Quote:
PrinzMegaherz said:
If I'm not completely mistaken, you only level up by increasing your primary skills to a certain amount. Her strategy does not involve leveling those skills, so she would forever remain on level one. And I doubt that you could master the arena with a level one character, as your abilities like Hitpoints etc. would be far too low to survive some of the more fierce battles.
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That's basically her purpose, actually. In Daggerfall and Morrowind, you do *not* want to level up, especially if you happen to be a mage. Compared to other games, your health is relatively high on level 1, and does not rise much with other levels; Mana does not increase at all, and you could aim for the 85 Intelligence on level 1 with ease in Daggerfall (Morrowind is a bit more reasonable here, I think). So, your fire power is comparatively greater than elsewhere, and your access to magic is virtually unlimited.
I have played a character with all skills starting at 5 in Morrowind, and frankly can't say I've noticed much of a difference. Though I had all my important skills in primary/major (and so levelled rather quickly), I was not seriously challenged past the first few levels - that is, once my Destruction skill reached an acceptable level (20% odds of casting isn't great). Note that it was playing the GOTY edition; in earlier incarnations of the game, Magicka was pretty limited (or so I've been told). In Daggerfall, I know I took down the odd Daedra Lord or three at level 2, while deliberately trying not to level up (bloody Language skills made me go up to level 2). Magic *is* powerful (continuous effects anyone?).
I also dislike very much the mindless levelling of some "non-combat" skills that the system implies. Raising, say, Speechcraft takes a *while* if you use the skill in a rational manner. There is only two ways of getting the skill to a reasonably high level without spending ten months on the same character: training, or the clicking madness. Speechcraft could be raised relatively quickly by bribing the same character left and right (until his disposition dropped to 0), even though there was no point in doing so. Training is the other panacea, wherein gold buys power, which buys more gold, and so on. Training has been revamped in Morrowind, though it may be even more useful than before, as you can now get trained above 50.
Note that I speak about Daggerfall and Morrowind only, as I haven't played Oblivion (but there does not seem to be any significant difference). I find the skill-based system to be more interesting than the classes found elsewhere; problem is, the particular implementation of the skills seem to be flawed in those games. It seems to reward the number of successful uses, no matter how trivial (spells without any "real" effect anyone?), and does not consider how important these successes really were. Quantity over quality... hey, doesn't that sound like the levelling scheme of your average MMORPG? (Ultima Online comes to mind here)