The Elder Scrolls XV: This is my Thu'um Stick

[Kareeah_Indaga]

it also sounds like your on the main quest. Why? there are so many other options. like going up to a cliff, saving then jumping off the mountain for fun to see how far you fall then see what your ragdoll death looks like.

Bah, true Nords don't bother with measly cliffs! True Nords climb to the top of the Throat of the World and Whirlwind Sprint off!

[Lord Raziere]

Bah, true Nords don't bother with measly cliffs! True Nords climb to the top of the Throat of the World and Whirlwind Sprint off!

True.

now I'm wondering if I can open up the creation kit and make a version of whirlwind sprint that has so much distance that it shoots me like, half way across skyrim. see what happens.

[Yora]

As Factotum said, level scaling is a thing, but there are some enemies that start out at a pretty high level. Have you tried picking a fight with a giant, for example?

Oh, I see. So character advancement isn't completely pointless. Can't think of anything but giants and ice trolls that I have encountered yet, though.

Still a weird game design choice to have such a complex character advancement system but not making the player feel any difference. As much as I enjoy exploring in Skyrim and Morrowind, these games always felt to me like they don't know themselves what their gameplay is supposed to be.

[Vinyadan]

You feel a difference later on, with a perk like Impact, or with 100 enchanting, when you suddenly can cast any Destruction spell for free. Whether or not it's worth playing for 100 hours for that is another matter.

I personally am always surprised by people speeding through the game. I remember my character getting destroyed back when the game had just come out. No one else seems to have had this problem.

[DigoDragon]

I personally am always surprised by people speeding through the game. I remember my character getting destroyed back when the game had just come out. No one else seems to have had this problem.

Mages can still wreak me even at moderate levels (30s) with a good ice storm spell.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

True.

now I'm wondering if I can open up the creation kit and make a version of whirlwind sprint that has so much distance that it shoots me like, half way across skyrim. see what happens.

Tarhiel would be proud...if he'd survived...

[LibraryOgre]

I'd note that you don't need to level up or make significant use of all of your class skills - sometimes it's just useful to have a skill as a class skill so that you'll be good enough with it to use it when you need/want it or to have a mostly-passive benefit. A character with Enchant as a class skill doesn't need to be making enchanted items to gain value from having a high Enchant skill - just having the high skill means that item activations cost less, allowing you to benefit more from the enchantment on Tahriel's Iron Sparksword or Fargoth's Engraved Ring of Healing or a Dire Shockbloom Ring that you picked up in a store since the reduced activation cost from high Enchant skill allows you to activate the item more times before it runs out of charge while simultaneously reducing the time taken for the item to recover enough charge for the next activation. A character with Speechcraft as a class skill doesn't need to go around making all the NPCs (or even just all the merchants) love him or her - just having enough Speechcraft to make moderately effective use of it on rare occasions like the bloodbath at the end of Larius Varro's little story can be good enough to justify having it, if it fits the character.

I always want more Speechcraft when I got to wipe out the Camona Tong in Balmora. I REALLY want to be able to taunt them into attacking me, rather than picking up a bounty.

[Keltest]

I always want more Speechcraft when I got to wipe out the Camona Tong in Balmora. I REALLY want to be able to taunt them into attacking me, rather than picking up a bounty.

Speechcraft is really one of those skills I wish they would figure out how to do right. Raising and lowering disposition was all well and good, but when bribery was a thing and gold is basically free, there really wasn't any need for it, which by extension also made charm spells less than worthwhile.

Ideally what it would do is unlock entirely new dialogue options, similar to Skyrim, but actually have them straight up hidden unless your speech skill is high enough, along with the basic disposition changes. Relegate bribery to a specific dialogue option (perhaps have it replace the speech check if your skill isn't high enough) instead of just being a generic way to make somebody like you quickly. Then add in the ability to recruit somebody as a follower at high disposition, or provoke them to attack at low, and boom, its a useful skill worth training in.

[Morty]

A problem I had with Speechcraft in Morrowind was that even on a character who did have it as a starting skill, trying to raise someone's disposition still required many attempts and probably quick-loading. It felt like not having it and just throwing money at people worked just as well, particularly due to the slow pace of increasing it.

I don't think the series will ever figure it out. Oblivion had a disastrous mini-game and in Skyrim it's barely even there... but everyone will level it anyway just by offloading loot in stores.

