Jack Frost
(I should begin by saing that this is my first ever build that I ever post so I pray to the nine that I am not messing this one up)
Plologue:
Unlike most legendary heroes and champion's stories, who have begun as mere mortals, fighting against impossible odds, gaining great boons of magicka and physical power, just so that they may die with a glorious bang on the field of battle, with friends and family to remember them, Jack's story was a bit... different. His story began with his demise.
No glamorous last stand of happy ending amongst friendsand familly, no, Jack was a cold as ice corpse, floating in the Sea of Ghosts after what it seemed to be a horrible shipwreck. He was a beautiful young breton lad, a corpse now, but a beautiful corpse. After a few hours in the unforgiving waves of the sea, his body has reached the icy shored of Skyrim.
And as the light snow waved above him, with pale light coming from the mostly covert by clouds sun, the young breton has opened his eyes.
His head hurt, it felt like he had smashed it over every single floating block of ice in the damnable sea. And although he was not wearing anything except for some modest light clothing, the cold did not bother him, he barely felt the snow that has now grown closer to becoming a blizzard.
No, indeed it did not, however, he felt mild discomfort from the ocassionl ray of light that touched his head... he even felt hot, like he was about to sweat.
The young lad took a moment to clear his mind, yet his thoughts were clouded nonetheless. He could not recall how he has arrived to Skyrim... save for the shipwreck of course. The only thing he could recall faintly was his name, Jack.
After surveying the coastline for a bit, he realised that it was obvious no ne else made it out of the wreckage. Although hesitant, Jack knew that the best course of action was heading for a town, least he was ought to find a better place for thinking that the lifeless shores of the frozen continent.
And as he was walking south, hopping he would find a road, he felt something wet runnign down the base of his neck. He touched his neck with his hand, and was shocked to realise that the wetness came from his blood, that dripped from two holes within his neck.
The more he checked his body, the more claw wounds and cuts along his body he found, like he was embraced by a beast that mawed him. Jack began to connect dots now, between the shipwreck at the Sea of Ghosts, his lack of coldness... and now that began to think about it, his hunger for something fresh... and dripping.
Description:
Jack is a breton vampire spellsword, making use of frost spells and bound blades to fight. At times he uses persuasion to get his way around where blades would be an unwise choice. He is certanly not the nicest person you could meet, being greedy and power hungry, offering to help only if he can win something out of it
Race:
The Breaton is the best race you could go for a spellsword/battlemage/spellblade type of character. They have a 25% resistence to magic attacks, making them powerful against other mages, and the racial spell "Dragonskin" absorbing 50% of the magical spell that hit you (that of course means that you have to be hit.. which depending on what you fight might be probelmatic).
The 25 points in conjuration they begin with and 20 speech will help you out earlier, with prices and making use of a bound sword, their 20 alchemy could also be useful if you decide to focus on the skill. Alternatively you may pick Altmer, having 20 skill point in all magic schools except for ilussion where thye have 25. Their "Highborn" spell also makes them really good at managing magicka, not to mention their +50 magick point from the very start
Stone:
Take either Lover or Mage early on, they will help you level up skills like destruction, enchanting and conjuration better, if you take lover it will also help you out with your one handed skill and light armor.
Later on I recomand The Serpent, the extra cc will never hurt if you are overrun. The Atronach is also a good choice later on for the extra magick (50) and magic absobtion (50%) , since at later levels you will have quite the magicka pool, so the -50% magic regen should no longer be a problem
Shouts:
-Unreleating Force
-Ice Form
Both are great for cc, and Ice forme is better only thematically
Skills:
Deastruction:
You will level up destruction to make your frost spell deadlier. Frost spells will be one of the two ways you will do damage. Your default spell is likely to be frostbite, (Note, I used the mod "Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim) other spells of use will be Creeping Cold (great early on, and if in a cluster, it has a short range ant it is channeled) and Frost Nova (Also great for cluster and if overrune)
Conjuration:
You will need conjuration for your bound blade, I don't recomand focusing to much on it, you only need to level it up the the perk "Soul Raider" (Note, I used Ordinator), which will make your weapon absorbe souls, and the previous perk "Mystic binding" would have made the blade already stronger. But if you insist you may level it all to way to 80, picking all the perks that improve the weapon. Note that you shouldn't focus on anything else on the conjuration tree, since you won't be doing any summoning.
