Need help picking a class/race

[GreekIrish]

I'm drawn between too options:

 

Assassin (Dark Elf or Khajiit)

 

-Join Darkbrotherhood

-Join Thieves Guild

-Use daggers/bows

 

or

 

Pure Mage (Breton)

 

-Join College of Winterhold

-Use mostly Destruction spells

 

 

So what would you guys recommend? What are the pros and cons of each?

 

I don't really want to do a hybrid of anything, I'd rather stick to thePure Warrior/Thief/Mage set. I also don't have followers if that matters.

[Desideria]

I'm drawn between too options:

 

Assassin (Dark Elf or Khajiit)

 

-Join Darkbrotherhood

-Join Thieves Guild

-Use daggers/bows

 

or

 

Pure Mage (Breton)

 

-Join College of Winterhold

-Use mostly Destruction spells

 

 

So what would you guys recommend? What are the pros and cons of each?

 

I don't really want to do a hybrid of anything, I'd rather stick to thePure Warrior/Thief/Mage set. I also don't have followers if that matters.

 

 

Well, it's really up to how you want to play the game. I'm going the way of your first choice, as I'm a Khajit female character that joined the Dark Brotherhood, uses a lot of stealth and does archery (you'll see elsewhere that I've just had a mysterious sudden drop in my Archery skill, which is..inconvenient). As a stealth character, I have to rely on someone like Lydia who's a heavy armor wearer and a hard hitter, but she also messes with my stealth as enemies tend to spot her--but then, they tend to attack her and ignore me, also. As a stealth character I feel more vulnerable than I would as a fighter and I tend to use a lot of poison to increase my odds of killing quickly. I don't feel ready to kill a dragon solo so I can't really go far without a follower of some kind.

 

I do think that no matter what a person chooses, there tends to be some melding. There are times when I've absolutely had to switch to one handed weapons over the bow, or die. A character who wants particular kinds of enchanted weapons will likely have to do enchanting, or may need to use magic against undead sometimes. Even the extra ability you gain as the main character involves something like magic--no matter what kind of character you're playing (and yes, I think you'll want to use that skill). And...to get all the options on that ability, a character needs to be pretty broad in what kind of things they try (being pretty general here to avoid spoilers as well as possible).

[Papashuster]

High elves are the best at literally everything they are the tallest race which makes their attacks do more damage because they are larger and the have a lot more starting magicka so either way you want to go with you can.

[Krawll]

The real beauty of this game is that there is no such thing as a bad build for your character.

 

I started my character as the normal warrior type , wearing heavy armor and wielding a two handed greatsword. I wanted to create myself a kind of deathknight based on the ones from World of warcraft. So i studied a little bit of magic and gave him a few points in Magicka whenever i was lvling up and learned a few frost spells and a few defensive spells as well, i would also give him lots of stamina and stuff. I learned how to craft my own gear and how to enchant it also. Smithing and Enchanting were the two first skills that i managed to max out.

 

Those two skills also made my character nearly invincible, being able to put two enchantments on each piece of gear that you have is Godly. I used a lot of resistance enchantments so in total i had 92 % shock resistance, 92% cold resistance and 50 % fire resistance.

 

Anyways those plus the Life leeching and Soul traping enchants on my weapons plus the Magicka Regen and Life Regen on the rest of my gear made me impossible to kill. I also joined Both the companions and the mages College and became the leader of each groups.

 

Now after finishing all available quests from all of the "GOOD" factions in the game and having pretty much nothing else to do, i decided to go for a new kind of challenge. The only guild i had never joined was the thieves guild and i realy didn't feel like creating myself a new character at all so i went to whiterun and crafted myself a whole new set of armor , all Light Armor, also a new ring and a new amulet. And instead of a helmet, i chose to use a hood to make myself look a bit more like a thief. I enchanted it to improve my sneaking skill because that skill was definatly realy low and i gave myself some health regeneration and stamina regen too. The only resistance skill i managed to keep was a 46 % frost resistance. ( Could've been fire or shock , i chose frost ). At that point, my pickpocket skill was at 19. The only time i had ever increased the pickpocket skill was by reading books lol. My sneak skill was around 40 , only because at some point in the game i was a vampire and i sometimes had to sneak in order to feed , i had no perks in 1 handed weapons and no perks in archery at all. I had never used a 1 handed weapon or a bow at all throughout the whole game so far.

 

now which brings us 2-3 days later . My sneak skill is at 96 , my archery and 1 handed skills are both over 60 and i'm definatly both a thief and an assassin to be feared. And at this point in the game , i'm the leader of the Companions, The Archmage of the Mage's College, the leader of the Thieves guild, a Member of the Nightingales and the leader of the Dark Brotherhood. I've talked to pretty much every single Gods and became their champion lol. I'm a Thane in Whiterun and Solitude and i have a house in both cities and i've also completed the main plot which is to slay Alduin the world eater.

 

And all of that only to say and to prove that there is no such thing as a bad build in this game . You can start your character one way and if you don't like the way he's going, just change it . My character may not be as good of an assassin as he could be since i only started spending perks in those areas very very late in the game but by using a combination of the skills i previously had and the new skills i acquired, i managed to become a very successful thief and assassin.

