Build the hero before the hero exists.

The creation screen decides the game

Character creation in Daggerfall looks like it belongs to a smaller, kinder game: pick a race, pick a class, name yourself, get on a boat. It is not. This screen is the whole foundation of your character, and Daggerfall never lets you change your mind afterwards. No respec, no level-up tree, nothing.

Three systems start here and never stop running. Your attributes decide damage, hit points, encumbrance and spell points. Your skill picks decide how fast you level, because levelling reads specific skills and nothing else. Your class restrictions decide which disadvantages you live with. The common first-time mistake is treating this screen as flavour, then wondering why levelling stalled at level 12.

The seven creation steps

Classic Daggerfall walks you through seven screens. Knowing what each one actually decides saves you an hour of staring at menus.

Step 1: Race

The race screen looks like it should be the start of your build. It is not. Daggerfall has eight races, and the only gameplay effect each one gives you is a single Special Advantage. The racial attribute adjustments published alongside the game were never implemented in code, so a Nord does not actually get free points or a Health bonus. That table in the Chronicles is fiction. Pick the race whose advantage you want and move on.

Step 2: Class

This is the heaviest decision in the game. A class is three things at once: a hit-point rate per level, a set of starting skills, and a list of restrictions. A Monk can never wear armor. A Sorcerer can never regenerate magicka. A Knight can never cast Daedric spells. Because every class totals exactly 400 attribute points, none is "more" in the budget sense. They are equal, differently shaped.

Step 3: Background

Backgrounds add points to skills rather than taking them away. Take whatever helps your Primaries or your best Majors. It is the one step where the correct choice is obvious on the first read.

Steps 4 to 7

Name and face are cosmetic. Attributes and skills are covered below. The Reflexes step deserves its own warning, because players expect a difficulty slider and Daggerfall does not have one.

The eight attributes

Every attribute starts at 50 in a custom class. You then get a random bonus of 0 to 10 per attribute plus 6 to 14 points you may allocate yourself, with a legal range of 10 to 75 at creation and a hard cap of 100 later. You can never max everything.

What a skill's governing attribute is worth

Next to every skill you will see a governing attribute: Strength governs Blade, Intelligence governs Sorcery, and so on. This is flavour text with no mechanical effect whatsoever. Training Blade never adds a point of Strength. Do not build around it.

How the reroll screen really works

The attribute step is where most first-time players waste an hour, because the screen never explains what it is doing. Here is the mechanic in full.

What you are given

Eight attributes starting at a base of 50, a random bonus of 0 to 10 rolled per attribute, between 6 and 14 points you place by hand, a legal range of 10 to 75, and a reroll button.

Why the reroll matters so much

That 0-to-10 roll is pure variance. Roll three times and the same class will give you a 61 in Endurance, then a 58, then a lucky string where three attributes land above 8. Because you cannot edit a character later, this is your first real decision in a game with no undo.

Budget planning

Spend your free points where the curve is steepest. Strength at 65 gives a damage modifier of 3, a 30 percent improvement over 50. Endurance at 65 adds 1.5 hit points per level, which compounds for the rest of the game. Compounding stats win; dump stats like Agility waste your one good decision.

BASE ROLL

0 to 10 random bonus points per attribute, rolled independently.

FREE POINTS

6 to 14 points you place by hand, anywhere from 10 to 75.

TOTAL BUDGET

Exactly 400 attribute points for every predefined and custom class.

HARD CAP

100 per attribute later in the game, not 75.

SKILL COUNT

35 skills ship in the game. Disguise, Elvish and Faerie were cut before release.

35 skills and the 15-point rule

Here is the fact that changes everything: Daggerfall has 35 skills, not the eight you may have read about. They are grouped as Combat, Magic, Stealth, Social, Academic and Athletic. In a custom class you pick 3 Primary, 3 Major and 6 Minor; a predefined class fills the same slots for you.

Starting skill values

Values depend on the slot: Primary 25, Major 15, Minor 10, everything else 0. Backgrounds add on top, and some give a flat random roll of 3 to 6 instead. Read the number before you commit.

