One change I've made in my own local version, and might suggest be introduced for future versions, is redoing retroactive health similarly to how "Carefree Leveling" does, where current max health is based on if you had leveled endurance as early as possible, rather than what it currently is.
Say I reach level 15, with 100 endurance, and started with 40 health and 40 endurance. Currently retroactive health would treat it as if I always had 100.
40 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 180 Instead, we treat it as if endurance gets +5 until it reaches its current value, getting a maximum health that is possible to achieve in-game, just if we'd been leveling optimally.
40 + 4.5 + 5 + 5.5 + 6 + 6.5 + 7 + 7.5 + 8 + 8.5 + 9 + 9.5 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 147 I've added a few lines in my own installation to implement this, and it seems to work, but I haven't tested it rigorously.
This can also work with custom health weights, treating it as if the weighted average increases by 5 per level (often not possible due to weights and whole numbers, but close).
Additionally, instead of specifying +5, a setting to use a different number could be used, say "calculate my maximum health as if i put +4 to endurance every level as soon as possible".
Anyway, thanks for the great mod!
Edit: Upon further thought, this change also removes a new incentive to min-max endurance, which I've always found worse for my fun than optimising attribute increases.
This mod makes rushing endurance even more appealing, as now attributes can be increased by 15 per level instead of 5. If you delay level ups, you can reach 100 endurance and higher maximum health than is possible in vanilla.
Say I start with 40 endurance, If i gain 120 endurance skill-ups before doing any leveling, I can reach 100 endurance "at" level 5, spending all 15 exp on endurance, hitting 100 at level 5 before continuing to level 6 and 7. In vanilla, 100 endurance from 40 wouldn't be reachable until level 13.
Changing the health calculation makes it closer to what's attainable in vanilla, without having to min-max, but still lets you specialise into what you want as before.
I like that this approach gives more balanced health totals, it makes it more vanilla-friendly. I've added this feature for the next version of the mod; it's already on GitHub if you want to check it out. I'd be curious to know how my implementation differs from yours. Anyway, thank you for the suggestion.
I see this has some HP retroactive options. I have been using Talrivian's State-Based HP and still have it loaded earlier than this mod. Will this overwrite it? Should I remove and enable the settings here?
I think the two mods would inconsistently overwrite each other during a playthrough. With the "Retroactive Health Gain" and "Retroactive Starting Health" settings enabled, PCP's health calculation will match Talrivian's HP mod. ((0.1 * Endurance) * (level - 1) + (Strength + Endurance) / 2) Disabling that mod and enabling the settings I mentioned should work fine, though since you'd be doing it mid-playthrough I'd suggest testing it a bit before committing fully.
After enabling those settings, you might need to open and close the potential menu or actually level up for your health to be adjusted. If that doesn't work, could you tell me your character's Strength/Endurance, level, and current max HP?
Definitely now well-established as my go-to levelling mod.
My only critique is that on default settings, it does dilute the impact of your major and minor skill choices. All skills are now interchangeable when it comes to level-up progress. Although you can offset this by changing how many progression points major, minor, and misc skills give you, I do find it's a hard balancing act to get "right".
But maybe there could be some options to tweak how much major, minor, and misc contribute to your original level-up progress or experience gain? Not sure if that's possible since I've not played around with the CS myself.
For ref I've settled into major skillups adding 0.75 potential, minor adding 0.5, and misc adding 0.25. It's an alright system that does preserve the impactfulness of major/minor choices to a fair degree, but not perfect.
My only critique is that on default settings, it does dilute the impact of your major and minor skill choices.
That's pretty much intentional. In my opinion, major/minor skills were too important in the original system, essentially dictating how you need to play your character based on choices at the very start of the game. My philosophy when making this mod was that things chosen at character creation (major/minor skills, favored attributes, specialization) should represent what a character is already good at and will improve in more easily; A character's level should just represent how strong a character is, with all attributes/skills contributing equally to that measurement regardless of what the character was initially good at. That being said, I'm open to adding settings for major/minor/misc skills contributing different amounts to leveling up. It's possible, I just didn't do it.
Good point, I hadn't thought of it that way! Regardless, it's a fantastic mod and so much better than vanilla. It's made the early- to mid-game so fun, whereas I once was a slave to my minmaxing instincts.
