Yet another "Yet Another" kind of mod, joining the handful of other painfully simple and easy-to-make mods that I myself am guilty of searching for (and downloading) to "fix" the governing attributes of certain skills.

But - since I spent the time looking through Nexus for them and read all of the discussions within their comments section, I now consider myself somewhat of an expert on the subject. Since no one else has put up a version of these mods that reflected those conversations, naturally I've decided that I am the one to do it.

Attributes now make sense, according to me and the people whom I've agreed with. Which means that you should have a more meaningful and perhaps less tedious time in playing your role. You do roleplay... right? RIGHT? Right.

What's changed?

Security: Intelligence -> Agility
Alteration: Willpower -> Intelligence
Hand-to-Hand: Speed -> Strength
Light Armor: Agility -> Endurance
Short Blade: Speed -> Agility
Spear: Endurance -> Agility
Unarmored: Speed -> Endurance

Above this line _ you'll see changes that are more-or-less already featured in other mods or have been discussed (on the Nexus at least.)

Below this line _ you'll see changes I have made outside of the scope of the traditional arguments (as I have seen here) which means I actually contributed an original thought (2!) to this mod! Ayyy! Go me!

Illusion: Personality -> Intelligence
Conjuration: Intelligence -> Willpower

Will this break the game?

Quite possibly. But that's more your problem than mine now.

You can always just delete the .esp or simply not download this at all. But do. Do download this at all (costs.)

Ok, but why did you do this?

It all started way back when I first played Morrowind on the original Xbox. Having an affinity for sneaky thief types (before Bethesda pretty much cemented the fact that pretty much every casual gamer would decide to follow me [specifically] down that less-than noble path) I was particularly disappointed that Security was governed by Intelligence. How did I respond? Well, when I found this out after a short trip from Seyda Neen to Balmora, I think I looked up the attribute/skill functions, how leveling worked, etc. and then I literally turned the game off and have not picked it up again until recently thanks to a combination of Skyrim opening my eyes to modding, Bethesda being owned by Microsoft and stupid low holiday deals.

Note: I had a broken Xbox that literally only played Morrowind. I tested that thing with plenty of games and for whatever reason, Morrowind was it for me. That's how annoyed I was with this game. I knew I could only play one game and I decided that in the end (at the very beginning) it wasn't worth my time - simply because the most basic of basic roleplaying functions didn't make any god damn sense.

But now I'm back and ready to F% $%!@ up. Still, in all honesty, I might not actually ever get to play because I'll be too busy perfecting it all on paper and messing with the construction set to clear conflicts, but that's all of us amirite? By 2023 I might actually know how to code MWSE-lua mods out of sheer determination. By 2024 I might actually deliver that package to Mr. Cosades. I'm just starting small with solutions that haven't been addressed in a way that I'm satisfied with. But anyways, let's continue...

Yikes. What I really meant was, why did you change what you changed?

HAH, of course that's what you meant. I knew that. Come on.

Let's start with the change I made to...

Security: Now, one could (and they do) make the argument that lockpicking is more about knowing the inner workings of the lock. how to attack the pins, and blah blah blah I don't care about ANY of that when it comes to the relationship of lockpicking in a video game setting and the role of the character who is actually using these skills. Agility is different from Speed for a reason, and it is not simply defined as a physical attribute. A quick trip to google and back has revealed the top 2 definitions of the word:

a·gil·i·ty

/əˈjilədē/

noun
noun: agility

• ability to move quickly and easily.
  

"though he was without formal training as dancer or athlete, his physical agility was inexhaustible"

• ability to think and understand quickly.
  "games teach hand–eye coordination, mental agility, and alertness

I would simply like to take a moment to argue back. Aside being physically agile, Agility is representative of "street smarts" while Intelligence is more your "booksmart" attribute. There. There it is. That's my arguement. But in all seriousness (lol) It makes more sense for any character who is going to be using a lockpick to not be worried about competing mentally with people who can... oh I don't know, conjure up and fling fireballs, brew Jesus potions, or trap souls inside of shiny rocks - especially since those same people can unlock the same lock with a fancy word and a flick of the wrist.

