A bit you neglected (not many people seem to catch this in all honesty, so no fault of your own IMO) is the broken attribute system. It's fine and dandy that skills are tied to attributes. Logical idea and makes sense, until you start realising that they kinda gimped a bunch of potential classes via bad attribute assignments/not thinking things through entirely.
1.) Melee stealth characters. At first, when you build one you're like HOLY JESUS CHRIST THIS IS AWESOME. After all, sneaking up on an unsuspecting opponent and taking them out in one hit is always amazingly fun and gives you that feeling of utter badassery. However, when crossing from Morrowind to Oblivion, the developers had a case of the stupids and assigned small sword to strength.
Now, as you stated, in order to buff up a skill, you have to use it over and over and over, or buy it up. Which leads us to the gigantic logic pitfall here that since you're a stealth character you're trying to AVOID protracted and drawn out fights. Which means your small sword skill isn't raising as fast as it should. Which means that you'll very quickly find your backstabs to be about as effective as sneaking up and giving them a hug. Not to mention the other huge gaping problem where your strength isn't raising as fast as it should, which only exacerbates the problem.
Oh and did I mention that in a pure assassin build, you've only got small swords as your lone strength boosting skill? Whoopsy.
In Morrowind, this wasn't a problem at all in any way shape or form because in a moment of sheer brilliance, they made small swords a speed skill, which made stealth characters suddenly VERY viable and potent. Why in god's name did they change it?
Second problem lies with magic. Attempting to splash magic onto a mostly melee character (i.e. the bard build) will run you into another giant problem. Without one of the intelligence boosting magic skills, your mana pool will not increase. Much like the issues with stealth, as you go up in level, you'll find yourself completely unable to cast the higher powered spells. So when you walk up to the big bad monster, and attempt to charm it, or rout it or whatever, you'll basically be giving it a very pretty light show before it rips your face off.
Not to mention that without wisdom, your recharge rate will be complete wank leaving you good to go for only a couple of spells. You essentially need both an intelligence booster and a wisdom booster in order to effectively stay competitive in magic. So if you wanted to play a shiny, plate wearing paladin utilizing healing spells and rally/rout style spells, you're be totally fucked without destruction/conjuration.
How hard would it have been to have them all buff your mana pool/recharge rate to varying degrees of success? That way, said paladin character will at least still be able to pop out at least some of the higher end spells for their chosen profession. Sure they won't be dropping massive healing bombs like a dedicated caster would, but they'll still be able to manage just fine with a little bit of applied player skill, as any proper hybrid should.
1.) Melee stealth characters. At first, when you build one you're like HOLY JESUS CHRIST THIS IS AWESOME. After all, sneaking up on an unsuspecting opponent and taking them out in one hit is always amazingly fun and gives you that feeling of utter badassery. However, when crossing from Morrowind to Oblivion, the developers had a case of the stupids and assigned small sword to strength.
Now, as you stated, in order to buff up a skill, you have to use it over and over and over, or buy it up. Which leads us to the gigantic logic pitfall here that since you're a stealth character you're trying to AVOID protracted and drawn out fights. Which means your small sword skill isn't raising as fast as it should. Which means that you'll very quickly find your backstabs to be about as effective as sneaking up and giving them a hug. Not to mention the other huge gaping problem where your strength isn't raising as fast as it should, which only exacerbates the problem.
Oh and did I mention that in a pure assassin build, you've only got small swords as your lone strength boosting skill? Whoopsy.
In Morrowind, this wasn't a problem at all in any way shape or form because in a moment of sheer brilliance, they made small swords a speed skill, which made stealth characters suddenly VERY viable and potent. Why in god's name did they change it?
Second problem lies with magic. Attempting to splash magic onto a mostly melee character (i.e. the bard build) will run you into another giant problem. Without one of the intelligence boosting magic skills, your mana pool will not increase. Much like the issues with stealth, as you go up in level, you'll find yourself completely unable to cast the higher powered spells. So when you walk up to the big bad monster, and attempt to charm it, or rout it or whatever, you'll basically be giving it a very pretty light show before it rips your face off.
Not to mention that without wisdom, your recharge rate will be complete wank leaving you good to go for only a couple of spells. You essentially need both an intelligence booster and a wisdom booster in order to effectively stay competitive in magic. So if you wanted to play a shiny, plate wearing paladin utilizing healing spells and rally/rout style spells, you're be totally fucked without destruction/conjuration.
How hard would it have been to have them all buff your mana pool/recharge rate to varying degrees of success? That way, said paladin character will at least still be able to pop out at least some of the higher end spells for their chosen profession. Sure they won't be dropping massive healing bombs like a dedicated caster would, but they'll still be able to manage just fine with a little bit of applied player skill, as any proper hybrid should.
