Rant: Archery As A Combat Skill - I Can't Keep Quiet On This Anymore

One thing that is driving me mad about Skyrim is so small and technical it shouldn't even bug mebut it does.

Archery is Skyrim's renamed Marksman skill from Oblivion and Morrowind, but unlike in past games, where Marksman was a Stealth skill, it is now a Combat skill. This bothers me, a lot. Originally each skill specialization (combat, stealth, and magic) had at least one defensive skill, at least one attack skill, and a collection of utility skills. Now, while it's remaining skills help deal damage, a pure stealth character has no means to directly attack an enemy. Mages can use Destruction magic, warriors have a wide assortment of weapons available, but thieves have no way to attack.

In the past a pure stealth character, also known as a thief, had a bow to fight with. A fitting weapon since it was a silent means of killing a guard from the shadows and it required finesse, dexterity, patience, and skill to use, things any good thief must have in abundance. However in Skyrim the bow now belongs to the warriors, leaving someone who wants to make a pure thief character defenseless with no way to harm an enemy until they have the Poisoned perk which requires 40 Pickpocket skill and a large number of poisons, not to mention many enemies can't be pickpocketed and therefore this is useless against them.

While I understand a thief would avoid combat he will at times need a means to defend himself when detected. In Skyrim this is no longer possible without drawing in a skill from one of the other two specializations.

Does anyone else get annoyed by this technicality?

Skyrim doesn't have "stats" like Oblivion and Morrowind, with the simplified system, anybody can use a bow..so it really doesn't require much of what you mentioned.

Archery gains fall under the Thief Stone though.

Which bothers me even more because... CONSTANCY IS IMPORTANT!

Well there's the loophole I guess.

You could always go with Shiv/Knife/Fork ... or unarmed.

Shiv/knife/fork are all one-handed weapons... just saying... and unarmed is fun... I'll say that...

Are they coded that way? I know you equip them as such, but the damage of the fork and knife always stays @ 1 no matter how high you 1h skill is and no matter what +1h items you may be wearing. Neither can be additionally tempered, but they can be enchanted and they can carry a poison charge.

The Shiv, if I remember correctly, is considered a type of dagger.

... If someone told me at the beginning of the day I would be talking about the Knife and Fork as weapons in Skyrim, I would have laughed at them. Reminds me though, should go play my cannibal character a bit more.

I do not consider my character a thief, but he certainly uses stealth, lockpicking, and archery MORE than any other skills. These are his three top skills. But a thief? No, my char is a savy warrior, plain and simple. His next highest skills are light armor and one handed weapons.

My point is this : In Skyrim we no longer fall into the "mage", "thief", or "warrior" templates. Play your style and it will suit you. At least 75 percent of my kills are from a stealth position, but rest assured when my char is *discovered* I do not panic. Why? Because he is a warrior who just happens to use stealth, bring it on in a straight up fight and I'm still good.

I understand your rant, but I think your binding yourself too much to the idea of templates that are obsolete in Skyrim.

Appaullo

If you had seen my character you would realize am not template bound. I use one-handed, archery, conjuration, stealth and, light armor as major skills. Lockpicking and a few other as minor skills. Also lack of templates are one of the reasons I play so much Skyrim. Point is the skill specializations were designed to be balanced out across all three originally. But there are many people who are very touchy RP wise who want their thieves to be thieves and not warriors.

My likely issue is I am someone who need balance. Many RPGs fail to keep me because the 3 major class groupings in them are so utterly unbalanced toward one direction or another it ruins them for me. Until Skyrim TES had three perfectly balanced specializations each with skills tailored towards the three primary ways to play the game. Those three primary ways to play the game are warrior, mage, thief. Or if you will combat, magic, stealth. All three balanced and able to handle any situation. Each one had a means to fight, a means to protect themselves, and a collection of extra utility skills. All chosen to complement each other. Archery still compliments the stealth specialization more than the combat specialization. And one of the old joys of the earlier games was the challenge of playing a purist build.

