The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Character Building Guide: Breton Race

Now that we have covered some of the basics of the game together with some useful tips which will help you during your journey, it’s time to cover another important element of Skyrim: character building. Skyirm offers a lot of freedom in creating characters to your likings: players will be able to choose the race of their character, race that will ultimately influence how good their character will be in some fields. Each race has unique abilities and stats, making each race excellent only in specific fields: obviously not all races are good at magic or physical attacks so you’d better know beforehand about each race’s traits. And you better make your choice carefully since, unlike Oblivion, you won’t have a second chance and once you’ve picked a race, you’ll be stuck with it.

At the beginning of the game, if you experiment with multiple race choices, you’ll notice that the base value for each skill is 15. At the same time you’ll notice how not all skills start with 15: this means that that specific race comes with a bonus for that particular skill. All races come with either a +5 bonus or +10 bonus: skills they’re not too good at won’t be getting any bonus. As you can see while all races can become decent at everything, you’ll need to put in some extra work if those skills you want to invest in come with no bonus.

As we already said, each class comes with some special innate abilities: some are always active, some are weaker versions of skills that can be learned during the game and others can only be activated once per day. These skills, while incredibly useful at the beginning, don’t really influence the game later on so don’t make your choices just by looking at the innate abilities of each class: these abilities should only complement your fighting style, rather than becoming the basis for it.

• Breton Race

The Breton race originates from the mountains of High Rock and they’re quite good in all magical areas: if you’re looking to create a character well versed into magic, the Bretons are your first choice. They’re also decent for Stealth and Warrior builds so they’re quite balanced and ready for a variety of situations.

Innate Abilities:

• Dragonskin : Absorb 50% of magicka from hostile spells for 60 seconds.
• Magic Resistance : Breton blood grants a 25% resistance to magic.

Skill Bonuses

• Alchemy: +5
• Alteration: +5
• Conjuration: +10
• Illusion: +5
• Restoration: +5
• Speech: +5