That's just a remnant of the original D&D rules this system is derived from. They also tried to tie each attribute to the same amount of skills (for balancing) which led to some strange decisions. Anyway, chances for successful spell-casting in Morrowind are only dependent on skill, Willpower and Luck, but not Intelligence anyway. I also can imagine that having a high illusion score might improve one's perceived appearance.

I appreciate your reinforcement of my last statement, too bad this thread isn't in the OFFICIAL TES #21. I feel like a broken record, just don't forget about cross class training, also, a good use of perks is to choose skills and abilities standerd to other classes.

I've always throught, for instance, thieves and assassins should also have illusionist abilities since there skills are based around misdirection, confusioand stealth, ( especially in Skyrim, If your going to strip somebody butt naked, they'd better be in a transe)

They do through alchemy. Which makes sense rather than spells as they aren't mages.
Assassins and thieves create illusion potions by mixing herbs and other ingrediences together. They can also make poisons and also make health potions. This helps the balance as a warrior should have more physical strength to both hit and absorb damage (able to manoeuvre better / heavier weapons and armor) and a mage has restoration, alteration and conjuration which all aids.

I think it's always been an advantage of TES that it hasn't forced you into any of these character stereotypes. You can take any combination of skills you like, and try to make it work.

Well I'm going to disagree with you. Classes are professions meaning professional, I'm not going to a doctor who's well not really a doctor but he's studied law and a little music. I'm going to a doctor who's a doctor first, but there's nothing that says he can't also be a damn fine musician.

THERE's an old adage that says, " walk on one side of the road or the other, but not in the middle, or you'll get hit".

That was done with the old system of major/minor/miscellaneous skills. Major skills were your profession, minor ones supplementary skills and misc. ones you hobbies. This didn't prevent anyone from excelling in their hobby, but it certainly a lot harder then excelling in your chosen profession you studied.

I didn't mean to be talking about being specialised vs being a jack of all trades. I was talking more about being able to focus on unusual combinations of skills; combinations which we can't easily classify with the traditional class labels. TES hasn't restricted you to the traditional stereotypes of warrior, mage, thief (and a handful of hybrid classes). It's whatever skills you like.

For example, a warrior might specialise in four or five skills---a weapon skill, an armour skill, block, smithing, maybe one more. But now consider someone who wants to focus on four or five skills, but it's an unusual combination like: One-Handed, Pickpocket, Alteration, Block, Alchemy. In a good sense, these two characters are equally specialised, because they're focusing on the same number of skills. But while the first character is a pretty traditional warrior, the second character is much more unusual.

But also, even if these unusual classes are not as "effective" as traditional classes, so what? Yes, you wouldn't seek medical advice/treatment from a part-time doctor/lawyer/musician. But the nice thing about TES is that you don't have to be the saviour of the world. You don't have to play the sort of character that everyone in the land is going to ask for help. You can play the journeyman mercenary. You can play the town's local scoundrel. You can play the anti-social hunter. That freedom has always been a major appeal of TES, I think.

FWIW, I think all of the previous TES games did this: in Oblivion + Morrowind because you could make your "custom class", and in Skyrim because you improved in as many skills as you used. So I just hope that this sort of approach doesn't change.

That's American, like Kennady said, " WE DON'T DO IT BECAUSE IT IS EASY, WE DO IT BECAUSE IT IS HARD".

Well I do understand what your saying, like said, I don't agree. The system in Skyrim was to simple, generic, gave the game a 'GAME' feel, in all cases, opposite of an RPG feeling. YOU seem to want your cake and eat it to.

An adventurer must have a certain skill set to survive, and, (THE BIG REASON FOR HAVING GIVEN ATTRIBUTES i.e. str, con..so on) is to make you choose your strategy, bases on your strengths and weaknesses, to navigate the environment. AND, as in life, live with the consequences of those choices.

IF BETHESDA wants to continue the Skyrim format , they better stop calling it an RPG! THE WHOLE SOUL OF ROLE PLAYING, is to simulate a life experience, in a fantasy setting, through a PC. NOT TO design a world were average 'JOE carpet bagger' can be everything there is to be, just in case.

I wish my johnson was 2x longer, roleplaying isn't WENDY'S , you just can't have it your way.

Anycase class skills must make sence, if you want to cross-classes, well there are drawbacks. If you use your limited perks for skills not defined in the class your playing, down the road you might regret those choices. AND NOT JUST DECIDE TO GO TRAIN IN SOME SKILL YOU WEREN'T CONCERED ABOUT PREVIOUSLY. It also makes you consider you choice in a follower closely.

Agree 100%! My avatar is 250-year old mer (Altmer or Bosmer) with a lifetime of accumulated experiences. He has a profession with a certain set of skills and he doesn't like setting off anew thinking, what do I do now? It's not good enough to come out of med school and say I'm a doctor, you need to be able to define what kind of doctor you are before you start your practice, if you have an eye problem, you want a ophthalmologists or a optometrists not a orthopedic surgeon. Only a Nord would go out into the world not knowing the difference between a sword, axe or hammer. All he knows is that he needs to use one or two hands.

One thing that was good about the previous games was if the preset classes didn't appeal to you, you had the ability to define your own custom class. That was a great personal touch, one of many touches that made TES unique among the RPG world. I think it is unfortunate that the series is going mainstream

I think these two things should be treated separately. Even if one agrees with your first point---about the reasons for having classes---why should those classes have to "make sense"? Or, perhaps a better way to put it: why should it be up to Bethesda to second-guess what combinations of skills a player might like to use and that "makes sense" to them? As I said, TES traditionally has not done this; Bethesda has left it up to the player to find a combination of skills that works for them. And I think this has always been a pretty appealing feature of TES, and I don't think it will change for future games. That's really my main point.

