Gameplay:Character Creation

**Creating your character** is the first decision (and arguably the most important decision) that you will make, as it affects the entire game.

## General Considerations

The factors that you must decide upon are:

* **Your Race and Gender**
	+ Determines Attributes, skill bonuses, and special abilities (greater powers, lesser powers, constant effect characteristics)
* **Your Birthsign**
	+ Provides special abilities (typically attribute bonuses or greater powers)
* **Your Class** - the single most complex decision you need to make.
	+ One option is to use one of the game's built-in standard classes.
	+ The other option is to create a custom class, in which case you need to make decisions about specialization, attributes, major and minor skills.
* **Your Appearance and Name**
	+ While largely governed by your choices of gender and race, you can also fine-tune most aspects of your character's physical appearance. These choices have no effect upon gameplay.
	+ While deciding on your character's appearance, you will also be able to name them. You are free to name them anything you want. This choice doesn't affect gameplay.

There is no one "correct" way to make these decisions about your character. Your choices will be determined by your personal roleplaying preferences. Some questions that may influence your choices include:

* What type of combat do you prefer?
* Do you prefer to charge into dungeons, or explore more slowly and stealthily?
* Do you like to visit cities regularly for supplies and services, or do you prefer to play a more self-sufficient character?
* Do you want a character that is strong at the start of the game, or later on?

## Race and Gender

Race and gender are best determined simultaneously, because both factors influence the starting values of your character's attributes.

Gender is a choice that is likely to be made based upon personal preference (how you like to roleplay, the appearance of your character). Objective considerations are how your character's attributes are modified. Female characters frequently have higher Personality or Willpower and lower Strength or Endurance, though some exceptions exist. It is also important to consider, NPCs will address you differently, and may treat you differently, depending upon your sex (the *Allure* perk in Mercantile skill allows you to get 10% better prices with the opposite sex and the *Casanova* perk in Speechcraft skill allows you to get increased disposition and damage with the opposite sex) and your height is dependent on your sex. As movement speed is a function of height, it is indirectly affected by sex.

There are ten possible races to choose from:

**Altmer:** Highly magic-oriented, the High Elves have an innate extra 150 magicka, a daily rapid magicka regeneration ability, and starting bonuses to a variety of magic types.
**Argonian:** A versatile race with skills in combat and magic, they are well rounded characters, though given the lack of the ability to wear full armor as a beast race prevents Argonians from being overwhelming warriors & their many bonuses that are useful for thieves, they are best suited for the role of assassin; their rapid-healing daily ability is also better suited to combat than stealth. Their waterbreathing ability is also useful in a few circumstances. They are also 100% resistant to poison and 75% resistant to common disease.
**Bosmer:** The Wood Elves' starting skill bonuses are perfect for thief-archers and as such they're a popular choice for the archetype. Resistance to poison and disease may not be exciting, but they have their uses. Their daily ability to command any animal comes in handy early in the game.
**Breton:** Bretons start with bonuses to many magic skills, and they have an innate 25% Magic Resistance, widely regarded as one of the most broadly useful passive abilities. Their Dragonskin ability gives shield and them to absorb magicka from spells once per day. Combine that with the Breton's Magic Resistance and you have a well-suited anti-mage.
**Dunmer:** The Dark Elves are well-balanced characters. They can become any of the three main archetypes with ease. With good Destruction bonuses and combat bonuses, they can make perfect middle-of-the-line fighters with just enough magic to get the job done. Also, with their 75% Resist Fire gives them a good starting point for achieving maximum resistances.
**Imperial:** Cyrodiils are a very versatile race, and are especially suited for adaptability. This is due to the fact that they can specialize in any of the three main archetypes easily with their beginning attributes and skills. They get boosts to several combat skills that fit sword-and-shield fighters or spellswords. Imperials also start with the highest Personality of any race, and with their Charm Power, Voice of the Emperor, and with their bonus to Speechcraft and Mercantile, they have no trouble persuading just about anyone or making good trades.
**Khajiit:** A good alternative to Wood Elf for thief/assassin builds, with very similar starting bonuses. They are quick and especially adept at getting into places some of the other races might have trouble with. Night Eye is a handy lesser power while dungeon-crawling or for seeing at night, when many thieves and assassins do their work and do extra unarmed damage.
**Nord:** Nords are primarily combat-based, so their skills synergize with each other, especially for those who want to use two-handed weapons. Just like the Dark Elf's fire resistance, their innate 75% Resist Frost is valuable at every stage of the game.
**Orc:** The Orsimer are defensive combat characters, although they focus more on physical defense than magical. A starting Endurance of 50, plus a good Block bonus, means you may actually go out looking for scars. They start off with a good skill package and the extremely useful Berserker Rage ability, and they're not totally helpless against magic, with about 50 willpower to start and 25% magicka resistance.
**Redguard:** Redguards have the best starting One-handed skill and one of the best Blade skill of any race, plus a daily rapid stamina regen ability; this makes them naturally good at sword and shield, dual-wielding, or spellsword styles. They are also 75% resistant to poison and common disease.
Personal preference can also play an important role in this decision, since your character's race controls your character's appearance. The objective considerations are:

