Love your RPG loyalty. I am myself doing something similar. Most of your other mods makes sense in RPG scope. However, this one is questionable.
Intelligence adding more skills does not break progression by itself. It is a usual RPG trade-off: get more skill point for expense of something else (melee damage, health, action points, etc.). One can be better off with more skill points or with higher critical chance - this is for player to decide. The question is in proper balance.
argument #1 If INT giving skill points would be perceived OP than all character build recommendations would advise to max it out. Yet, this is not the case. True, they suggest to have it somewhat high (6-7-8) but not necessary. In fact, having it low does not hurt the game at all.
argument #2 With 30 levels cap, player gets ~300 SP from base leveling plus ~20 * 13 = 260 from books plus maybe some from perks taken. Every IN gives you 30 more = 5% on top of the flat base. Does not seem very excessive and not OP at all. One needs to spend 9 SPECIAL to get about 50% more skills creating somewhat more well rounded character but not in any way a demi-god as one DOES NOT need to max out all skills, especially combat ones. At the same time each stat point is quite valuable. Some people may prefer increasing their carry weight or AP or critical chance or whatever else. Let me reiterate this again. More skills do not make character superior. They make it more versatile. I.e. jack of all trades. One can try it out but that not the requirement to pass the game.
argument #3 Every primary stat governs some derived stat. In my mind that is THE most important and immersive use of them. Endurance by itself as a number means nothing until tied to something like health, rad resistance, and such. This is how player understand its importance. Other use of them is for skill check and perk requirements but these two are immersion breaker and minor at best. I do not count them as pure stat MEANING. Skill points is the only derived stat governed by INT. Without it INT has NO meaning. This mod FORCES people play INT = 1 game style. They can actually do it without this mod, you know.
4 comments
Intelligence adding more skills does not break progression by itself. It is a usual RPG trade-off: get more skill point for expense of something else (melee damage, health, action points, etc.). One can be better off with more skill points or with higher critical chance - this is for player to decide. The question is in proper balance.
argument #1
If INT giving skill points would be perceived OP than all character build recommendations would advise to max it out. Yet, this is not the case. True, they suggest to have it somewhat high (6-7-8) but not necessary. In fact, having it low does not hurt the game at all.
argument #2
With 30 levels cap, player gets ~300 SP from base leveling plus ~20 * 13 = 260 from books plus maybe some from perks taken. Every IN gives you 30 more = 5% on top of the flat base. Does not seem very excessive and not OP at all. One needs to spend 9 SPECIAL to get about 50% more skills creating somewhat more well rounded character but not in any way a demi-god as one DOES NOT need to max out all skills, especially combat ones. At the same time each stat point is quite valuable. Some people may prefer increasing their carry weight or AP or critical chance or whatever else.
Let me reiterate this again. More skills do not make character superior. They make it more versatile. I.e. jack of all trades. One can try it out but that not the requirement to pass the game.
argument #3
Every primary stat governs some derived stat. In my mind that is THE most important and immersive use of them. Endurance by itself as a number means nothing until tied to something like health, rad resistance, and such. This is how player understand its importance.
Other use of them is for skill check and perk requirements but these two are immersion breaker and minor at best. I do not count them as pure stat MEANING.
Skill points is the only derived stat governed by INT. Without it INT has NO meaning. This mod FORCES people play INT = 1 game style. They can actually do it without this mod, you know.
The first comment pretty much sums it up:
"The 1 int character meta"