The Balance of Skyrim

Smithing works against you. My first character got to 100 smithing and I made Dragonscale armor for her. I was expecting her to be invincible but she was very much "vincible" as the skills of some foes ramped up a bit while her combat skills had not. Schmucks weren't a problem at all but the elder dragons and mob bosses were almost impossible.

My sneak causes no staggers when backstabbing with a dual-wielding daggers. So if the enemy isn't dead in 1 sneak dual power attack and maybe 1 more non-sneak power attack, sneaker is toast without a backup option like running away and casting invisibility or calm or fear. He has had to use the best enchanted daggers he can find/buy to keep up the damage output. Sneak skill is almost 100, but the damage dealing skills (archery and one-handed) are stuck down at 60 or so. If you play a sneaky one hitter, your damaging warrior skills don't increase very fast.

Do you have that 15x sneak attack thing? I was taking down giants with that! And my followers who loved to walk right in front of me just as I attacked.

That's interesting, Bill. I only planned on getting smithing up to where I can improve magic weapons. I haven't bought any of the other metals past steel. I'm level 29 and mostly wear elven, which I can improve before enchanting. I've got a few glass pieces, but I think glass is the highest light armor until dragon. I'm not sure. I truly enjoy the mini games of alchemy, smithing, and enchanting though. All of those skills are in the 45-60 range. Destruction, which I use all the time is only 60 too and I have the 20% boost you get from the mage sign. It levels pretty slow compared to the non-combat skills.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
That's interesting, Bill. I only planned on getting smithing up to where I can improve magic weapons. I haven't bought any of the other metals past steel. I'm level 29 and mostly wear elven, which I can improve before enchanting. I've got a few glass pieces, but I think glass is the highest light armor until dragon. I'm not sure. I truly enjoy the mini games of alchemy, smithing, and enchanting though. All of those skills are in the 45-60 range. Destruction, which I use all the time is only 60 too and I have the 20% boost you get from the mage sign. It levels pretty slow compared to the non-combat skills.

On my second character I got smithing up to around 60 and then using skill boost potions made my equipment all legendary (all orcish armor and the skyforged steel greatsword) and stopped smithing then. Well, I did swap a few things later for my follower. That seemed to work just fine. Even by the end of the game I wasn't really finding anything better than what I had which I actually liked. Possibly because I was an orc the shops had been carrying orcish stuff almost from the beginning and I had been upgrading it over time through all the improved categories.

Originally Posted by BillSeurer
Do you have that 15x sneak attack thing? I was taking down giants with that! And my followers who loved to walk right in front of me just as I attacked.

I haven't tried giants yet! One hit from one and my character would bounce to Red Mountain.

I do have the 15x sneak attack perk with daggers. Talk about an awesome button.

Sadly, I have found followers are not conducive to sneak attack backstabs with daggers. They almost always alert the victim before I can get into position. Annoyingly, right at the last moment. Oops, sorry for killing you Farendel. I guess you should stay out of the fucking way.

Maybe the Dark Brotherhood companions would be better at sneaking?

Originally Posted by Thrasher
I haven't tried giants yet! One hit from one and my character would bounce to Red Mountain.

One of my favorite moments from when I first started playing: Full of how awesome my guy was I snuck up on the first giant I saw and attacked! His healthbar barely moved. He turned around and splut, game over.

Lydia is terrible at sneaking! I have given her as much sneak stuff as possible, so she's no longer horrendous, but she still gets detected quite frequently. I've been tempted to use the console to give her better sneaking skills

There are so many followers around that in my current game I decided to stop reloading when one dies. So far I lost just one, the elven guy from that first village you go to.

Can you tell a follower to wait here, and then pick up a new one? I guess that you must tell them to go home first, but I haven't tried it. Otherwise, if you had a tough combat you could bring a posse just out of range and then engage. The whole posse would come in and attack

That would be kind of cool. There were some big battles with multiple people on each side that were really cool late on in the main quest line though I'm not sure it was intended to work out that way. I had one where it looked like a dragon had attacked some people I was supposed to meet and during the combat they had wandered into an forsworn encampment AND a bandit group. Then I showed up. Spells flying everywhere, two frost atronarchs duking it out, a dragon attacking, it was crazy! I wasn't sure who to fight at first or that friendlies were even involved.

Obviously I play like an idiot, because I die, often several times before I can figure out how to tackle some of the enemies. Sometimes I even resort to running.

I don't impose any restrictions other than playing according to what my character would do. He doesn't necessarily go after the best gear, but chooses according to taste, what he feels comfortable with. Chooses perks according to taste as well.

And he wouldn't dream of replacing Lydia with someone else (.partly out of loyalty).

Works for him .. eh .. me.

says pibbur who plays pibbur (EDIT) on expert level

Originally Posted by crpgnut
Can you tell a follower to wait here, and then pick up a new one? I guess that you must tell them to go home first, but I haven't tried it. Otherwise, if you had a tough combat you could bring a posse just out of range and then engage. The whole posse would come in and attack

That would be great, but I think when you leave them (after fast travel, at least), they drop from your party, and go home.

When you say "they go home" where do you mean? The PC's house, or the location you found them?

It should be possible to bring a posse if one plays a conjurer.

Equip a companion with a summoning staff, get yourself two dead thralls, equip both with summoning staffs as well and voilá.

It varies. Some I think disappear and become unavailable. At least one was missing from the dungeon's exit where met. Another one stayed put there.

Some go back to the place (e.g. settlement, town, tavern, etc) where you first met them. I think only the housecarls (sp?) or spouses go back to one of your homes, but I am only guessing on this one.

Originally Posted by DeepO
It should be possible to bring a posse if one plays a conjurer.

Equip a companion with a summoning staff, get yourself two dead thralls, equip both with summoning staffs as well and voilá.

Sounds like something fun to try. Do companions and thralls actually use summoning staves properly? How about create zombie staves?

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Sounds like something fun to try. Do companions and thralls actually use summoning staves properly? How about create zombie staves?

Dunno about thralls since I wasn´t using conjuration that much, but I haven´t noticed any problems with companions in this regard.
Edit: I think I was giving them only summoning staves though.

I gave one of my followers a whole sheaf of staves and she only ever seemed to use the first/frost ones. Definitely never the zombie one.

At one point I saw she was dual wielding two of them which was pretty cool!

The algorithm they pick for wielding or wearing is a bit unfathomable. I have to remove some of their extra equipment to get them to use the right stuff sometimes.