Oblivion talk:Races

Transclusion

Does the transclude from Lore:Races make sense? It lists a number of races that are never mentioned in Oblivion and some of the individual race pages (also transcluded) have links that then break (see Oblivion:Nedic for examples) when the original page works fine. I think this is due to the {{NAMESPACE}} links in the pages transcluded from.

I propose this page become a separate menu for Oblivion races only (playable and nonplayable) with a link to Lore:Races for those interested in any races mentioned only in other lore. --Actreal 04:05, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

The only non-playable race encountered anywhere in Oblivion (other than books) are Dremora. Oh, actually, there's a "Vampire Race" which only has two members that only appear in a test cell. (All other vampires belong to one of the 10 playable races.) It is notable that Oblivion is the first game in which Dremora appear as a race, (NPCs) rather than as creatures.

Question is, when considering lore, do we include books that originated in other games? For example, "Fall of the Snow Prince" is a book from Bloodmoon that mentions Falmer. However, the book exists in Oblivion as well, even though there is no mention of Falmer anywhere else in the game. Include, or don't include? Likewise, there were no Sloads in Morrowind, but there was Sload Soap as an alchemical ingredient. Does that count? What about other races that are considered intelligent, but are only seen as creatures, such as Spriggans or Dreugh? Hard to say what to include or not.

Maybe we should just stick to the playable races on the game pages, and put all the other races on the Tamriel page only. --TheRealLurlock 09:46, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

Sounds good to me --Nephele 12:19, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

I removed the transclusion to the Tamriel race page, as I have since modified (and will continue doing so) to include further races (those of Akavir and the Aldmer, among others) which are not encountered in Oblivion. I too support the suggestion to use this page only for those races which are playable in the game, with the inclusion of a link to the aforementioned page (which I shall leave up to you, as I do little work in the Oblivion section). -- Booyah boy 10:12, 28 August 2006 (EDT)

The pictures

I think that the Oblivion:Races pages should use pictures of the races in-game, instead of the illustrations from the codex. So if there are no objections, I'll change the picures to the ones that were there before, but I'll re-upload them with the O- prefix. - Xbolt 02:51, 8 September 2006 (EDT)

Hmm, I uploaded O-Khajiit.jpg to test, and when I edit the section on Oblivion:Khajiit, it edits a section on Lore:Khajiit. Could someone help me understand this? Thanks. -- Xbolt 19:57, 11 September 2006 (EDT)

The first section of each race page (i.e., the part with general info about the race) is being transcluded from the Tamriel page. So the pictures appearing on the race pages are actually coming from the Tamriel sections. I'd guess for the Tamriel pages the codex pictures are more appropriate than the Oblivion pictures. The question is then whether to add additional game-specific pictures on the Oblivion pages, or not include the codex pictures at all on the Oblivion pages. I'm not sure at the moment which seems more appropriate. --Nephele 20:26, 11 September 2006 (EDT)

Dremora

Should I add the stats for the Dremora race into the table on this page to allow for side-by-side comparison with the other races, or should I just put that information onto the Dremora page? --Nephele 11:10, 9 March 2007 (EST)

I'd say yes, add it here. While the Dremora may be unplayable (without modding), they are still clearly present in the game, unlike the other non-playable races. -- JustTheBast 14:30, 9 March 2007 (EST)

OK, then, done :) I'll also probably include the information in some fashion on the Dremora page, too, once I work myself up to tackling the vast emptiness that exists on that page. --Nephele 16:12, 9 March 2007 (EST)

Sheogorath Race

I've removed the bit in the Sheogorath race note about voices, since it's not actually necessary to make a seperate race to give a seperate voice and exclude dialoge that is standard for that race. See Martin, Emperor Uriel Septim, and Mankar Camoran as examples. It is, however, necessary to have a seperate race to give an NPC a real beard. (In Sheogorath's case, it's part of the Tongue nif. Some player-made races include a beard as part of the Teeth nif.) Deathbane27 04:25, 15 April 2007 (EDT)

Height

I've added a Height row to the racial stats table, since it is relevant to the player's movement speed and so deserves some consideration during character creation. In case anyone was wondering, I did the test using a stopwatch, running over a straight, flat hall in a dungeon. I changed my race and matched stats using the console, ran runs with Feather spells, and even created some custom races. In all cases an Altmer runs 22% faster than a Bosmer male, 10% faster than an Imperial or Dunmer. And a race with a height of 2 moves 4 times as fast as a race with a height of 0.5.

