Some people have posted about problems with 'thief' classes in Oblivion. Is this a viable class I can complete the game with and be competetive and actually have fun with it at the same time? If not, are there mods that specifically tailor to this while not exactly 'cheating' the game?.

Basically I plan to make a stealthy, somewhat selfish loner-type char. A kind of Oblivion version of Garrett. I don't want to get so far to find out I am gimped. I want to have fun with it not just 'get by' too. My first class was a Crusader-type (Paladin) and it works fine so far.

Btw..is there actual stealth in this game or is it just hiding in shadows?

Anything else I need to know if I wanna go this route class-wise?

Stealth is one of the best features of this game.

Hiding in the shadows actualy feels like it. You're nervous, wondering whether your footsteps might alert your enemies.


The lockpicking is much better than it was in morrowind. Even my fighter, with a Security skill of 7, was able to crack a Hard lock. But, that's really only becuase I played an assassin my first time through. This allows the thief/assassin to get good treasure early on; If they're skilled enough.

For assassins, Poisons play a huge role. Paralyzing, Intelligence draining, Health Damaging... the possibilities are endless. You could even put two effects into one poisons, saving you an extra attack. Couple a health damage poison with a sneak attack, and you could seriously cripple your opponent.

Quite frankly, I think that stealth is the best feature of this game. The thieves guild quests are great to boot! And the Dark Brotherhood... well, let's just say that they have an "evil humor" to them.

And I think that this game is probably possible with a stealth character. In fact, it is completely possible.

Just my 2 septims.

Stealth is good, not Thief series good (best stealth game... EVER) but good.

Problem is that many quests require you to kill stuff, but your just not that good at killing stuff (better at avoiding it).

One option is to go Vamp, I think that offsets a lot of the negatives of a thief character... but it gets tiresome pretty quickly.

And as Kyrvias said... get your alchemy up quick (just got my apprentice glassware).

oh yea... get the 'No Psychic Guards' mod too.

I have it on the 360, so I don't have that luxury. More of a challenge, I say.

Yeah, where I am now, it take my cheated character 50 hits to kill an ennemy while they often kill me in 2-4 hits.

I gave myself moded glass armor and weapons, and it's still ridicullous. I wouldn't recommend it.

Actually, you can play a thief. Just don't put any thief skill as your major. As long as you only level based on fighting skills you'll always be balanced with the mobs. The problem is that when like me you leveled mostly from stealth, security and such the game still put you up against ennemies as if you were Tralar the Barbarian king of Xuxjudu. Good luck fighting those peasants in full Deadric. What? You're a rogue and would like glass armor? Too bad, everyone else use Daedric.

At first things seemed balanced, especially with sneak attacks, but sneak attacks never get better multiplier to match the health of ennemies. My sneak attack barely dent the health of level 20 ennemies now.

[ 04-03-2006, 07:38 PM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

It seems like it calls for a thief mod, simply adding a multiplier to sneaks over time and various other tweaks. In the meatime I'll just play my pally I guess.

I failed :(

Still... pally's are fun :D

[ 04-04-2006, 11:23 AM: Message edited by: Kyrvias ]

Being a thief is fun at early levels, but as you level up the enemies have so many hitpoints that backstabbing becomes completely irrelevant, and every Joe Blow npc has glass or daedric armor worth 1,000 times more than anything you can ever steal. A thief simply becomes a warrior with glass armor instead of daedric. You can forget about being Garret past the first few levels, not gonna happen.

There are several plugins increasing bow damage. I suppose you could install that, turn the difficulty all the way down, and play a thief with low endurance and no armor that could kill enemies quickly from stealth. That might stretch out the feeling of being a thief past level 5. Maybe crank up melee weapons too.

Look for a mod called "300 weapons", it adds a blackjack that can knock enemies out for a few minutes. There are also plugins making high level armor much more rare and increasing the value of stuff to steal like silverware. I'm testing one called Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, haven't played it much yet though.

I'm currently level 10 and still having fun as a stealth, but I have a couple mods installed like stealth multiplier... they must have playtested stealth characters... I wonder how they could have thought it was balanced in it's default configuration?

Stealth multiplier is the one that give you x12 stealth attack damage right? I saw it but it seemed too extreme for me.

My best guess: Stealth characters, stereotypically, aren't tanks. They avoid combat. Perhaps Bethesda is trying to nudge us in that direction? Which would be fine for me (One of my fave MW characters was non-violent thief) but, from what i've read so far, Bethesda has forgotten that they've made it impossible to avoid combat.

Quick question that doesnt really warrant its own thread :eek:

How does the lockpicking work? I'm guessing its not the same as in morrowind

cheers :D

*edit* nevermind just found the thread on lockpicking :D

[ 04-07-2006, 05:27 AM: Message edited by: Madman-Rogovich ]

Yay searching!

Just make sure you have a decent light armor and block skill and you will be fine. Fencing galore thieves works great!

Just a thief who can't figure out the dangerous side of a dagger and who couldn't hit the inside of the barn with help? He shouldn't expect to get far without some helping spells and a very high stealth!