One Handed:
Your second means of damage, It will aid you when your enemies come to close to you, obviously. You will wield only one blade, so don't go for any dual wield perk.
Enchanting:
Your only means of fighting the vampire downsides, permanently. I recomand fire resistence enchants, one hand damage and a ring or amulet for speech or sneaking (non essential but can be usefull).
Light Armor:
You will be wearing light armor, Alongside a hood for magicka
Equipment:
Armor:
Since you will be enchanting your gear, this is not that important, I searched for style more than usefulness. Personally I went with a ragged looking character, combining the "Sand Assassin" chest piece (Note, I used Immersive Armors) along with grey vampire boots, hands and a hood. Only piece of gear you could consider a must have would be the dragon priest mask at the end of the Collage of Winterhold questline.
Weapons:
Bound Blade. It has a number of advantages, strong early on, it will collect souls for you and doesn't take space, plus if you decide to invest more into conjuration it will have even more combat power (even being able to stop enemy regeneration, usuful against those nasty trolls)
Misc:
Amulet/Ring
An amulet for speechcraft, not essential, but will never hurt you with bargains and having the upper hand in discussions, and a ring enchanted with either one handed power, or destruction spell power. If you reach the last perk in the Ordinator skill tree (Which allows you to combine 3 enchants once), you can combine all three in a necklace, and keep the ring for some extra magicka
Daedric Artifacts:
No artifact are that valuable to you, save for Azura's star, as an enchanter, you want to get your hands on the Black Star.
Stats distribution:
2/1/1
Perks :
(https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/68425) <--- A link to the perks and what they do
Conjuration:
-0 Conjuration Mastery (2)
-20 Mystic Binding
-30 Soul Raider
Destruction:
-0 Destruction Mastery (2)
-20 Merciless Cold (2)
-30 Frostfall
-40 Crystalize
-60 Iced Earth
-70 Hypothermia
-90 Winter's Majesty
-100 Glacial Prison
One Handed:
-One-Handed Mastery (2)
-(From One-Handed Mastery you will go all the way from Clash of Champions to Wandering Warrior)
Light Armor:
-0 Light Armor Mastery (2)
-30 Light Armor Fit
-40 Initiative (2)
-40 Keen Senses (Allows you to have “wearing all light armor” even if not wearing a leather helmet. Only take this if you plan on using a cloth hood)
-50 Windrunner
-60 Evasive Leap
-70 Wardancer
-80 Spelldancer
-90 Glancing Blows
-100 Tempting Fate
Enchanting:
-0 Enchanting Mastery
-40 Gem Dust
-60 Regalia
-80 Twin Enchantment
-90 Arcane Nexus
-100 Miracle (A gift from the Nine, believe me)
Strenghs and Weaknesses:
+Flexible in most combat situation, having good crown conntrol both because of the spells and the effect applied by the frozen spells, good in range and melee
+Enchanting is relatively easy to level due to your bound blades absorbing most of the souls of your foes
+Strong at melee early on due to your bound blade
-Weak if taken by surprise, since you have to cast your bound blade, if you are taken by surprise at close range you would take some time to counterattack
-Using a bound blade means you are unable to enchant your weapon
-Vampire's fire weakness can be a problem before you receive your fire resistence enchants
Roleplay:
Finally something fun eh ?
As you could tell from the prologue, Jack's past is murky to say the least, he became a vampire after his ship was assaulted by the vampires that stalk beneth the ice of the Sea of Ghosts. During the assault Jack fell into the water, where a vampire fed upon him, luckly for him he was spared of any excessive mutilation.
I personally played Jack early on as a confused man trying to make sense of all that has happened, that took his first bite out of mortel flesh only when the hunger was unbarable. He would later on discover his afinity to magick, frost spells to be specific, wheter that afinity was there in the first place or was a result of his transformation it is up to you.
Later on I turned Jack into a more Chaotic Neutral character, in only for himself, greedy, and willing to steal, considering himself justified due to his traumatic experience.