Just stand back for a second and think about Skyrim's system:

A) You have an overall level (which 'only' gives you a 10pt increase in eighter magic, health, or stamina and gives you 1 perk choice)

OVERALL level is a measure of maturity, ability and development, meaning ALL your stats should move up respectively

You have a skill level (which only dictates 'when' you can choose a perk in a given skill)

THIS level doesn't even progress your success rates or damage percentages, YOU MUST PHYSICALLY choose to place a 'perk' to strengthen the skill IN WHICH YOUR LEVELING UP IN!!

C) You have PERKS (which NOW---! ALLOWS YOU TO STRENGTHEN YOUR SKILL)

Think about it srk, I mean sit back and think. Does this not seem redundant, over-encumbered nonsense?

I've aready said I appluad BETHESDA for trying something different, but they really should of consulted with an RPG expert before finalizing it.

Things such as weapon damage, smithing quality, and sneak success are directly influenced by skill level alone in Skyrim.

Real-life people peak at different levels of ability, and much of that happens not because of their aptitude, but because of what they either accidentally or deliberately fail to know. Real-life skill improvement comes both from repetitively rehearsing the things you already know and from learning and adopting new things.

Skyrim's skill system is not a perfect match for reality, but neither is any other RPG skill system. The system's purpose is to give players freedom in establishing their characters' particular abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and it manages that end reasonably well. It is an effective system, which I would say matters much more than being a believable system.

EDIT: Wanting a character's acquistion of new ablities to happen more believably through your role-playing choices is something I support. I do not mean to imply that Skyrim's system cannot be improved.

The answer is yes, of course. The perks and skills should only get better after this is the first time Beth did this with TES.

Well if you mean it's effective at being generic and boring, I'll agree with you. Other than that, WELL TO BE FLAT HONEST, if it weren't for the brilliance in other aspects game, I would have quit it 20-30 hrs in, DRAGON AGE ORIGION's player management system, while being far from perfect, WAS far superior to Skyrim's. If you could take Skyrim's open world and amazing visuals and mesh them with DA mechanics, Skyrim would have been a whole different experience. (Mind you, I quit DA 2 early on because of the combat changes)

I know one thing though, if your satisfied with Skyrims PC management system, your not a TRUE RPGamer. You can take that to the bank!

I'm confused. I was just talking about TES giving you the freedom to make characters that specialised in an unusual combination of skills. I never denied that a good character customisation/development system is one that is reasonably intuitive.

But anyway, as I said above, I'm not really inclined to argue over radical overhauls of Skyrim's skill/perk system---just because I don't think that will happen. Most likely, I think. Bethesda will keep the basic idea of the skills/perks system, but just refine and balance it.

Well I'm a betting man, and I bet they'll use classes, sub-classes, AND perks, but differently in the next TES installment.

In OB, they made Attributes next to useless except as a mechanism for increasing Level, then in SR they removed Attributes. In SR, they've made Skills mostly useless except as a mechanism for limiting Perks, so I'm half-expecting them to remove Skills in the next game.

How would you see that working? Skills played two main roles in Skyrim: (i) increasing a skill gave you experience points that contributed towards leveling up; (ii) each perk had a prerequisite skill level.

i can see how Bethesda could get (ii) to work without skills: just have perk prerequisites for other perks. These prerequisites might be specific---you need to take the +X% damage perk before you can take the special move perk. Or they might be general---you need to take N many perks before you can take a certain perk. Also, it's one thing to get rid of skills as values from 0-100 that play a certain role in the game mechanics. It's another to get rid of them as a way of categorising the perks. They might keep the latter even if they get rid of the former.

As for (i), it's less clear how that would work. Perhaps there would just be a generic overall experience metre, and every activity you successfully perform (from hitting an enemy with a sword, to casting a spell, to picking a pocket) fills a little bit more into this metre. And then a certain amount of experience points gets you to level up; each level up you choose between HP/MP/SP, and you can choose a perk.

They could eliminate the first of those by eliminating levels. Perks could be based upon other factors, like Fame, Kills, or other stats. I'm not suggesting that it's a good idea, but it's possible to eliminate Skills (they seem to have already gotten rid of quite a few of them.)

Another possible (and perhaps more likely) simplification would be cutting Skills down to the bare bones: Something like Weapon, Armor, Crafting, Magic, Social.

It can, and I hope it does.

They could bring back attributes and remove skills. Attributes could increase through use the same as skills do now. Things previously done with skills could be done with attributes instead.

Acting as Bethesda has done in the past what you are suggesting could very well happen. The record of removing instead of improving is very clear.

Omg! Please no.

What is the point to numerous attributes other than unnecessary complicating character designing? Skills make much better sense as it is something we learn. Since when can people magically put points into specific areas of the body's growth anyhow?

I can understand an attribute to represent physical exercise rather than have us repetitively running, jumping and weight lifting etc but to split them up into individual groups seems tedious and unnecessary. How can you magically train one area and why would you? The same is with an attribute to training the focus and use of the mind for a mage and an attribute for a rogue (thief / assassin etc) that perfects motor skills to a superior level (the body's natural balance, timing, precision, the art of deception without showing conscience, facial expression, vocal tone etc) but again what is the real benefit of separating them other than unnecessary complications?
Surely trained skills and specific details and paths within training fields adds much more variety to class.

I actually would rather see less effort on attributes and much more selection and variety on skills.
I want to specialise one handed further into specific sword types or archery into specific fields rather than one for all that auto levels. Someone raised and trained in hours with an Elven style short bow would not necessarily be as naturally good with a crossbow. I would also like to see magic taken much further and the ability to make our own spells be added back in.