[LibraryOgre]

A problem I had with Speechcraft in Morrowind was that even on a character who did have it as a starting skill, trying to raise someone's disposition still required many attempts and probably quick-loading. It felt like not having it and just throwing money at people worked just as well, particularly due to the slow pace of increasing it.

I don't think the series will ever figure it out. Oblivion had a disastrous mini-game and in Skyrim it's barely even there... but everyone will level it anyway just by offloading loot in stores.

What are you talking about? Oblivion didn't have a minigame. It had a Novice-level, touch-range Charm spell that instantly raised everyone's Disposition to 100 for 5 seconds, so you could start talking to them.

[Cygnia]

Really wished they tied Speech with the Bards College in Skyrim. Wasted opportunity there.

[Keltest]

Really wished they tied Speech with the Bards College in Skyrim. Wasted opportunity there.

I get the sensation that it was cut for time. There was a lot they could have done with it, making it a guild akin to the College of Winterhold. Come to think of it, they could have made it the "good" counterpart to the Thieves' Guild.

[The_Jackal]

A problem I had with Speechcraft in Morrowind was that even on a character who did have it as a starting skill, trying to raise someone's disposition still required many attempts and probably quick-loading. It felt like not having it and just throwing money at people worked just as well, particularly due to the slow pace of increasing it.

I don't think the series will ever figure it out. Oblivion had a disastrous mini-game and in Skyrim it's barely even there... but everyone will level it anyway just by offloading loot in stores.

I agree, I don't think the format of a computer RPG is conducive to making gameplay out of a speechcraft skill. Convincing your GM or fellow players on tabletop of the persuasiveness and eloquence of your speech is easy. Teaching a computer to even pass for human is insanely, impossibly hard. So, what speechcraft winds up being is how it's implemented in Skyrim: A threshold-based mind-control which is prompted in certain conversations, plus a haggle bonus when dealing with vendors. Something simple, quantifiable, and easy to code. Now you might argue, and I wouldn't completely disagree that better writing could provide more interesting opportunities to use those speechcraft threshold checks, but I don't think that would actually make the gameplay any more rewarding. Either you make the check or you don't. There's no scope for creativity or cleverness, like there is in a tabletop setting. It's a button attached to an integer comparison, with maybe a hash-function to add some randomness. Woo.

[Rynjin]

I agree, I don't think the format of a computer RPG is conducive to making gameplay out of a speechcraft skill. Convincing your GM or fellow players on tabletop of the persuasiveness and eloquence of your speech is easy. Teaching a computer to even pass for human is insanely, impossibly hard. So, what speechcraft winds up being is how it's implemented in Skyrim: A threshold-based mind-control which is prompted in certain conversations, plus a haggle bonus when dealing with vendors. Something simple, quantifiable, and easy to code. Now you might argue, and I wouldn't completely disagree that better writing could provide more interesting opportunities to use those speechcraft threshold checks, but I don't think that would actually make the gameplay any more rewarding. Either you make the check or you don't. There's no scope for creativity or cleverness, like there is in a tabletop setting. It's a button attached to an integer comparison, with maybe a hash-function to add some randomness. Woo.

The best RPGs take an in-game skill out of it entirely, and make dialogue options work based on...dialogue option, sometimes modified by other skills. If you tell someone they're fat and their momma's ugly, they'll get mad and take a swing at you. If you're given the option to tell them to let you take over while you handle the fighting, they might agree to do so...if they've come to trust you over time or your [Fight] skill is high enough. And so on.

Speechcraft is generally useless because it HAS to be useless the way most Bethesda games are set up. Even in New Vegas, which handles it better than most due to Obsidian's superior writing, the Speech skill comes down to a binary pass/fail with some ridiculous results.

[Keltest]

The best RPGs take an in-game skill out of it entirely, and make dialogue options work based on...dialogue option, sometimes modified by other skills. If you tell someone they're fat and their momma's ugly, they'll get mad and take a swing at you. If you're given the option to tell them to let you take over while you handle the fighting, they might agree to do so...if they've come to trust you over time or your [Fight] skill is high enough. And so on.

Speechcraft is generally useless because it HAS to be useless the way most Bethesda games are set up. Even in New Vegas, which handles it better than most due to Obsidian's superior writing, the Speech skill comes down to a binary pass/fail with some ridiculous results.

