy. She is a standard class Mage born under the sign of the Atronach. Her specialties are conjuration, illusion, and alchemy. She has a gentle nature that tends toward the philosophical. She has spent night-long vigils simply contemplating the energy pouring out of an Oblivion gate. She loves nothing more than sitting on a bench in the Anvil plaza and watching the sun go down, the lamps come on, and the stars come out. She is most at home in the fields gathering ingredients for her alchemy business. She also enjoys her archery hobby but only the non-combat kind on the target ranges in town. in a one-on-one fight, Angel will protect herself with shield magic and kill with her staff or with poisons applied to her dagger. She has never worn armor or carried a shield. In a two against one fight, Angel will summon her Clannfear which she adores. If there are more that two she will turn them against each other dealing only with the injured survivors. The more there are, the more deadly she is.

I prefer sneaky, athletic characters with training in maces or short swords and experience in Illusion/Alteration and Destruction/Restoration.

In otherwords, Nightblades.

Adventurer, Stealth Archer. No magic, just two enchanted bows, 250 elf arrows and a load of homemade poison.

Thank you everyone for the replys I did end up making a Ranger themed character and so far I am loving it! He is a Nord named Arathorn and has traveled many days and far over the sea and arrived in Anvil to start a new life. It shall be interesting to see how his story unfolds

I play characters, personalities, stories - not classes. With me, form comes before function. In this I am the opposite of most gamers, even those who call themselves roleplayers - for whom function comes before form. I invent a character, a character's story, a character's personality. These things lead me naturally to that character taking certain actions in a game. I do not decide what actions a character is going to take and then build a character around that. That kind of approach doesn't interest me.

My characters also tend to develop as they age. Their outlooks on life, sometimes their very personality, often change as they gain experience, just as we do in real life. This is one of the reasons why I love the Elder Scrolls games above all other RPGs. In a typical D&D game my character cannot grow. Once a Rogue, always a Rogue. That's just not roleplaying to me.

I believe that "class" has nothing to do with roleplaying. Class is a game mechanic that was invented for party-based pen-and-paper games to avoid redundancy. But even then classes never made any roleplaying sense to me. If I'm in a group of five or six people in real life and we find ourselves in a life-threatening situation you can bet that all of us are going to use whatever weapons we can get our hands on: guns, swords, bows, clubs, fists, magic, pointed sticks, anything. No one who is threatened with death is going to say, "I'm sorry, I can't possibly pick up that club because I'm a mage."

I feel classes make even less sense in games like the Elder Scrolls series, where we play solo adventurers. The idea of being a jack-of-all-trades gets criticized a lot but it's really the only plausible way to roleplay a lone adventurer. We can look to American frontiersmen like Jim Bridger, Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith as examples: these folks did everything: shoot, fish, trap, build houses, make clothes, ect. And if magic had been around they would have used that too. They did anything they had to in order to stay alive.

In my early days I did tend to play a lot of melee warriors though, if that's any help.

Beautifully said.

That′s how I justify Lothran being at the top of almost every skill; he has to survive and the best chance to do so is to know a lot about everything.

I agreed with most of what you said, but take exception to the above. If my character can shoot a fireball at a zombie from fifty feet away and kill it, she is not going to bother with that club. The zombie is going to take the club away from your mage, and beat her to a pulp with it, and then eat her brain. Likewise, nobody who has possession of a weapon with which they are skilled is going to go into combat with a weapon they've never used before. It would be simply stupid. Etta has a longsword, and she knows how to use it. Why should she pick up that club?

None of our characters are in the position you describe above. In Oblivion's beginning tutorial section, before we are presented with our first fight, we are given access to a longsword, a short sword, a fire spell, a healing spell, and several potions. After you kill a couple of rats (which you could do with your fists), you immediately have access to armor, several blunts, and a ranged weapon. At that point, you are already free to choose what you prefer.

A specialist will always get better at a skill, faster, than somebody who divides their training among several skills. It's true in life, and it's true in TES.

I'm not saying that one can't be a "jack of all trades," but it's unnecessary, and probably a hindrance.

I′m so not on the same page here The more skills you have the bigger the chance to survival. If you know how to use a vast array of weapons then you have a much bigger chance finding a weapon that suits you. If you are a specialist on guns but only find spears, sticks, swords, rocks or only have your fists, then tough luck.

I do agree however that specializing on one thing makes you much better at it than you′d be with many kinds of weapons, but I still think that being half-decent with many weapons is better than being an expert with one.

Well, my character is too weak to do anything with fists, blade or blunt beside piss off her foes. Similarly, that low strength prevents carrying much loot or wearing heavy armor. And of course she was daydreaming about riding her precious black mare during the classes that taught her fellow mages how to use staves. And despite the vigorous efforts of guild mate Delphine Jend, Buffy can’t manage to do much more with the elements of fire, ice and shock beyond killing a mudcrab or cooking. When she tried to use a lockpick, she broke a nail, so those are completely out (except for selling because they weigh nothing). Because she rides Superian everywhere, her endurance is troll poo and she has the tiny red bar to prove it. At least she can compensate for a lack of speed by disappearing into thin air. Her potions stink, but she can make awesome poisons. Oh, and her bow can stop an ogre from an astonishing distance.