* Race determines your character's attributes (which are also modified by gender).
* Each race/gender combination has a different height, which affects movement speed. See the Race summary page for more details.
* Race provides initial bonuses to your character's skills. All races get a total of +65 in skill bonuses, but distributed among different skills.
* Each race has certain special abilities, which may be once-per-day greater powers, multiple-use lesser powers, and/or constant effect characteristics (e.g., resistances, weaknesses, magicka fortification, water breathing).

## Birthsign

There are thirteen possible birthsigns, each of which bestows a special ability. They can provide a number of boons, from providing constant-effect attribute bonuses to providing constant-effect Magicka bonuses and those providing powers, which can be used once per day (in the case of greater powers) or cast multiple times per day using the character's Magicka (in the case of lesser powers). The strongest bonuses are accompanied by offsetting weaknesses.

The birthsigns that provide constant effect Attribute bonuses are: the Apprentice, the Atronach, the Lady, the Lord, the Lover, the Mage, the Steed, the Thief, and the Warrior. Because you do not have to remember to use these constant-effect bonuses, they require the least effort to be made useful. They are most useful early in the game. Thief is noteworthy for providing a +10 bonus to Luck; this is one of only two ways to augment your character's initial luck.

Constant-effect Magicka bonuses (in order of increasing bonus) are provided by: the Mage, the Apprentice, and the Atronach. The higher Magicka bonuses are balanced by weaknesses, making them less conservative choices. As with the attribute bonuses, little effort is needed to take advantage of these birthsigns. The extra Magicka bonuses are useful throughout the game, even for high-level characters. Even the smallest Magicka bonus (+50 from Mage) is equivalent to +25 Intelligence.

The the Lover, the Mage, the Thief, and the Warrior are also notable as they make the leveling of certain skills easier. The Warrior improves combat skills, the Mage improves magic skills, the Thief improves stealth skills, the Lover improves all skills.

All birthsigns provide a once-per-day greater powers. These bonuses are most useful if you are likely to remember to use these powers regularly - if you always forget to take advantage of them (or are afraid to use them in case you might need them later in the day), these birthsigns are relatively ineffective. Most of the powers are most useful early in the game; later in the game, your character can generally learn spells or make potions that are at least as powerful as the greater powers.

Three birthsigns provide at least one lesser power: the Lord (Blood of the North), the Serpent (Star Curse), and the Ritual (Blessed Word, Blessed Touch, Mara's Milk, & Mara's Mercy). Lesser powers can be used as many times per day as desired, but carry with them a magicka cost (albeit a small one).

## Class

### Standard Classes

The game comes with twenty-three predefined standard classes, which provide a quick way for players to set up a character. One will be suggested for you during the tutorial. Unlike in previous chapters of The Elder Scrolls, this will be determined by what skills you have used up to that point, rather than a series of questions. Some of the classes focus on a single one of the three specializations; other classes combine elements from two or more specializations. Therefore, it should be possible to find a class to cover most standard styles of gameplay.

