when does a wepaon/armor mod become "cheating"?

[diosoth]

I can ignore the obvious "cheat" stuff such as weapons with insanely high "1-hit kill everything" damage or very powerful "end game quality" armor laying around in a chest that's easy to find. I'm talking more about the weapon that just overpowers anything or the armor that's better than anything you'd find in a vanilla game.

 

For example... Apachii Goddess Store carries 1-handed keyblade swords that swing fast and are as strong as most of the high-end vanilla claymores. Lost Chapel sells the Soulshade swords, the 1-handed type has a base attack of 50 and the 2-handed a base of 55. Enchant any of these swords with even a basic elemental damage and they're more powerful than anything you could use otherwise. Going by UESP, the Daedric Claymore has a damage rating of 26 while the other swords cap much lower. I think the highest damage any vanilla weapon has is the Daedric Warhammer, at 28. Some weapon mods try to balance this with high weight, though most anyone agrees that vanilla item weights are too much for these items to start with and low-weight mods are popular as a result(because a 100-pound warhammer just makes no sense).

 

And then armor... some armor sets made are equal to vanilla sets but some will have nigh defense and very high health. Since the game caps shield at 85 total, armor rating usually doesn't get very high though with mods I find I almost never wear vanilla armor or weapons. High health also means not having to repair as often. Though a modder may choose to set a piece of armor as clothing with a shield enchantment, bypassing the need for repairs.

 

Now, unlimited ring mods may also be cheat mods too, but I find wearing only 2 rings to be too little and many clothing modders use the ring and amulet slots for their gear- amulet especially for head gear, as the helmet slot would remove the hair and ears otherwise. This ends up being to the player's discretion.

[David Brasher]

People have various opinions on this.

 

In my opinion, custom weapons and armor are cheat items if they have stats much better than things like daedric and glass. Making an item way too light or way too durable could also be considered a cheat. One type of cheat is a mod that gives you good equipment early on when you are low level without making you face great danger, or pay lots of gold to get it.

 

Bikini armors are usually cheat items, because they give characters a really high armor class, when in reality, they should have an armor rating similar to clothing. Maybe they should have an armor rating of like 1 or 2.

 

But the definition of cheating is up to the individual player. The game is played for fun, so you should play it however makes you happy. If you love rules and strategy, then you should have some pretty strict rules on how you will roleplay and what kinds of mods you can use. If you are wild and crazy and are a rather casual gamer, then anything goes, and any sort of mod might fit into your play style. I saw a ridiculous wacky mod the other day that made Skyrim dragons look like a professional wrestler.

Edited January 10, 2012 by David Brasher

[Striker879]

Doesn't just need to be a weapon or armor to be overpowering. On my first playthrough, when I was doing the 'closing 60 gates' thing I made some spells to ease the pain (60 gates = lots of Daedra to kill). They all included a short invisibility and fortify magicka and were on touch. All magnitudes were set so that once I started casting I could continue indefinitely. So the routine became cast a regular vanilla invisibility spell, walk up to the nearest Daedra, start casting my custom spell and continue casting (about once every second or two) until all the Daedra in the room were dead. They'd go on alert when you first nailed them, but couldn't find me so I had total impunity from reprisals. Got me through the 60 gates, but it wasn't really much fun. And you know, the reason behind the 60 gates was I wanted 60 sigil stones (and I wanted them to be the ones I valued). Thing is, with that character I haven't used 50 of those 60 stones for anything.

 

Makes you wonder who cheated who and why, doesn't it.

[Septfox]

I define cheat items as "anything stronger than what the player could reasonably have". For this reason, I always create my own esp and assign appropriate stats to custom stuff that I download, then go in and manually edit the stats when I start finding the next tier of items. Keeps me on even ground with the enemies, I like to think.

 

That said, every now and then it's fun to crank stats up to 100 and go slaughter things every now and then, or lure a bunch of guards up to a high area and cast mass paralyses so they all tumbleweed-ragdoll away, or <insert most any abnormal thing here>. Like David said, it's up to the individual player; it's a game, it's meant to be fun, and people's definition of fun varies wildly. For example there's a mod around here somewhere that adds in a bunch of DMC abilities (Air Hike and whatnot). I personally think it looks like a lot of fun, and it's fun to watch someone play with it, but there's plenty of other people who think it's dumb and too animoo and too overpowered for Oblivion. And then there's all the not-overpowered-but-lorebreaking things floating around.

 

So now that I've drifted slightly off topic, to answer the question..."when it's so overpowered that you recognize that it is and the game is no longer fun because of it". Yup, that'll do.

[diosoth]

I do find the Soulshine swords a bit powerful, though with the custom enchanting being limited(even with a better enchantment mod, OOO is still severely nerfed beyond nerfed as far as enchantments go) I'm better off with the Master Sword from the Roadstroker mod. I currently use the mod that combines with with LordFrostcraig's mod. 35 base damage, 50 shock damage and other enchantments with unlimited charge, but it swings slow and isn't the strongest weapon around. And with Sigil Stones expanded and unlimited rings I have a bunch of rings enchanted with shield so I can wear whatever armor I please without having to worry about armor rating or repairing it. Though I never feel too powerful as I can still take damage easily.

[kingtitan]

Providing that the game gives you the ability to get 100% Reflect Damage, I'm really not sure that any one thing could be considered a cheat :)