My thief's Major skills were:

Blade, Light Armor, Marksman, Security, Sneak, Restoration and Acrobatics.

She was specialised in Stealth skills, her favorite attributes were speed and agility. At 21 She had 100 both in Speed and Agility, something like 70 str, but few endurance.

She's been sneaking all the time, both Sneak and Security were almost maxed. She had 70 or so in marksman and blade I think. She could sneak trough anything, the problem is that beside the Thief and Dark Brotherhood guild quests, there pretty much is no quests you can do without fighting.

Like I said somewhere, I did a crappy quest in the Imperial city while I was level 21. That quest was available since level 1 when you first get there. The ennemies you had to kill at the end were in Daedric.

Even with cheated weapons and glass armor, with god mode on, it took my character 50 or so hit to kill something at that point. I had to keep 2 set of armors and weapons on my character because the items would break before I was even halfway trough a ruin or cave, from all the long fighting, I was always repairing stuff.

Sneak and security are counter productive to a good character. If you get your level from skills that make you avoid fight (or at low level end them fast with sneak attacks), then you won't be able to fight against something that's balanced for a character that level from from fighting skills. You might as well level by staying in town and jumping your way to level 200, it won't make any difference.

[ 04-10-2006, 09:22 AM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

I am no fan of the peasants with Daedric equipment either and some quests are destroyed by this, but also some quests should not be done with a thief and some quests not with a fighter etc IMHO.

I am not sure which quest you refer to in Imperial City though.

Also, I have downloaded, but not yet tried a mod with new tables in the game so that you can find a level 20 warriror with rusty iron equipment etc. It makes things more random and also, you can as a high level character still fight of a few lvl 1 rats and other crappy enemies.
The mod is: 1197-Better levelled lists-TESSource.rar

There is also a mod that will increase the sneak damage multiplier, and another mod that makes it harder to find sneaking marksmen etc. So I don't think you are alone to not like this in the game. IMO Bethseda has always favoured spellcasters, and heavily so, in their games.

In a way I think that Bethseda has gone a bit too far in making the game streamlined since it then will just be boring and same same but different. In Morrowind I learned to give Daedric ruins a wide birth with my low level character.

Where can I get this sneak multiplier mod then?

I still wanna wait till more mods appear...Luvians char sounds like a nightmare experience. If I am having to cheat just to survive I have ruined the game for myself personally. I will try mage for now I guess.

Here's a mod that claim to rebalance the game.

I haven't tried it yet, since I've been reading a novel, but I want to give this a try with my thief later on. I probably wouldn't use it for a fighter character.

And yes, agree not all quests should be able to be completed by everyone, but if so, it should be clear from the start, it suck to get trough 10 parts just to find out the last one ask you to kill some powerfull guy, or sneak trough something.

[ 04-11-2006, 09:23 AM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

While I normally prefer mage-type characters, I went and made an assassin archer now(custom, not the one in the game) just to see what all you are on about. Level 2 right now, so far it's fun, but I think the hard parts are coming, if I hear you right.
So what are the mods, and where do we get them? (preferably links where I don't have to pay to download)

I think the auto-difficulty thing is a nod to the console market... and frankly it's stupid.

So you go through all this adventuring and in effect you get WEAKER as you level up... not only is it counter-intuitive but it essentially provides a disincentive for levelling.

makes one wonder if you could just ignore the level up button and go through the whole game at L1... because the game was MUCH easier at L1 than it is at L15.

Drop the difficulty a notch, to 40% or so. This makes an enormous difference in monster hitpoints. No more whacking a guy in the head 30 times with a daedric claymore. Combat is much more pleasant this way.

Ya, the scale on the difficulty slider is huge. But if you're like me, it seems like cheating when you're forced to drop it.

I think the thief class is very powerful; many enemies are incapable of detecting you even while you are attacking them. For example ogres i can sneak attack and the first round seems to paralyze them almost every time. This causes them to be unaware of my existance for the next dozen rounds....which makes it so i am getting the 6x damage bonus for every hit - which leads to kills with zero risk to me. The monsters that are immune to this tactic are still very easily beatable by using paralyzing weapons or spells.
I think alchemy is probably the most overpowered skill in the game - the potions stack with the spells in most cases, and you can make some simply amazing potions - im a master with the 4 expert level alchemical items and i can make potions that regenerate fatigue, health, and cast powerful shield on me at the same time.
So far the only fight i have had real trouble with is against umbra; she was immune to my frontal power attack stun so when i sneak attacked her she immediatly started her attack. I managed to beat her using a staff of paralization so i could attack her without being assaulted back.

I had no difficulty with Umbra whatsoever...but that's because I've reached the top of the game.

See, the enemies ARE leveled...but their equipment can only get so good. In morrowind, only a few select NPCs were priviledged enough to have equipment better than me after level 30...and the same is true so far in Oblivion. Now that I'm level 35, with full daedric, I look at the punk bandits in glass and laugh, because once you hit daedric armor and weapons, the only thing the enemy can throw at you that you haven't already cancelled out is more hit points...and that can be overcome with poisons, potions, and repair hammers.