There are 5980 different character combinations without making a custom class, choosing traits, or generating a background. So remember, no pressure! There is a character combination for everybody's needs.

One of the ways to choose your character's class at the start of the game is to allow the game to give you a "personality test" of sorts. You will be asked ten multiple-choice questions, and be suggested the class that best fits your answers. You can always ignore this suggestion and choose a different predefined class, or create your own.
Each question has three possible answers, and each answer indicates a preference for one of the specialties: Stealth, Combat, or Magic. Ten questions with three choices each means there are sixty-six unique combinations. There are only twenty-three different classes, so some classes correspond to more than one combination. In particular, the Thief, Warrior, or Mage will be suggested for any combination with at least seven matching answers of Stealth, Combat, or Magic, respectively.

### Custom Class

However, none of the standard classes are ideal. For example, there are actually no classes that exactly match the prototype character types presented below for fighters or thieves. Players interested in min-maxing or otherwise controlling their character's development will not find any suitable standard classes. Custom classes are necessary to provide complete control over the character creation process.

#### Specialization

There are three cohorts of skills: Combat, Magic, and Stealth. Each cohort has ten associated skills - when you select a cohort to be your class specialization, all ten skills receive an initial +5 level bonus. These skills also increase more rapidly than other skills, needing only 80% of the normal experience points for each Skill level.

#### Favored Attributes

Two attributes can be chosen as favored attributes, and these attributes each receive an initial +5 bonus.

In general, these attribute bonuses are most useful early in the game; a +5 bonus to two or three attributes is possible each time you level up if you level efficiently, so the initial favored attribute bonus can be considered equivalent to an initial one level bonus. The maximum value of any attribute is 100, regardless of whether it received any initial bonuses.

Two attributes behave slightly differently, however:

* Luck can only be increased by +1 each level, so an initial +5 bonus in Luck is more comparable to a five-level bonus than a one-level bonus. Also, Luck is a particularly useful attribute early in the game, so investing in a Luck bonus can be very advantageous, especially to well-rounded characters.
* Endurance determines your total Health: base health is two times endurance. In addition, each time you level up your Health increases by an amount dependent upon your Endurance. The Health bonus each time you level is not retroactively increased if you later increase your Endurance. Therefore, increasing your Endurance early on is important in giving your character the maximum possible Health.

One attribute that in general should not be chosen for your class attribute is Personality, as it is particularly weak. Not only does it govern only three skills but of those skills, two provide no benefit in combat or survival (Mercantile and Speechcraft) and usage of the third (Illusion) is not improved in any way by increased Personality. Only those who plan on roleplaying their character with a strong personality should pick this.

#### Skills

The most important part of creating a custom class is choosing your Class's skills. Each class categorizes five Skills as "Major", five others as "Minor", and the remaining twenty as "Miscellaneous". A significant factor of this is that your character's proficiencies will start at 25 in each Major Skill and 15 in each Minor Skill.

Another benefit, however, is that Major and Minor Skills advance your progress more toward the next level when they increase. Miscellaneous Skills start at 5. These are the values before any bonuses from race or Specialization. The experience points required to increase a Skill are only 75% of normal for Major Skills, but they are increased to 125% of normal for Miscellaneous Skills. Whenever your major skills have improved by a total of 10 points, your character levels up. This feature alone makes character creation difficult: depending upon whether you like to level up quickly or whether you prefer to control your character's level, creating your custom class will be fundamentally different.

A secondary consideration is that starting spells are made available for any magic skill that is chosen to be a major skill. These spells are summarized on the individual skill pages, and are also noted on the Spells page. These spells are in all cases standard spells that can be bought from spell vendors. However, getting them for free saves some money and bother in tracking down spells before you can even start training the skill.

##### Most Used Skills

The first step in deciding which skills should be major skills is determining which skills your character is likely to use the most often. The most-used skills will largely be determined by the overall type of character you choose to play as. Some suggestions on sets of skills are provided in the next section.

