that make them worthwhile to play, more so than their gifts or advantages.

Learn how to strategically select disadvantages in The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. Maximize your character points by understanding the impact of critical weaknesses, damage vulnerabilities, and forbidden items.

When creating a character in The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, choosing disadvantages can grant you a significant number of points to spend on advantages and better stats. However, these choices can drastically alter your gameplay experience. Understanding the implications of each disadvantage is crucial to making them worthwhile rather than detrimental.

Critical Weakness: You can choose to be vulnerable to disease, fire, frost, magic, paralysis, poison, or shock. A safe choice is disease, as it only increases your chance of contracting an illness, not its effects. Fire and frost spells are range attacks, manageable if you close the distance to mages. Shock spells are dangerous as many human enemies use touch-range shock spells, making them hard to avoid. Poison is strongly advised against. Paralysis can be the best or worst choice; High Elves, being immune to paralysis, can select it safely. This disadvantage nets you a lot of points for advantages.

Damage: You can take damage from holy places or sunlight. Temples are less of an issue unless you plan to join one. Sunlight (6:00 to 18:00) makes visiting guilds and merchants difficult, as most shops close at 20:00. Overcast days reduce damage, and quick movement between establishments can mitigate risk. This disadvantage significantly changes your playstyle, making for an interesting character.

Darkness Magery: This lowers your ability or magicka entirely when in light (daylight). Since most of the game takes place in darkness, this can be a relatively safe disadvantage.

Forbidden Armor: You can be restricted from wearing chain, leather, or plate armor. Leather and chain are generally weak and only problematic at the very beginning. Plate armor is the best in the game and restricting yourself from it will be a significant hindrance throughout your character's life, unless you are roleplaying without armor. Wearing armor does not inhibit sneaking or spellcasting, only slightly slowing you down and consuming weight allowance.

Forbidden Material: You cannot use weapons or armor of a chosen material (iron, steel, silver, elven, dwarven, mithril, adamantium, ebony, orcish, daedric). Nixing rare materials like silver or orcish is safe. Iron or steel will be difficult early on. Daedric is the best material.

Forbidden Shield: You can be restricted from using buckler, round, kite, or tower shields. Kite and tower shields are generally considered the most worthwhile.

Forbidden Weaponry: You can be restricted from any weapon skill. Since you typically only use your class's chosen weapons, this is often a safe disadvantage. Selecting Hand to Hand has no effect.

Inability to Regain Spell Points: This makes it very difficult to play if you use magic. If you choose this, you MUST also take the Spell Absorption advantage, as you cannot regain magicka when resting.

Light Magery: This lowers your ability or magicka when in darkness. This should never be taken, as most of the game occurs in darkness.