The formula that decides your speed

Your level is floor((S - S0 + 28) / 15). S is the current total of your three Primary skills, your best two Major skills and your best one Minor skill. S0 is that same total at character creation. Every other skill you train is ignored, no matter how good you get at it.

So you do not level by being a generalist. You level by pushing up a fixed set of eight skills and letting the other twenty-seven rot. Level 2 needs only 2 points of progress, so everyone gets an early, cheap level. After that the threshold is 15, and typical maximum level is 29 or 30.

The six-hour cooldown

Every skill has a six-hour real-time cooldown between advances. That is why your character is not finished when you reach Skingrad. Plan your training route around time, not around levels.

All 18 classes compared

Eighteen predefined classes ship in the game: Acrobat, Archer, Assassin, Barbarian, Bard, Battlemage, Burglar, Healer, Knight, Mage, Monk, Nightblade, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Spellsword, Thief and Warrior. Warrior is the only class with no restrictions at all.

Spell point advantages worth knowing

Mage gets 2 times Intelligence in spell points. Sorcerer gets 3 times plus Spell Absorption, but can never regenerate magicka. Battlemage and Healer get 1.75 times, Nightblade and Spellsword 1.5 times. Everyone else falls back on the base 0.5 multiplier, which is why a plain Knight casting spells runs dry in two fights. Read the spellmaking guide before you commit to a caster.

Restrictions as a design tool

Read restrictions as part of the class, not as a drawback to work around. A Monk's inability to wear armour is a real cost and stays a real cost. You are not choosing between good and bad classes; you are choosing which bad thing you would rather have.

Races and Special Advantages

Each of the eight races grants exactly one Special Advantage, and that is the entire gameplay content of the race system. Choose for the advantage, or choose for the face and the name, which are equally valid reasons in a 1996 RPG. Whatever advantage you pick, enemies come in packs from the deeper dungeon levels, and a Special Advantage rarely stops the things that actually kill you.

Custom classes and the ClassMaker exploit

The custom class option lets you build anything: 3 Primary, 3 Major and 6 Minor skills, up to 7 advantages and up to 7 disadvantages. Advantages sound good and are not. Advantages make you level slower. Disadvantages make you level faster. So the optimal custom class is deliberately hobbled. Take the disadvantages that do not hurt you, refuse the advantages that only look impressive, and pick eight levelling skills you will enjoy using in a fight. When you shop for your first real equipment, remember that Strength sets your encumbrance ceiling at 1.5 times its value.

The ClassMaker exploit

On the attribute allocation screen, pressing U resets the add and remove counter, which lets you set every attribute to 10 or to 75 and walk away with an illegal character. It is a genuine exploit in the original game, not a fan-module trick.

Should you use it? For a science run, yes. For a first playthrough, no. A character with 75 across the board trivialises the first ten hours, then hits the same 15-point wall with attributes already solved. You lose the only part of Daggerfall that is actually a decision.

Three builds you can copy

These three characters are tested against the systems above: the 15-point rule, the hit-point rates, the class restrictions and the attribute formulas.

A. Pure fighter: the Barbarian who never dies

Put your free points into Strength and Endurance. Strength at 65 gives a melee damage modifier of 3 and an encumbrance ceiling of 97.5 before a single piece of armour. Twenty-five hit points per level is the best rate in the game, and poison immunity deletes a whole category of dungeon hazard.

Bad at exactly one thing: no magicka, and no Orcish or Daedric spells, so the shortcuts those schools normally provide do not exist for you.

B. Mage-thief hybrid: the Nightblade who heals himself

Alchemy in your Primaries means you carry your own hit point regeneration, which makes a low 8 HP per level far less frightening than the table suggests. Thievery and Stealth in your Majors let you leave a dungeon instead of fighting out of it.

Bad at sustained melee against anything faster than you, and at any fight where you run out of potions. Buy ingredients constantly.

C. The honest oddball: no magic at all

Fill your slots with athletics and stealth skills you will genuinely use, accept disadvantages instead of advantages, and play someone who solves problems with doors, cliffs and nerve rather than fireballs.

Bad at the first two dungeons, which are tuned for characters with combat skills or magic. You stay slower and weaker than build A until roughly level 15, then you stop dying outdoors entirely, which is worth the ugly middle.

Frequently asked questions