I don't think theres necessarily anything wrong with a binary check. Unlock some new dialogue options you can choose from and bring back the taunt ability from morrowind so you can pick fights with people without getting arrested. Plenty of skills in the game are just a binary check. They don't, by themselves have to carry the entire game on their shoulders, just contribute to the overall whole. It doesn't need to be a whole minigame or big interactive thing all the time, just let us proactively see the results of a character who has it compared to a character who doesn't.

[Morty]

I don't think theres necessarily anything wrong with a binary check. Unlock some new dialogue options you can choose from and bring back the taunt ability from morrowind so you can pick fights with people without getting arrested. Plenty of skills in the game are just a binary check. They don't, by themselves have to carry the entire game on their shoulders, just contribute to the overall whole. It doesn't need to be a whole minigame or big interactive thing all the time, just let us proactively see the results of a character who has it compared to a character who doesn't.

This would work better in a system that doesn't necessitate frequently and regularly using a skill to advance it.

[Keltest]

This would work better in a system that doesn't necessitate frequently and regularly using a skill to advance it.

Partly, but since its also the mercantile skill you can grind it to a point.

[halfeye]

Some people like to haggle in real life, some people like to see a price and say "yes" or "no", some people will see a price and make a counter offer, but walk away if haggling starts up. There are people who are good at the Yes/no system, there are people who like to haggle but are actually not very good at it.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

If you're looking to get 100 Luck eventually, then sure, go ahead and take Luck as a class attribute because it'll save you ten levels, but it'll still take you 50 levels to get there and that's not significantly more practical than the 60 levels it'd take you without Luck as a favored attribute. Otherwise, I don't really think that Luck's particularly worth taking or investing in - it gives a bunch of small bonuses to a lot of unrelated things but doesn't have a big impact on anything in particular - unless your particular character concept or roleplay goals make having a particularly 'lucky' character important.

Well, the end goal WOULD be to get to 100 in each attribute. I want to do EVERYTHING in the game (barring mutually-exclusive paths like the House questlines, Vampire clans and Bloodmoon's forking between Skaal and Werewolf). Last time I played Morrowind, the only way I could do that was through cheat codes, which I don't want to do anymore.

As to what skills to pick, I personally would recommend picking skills that make sense for what you want your character to do rather than designing a character around getting the optimal 551/555 attribute bonuses at level-up, because making significant use of low-level skills (usually those under ~20-30, though some - like Sneak - can feel almost impossible to use until 50+ without something supporting them) in Morrowind tends to be an unpleasant experience - your sword repeatedly passes through your enemy harmlessly, your reagents evaporate into thin air when you try to make potions, your spells fizzle and do nothing but waste your (possibly severely limited) magicka reserves, you couldn't sneak up on a blind and deaf man if your life depended on it, and so on - and the bookkeeping necessary to do it, while certainly not particularly significant, is neither fun nor interesting in and of itself and doesn't add anything to the game unless you get a kick out of pointless optimization. Morrowind's power scaling generally tips in favor of the player character more as character level increases; there's no real need to favor yourself further with 'perfect' levels even if you're doing something a bit silly like leveling off of Mercantile, Speechcraft, and Alchemy for the first ten or fifteen levels.

Again, I'd like to get to 100 in ALL the skills eventually, and I'm looking for the best way to get there without cheating. I see what you're saying, but I don't want to restrict myself to one specific playstyle because I'm so darn indecisive and obsessive-completionist.

[Aeson]

Again, I'd like to get to 100 in ALL the skills eventually, and I'm looking for the best way to get there without cheating. I see what you're saying, but I don't want to restrict myself to one specific playstyle because I'm so darn indecisive and obsessive-completionist.

Your goal is unrealistic. Regardless, if you want my opinion for the most feasible way to get there:

- Race: High Elf (second choice: Breton; third choice: anything with a racial Alchemy bonus)
- Class Specialization: Magic
- Class Attributes: Intelligence, Luck
- Major Skills: Any five randomly selected from the set of all skills EXCEPT Alchemy; optionally also exclude Restoration, Destruction, and Mercantile
- Minor Skills: Any five randomly selected from the set of all skills EXCEPT Alchemy; optionally also exclude Restoration, Destruction, and Mercantile

How does it work? A Magic-specialized INT/LCK High Elf should be able to make sufficiently valuable potions reliably enough to break even at a vendor with cheap restocking ingredients , so find one of those (Dralval Andrano at the Balmora Temple is a good one) and sit yourself in front of them making potions until Alchemy becomes a money-printer. Make yourself a fortune off homemade potions. Spend that fortune on training. Repeat until you have 100 in every skill.