And for RP reasons, a lowly thief is highly unlikely to be a swordsman, but rather a coward and reluctant to fight, preferring to strike from a distance using a bow and shadows to hide themselves. Not stand and fight against his enemy in close combat, but rather using lowly tricks like jumping a table and shooting them with arrows and using traps against them. An assassin might fight, but a thief is a coward in a fight. And a bow more of the weapon of a coward than that of a warrior.

I just hate bows entirely. I find the damage to be way too low. And I always seem to run out of arrows!

Try the Bound bow. 100 arrows with specs like the Daedric arrows every time you summon the bow

i've discussed this very issue on other boards and understand you completely squirrel.

it's a ridiculous oversight only made worse by the screw-up with governance by the wrong stone, lol.

the only aspect that somewhat makes up for it is the assassin's blade perk under sneak. but, i consider that a slight screw-up, as well, since, daggers we all have the basic understanding that daggers are 1-h blades.

however, your initial point is what matters most: the 3 skill types used to each have a primary offensive weapon. if i were to play a 'pure' thief in skyrim i would be forced to use a skill that isn't even validly represented: h2h. as well, since pacifism isn't a realistic method of playing the ENTIRE game, playing a 'pure' thief is not possible.

Is it ironic that even though I use a lot of conjuration to summon help while using a bow as my primary means to fight I don't use the bound bow?

personally, i've NEVER had a character that uses magic of any kind, EVER, use conjured weapons.

any tes game and with 1000's of hours of gameplay.

They wanted to neatly divide up the skills evenly between the 3 legs of the combat tripod, and I guess decided that a Bow is a weapon, so... Yeah, it ticks me off that Stealth has NO offense, unless you count pickpocket poisoning, so I ignore it. Archery is under the Thief Guardian Stone, (And called Marksman in almost all of the coding, BTW) so as far as In Game Effects are concerned, it's a Stealth Skill. (I guess that's why they were able to sneak it in under our radar.) Just don't pay attention to the literature, it's on the border anyway, assume it's on that side instead of the other.

Uhmmm well...think of it this way...

Archery is a combat skill, because you use it to attack enemies. It isn't really a stealth skill because it doesn't in any way contribute to you being able to sneak around.

And since even a thief needs to know how to defend himself during combat, it also makes sense that it's park of the thief stone.

Except it means you don't have to Sneak as close. In fact, the sneak shot bonus XP is one of the fastest ways to level up Sneak without grinding.

You can also get a sneak attack bonus with any 1 or 2 handed weapon, can't you? Do you think those should be stealth skills as well?

And plus lots of people use archery without sneaking, warriors for example might use them to fight dragons from a distance, especially on higher difficulties when it's very difficult to stand up to them melee. In that scenario, it isn't a stealth skill whatsoever, and is entirely a combat skill. It would make absolutely no sense to have it under stealth in those circumstances.

True, but I was mostly debating the statement I quoted, to the effect that is doesn't help, nor contribute to Sneak whatsoever. While you Can backstab with a dagger, at low Sneak levels, like 15, it's very hard to get that close. Obviously, 2 handed isn't a stealth skill, because it doesn't even have a damage multiplier perk, but the ultimate Assassins' Blade, a dagger, is 1 handed. It just bugs me that a sneaky type cannot do any direct damage without using a Magic, or Combat skill.

But like I said above, it's an annoying piece of Fridge Logic that doesn't directly affect the game in any way.

Oh, sorry. I'm just trying to offer an alternate look at the topic.

And my original point still stands; it doesn't really contribute to sneaking. It may allow you to benefit from sneaking by using ranged attacks while remaining unseen, but the part where you are sneaking around and remaining out of sight is not affected by what weapon you have equipped, nor with what weapon you choose to attack with.

It's entirely separate from the actual stealth part, although you can combine it with stealth to enhance your attack strategy, using archery by itself doesn't constitute stealth.