Skills chat, Pros and cons Options

[Discobiscut]

Ok we are getting really close
And I still have absolutly no idea what skills I will be using.
These are my personal choices to select from (in descending order of preference);
Hand to hand, acrobatics, athletics, sneak, security, Block(if it works with H2H), Marksman, Speechcraft, Mercantile. And as you see 9 so have to kill 2

Have we got a definative answer (ie from dev)
whether Block ("Parry melee attacks with shields and weapons. Successful blocks reduce damage") and Hand to Hand ("Attack without weapons to damage and fatigue opponents).
will work together?

Has anyone ever actually had Speechcraft as a skill and is it worth while. With the new RAI being such an amazing thing I can image that there is the possiblity of lots of interactions on varying levels with charecters. Any word on possible perks for this skill.
I guess the same question could be asked for Mercantile, though I have heard one perk is the ability to own shops.

I consider Acrobatics and Athletics manditory for the way I play. I want to go faster and jump higher.
Both of these are speed governed.

Security and Sneak are two musts for my style of play and I know about some of the benifits of them.
I wonder if Hand to hand has a special sneak attack?

Is there a point to trying to have your main skills to include a range of governing attributes?

I admit every time I read about how the skill points are distributed to raise the attributes my head swims abit. Raise you primary skills 10points is 1point to attribute or something.

And in that vain if you don't have a offensive in your primary you don't get the "perks", but it still raises just the same but slower. So I am thinking that if say Short Blade isn't something you really care about the perks in but still use it is something that will go up quick as you will be using it all the time.
Now Marksman is a skill I think the perks are going to be way cool in so I guess if I had to have an offensive skill that would be it.

Thoughts please

[Discobiscut]

All interesting points
Very glad to hear about H2H and block working together. So the only way to reduce damage is my armour and maybe if there are perks to H2H we don't know about like deflect.

Not sure what you mean about "no point to security with alteration". Have we heard about any of the perks for Security?

Deathbane27 can you explain why race would effect your major skill choice? I was thinking a Brenton or Imperial

So skills now:
H2H
Block
Acrobatics
Alteration
Sneak
Speachcraft
Mercantile

Not sure how easy this is going to be to play though
But I will try mostly non-offensive gameplay

[Deathbane27]

Deathbane27 can you explain why race would effect your major skill choice?

Each race gets skill bonuses. You can see each one's here:

http://www.oblivionmods.info/

Basically, if you pick an Imperial, it's less important to have Mercantile and Speechcraft be major skills since you get an automatic +10 boost to them.

Oh, also, you get to pick an archetype specialization. Basically to get +10 to all 7 skills in either Combat, Magic, or Stealth. So basically if you pick Stealth as your specialization, you'll get a +10 to everything on your list except hand-to-hand and block.

So if you picked an Imperial with Stealth as a specialization, and left Mercantile and Speechcraft as minors, you'd end up with: 25 in Mercantile, Speechcraft, and Block, 30 Hand-to-Hand, and 35 in your other majors. Compare that with 5 or 10 in all your other minors.