You are not restricted on what skills any character can use. Any character can develop any skill to 100 given enough time and effort. Therefore, selecting your character's most-used skills does not imply that the other skills will not or cannot be used. However, the strongest characters will start by focusing on a few skills and developing those skills the most rapidly. For example, a character with 100 in one combat skill (e.g., Blade) will be a much more powerful opponent than one that has developed five different combat skills equally, since each will only have skill levels of 50 at the same point in the game.

* Offensive melee skills, that directly disable enemies at close range: Axe, Blade, Blunt, Hand to Hand, One Handed, Spear, and Two Handed. The evasion behavior and long range attacks of enemies such as Conjurers make the Speed attribute desirable for melee characters.
* Offensive ranged skills, that disable enemies from a distance: Destruction and Marksman.
* Defensive skills, that prevent damage from enemies: Light Armor, Medium Armor, Heavy Armor, and Block. Alteration's Armor and Shield spells, Mysticism's Reflect Attack, Reflect Spell, and Spell Absorption spells, Restoration's Ward, and Thaumaturgy's Reflect Damage and Reflect Magic can be used at the same time as or in lieu of light, medium, or heavy armor.
* Restoration spells can be either a replacement for or merely an addition to damage prevention; however, such healing spells are not cheaper than Potions of Healing if the player uses Potions of Sorcery to cast them, unless they are spells that heal over time.
	+ Evading attacks is the penultimate damage reduction: a missed attack equals no damage at all. The Speed attribute, and to a lesser extent the Athletics skill, increases movement speed, and Acrobatics increases the height and distance of jumps; both aid in dodging attacks.
	+ The ultimate damage prevention is to not be attacked in the first place: Conjuration spells summon creatures or raise undead to take damage instead of you, and the Illusion effect of Invisibility ensures that enemies can only attack the summoned creature. A character of a given Conjuration level will summon creatures that are weaker than a character of the same level of combat skills, so this approach requires patience and preparation.

There are some other game abilities where there are two different skills that can be used to provide that ability; it is worthwhile to choose which skill your character will rely on.

* Opening locks: lockpicking (Security) or Open spells (Alteration) can both be used.
* Increasing NPCs' dispositions: Speechcraft or Charm spells (Illusion) can both be used.
	+ Speechcraft is overall a less useful skill than others, as the maximum disposition available via Speechcraft is limited. There are no additional effects outside of maxing disposition and changing NPC behavior. Many alternatives and enhancements are available, notably Illusion's Charm, Command, and Frenzy spells.
	+ Illusion, by contrast, also has combat (e.g., Paralyze) and stealth (e.g., Chameleon) effects. Its spells affecting NPC behavior can be tailored with spell-making to fit the requirements of the situation.

##### Controllable Skills

Another factor in selecting skills is whether or not it is easy to control when and where your character uses a skill. In particular, if you are interested in efficient leveling, it is important to not accidentally level up because your character is forced to use a skill.
Some skills that you typically cannot control the use of are:

* Acrobatics: You gain acrobatics experience particularly quickly if you fall down a slope or need to jump down a level.
* Athletics: Athletics experience is gained whenever you run or sprint, so it tends to go up continuously.
* Restoration: Even for characters who don't rely upon spells for healing, there can be times when you will really need to cast a restore health spell.

Skills that are not used in combat (in other words, that you will not need to count on for character survival) are typically easier to control. For most characters, easy to control skills will include:

* Alchemy
* Alteration
* Axe, Blade, Blunt, or Spear, depending on whether or not you use only one of these skills.
* Hand to Hand, if not being used as primary form of combat.
* Light Armor, Medium Armor, or Heavy Armor, depending on whether or not you use only one of these skills.
* Marksman, if you do not normally use it.
* Mercantile
* Mysticism
* One Handed or Two Handed
* Speechcraft

Block can even be considered easy to control, because if necessary you can always opt to fight without blocking.

## Traits

Traits give the character extra abilities. Adding positive traits to a character increases Skill Advancement difficulty and negative traits lower the Skill Advancement difficulty.

## Background

The next step is to generate a background for your character based on your class (or the class you are most like, if you created a custom class), which will affect your starting skills, equipment, and reputation. You can either have the game randomly generate your background, answer a series of questions to exert more control over the process, or keep a blank slate.