As to why you might want to exclude Restoration, Destruction and Mercantile from your class skills, they're skills that you can use to accelerate the process - Mercantile makes the wealth-accumulation go a bit faster and reduces training cost, Restoration makes finding an appropriate trainer significantly easier as any trainer can become an appropriate trainer for the skill you want to train if you have an appropriate high-magnitude Fortify [Skill] on Touch spell and can cut training costs if you use a (short-duration high-magnitude) Fortify Mercantile on Self spell right before purchasing training, and Destruction can cut training costs if you use a (short-duration high-magnitude) Drain Skill on Self spell right before purchasing training (also slightly helps with finding an appropriate trainer, though not nearly as much as Restoration does with Fortify [Skill] on Touch).

If you want to get 100 in every skill and every stat without resorting to something like the above ... well, I suppose it's possible, but I strongly suspect that you'll grow weary of the character long before you come close to achieving your goal, because if you're playing the game 'normally' you can probably do pretty much everything that there is to do within the game by level 30 or so, even including Tribunal and Bloodmoon. Assuming Luck is a Favored Attribute and you get perfect 551 levels, the earliest that you'll hit 100 in every stat except Luck is level 38 with the Lady as your Birthsign, level 41 with the Steed or the Lover as your Birthsign, or level 43 otherwise; if you also want to have 100 Luck you'll be waiting until level 51 at the earliest. If you want to get 100 in every skill, you will have to hit level 68.5 to 77.5 depending on how many of your racial and specialization bonuses apply to Major and Minor skills (more applying to Major/Minor skills => lower level required to hit 100 in every skill since it reduces the number of natural levels available before hitting skillcap in all class skills).

[veti]

I always want more Speechcraft when I got to wipe out the Camona Tong in Balmora. I REALLY want to be able to taunt them into attacking me, rather than picking up a bounty.

You realise there's no limit to the number of times you can make the attempt? Taunt them until their disposition is at zero, then just keep going. It might take half an hour, but sooner or later you'll hit on some insult they can't shrug off.

[Vinyadan]

You realise there's no limit to the number of times you can make the attempt? Taunt them until their disposition is at zero, then just keep going. It might take half an hour, but sooner or later you'll hit on some insult they can't shrug off.

In Morrowind, you can also lower someone's disposition by talking to them while they cannot see you. They'll go "who's there?" a few times, and then they will become aggressive.

[Morty]

Partly, but since its also the mercantile skill you can grind it to a point.

Which means everyone is going to be using it in roughly equal measure, because everyone has to buy and sell. So the only difference is going to come from its being a primary/secondary skill (if those even exist in this hypothetical situation).

I'm still going to take Speechcraft if I do play Morrowind again, just to see what happens. Maybe Mercantile too, but I don't know if there's much of a point. It could make training and enchanting less stupidly expensive, I guess? Not sure if it works on them. It won't be an optimal character either way, because the best way to play Morrowind, as I remember, is a spellsword with long blades, heavy armor and magic.

Of course, in order not to get fed up with Morrowind after an hour, I'll need some serious modding. But I'll cross that bridge when/if I get there.

And yeah, getting all the skills to 100 is just not very likely to happen.

[Keltest]

Which means everyone is going to be using it in roughly equal measure, because everyone has to buy and sell. So the only difference is going to come from its being a primary/secondary skill (if those even exist in this hypothetical situation).

I'm still going to take Speechcraft if I do play Morrowind again, just to see what happens. Maybe Mercantile too, but I don't know if there's much of a point. It could make training and enchanting less stupidly expensive, I guess? Not sure if it works on them. It won't be an optimal character either way, because the best way to play Morrowind, as I remember, is a spellsword with long blades, heavy armor and magic.

Of course, in order not to get fed up with Morrowind after an hour, I'll need some serious modding. But I'll cross that bridge when/if I get there.

And yeah, getting all the skills to 100 is just not very likely to happen.