And if anyone is curious, this was the same in Morrowind, except it was the race's Weight stat, so Orcs moved the fastest, even with their starting Speed attribute. --Deathbane27 22:59, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

Anyone else find it ironic that Khajiit females thanks to their lower starting strength and shorter height actually makes some of the worst hand to hand fighters in the game? (They move slower meaning they struggle to outmanevuer taller weapon wielding foes and their lower strength wipes out any advantage they had in hand to hand damage they had and means they take longer to reach maximum potential) --85.62.18.3 14:46, 20 October 2007 (EDT)

Knights of Order

Since Knights of Order are considered NPC's, shouldn't they be included as one of the unplayable races?

Somewhere else on the Wiki it is stated that Knights of Order are just Imperials with unlootable armor.--LordDagon 12:25, 4 February 2008 (EST)

I thought Knights of Order were shapeless masses with armor and weapons, as Haskill said if one took of there armor, there would be nothing there?It's a Teddy Lich! 21:19, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

True. In the game, however, they are indeed implemented as Imperials with unlootable armor. –rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 05:37, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Found a mod on tesnexus that makes Knight of Order Armor lootable, and they are indeed Imperial males under the armor. Not only that, but they all look alike, very much like your default character but with a military style haircut.— Unsigned comment by 67.190.205.73 (talk) on 16 January 2010

Stats Listing

Why would the stats not be listed from top to bottom on the page, as they are in-game? -Mrblowtatoes

They've simply been listed in alphabetic order. It confused me for a while, too. --Gaebrial 02:27, 8 May 2008 (EDT)

Colors for gender differences.

I feel that changed numbers in the gender differences section of the graph should be written in green (for the greater number) and red (for the lesser number). This should make it much easier to spot the gender differences.

I'll go right ahead and do this without discussion. I don't see why we shouldn't have the colors. (Gromir the Wasted) 24.2.171.37 10:49, 24 May 2008 (EDT)

I do, it is virtually no use for a page like this, red/green colours are normally only used for comparing merchants prices not for something like this, it isn't needed.--Volanaro 10:54, 24 May 2008 (EDT)

It is a guide for people who easily get cross-eyed (compare with tongue-tied) spotting specific information in a field of uniformity, therefore it is of some use. Like alternating colours in a graph. It's there for convenience, really. (Gromir the Wasted) 24.2.171.37 19:16, 24 May 2008 (EDT)

The undifferentiated mass of numbers can be hard to digest. But I'm not sure that just focussing on the gender differences really improves the table that much. I doubt too many readers choose their character's gender based upon the attribute differences. Readers are more likely to be scanning the table to identify racial strengths, rather than gender strengths. Also I think it's a bit strange, for example, to have the male Orc's 30 for personality highlighted in green as a "good" value.

