Attempting a Skyrim paladin archetype playthrough

[Alrin]

So.. since my main characters save has been corrupted/glitched out in a way that makes it impossible for me to use followers anymore (and other strange STRANGE behaviour I figure'd I make a go at Master difficulty (with a twist).

Play through skyrim as a paladin archetype. I realize that technically paladins don't even fit into the world of Tamriel but the idea of a Holy Warrior has always appealed to me in fantasy lore.
I'm looking at 1handed, blocking, heavy armor, smithing, restoration, alteration as the means of progressing through the world.
I will deliberately stay away from light armor, alchemy, enchanting, destruction, conjuration, illusion, lockpicking, pickpocket, stealth as they dont really fit the motif of the character.

Now my conundrum comes at the choice of skill usage and actually roleplaying a paladin-esque type character. If I were to RP one, a huge portion of the game quests would simply be off limits. Mage college, Thieves Guild,

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not even being able to initiate the dark brotherhood join/destroy arcs

, several of the daedric princes quests, unable to complete the companion's guild story aswell. The list goes on.

Or should I just go for a completionist's style. I follow my skill limitations and do quests normally, but still go with the character choices where possible? I'm really looking forward to the challenge of only purchased potions/gear for once.

[BinoAl]

Just play through the game as if you were the paladin. When offered a quest, just think "Is this morally right?". plus, you CAN destroy the dark brotherhood. Eliminating the orphanage owner is a very good deed, as is destroying the dark brotherhood :) Killing is ok, if it's evil people. That's the whole point of the paladins carrying swords :) Oh, and you MUST worship mara. :D

[Alrin]

Ofcourse Mara. And also that artefact quest that rewards the undead-slaying sword. Naturally! :P

[gftweek]

Just play through the game as if you were the paladin. When offered a quest, just think "Is this morally right?". plus, you CAN destroy the dark brotherhood. Eliminating the orphanage owner is a very good deed, as is destroying the dark brotherhood :) Killing is ok, if it's evil people. That's the whole point of the paladins carrying swords :) Oh, and you MUST worship mara. :D

I keep baulking at the idea of killing the orphanage owner, yes she's a nasty piece of work, but does that justify murder to satisfy a child's revenge fantasy?

I thought Stendarr was the god of the righteous? The vampire/werewolf/daedra hunters are followers of Stendarr aren't they?

Oh and I keep forgetting that restoration spells hurt the undead, I might have another go at Red Blade(?) again.

[Brethern]

The dark brotherhood has a code of honor, therefore they are good.

[Alrin]

I'm going to have to disagree with you there on the brotherhood thing. Sure, they have their tenets but they are still a group of murderers.
Just because they are doing the will of Sithis and have a code doesn't make them 'good' in any way.
They're evil, just not chaotic evil.

[misterwuggles]

Man, I hate how you can't really do this on your first playthrough. There are a lot of quests that you can accept that take a complete turn towards CRAZY EVIL with no real warning, so I feel obligated to finish them despite the fact that I don't REALLY want to beat an old dude to death twice with a rusty mace. It's almost required to either use a guide, already know what the quest involves, or be okay with having an extremely cluttered journal.

[Urian]

My first char got corrupted when my computer died so now I've got a new computer and a new character. I've also decided to go with a somewhat RP-ish style but I'm trying for almost pure mage (alteration for armor and conjuration for weapons). I'm not very far along yet so I don't know how well it will work so I also get to use some thief abilities (sneak and lockpick) to avoid some combats I'm unsure of.

[BinoAl]

The dark brotherhood has a code of honor, therefore they are good.

The road to evil is paved with good intentions :)
Rarely ever is there someone who is evil and and believes they are evil. The dark brotherhood have companionship and a code of honor, yet they are also killers. Being able to be a part of the dark brotherhood meant the developers had to make you feel they were still good people, so you would still be motivated to help them.

I keep baulking at the idea of killing the orphanage owner, yes she's a nasty piece of work, but does that justify murder to satisfy a child's revenge fantasy?

