Zone chat directed me here.
There is still something I don't understand, despite having played the game for months now....
Let's say you have two characters. They are two different classes. Neither one of them has a single skill point spent on class abilities. Now, say you were to have both characters play as the same race, have the same spendings on health/magicka/stamina attributes, and have the same skill points allocated with weapons/armor/world abilities, etc.
At that point, would the characters be equal? Or does the class you play as add passives behind the scenes that I don't even know about?