So as an alternative, I've experimented with making two changes to the table. First, add a double line in between the races, to make it easier to scan the table and recognize which columns are gender comparisons. Second, use colours to identify the overall high/low values, whether due to race or gender. For example, choose red for any value that is 30 or lower; green for any value that is 50 (except for Luck, which is 50 across the board); 35, 40, 45 are considered "normal" and left in black. The resulting table (or at least the first section of it) would look like:

Attribute		Altmer			Argonian			Bosmer			Breton			Dunmer			Imperial			Khajiit			Nord			Orc			Redguard
		M	F		M	F		M	F		M	F		M	F		M	F		M	F		M	F		M	F		M	F
Agility		40	40		50	40		50	50		30	30		40	40		30	30		50	50		40	40		35	35		40	40
Endurance		40	30		30	30		40	30		30	30		40	30		40	40		30	40		50	40		50	50		50	50
Intelligence		50	50		40	50		40	40		50	50		40	40		40	40		40	40		30	30		30	40		30	30
Luck		50	50		50	50		50	50		50	50		50	50		50	50		50	50		50	50		50	50		50	50
Personality		40	40		30	30		30	40		40	40		30	40		50	50		40	40		30	30		30	25		30	40
Speed		30	40		50	40		50	50		30	40		50	50		40	30		40	40		40	40		30	30		40	40
Strength		30	30		40	40		30	30		40	30		40	40		40	40		40	30		50	50		45	45		50	40
Willpower		40	40		30	40		30	30		50	50		30	30		30	40		30	30		30	40		50	45		30	30

How does that work? --Nephele^Talk 20:08, 24 May 2008 (EDT)

Now that is a better idea! It is both easier to read and more useful. (Gromir the Wasted wants to see how long he can go without an account)24.2.171.37 00:45, 25 May 2008 (EDT)

You know, that's such an obviously good idea, I can't believe no one thought of it before. I've also struggled to read that list, but it looks good now.Vontos 01:01, 25 May 2008 (EDT)

OK, then, done :) --Nephele^Talk 13:25, 25 May 2008 (EDT)

Male Golden Saints/Dark Seducers

Since when are there male Golden Saints/Dark Seducers?64.13.25.90 17:45, 29 June 2008 (EDT)

Cylarne and Retaking The Fringe are two examples.-Puddle ^{Talk•Contribs.} 17:51, 29 June 2008 (EDT)

Dwarves?

How come there are so many dwarven items (armor, weapons and arrows) yet we can not see any dwarves anywhere? Are there suposed to be dwarves somewhere near Cyrodill?

No, there are not any dwarves in Cyrodiil. They disappeared long ago in Tamriel history. See the article Dwemer for more information on the dwarves. Darkle 17:55, 13 July 2008 (EDT)

Weight

I noticed the row of weights under the heights in the playable race table. There is a note explaining what height does but no such not for weight. Does weight affect gameplay at all?

I'm almost certain that it doesn't. The weight value seems to be purely aesthetic. It allows them to make Nords look bigger than Altmer while still using the same model resources and animation files. Height does have an affect on the overall running/walking speed for your character, and it's possible that weight does as well, since they both alter the scale of the character model and animations, though if it does have an effect, it seems to be fairly negligible. (To test this, you might try using the CS to create races with identical stats but extremely different Weights - more extreme than those available in the default races.) My guess is if it affects anything, it might affect the side-stepping animation, allowing "heavier" characters to strafe faster than "lighter" ones, but that's just a guess. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 14:54, 8 November 2008 (EST)

It does not affect gameplay at all. There really is no need for change in weight other than to personalize the looks of your character. The change in weight can be aesthetically pleasing, but it does not affect anything in the game other than your appearance. Valen 05:09, 10 December 2011 (UTC)Valen

Should this still be marked as unanswered? FromCrimsonToWool (talk) 17:54, 27 January 2013 (GMT)

Race Namng Convention

Aren't the race names - Altmer, Dunmer, Bosmer a bit out of place with respect to Oblivion? I understand these are the names that have been used in Morrowind (as in a prior version of the game). I guess it would be safe to use these names in the Morrowind section but for those players who have joined late using these names throughout Oblivion wiki is a bit confusing. Would suggest to replace these with their counterparts like High Elf, Wood Elf, Dark Elf as used in Oblivion (during race creation) for the Oblivion section of the wiki.