With that in mind, really think about your Intelligence score on a scale of 1-100 in relation to Morrowind/Fiction in general. Magic as an idea has always been associated with Intelligence and mental focus. Even if the main character in a story is naturally gifted, they (typically) live in a world where that is rare, because everyone else (Ronald Weasley and friends) had to go to K-12 Wizarding school to be AVERAGE magic users. Out of 100, I would be so bold as to say even 50 is not representative of the "average" intelligence, as the extremes are indicative of brain dead vs. Tony Stark level thinking. In an unmodded (yuck) version of the game, your base racial intelligence ranges from 30-50. Considering the fact that you fall into the "main character" category, I can go with that, especially since only a handful of classes get that +10 bonus. You're grown. You're not some teenage kid getting dropped off in Vvardenfell for a fun little vacation. You've seen the world, you've been to prison even - and now you're on a mission for the Empire. Probably not your average Josephine.

Ah, but I digress... My sneak-thief is not interested in magic, she's interested in gold - so what am I building up my Magicka for? My just-smart-enough-to-use-a-sword-without-killing-himself warrior is definitely not getting any smarter by ramming lockpicks into cheap locks until they simply just give up and open, and that's aside the fact that he's probably just bashing the lock open in the first place.. Basically, I don't think that fiddling with locks is going to make me any smarter. I might learn a thing or two in regard to how locks work on a muscle-memory basis, but any true gains to my intellect will be made through the actual study of locks via books or tinkering. You can get a whopping 5 Security points from books, and... oh, looks like Bethesda didn't include a way to take apart locks and study them. Weird. Hmm... can't find any mods that let me do that either. Guess I'll just have to move Security from Intelligence to Agility, because you can still be highly knowledgeable about a particular subject or craft (through practice) without actually being intelligent at all. Prince could play 27 instruments flawlessly but couldn't read sheet music, so if you put a song on paper in front of him he wouldn't know what to do, but if you just asked him to play that same song he'd have no problem making it sound better than the original. Repeating myself for the 3rd time in a different flavor - You can become proficient through repetition and not actually understand the inner workings, the bigger picture, or both.

Wow... Do I dare ask about the other changes?

No, you daren't - but I'm so glad you did.

Alteration: Moving this from Willpower to Intelligence was a fairly easy decision, because of the way Intelligence works vs. Willpower. Intelligence increases your base Magicka, while Willpower increases your chance to successfully cast Magic. The way I see it, Alteration spells are all fairly generic and beginnerish. Float? Water-Breathing? Open? Magic Shields? I mean come on. These are your basic Alakazams, and it would make sense to have this governed by the stat which is representative of increasing your focus. You aren't learning how to shoot firebolts on your first day in the Mage's guild. You're learning how to build up your Magicka pool with trivial spells that don't hurt anyone - because you're new here, Outlander.

Hand-to-Hand: This one is actually pretty common as far as this kind of mod is concerned, and I feel like the reasons are pretty obvious. Punching things makes you stronger, it doesn't make you go faster. I would even put this in Agility before I ever put it back into Speed because duh. There's only one thing that should increase your speed in this game, and that's Athleticism. Coincidentally, this mod makes that a thing.

Light Armor: All of the armor skills go to Endurance, because getting hit is how you raise these skills. It doesn't make any sense for them to increase your Agility or Speed because that's not the way the actual game works. If it did, you would see skill increases when enemies miss you. Since it *doesn't* we'll have to settle for the common sense approach, which in this case is "whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger."