I was thinking more along the lines of Skyrim's perk system, which I think does pretty well for the non-combat skills in differentiating between somebody who uses a skill a lot passively versus somebody actively trying to be good at it.

[Balmas]

I agree, I don't think the format of a computer RPG is conducive to making gameplay out of a speechcraft skill. Convincing your GM or fellow players on tabletop of the persuasiveness and eloquence of your speech is easy. Teaching a computer to even pass for human is insanely, impossibly hard. So, what speechcraft winds up being is how it's implemented in Skyrim: A threshold-based mind-control which is prompted in certain conversations, plus a haggle bonus when dealing with vendors. Something simple, quantifiable, and easy to code. Now you might argue, and I wouldn't completely disagree that better writing could provide more interesting opportunities to use those speechcraft threshold checks, but I don't think that would actually make the gameplay any more rewarding. Either you make the check or you don't. There's no scope for creativity or cleverness, like there is in a tabletop setting. It's a button attached to an integer comparison, with maybe a hash-function to add some randomness. Woo.

I kind of like how Kingdom Come: Deliverance handled persuasion. You have your standard "I'm a nice, charismatic, persuasive guy" options, but you also have options that take into account your social standing, how dangerous you look, the perks you've taken, and missions you've completed. What's more, you need to actually figure out which option is the best for the person you're talking to. F'r'instance, if you're trying to wheedle a bottle of wine out of a merchant, it might be appropriate to lean on your standing as the local lord's agent. However, if you're trying to persuade an archbishop that he should let you advocate for a local accused woman, saying that he has to let you do it because you're Lord Radzig's servant will result in him saying, in essence, "And I'm the archbishop, bug off."

Of course, all of that is probably more work than it's worth in an Elder Scrolls game, especially when you don't have a set character background like you do in KC:D. It would be much harder to account for all the variables in an Elder Scrolls game.

[Aeson]

You realise there's no limit to the number of times you can make the attempt? Taunt them until their disposition is at zero, then just keep going. It might take half an hour, but sooner or later you'll hit on some insult they can't shrug off.

And having a decently high Speechcraft skill will make that go a lot faster. Some of us play games to have fun; sitting in the dialogue menu hitting Persuade=>Taunt for an hour trying to pick a fight with an NPC, and then potentially doing it again for the one in the basement and yet again for the pair in the bar, is not what I would consider to be 'fun.'

Beyond that, there's only so much time in a day, and there's a lot of other things you could do with an hour that are more enjoyable or more important than spending an hour provoking an NPC so you can kill them 'legally.'

[The_Jackal]

The best RPGs take an in-game skill out of it entirely, and make dialogue options work based on...dialogue option, sometimes modified by other skills. If you tell someone they're fat and their momma's ugly, they'll get mad and take a swing at you. If you're given the option to tell them to let you take over while you handle the fighting, they might agree to do so...if they've come to trust you over time or your [Fight] skill is high enough. And so on.

Well, we just differ on what makes a good RPG. Doing dialogue tree spelunking doesn't appeal to me at all, which is why I'm generally on the other side of these anti-Bethsoft rants where RPG grognards want to go back to playing a choose-your-own adventure book. Don't get me wrong here: If that's what you want, then you want it, but don't call it gameplay, because there's no actual game there.

Speechcraft is generally useless because it HAS to be useless the way most Bethesda games are set up. Even in New Vegas, which handles it better than most due to Obsidian's superior writing, the Speech skill comes down to a binary pass/fail with some ridiculous results.

Well, to be frank, this can be just as big of a problem in tabletop RPGs too. If your GM has set up your story arc well, there are simply going to be situations where your soft-skill (persuasion, charm person, mind control, etc.) must be a hard-fail, otherwise there's nothing to stop the party's Bard from rolling in and defusing every story.

I have a friend who really like to make specialist PCs, and in one superhero themed game, he made a character which was all mind-control. Big surprise, he wasn't happy, because there were huge swaths of the game where his character's powers were effectively disabled by GM fiat. Because if he got to use his uber-powered mind-control, scenario over.