When you walk in, you hear her yelling at all the children, and telling them nobody will ever adopt them, etc. It's far more than a child's revenge fantasy, it's giving many children a better life :D Don't think too much about the morality of things in the game, you'll spend most of your time thinking :)

[Brethern]

The dark brotherhood has a code of honor, therefore they are good.

The road to evil is paved with good intentions :)
Rarely ever is there someone who is evil and and believes they are evil. The dark brotherhood have companionship and a code of honor, yet they are also killers. Being able to be a part of the dark brotherhood meant the developers had to make you feel they were still good people, so you would still be motivated to help them.

I keep baulking at the idea of killing the orphanage owner, yes she's a nasty piece of work, but does that justify murder to satisfy a child's revenge fantasy?

When you walk in, you hear her yelling at all the children, and telling them nobody will ever adopt them, etc. It's far more than a child's revenge fantasy, it's giving many children a better life :D Don't think too much about the morality of things in the game, you'll spend most of your time thinking :)

She can taste my orc dagger, then I will use my undead spell and kill her again.

[gftweek]

I keep baulking at the idea of killing the orphanage owner, yes she's a nasty piece of work, but does that justify murder to satisfy a child's revenge fantasy?

When you walk in, you hear her yelling at all the children, and telling them nobody will ever adopt them, etc. It's far more than a child's revenge fantasy, it's giving many children a better life :D Don't think too much about the morality of things in the game, you'll spend most of your time thinking :)

It's not even a conscious choice, I have a hard time doing things that feel wrong in video games, playing a sith character in a Star Wars game makes me feel terrible every time I gain dark side points, even if it's fun or funny. I couldn't beat the old man to death with the rusty mace, I just abandoned the quest, likewise I won't steal the statue of dibella for the beggar in Markarth, so the quests just sit there in my journal glaring at me to finish them. However I'm still fine joining the thieves guild as it feels more victimless.

Silly ethics getting in the way of harmless enjoyment.

[Alrin]

Silly ethics getting in the way of harmless enjoyment.

Then I assume that you - like me - was completely dumbstruck with the impossible choice you are given in Mass Effect 2 in regards to the Geth.
I know I just sat and stared at the screen for a good 5 minutes. "What? Who? Wh... uhh. How am I supposed to choose!?"

That was very memorable.

Skyrim edit/update:
Master difficulty.. yeah. Wow. :P So far I've been doing ok. I picked up Faendal in Riverwood since I had a feeling I'd need a follower to start with. I decided to learn skills from followers that I have with me since that makes sense that as I watch them fight I pick up some things in the area they are proficient and use when with me. And no, I dont take my gold back after training with him! :)
It feels strange to pass by locked chests without attempting to pick them open, it's like I know there's magical wonders hidden inside.
I got smithing to 29 from just making and improving armor for myself and Faendal. No grinding smithing or any skill for that matter.
Also managed to pre-empt the buggy Bard's College breadcrumb quest that never disappears from your log by immediately travelling to Solitude and picking up their quest. I now hope I wont get a stupid letter offering me to come check out the college. We'll see. :)

[Zhil]

Silly ethics getting in the way of harmless enjoyment.

Haha, never play the Witcher then. It actively tries to push the player into gray decisions.

"Let angry mob lynch witch for a crime they commited themselves"
"Stop angry mob, even though you know she still did tons of evil deeds, including murder, though it was out of revenge for being wronged"

Option 2 includes having sex with said witch afterwards

If you let ethics come into play, you can never do the right thing in that case

[BinoAl]

Ahh, man. I love being evil in games like this. I'm such a nice, held back, polite person IRL that it feels good to be a complete dick sometimes >:)

[joetalbot1]

Option 2 includes having sex with said witch afterwards

That's why they call him the witcher.

[Zhil]

That's why they call him the witcher.

WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK

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[Urian]

BioWare really likes the morality choices and they're usually very good at it :) I usually have a bit trouble playing an evil character if the game has an immersive story since so many games has the moral options being "Save the poor orphans and give them a magical christmas" or "Burn down the orphanage and tell the kids that Santa Claus did it". Games that actually have believable and/or more nuanced morality options are much better.

