Thief overpwered?

[Sabatasso]

Sneak should rely on shadows, running silent when no one is looking and being generally silent at daytime, and under cover of night everything would be much better due to darkness of course. Vanilla skyrim sneak seems a bit like a "cloaking" feature, because when I invest enough points into it, I can sneak past, from a little distance, NPC's in broad daylight while they are basically looking straight at me, which I personally find utterly ridiculous.

 

Stealth is underpowered at the start, where you can't even hide in darkness behind a barrel without moving... guards will still see you in many cases. And there should be a detection zone around NPC's that makes them notice you if you linger in that zone long enough even with 100 and all perks. Give let's say a 4-5 second window to sneak in and stab before the auto-detection kicks in.

[Arkune]

At that point I hardly see it as unfair.

 

At which point are you? - I'm at the point where I one shot ancient dragons.

Shadow Warrior > Backstab > dead.

That's it.

 

A master of stealth craft should effectively turn invisable at will in my opinion that's fair.

It is however game breaking balance wise. It makes things too easy, there is no challenge.

 

Otherwise it would be far better to forgo all of those points and gear optimizations and just chug invisibility potions. Which in it's current state for stealth play could easily be argued.

Well and I would argue that alchemy needs a rebalance too. Remove the invis potion for example to counter boost the sneak rebalance.

Edited November 25, 2011 by Arkune

[NephilimNexus]

Stealth rocks against humanoid foes.

 

Against animals, not as much, as they have much higher detection ratings (realistic).

 

And against dragons stealth is pretty useless. You will get spotted, and the dragon will just swoop down and chomp you down in one gulp.

 

I suggest any stealth build should include the invisibility spell, even if it's the only spell you ever learn. Invisibility in the left hand, dagger in the right, and you should be able to throat-cut anything on two legs easy enough. Or run the frack away from that dragon, as the case may be.

[marabunta5]

Im currently just using a scimitar Took the deadly archery perk... the strongest things i can take down in one shot are... Not sure but i think those may be falmer or restless draugr And haha my thief doesnt use magic aside from a little restoration (the first spell... ) the only way that char could be over powered is if i use the next few levels purely for combat and combat perks :/ wont happen as im so close to pickpocketing equipped weapons! (and 50% more chance for special loot... lol ) and dragons anything higher than blood (who somehow seem to be very easy one time and very hard the other) i'll run away from

[Arkune]

Having a spell in one hand compromises your hidden state unless invisible.

If you use invisibility then why bother with sneaking altogether? - Just get the multis for the sneak attack and off you go.

However I think that makes thief type gameplay rather pointless since it removes the chance of being detected.

Not to mention that a high sneak skill makes you almost invisible in the shadows to a human anyway.

 

Having no hidden state during dragon fights is a problem at lower levels. There I suggest covering behind objects to avoid the dragon breath and using a bow.

However stealth is not completely useless against dragons once you have Shadow Warrior you can sneak attack during regular combat (it gives the user ~1 sec invisibility which allows for a regular sneak attack).

 

I personally will replay the game as a normal warrior or mage type character. That should make combat more interesting.

It became rather dull with the my thief/assassin since when I use sneak I can one shot or pass anything. (For the record my character is level 81)

A friend of mine started out as thief as well and at first was rather “WTF how do I fight dragons?” now he is “mehhhh I replay with different class, its to easy now” as well. And he did not even finish the main plot yet...

Edited November 26, 2011 by Arkune