Those are still the correct names of the races, and however confusing it might be for Oblivion players (not very - seriously), it would be more confusing if we started to use one set of terms in one part of the wiki and another set of terms in every other part. More importantly, "(Alt|Bos|Dun)mer" is used far more in-game than "(High|Wood|Dark) Elf", in books, quest updates and dialogue. –rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 20:57, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Race-Specific Dialogue

I see that the Bosmer and the Bretons have a race-specific dialouge section but the other races don't. Would someone please add one to the other races? Helper Unknown 22:37, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Race changes in oblivion

Is it worth mentioning that some races have got significantly weaker or stronger abilities/ability scores?

Changes for no know reason

• Bosmer -Command Creature 5pts for 600sec reduced to 60 seconds.
• Altmer - lost weakness to magic, weakness to fire reduce to 25%
• Nord - Lost resist Shock 50%, Resist Frost reduced from 100% to 50%
• Argonians now have permanent water breathing instead of a spell.

Changes for game engine changes reasons

• Dunmer - ancestor guardian now summon ghost instead of sanctuary
• Resist common disease replaced by resist disease (Bosmer, Altmer, Argonians, Redguard )
• Demoralize Humanoid replaced by Demoralize (Khajiit)

— Unsigned comment by 79.79.176.82 (talk) at 13:43 on 17 November 2009

I don't think it's worth mentioning on the main page as there is no reason to mention their abilities they had in Morrowind. As for the explanation, there is no reason at all to assume that races will stay exactly the same throughout history. Or perhaps it is because Nords and Bosmer would be too strong in Oblivion while Altmer would be too vulnerable ^Talk Wolok gro-Barok _{Contributions} 18:21, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect in-game descriptions

As far as I can tell, the in-game descriptions on each of the races individual pages are incorrect. The following is taken from the Imperial page found here.

The well-educated and well-spoken native of Cyrodiil are known for the discipline and training of their citizen armies. Though physically less imposing than the other races, Imperials are shrewd diplomats and traders, and these traits, along with their remarkable skill and training as light infantry, have enabled them to subdue all the other nations and races, and to have erected the monument to peace and prosperity that comprises the Glorious Empire.

The in-game description as found in the character creation menu and your characters menu once created is as follows:

Natives of the civilized, cosmopolitan province of Cyrodiil, they have proved to be shrewd diplomats and traders. They are skilled with heavy armor and in the social skills and tend to favor the warrior classes.

I note that the Morrowind in-game descriptions are identical to that of the Oblivion ones, and wonder if they were simply copied (from Morrowind to Oblivion) or are using a different in-game source than the character menus (Possibly an in-game book I am unaware of)? - User:Aces Andre 15:18, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Orcs' stats colour

Starting a new header as instructed from Krusty. This relates to the old discussion above (Colors for gender differences)
I think that 40 is the neutral value (except for luck's 50) so I'd like the Orcs' 35 and 45 to be red and green. -- MartinS 92.254.208.123 20:37, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree, so I'll go ahead and change it. It's easy enough to change back if there's some overwhelming objection.

I've also moved your post to the bottom, though, since that's the normal procedure for posting. Here's a link back to the original discussion, for ease of reference. – Robin Hood↝talk 21:23, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Race-specific Dialogue

Does golaen saint and dark seducer have Race-specific Dialogue(Vvardfell 09:38, 4 December 2010 (UTC))

Game Differences

I think that it could be good to note on the page differences throughout the game that depend on player class, although I am not exactly sure if there are any, other than the beginning and a Daedric quest. Are there any other places? --DKong27 ^{Talk Cont} 18:52, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Malacath's quest is very slightly different if you're an orc, and the Alteration Training test is basically skipped if you're an Argonian. I think that's the lot. rpeh •T•C•E• 19:15, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Wrong quotes

Why are many of the quotes taken from Morrowind? SFK363 22:42, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Can you give some example of what quotes you're talking about? Vely^{►Talk►Email} 22:45, 12 May 2012 (UTC)