LE Idea for a Skyrim XP mod

[moonballz]

I'm not a modder and probably could not create a complex mod like this. Still, I wanted to share some ideas

about a possible XP leveling mod for Skyrim. The idea is mostly inspired by the Oblivion XP mod, but with

an important difference: how skills are increased.

 

 

Idea for a Skyrim XP mod

 

Summary: Character level is not at all affected by skill increase, but your character

level affects how much your skills can increase. To gain the XP required to level up,

you need to actually play the game: explore, fight and complete quests. Skill levels

will be able to increase gradually as you level up, unlike vanilla Skyrim where you

are tempted to max some skills right from the start, gaining you several levels without

any of the fun in exploring (and risking either gimping or overpowering yourself, which

can easily ruin the fun even further).

 

 

Character level:

 

To increase your character level, you need experience points (XP). You gain XP from

exploring, defeating enemies, completing quests, crafting, stealing, picking locks,

convincing and talking to people. More XP is required to level up the higher your

level becomes. After completing all quests, finding all locations, clearing every

dungeon once, talking to almost every NPC, and doing a reasonable amount of crafting,

you should end up at around level 45-50. To go higher you need to return to respawned

dungeons, hunt more in the wilderness, craft more valuable items, steal respawned stuff,

possibly explore custom content from mods.

 

XP from crafting and stealing depends on the value of the item, but should overall reward

relatively little XP. Similar for convincing people and lockpicking, the relative difficulty

affects the amount of XP gained, but is overall quite low. This means you actually have to

play the game: explore, fight and complete quests to level up.

 

The amount of XP rewarded for defeating enemies depends on their level, with higher multipliers

for harder enemies. For example, defeating a high level boss gives a fixed amount of XP, but is

relatively more rewarding at lower levels. If possible, defeating enemies by luring them towards

other mobs should reward some XP too, when you loot them. Similarly if your companion does most

of the damage.

 

The ratio of XP gained could look like:

 

20% from exploring

20% from main quest and other important quests

10% from random side quests

20% from defeating enemies

5% from defeating bosses and dragons

5% from finding artifacts and other special items

10% from crafting

5% from stealing and picking locks

5% from meeting and talking to people, and trading

 

(Getting the distribution of XP close to the above will need lots of testing and tweaking.

Another challenge is to get an idea of what a "normal" playthrough contains, so that the

XP per level wil fit how most people play the game.)

 

 

Skill level:

 

Skill XP basically works like vanilla Skyrim, the higher the skill, the harder it is to

increase. How much a skill can be increased depends on your character level. At level 1,

you can increase each skill 1 point by using it.

 

Additionally, a trainer can teach a skill up to the amount you have gained on your own.

Each level you get 5 points added to a pool of training points. If you haven't trained

any skills by level 10, you will have 50 points to use for training, but each skill can

only be trained as high as you have gained by yourself. You can choose to keep your 5

favorite skills maxed, or divide your precious training points among several skills.

 

Just like training, skill books will be more useful to keep your skills up. Skill gain

from books counts as a bonus, and does not affect how much you can train in other ways.

 

 

Skill level (each of these add up)

 

• 
   
  
• Base... 15 (or 5-25 if the difficulty level is locked at character start)
  
• Race... as usual, some 5, one 10
  
• Stone... Warrior/Thief/Mage: 10 to respective skill, Lover: 5 to all
  
• Grinded... up to character level
  
• Trained... <= Grinded (5 training points unlocked per level)
  
• Books... as usual (reading skill books is a bonus, does not affect Grinded or Trained)
   
  

Skill level sum = Base + Race + Stone + Books + Grinded + Trained

(Grinded <= Character level, and Trained <= Grinded)

 

 

So when will you be able you max a skill? (if skills are capped at 100)

 

Highest skill, max training: (100 - base 15 - race 10 - stone 10 - books 5) / 2 = level 30 (train 80-90 with no skill stone)

unspecialised skill: (100 - base 15 - race 0 - stone 5 - books 5) / 2 = level 38

less training, no books: (100 - base 15 - race 0 - stone 5 - books 0) / 1.5 = level 53 (train 50%)

no training, books or skill stone: (100 - base 15) / 1 = level 85 (level 95 at max difficulty)

 

...although it would be quite silly not to use trainers at all.

Note: The above numbers may not be 100% accurate.

 

 

So, that's about it. The above idea should be compatible with a skill uncapper mod, and may work better with one.

And/or another mod idea to make level-up choices more interesting:

- selecting magicka could increase spell magnitude by 1%, and give 0.5% resist against lightning and magic

- selecting health could give some damage reduction, and 0.5% resist against fire and disease

- selecting stamina could give either some avoidance or some run speed, plus 0.5% resist against cold and poison

[Oomo]

I love and support this idea. I wonder if the original creator of Oblivion XP would like to do a Skyrim version?

[moonballz]

Here's an alternative suggestion that fixes the min-maxing issue of reading skill books too early

or training too late. However, it depends completely on the ability to raise the skill cap on the go:

 

1. Let all skills start at 0, but put the skillcap at 10. Or 11 if start level can't be 0.

 

2. Add the race bonus (and maybe some perks in those skills).

 

3. All the skill caps are raised by one at level-up.

 

4. Training raises the skill cap but not the skill directly.

Adept trainer: 15 or 20 training sessions (need trainers for block, enchanting, illusion, lockpicking and 2h

Expert trainer: 25 (or +10) sessions

Master trainer: 35 (or +10) sessions

(possibly add novice trainers for all skills, and give each trainer 10 exclusive lessons to teach, total 40 sessions)

 

5. Books and quest rewards raise the skill cap, and may optionally raise the skill directly.

 

6. The first time a guardian stone is selected, its respective skills are "unlocked" by raising skill caps.

Each stone should give a permanent bonus of 90 potential points in total:

- 6 x 15 for the class stones (archery moved to warrior).

- 18 x 5 for the lover stone

- varying bonuses for the other stones, max 30 to any skill, max 15 points in total to the crafting skills

- also balance the effects of guardian stones, making less useful stones have more useful effects

 

7. Let max skill cap be a user option: from 100 up to any number that doesn't causes crashes.

 

8. No real max level, but diminishing XP returns.

 

Now, the choice of race and first guardian stone is suddenly very important for character building.

And trainers really are essential.

Edited February 3, 2012 by moonballz