 

I also forgot to mention that the day i became a thief i got rid of my follower and my thrall . I'm also definatly not invincible like i used to be. I definatly have to work a lot harder during fights and i can no longer kill dragons in 10 seconds like i used to and since i basicly only have Frost resistance now , everytime i'm fighting a dragon that spits fire i realy have to be extremely careful but to be honest, all that challenge only adds more fun to the game. I would have to worry about mages if they could see me first but most of the time, they feel the cold steel of my blade on their throat before they even know i'm there. I would have to worry about all those super heavy armored bandits who could slash me in two with their huge battle axe if i wasn't standing on the roof of a building where they cannot reach me . Allowing me to simply shoot them down when they least expect it. And when things get too spicy for my taste, i just cast the invisibility spell , run and hide in a corner, let them search for me a bit , then when they think i'm gone , i come back out of the shadows and spill more blood hehe.

 

I can't even begin to imagine how deadly an assassin can be if he has all the perks .

 

But anyways, this post is definatly longer than i expected it to be when i started writing it lol. The message behind all of this is that you can play whatever you want . No matter what you choose to play, you'll have strenghs and weaknesses. Whenever you find yourself in a tuff situation where you start thinking damn, how the hell am i gonna get through this, just open up your inventory and see what scrolls you have that might help you, if you don't hve any good scroll, open up your list of shouts and see if one of your shouts might get it done, if not then you may have learned a spell somewhere in your travels that you simply never used before and it will pop in your face and save your life .

 

I'll give you one last example of what i mean here and then i'll be done i promise lol. I was in Dustman's Cairn with Farkas ( One of the companions) . We were in the very last room where a whole bunch of draugr wake up 4-5 at a time . There are many waves of them waking up and even if you're not done killing the first wave, the next wave wakes up after a bit and it only gets harder. To make matters worse, some of them can shout and once in a while they'll blow your weapons off your hands. So i was only lvl 15 i think and i wasn't doing lots of damage yet and i didn't have any good enchants on me and they just kept blowing my Greatsword away . The 2-3 first times it hapenned, i managed to just scoop it up and re-equip it while running and kiting them but at some point they eventualy blew my Sword away and i simply couldn't find it . SO i opened up my spell list and remembered that i had just purchased the : Bound: Battleaxe spell. So i just summoned myself a Battle axe and managed to finish the fight with it . The good thing about those Bound weapons is that they CANNOT get blow off hehe.

 

SO as i promised lol i'm done now, just play what you like, decision is yours entirely, no one will tell you to play a certain class over another. Although we can definatly give you advice or tips to help you play the class you choose.

 

Cheers

 

Krawll

[JanusForbeare]

High elves are the best at literally everything they are the tallest race which makes their attacks do more damage because they are larger

 

Unlike real life, in TES, size doesn't matter.

 

Altmer are meant to be mages. You can play an Altmer warrior, but you certainly won't have any advantages in that field. Full details are on the wiki: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Altmer

 

To the OP, the choice really comes down to your personal preferences. However, if you haven't played through the game yet, be warned: the thieves guild/DB questlines are much longer and better crafted than that of the College of Winterhold. Furthermore, magic doesn't scale well in vanilla Skyrim, and you may find that a mage character feels underpowered at higher levels. Personally, I'd recommend the Dunmer build for your first runthrough.

 

EDIT: OP, It occurs to me that you never stated that this is your first playthrough, and your post count makes me question that assumption even more. Sorry if I was mistaken; my advice stands, though.

Edited January 16, 2012 by JanusForbeare

[chanchan05]

High elves are the best at literally everything they are the tallest race which makes their attacks do more damage because they are larger and the have a lot more starting magicka so either way you want to go with you can.

 

No they are not. LOL. They may be taller but in terms of damage dealt they don't do more damage than other races. Plus the fact that Nords are in fact larger than High Elves. Height does not mean large. I mean Yao Ming is taller than Shaq but in no way is he larger than Shaq. Shaq is heavier and stronger.

 

 

To the OP, if you go first route, I'll suggest going thief before assassin. Its a lot more fun and assassin-like going to your kills with Nocturnal's Shadowcloak blessing.

[GreekIrish]

Thanks Krawll, that was very helpful.

 

And actually, High Elves are the tallest race in the game, and contrary to popular belief, they run the fastest.

[Feanoro]

if you want to be a pure mage then good luck playing without conjuration or followers at higher levels lol. You'll get destroyed by hordes of enemies coming at you, especially since the area spell options are limited in skyrim.

[Cyrotek]

if you want to be a pure mage then good luck playing without conjuration or followers at higher levels lol. You'll get destroyed by hordes of enemies coming at you, especially since the area spell options are limited in skyrim.

 

As long as you didnt used PISE, you cant talk about "getting destroyed by hordes of enemies", because there arent hordes. Get PISE and have fun fighting 5 Draugr Deathlords and a named Dragonpriest on master at once.

 

Take heavy armor (yes, possible as mage), enchanting, restoration and destruction. You will get the most boring character possible, even on master. Just the start is a bit hard.

 

Oh, and i did that as argonian. Who the heck cares about racial abilitys.

 

Assassin type characters are more fun. At least for me. You got some challenge (but here also: at higher levels it gets somewhat boring because you oneshot everything if you play vanilla) and decent guildquests. Also you can switch to some sort of warrior type if you feel like it later on. My 100 sneak argonian is now a twohand fighter in heavy armor.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Cyrotek

[ZenMonkey47]

My personal favorite is Breton heavy warriors. Their passive magic resistance means 1/4 of ALL elemental damage is blocked. Through various sources this can be raised even further to a 85% maximum. With an armor at 570 your physical resistance is at 85% as well. When only 15% of all damage affects you (even less when you block with a shield), you pretty much become a short unstoppable juggernaut.