There are a few ways you yourself could play with the concept of the character. You could play with the idea of a lost man, turned to a monste because of terrible circumstances, descending into madness and questionable actions (edgy), or you could take him in the opposite way, making him try to fight his condition, maybe even seeing his curse as a sign from the gods, seeing it as fighting fire with fire, taking it upon himself to go out and fight monsters like vampires and other abominations.
Vampires are not well seen in skyrim, for obvious reasones, Jack might be a bit of a loner for a while until he starts to meet people he can trust regarding his condition (meaning his followers).
All in all, I think he can be taken in quite a few ways when it comes to roleplay depending on how you feel you want to play him.
Important Quests:
-Collage of Winterhold:
Great to extend your arcane knowledge and enchanting skill. It will also gift you at the end a really good dragon priest mask for greater magicka pool and regeneration
-The Dawnguard:
Obviously, you will do the DLC campaign. Although Jack is a vampire, you may chose to align with the Dawnguard if you wish to take him upon a reedemption ark. Personally I took him deeper on the road to degeneracy, making him offer his services and soul to Molag Bal.
-The Black Star:
The black star would aid you in your pursuit to become a better enchant, and who could say no to more power Jack sure can't
-Laid to rest (Optional):
Optional quest, only go for it if you are on a reedemption ark, otherwise leave the blood sucker to have their fun
-Thieves Guild (Optional):
Although not that versed in stealth, Jack would never say no to some easy coins, he would however not be interested in the guild's secret religion and the nightingale shenanigan.
-Dark Brotherhood (Skip):
Here's one for the real degenerates. Personally I did not find many reason for him to join them besides just to get darker.
-Civil War (big no no):
I am rather sure that political intrigue would be his least of concerns.
Mods:
-Sacrosanct (Greatly improves everything about being a vampire, )
-Alternate Start (Allows you to start of from the wreckage of a ship)
-Ordinator (A total overhaul to the perk system)
-Apocalypse (Adds a great ammount of new spells to the game)
-Vampire no sun damage (You may call it cheating, but if Serana can wear a clock during day to regenerate herself than so can I)
-Immersive Armors (Optional)
-Warmonger Armory (Adds the posibility to wear dragon priest masks at your waist if you don't want it as your head piece. Optional of course)
P.s: I used console commands to become a vampire from the get go
Final words
This build was Pixel's idea, he left no specification for it, in a way that was good since it gave me liberty, in a way it was bad since that meant I had to actually put my mind to work, Thank you Pixel :] may Molag Bal forever torment your wretched soul withing Coldharbour jk
Replies
Not bad Gthebear, especially for your first build. I found the backstory especially interesting. Nice work.
Lovely read. Nice work!!
*cloak ,btw
I have this image of serana running around with a clock on her head
The first screenshot looks great. I really like the strength and weaknesses section. I don't think I see that often in any builds. Congrats on your first build!
Seeing this posted made me quite happy indeed, especially seeing it built by a brand new builder. One of the main reasons we do these events is to encourage new members to join up, and I am glad to see you have done so. Speaking of which, for your first ever build you have absolutely killed it. This is quite a good job. And might I say: damn that is a freakin' fantastic opening screenshot. Gave me chills ...
cricket cricket
Mind-witheringly awful puns aside, thanks so much for taking on this build. I'm glad that the lack of clarification pushed you to think about how you wanted the character made, which was my intent in leaving no specifics with the submission (although you may hate me somewhat for it lol).
As far as feedback goes, the lore/backstory was very well done. It was the nice and short but very intriguing and quite enough to get me hooked into reading it. I might go a little bit more in depth into the combat style and strategy (although the strenghs/weaknesses section was quite a nice touch and you should definitely include it in future builds), and perhaps play around with the format/presentation a bit to help with the flow, but other than that this is a killer first time build. Thanks so much for taking this on, and have a very merry Christmas :D
Also your build has been linked on the event page.
Overall, great work. I loved the strength and weaknesses part. As Aysleph said, you don't see that much. Amazing first build.
Nice build - don't forget your Rank tag - Rank:Novice