And then there is Vampire Bloodlines... Good? Evil? I'm a malkavian, your moralities taste like sweet, tasty sunglasses dipped in blue nutmeg! I am the walrus!

[Alrin]

So the game is currently in punish-player-mode as my paladin is getting rocked back and forth between ridiculously high hp 2hand wielding maniacs and bears,trolls,wolves and just about anything that moves. Amusingly enough, a dragon attack is less dangerous than a roaming bear in the forest, because the bear will just up and 2shot me w/o any bullshitting around.

And I finished the companion quest where you go with Farkas and fight a bunch of silver hand guys.. after 3 hours of reloading and cursing at the screen. There is a segment where there is supposed to be a fight vs the humans and some draugr, problem is that the humans are destroying them and then barrelling down at me and farkas en masse. I finally beat that encounter thanks to RNG because some of the draugr didnt spawn right away and then helped tank them while I chipped away pitifully at their massive healthbars.

And I learned that even thinking about going past steel smithing 'early' is completely worthless. Dwarven gear is garbage. Getting there was not a detour but the supposed step from steel gear to dwarven gear is abysmal. Maybe once you have a high level smithing the improvements will be more noticeable but really, I dont see moving past steel gear being worth it this early. *makes a mental note*

And the armor skill.. *sighs*
You need to raise your armor skill in order to absorb damage better, but the problem is that everything is hitting so damn hard that you need to block them or you will get rocked. Which means your armor skill doesn't raise because you are blocking. So those times that you get caught offguard or flanked and they sneak in an attack you end up with an attack that checks against a shitty armor skill and you get owned.
Uurhgh. For a Dragonborn, gifted by Akatosh himself I feel like a soggy noodle when encountering any enemy. You need your companion. You need to play like you're mad of glass and that is really bothering me. I know I'm not supposed to just wade in and rambo dungeons on Master difficulty, but to wear heavy armor and getting smoked by a guy that is wearing fur armor and shrugs off my power attacks like they are insect bites is really taking me out of the immersion.

Maybe it'll get better once I level my fighting skills more, but right now its really troublesome. The only way my heavy armor skill is raising is me blowing all my gold each level training with Farkas. :/

[Zhil]

Are you complaining that master difficulty is too hard? Isn't that simple? Turn the difficulty down a notch?

[Alrin]

I suppose I am a bit torn. I like a challenge but it bothers me when their idea of doing a "master" difficulty just boils down to adding a 10x multiplier to npc damage/health etc. Then again, I like that you cant just stumble through content.
Maybe it's just last night talking, I was seriously annoyed at how ridiculous that fight was. And the fact that Farkas replaced my follower for the duration of the quest means that I had to finish it and yeah.. I didnt save before that and autosaves were overwritten by the time I realized that this was a Bad Idea™.
Could be worse, I could be playing a pure mage :P

(For the most part in dungeons I am doing ok as long as I can plan ahead on coming fights. Still, the fact that raising heavy armor to survive better depends on getting hit by not blocking is.. weird)

[BinoAl]

For the most part, I play on easy in games like this. I'm not too great with character development, and never seem to do very well :D

[Urian]

It's generally a bad idea to level up via things like smithing, enchanting, alchemy, etc since those won't really help you in combat and the enemies will be much tougher than for lower level ones. An example of this is the 7k steps; the first enemies you meet changes so I've gone there three times at different levels and have met (from low to high level): wolf and wolf, spider and worgen, troll and ice wraith.

[Alrin]

Yeah that's what I'm finding. I made steel armor for myself and leather armor for Faendal and I'm paying for those choices now with crazy strong mob combos. 2x spriggans + sabre cat ambush.. uhh... yeah reload + turn around. I'll just have to tough it out until I get my block/armor/1hand perks filled out I suppose.

[Urian]

You can level armor skills by letting a weak mob (e.g. wolves) attack you without hitting back. You might want to use a healing spell as well, that will both prolong how long you can let the enemy attack you and let you gain restoration points.

[Alrin]

Yeah I know I could do that but I am trying to avoid the grinding approach this playthrough :)
And hey, buying armor skillups is a good goldsink since this game throws gold at you like crazy.