Short Blade: Again, stabbing people doesn't make you run fast. You'll have to rely on actually running, swimming, and jumping around for that. You know? Don't skip leg day. Anyways, in this case I decided against Strength because Daggers and Short Blades aren't exactly used in a way that are going to build a bunch of muscle either. You just don't fight the same way with shorter blades, because you're specifically going for weak points with these weapons as opposed to going for impact.

Spear: This was even easier to move to Agility than the Short Blade, because moving all of the armor skills to Endurance made it a pretty heavy tree, and this looked out of place even before that. The arguments for Spear fighting to be governed by Endurance are weak and honestly apply to all weapons. Everyone needs endurance to be able to use weapons effectively, more-so with a spear for sure, because of the way you have to move your body. However, to be efficient with a spear it's more important that you're accurate with it since it's pretty much a knife on a stick. You're just stabbing people from a few feet away instead of up close and personal. It's too bad Halberds are governed by this skill, because I would honestly class them as Axes based on game mechanics if I could... and well... I just opened the editor and figured out that I can so... Mod #2 coming soon? I expect that by the time I'm done with that I'll want to change something else and before you know it I'll actually have enough to combine into a real mod. Huh. This is easier than I thought. Ah, oh, yeah you're still here. Bless you, let's continue.

Unarmored: See Light Armor above.

Illusion: There is nothing about forcing people to act in a manner that they typically wouldn't through magical means that says to me "Yeah, this is gonna make everybody wanna talk to me and sell me things for the low." at all. Whatever Bethesda was smoking in the late 90's/early 00's had to have been straight dirt that was giving them headaches because this was definitely not inspired. This is a solid point that I hope they bring up in the fight to legalize recreational use of wow I'm getting distracted here. So, as I was saying... Magic is magic, and it's not going to make you any kind of charismatic. You can fake it until you make it, but that's still going to involve actually talking to people and you're going to shake somebody right out of a charm if you come at them with stank breath, looking like Gargamel, barely able to form a complete sentence, while you squirm in place and avert eye contact. That being said, I again decided on Intelligence for similar reasons as Alteration. These are all mostly harmless (in the sense that they alone won't kill anyone) and seem to belong to a school of magic that any mage could master. Thus, it's better off serving the function of increasing the attribute that grows your Magicka pool. Aptitude (Intelligence) vs. Capability (Willpower.)

Conjuration: As I said. Aptitude vs. Capability. Destruction, Restoration, Mysticism, and Conjuration all feel like they would be the more major schools of magic here.

Fire, Fira, Firaga.
Telekinesis, Intervention, Soul Trap.
SUMMON DAEDRA.
Cure, Resist, Restore.

In my opinion, these are the schools of magic that you would really see the most magically gifted mages focusing their studies on. Alteration? Illusion? That's Bard magic. That's "I need extra Septims so *let me* (jedi wrist swish) do your kid's birthday party" magic. Nobody wants to see a clown pull a Bonelord out of a hat on the 2nd of Sun's Dawn, except maybe Sheogorath. So maybe actually that would be the best circumstance technically, but again we're straying from the point here. These are the skills that you're going to need to hone in order to actually become a Grandmaster Warlock/High Priest/All-Powerful Sorcerer, so it makes sense for them to all to hang out together under Willpower.

That was...

An air-tight case, I know.

I mean, sure, let's go with that. So where does that leave us?

Well, look at this (phoootograaaph) chart list.

Endurance: Heavy Armor - Medium Armor - Light Armor - Unarmored
Strength: Acrobatics - Armorer - Axe - Blunt Weapon - Long Blade
Agility: Block - Marksman - Sneak - Security - Spear - Short Blade
Speed: Athleticism
Personality: Mercantile - Speechcraft
Intelligence: Alchemy - Enchant - Alteration - Illusion
Willpower: Destruction - Restoration - Mysticism - Conjuration

As you can see, it just works.

Hmm, yes, indeed. Brilliant.

You're welcome, you are now free to argue amongst yourselves in the comments. I'll grab the popcorn. Have fun :)