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Hey all, my little brother's been saying that all of the other races suck except for Bretons for creating a good character. He also says that some of the birth signs are useless. I want to know, is this true?

Some of the birth signs are a little underwhelming. The Tower, for instance, lets you open (IIRC) an average lock once per day. When you can pick a very hard lock perfectly without wasting a single lockpick, there's not a lot of point to that.

But then, I run Oscuro's which makes a lot of balance changes anyway.

As for races, it's personal preference, really. Bretons have pretty respectable stats but so do a lot of the others. It just depends on the kind of character you want to build. I favor what is for lack of a better term a sort of "light paladin" (usually Blade, Block and both armor skills, then a mix of magic, Acrobatics, Speechcraft, Marksmanship, Sneak, or Security, or if I'm feeling particularly crazy one of the other skills), so I usually go for Imperials.

WesFox13 wrote:Hey all, my little brother's been saying that all of the other races suck except for Bretons for creating a good character. He also says that some of the birth signs are useless. I want to know, is this true?

Very true, some birth signs are worthless, and a starting vendor spell will equate some of the benefits.

However races don't matter much since with enough time you will max everything. The only exception is if you plan on being a PURE mage, you need mana to do damage, which means Brenton's (Good stats and bonuses) or High Elf(Don't get hit but you can throw the higher level spells MUCH easier) to get their multiplier to mana.

Some of the racial 'skills' are pretty useless, too: it's really just what you're going to want early-game and how much mana you need.

Bretons?

If you want maximum POWAR, go for the dunmer. Massive resistance to fire magic? Yes please!

Bretons are good, sure, but getting a high degree of fire resistance is lovely for delving into Oblivion. Plus, the dunmer stats bonuses are lovely! Honestly, regardless of which type you take, just make sure it has some bearing on your class. The game isn't very difficult, and though I greatly enjoyed the time I spent playing it and the Shivering Isles, you get to a point where there's really nothing left for you to do besides start beating the game.

At which point it doesn't matter what you are, as you will be well enough armed to do it.

Remember, this isn't your average fantasy RPG. I played my last character as a Dunmer chick primarily geared towards heavy armor and healing, with some destruction. Once you get on your way and really start slogging through the game adequately, you'll never run into something that is really all that terribly dangerous. Potions will do you great good in combat, and outside of it, there's very few things to ruin your shit.

As for Birthsigns, there are very few of any real interest. Thief is good, as is the Lady, or the Lover. You won't need the abilities though, not really. You get so much random shit throughout the game that you'd never have cause for, and honestly, it's not that hard.

Really, I wish they'd have given you more stuff to do. The game has a massive dearth of quests and such, but not much if it is really 'challenging' outside of the fact that things will scale up to your level and be dangerous. However, running through the same sorts of quests over and over gets a bit tiresome. I dunno. At the end of Oblivion, I just felt kinda bored with it.

So don't go for the best character ever. There's no POINT to it. You're going to be so massively superpowered midway through the game that you won't have a problem with anything. Going for maximum power/completion is an interesting idea, but really one that the game doesn't reward. I mean, honestly, look at the level-up mechanics. Horrible!

Kill shit, have fun, smash a few gods, and enjoy the ride. And get Shivering Isles! It's way better than the original plot, and more rewarding as well. I especially love the implications of it--I beat it before I started the original quest. Made for some interesting things to think about.

Wabbajack!

The Bretons make good sword-spells with their built in magicka resistance and shield buff greater power. But if you want to specialize in one or the other (Melee or Magicka) you might want to look elswhere.
Here's a good breakdown of the various races stats, you can click through to more specific information.

also, here's a breakdown of Birth Signs.
The class associated birth signs are pretty good (Mage, Thief and Warrior) for their classes. and the Ritual and the Lord are pretty good either way (those healing effects are niiiice)
The Atronach and Steed are good for later run throughs, they're not really useful but you can do some pretty crazy things with them (who needs a horse when you have a bosmer with speed focus and The Steed )

the other birthsigns are not too useful.

Covenant wrote:Really, I wish they'd have given you more stuff to do. The game has a massive dearth of quests and such, but not much if it is really 'challenging' outside of the fact that things will scale up to your level and be dangerous. However, running through the same sorts of quests over and over gets a bit tiresome. I dunno. At the end of Oblivion, I just felt kinda bored with it

'Tis what Oscuro's is for.

Covenant wrote: So don't go for the best character ever. There's no POINT to it. You're going to be so massively superpowered midway through the game that you won't have a problem with anything. Going for maximum power/completion is an interesting idea, but really one that the game doesn't reward. I mean, honestly, look at the level-up mechanics. Horrible!

Indeed, playing it 'properly' with an eye toward maximising capabilities just gets you owned by the level scaling. I deliberately make my characters 'backward' to slow my levelling down.

There are plenty of mods that 'fix' the bass ackwards leveling systemp Oscuro's Overhaul is thoe most popular and adds a ton of other cool features/quests etc. but Francesco's is cool too. as are some of the 'traditional' leveling mods that give Oblivion a 'regular' killing stuff+experience instead of using skills+experience system.

Going for OOO is the best option you can if you're playing it on a PC, it basically fixes everything and adds so much. It's sad how much MORE fun Oblivion would have been if OOO's most sensible changes had been there from the get-go. I ended up realizing that I didn't like Oblivion very much on it's own.

It's kinda how I feel about Bioshock! I'm waiting for a mod to come out to really jazz something up!

Well, the level system overhaul mods do sound good but I don't think I'll be able to use em because I have the Xbox 360 version of Oblivion.

Essentially, if you're not playing Redguard, you're not living.