I kind of like how Kingdom Come: Deliverance handled persuasion. You have your standard "I'm a nice, charismatic, persuasive guy" options, but you also have options that take into account your social standing, how dangerous you look, the perks you've taken, and missions you've completed. What's more, you need to actually figure out which option is the best for the person you're talking to. F'r'instance, if you're trying to wheedle a bottle of wine out of a merchant, it might be appropriate to lean on your standing as the local lord's agent. However, if you're trying to persuade an archbishop that he should let you advocate for a local accused woman, saying that he has to let you do it because you're Lord Radzig's servant will result in him saying, in essence, "And I'm the archbishop, bug off."

Interesting. It's certainly a deeper dialogue tree. Was KC:D fully voiced? If so, did the different factors of persuasion actually change the canned dialogue, or are we talking just a change in the text prompt you choose at the dialogue wheel?

Of course, all of that is probably more work than it's worth in an Elder Scrolls game, especially when you don't have a set character background like you do in KC:D. It would be much harder to account for all the variables in an Elder Scrolls game.

Yeah, well, that's one of the things I keep harping on when folks bring up Witcher III when making positive comparisons with the Elder Scrolls series. The Witcher III gets to make a lot more assumptions about your character, because he's not your character. He's Geralt of Rivia, protagonist of Poland's most famous romance novel series.

But ultimately, speechcraft mostly isn't a game mechanic at all. It's a feature of the game's story. That doesn't mean it can't be done better or worse, but I think there are limits to its relevance or utility, no matter how much time and effort developers put into it, especially in a game where all dialogue is recorded and animated.

[Rynjin]

Well, we just differ on what makes a good RPG. Doing dialogue tree spelunking doesn't appeal to me at all, which is why I'm generally on the other side of these anti-Bethsoft rants where RPG grognards want to go back to playing a choose-your-own adventure book. Don't get me wrong here: If that's what you want, then you want it, but don't call it gameplay, because there's no actual game there.

One of my gold standards is Dragon Age: Origins, which TBF has persuasion skills you can put points in, but I don't think they're ever actually NECESSARY.

It is rewarding to have your actual choices matter, not whether you chose to put points in X or Y during charop.

Well, to be frank, this can be just as big of a problem in tabletop RPGs too. If your GM has set up your story arc well, there are simply going to be situations where your soft-skill (persuasion, charm person, mind control, etc.) must be a hard-fail, otherwise there's nothing to stop the party's Bard from rolling in and defusing every story.

I don't agree. I let my players talk their way out of any situation it works by the rules.

The catch is that Diplomacy by RAW takes a minute to perform, which means it can stop a combat from starting, but may not cease it once it begins.

I have a friend who really like to make specialist PCs, and in one superhero themed game, he made a character which was all mind-control. Big surprise, he wasn't happy, because there were huge swaths of the game where his character's powers were effectively disabled by GM fiat. Because if he got to use his uber-powered mind-control, scenario over.

Most superhero games take that into account; you're meant to always have scenarios where your power works, at least on mooks. Unfortunately a lot of GMs forget to plan encounters that way, and treat a game like Mutants and Masterminds as though they're D&D. In a superhero game the good guys are supposed to win. So you plan encounters where the mind controller, or super speedster, etc., etc. can "win" while not letting them dominate the whole encounter.

Superhero teams, for example, typically don't all fight the same target when you think about it. Splitting the party is an EXPECTATION, not something to avoid.

Interesting. It's certainly a deeper dialogue tree. Was KC:D fully voiced? If so, did the different factors of persuasion actually change the canned dialogue, or are we talking just a change in the text prompt you choose at the dialogue wheel?

It was, and it did. It's the best part of the game actually; I found most of the other mechanics clunky, though some people really like the combat.

[Caelestion]

Well, we just differ on what makes a good RPG. Doing dialogue tree spelunking doesn't appeal to me at all, which is why I'm generally on the other side of these anti-Bethsoft rants where RPG grognards want to go back to playing a choose-your-own adventure book. Don't get me wrong here: If that's what you want, then you want it, but don't call it gameplay, because there's no actual game there.

Games with deep dialogue trees are like choose-your-own-adventure books? Did a CYAG run off with your girlfriend or something?

[halfeye]

Games with deep dialogue trees are like choose-your-own-adventure books? Did a CYAG run off with your girlfriend or something?

The thing with those books is that they are about as thick as a normal book, but there are three or more ways through them, so any path through them is very short compared to a novel, because there's only one path through a novel, and the books are the same size. So, I looked at one in a bookshop once, and didn't buy it, because it struck me as really bad value for money.