Well I agree with consgay and also add that the reason why I preffered the vanila system of only major/minor skills contributing is that it makes each class and playthrough unique. If all skills contribute to leveling up then classes are pointless and you have something similiar to Skyrim type progresion where they were made irelevant. I do think that changing the values for atributes to 0.75, 0.5 and 0.25 (and I would even go lower for misc skills) is a great balance idea but strongly dissagree that misc skills should have any bearings on you leveling up.
I definitely agree major, minor, misc contribution towards level-up progress being tweakable would be a nice setting to have, I feel at the moment that I level up a bit too quickly just trying to get some misc skills levelled which boosts me up in levels incredibly quickly.
Love the mod and second someone else's opinion about adding multiple attributes to each skill, frankly once that's added I'd consider this perfect to my tastes. I do like NCGDMW but it takes some of the oomf out of the level up process.
EDIT: Hadn't messed with lua scripts before so I wasn't aware of the in-game custom scripts menus. For anyone else who isn't sure where to go to adjust the settings, you'll find it under Options.
Really cool concept! Any plans for associating skills with multiple attributes, like NCGDMW and a couple of other leveling mods do? I always found that to be a lot more immersive than just sticking with the governing attributes.
This is amazing. You nailed it. NCGDMW is a solid take on leveling, but always had a "nobody asked for most of this" feel for me. This identifies the problem and elegantly fixes it. Endorsed.
Hi I was looking for a good leveling mod and this is definitely the best I have found so far. Is this safe to install with a pre existing character or does it have to be an entirely new save?
This mod is incompatible with Natural Character Growth and Decay (I assume that's the mod you're referring to), since they both replace the level-up system. You should choose one to stick with and remove the other.
I'm using this mod with Path of Incarnate modlist and it feels absolutely terrible. * Leveling up doesn't feel exciting at all - there are almost no stats to increase, and even if I have a bunch of potentiated stats I can do increase them at any time, which takes away from excitement. * I can increase only a few stats, a bunch of free points is left that I won't use since I don't want to increase my strength as a mage, and there is no potential for anything useful. * Needless to say I won't increase unpotentiated stats because it feels awful to waste points on them
The only thing I can suggest is to add perks that you could take on level ups, so leveling would feel good again But overall I can't recommend this mod at all
90 comments
One change I've made in my own local version, and might suggest be introduced for future versions, is redoing retroactive health similarly to how "Carefree Leveling" does, where current max health is based on if you had leveled endurance as early as possible, rather than what it currently is.
Say I reach level 15, with 100 endurance, and started with 40 health and 40 endurance. Currently retroactive health would treat it as if I always had 100.
40 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10= 180
Instead, we treat it as if endurance gets +5 until it reaches its current value, getting a maximum health that is possible to achieve in-game, just if we'd been leveling optimally.
40 + 4.5 + 5 + 5.5 + 6 + 6.5 + 7 + 7.5 + 8 + 8.5 + 9 + 9.5 + 10 + 10 + 10= 147
I've added a few lines in my own installation to implement this, and it seems to work, but I haven't tested it rigorously.
This can also work with custom health weights, treating it as if the weighted average increases by 5 per level (often not possible due to weights and whole numbers, but close).
Additionally, instead of specifying +5, a setting to use a different number could be used, say "calculate my maximum health as if i put +4 to endurance every level as soon as possible".
Anyway, thanks for the great mod!
Edit:
Upon further thought, this change also removes a new incentive to min-max endurance, which I've always found worse for my fun than optimising attribute increases.
This mod makes rushing endurance even more appealing, as now attributes can be increased by 15 per level instead of 5. If you delay level ups, you can reach 100 endurance and higher maximum health than is possible in vanilla.
Say I start with 40 endurance, If i gain 120 endurance skill-ups before doing any leveling, I can reach 100 endurance "at" level 5, spending all 15 exp on endurance, hitting 100 at level 5 before continuing to level 6 and 7. In vanilla, 100 endurance from 40 wouldn't be reachable until level 13.
Changing the health calculation makes it closer to what's attainable in vanilla, without having to min-max, but still lets you specialise into what you want as before.
I've added this feature for the next version of the mod; it's already on GitHub if you want to check it out. I'd be curious to know how my implementation differs from yours.
Anyway, thank you for the suggestion.
With the "Retroactive Health Gain" and "Retroactive Starting Health" settings enabled, PCP's health calculation will match Talrivian's HP mod. ((0.1 * Endurance) * (level - 1) + (Strength + Endurance) / 2)
Disabling that mod and enabling the settings I mentioned should work fine, though since you'd be doing it mid-playthrough I'd suggest testing it a bit before committing fully.
If that doesn't work, could you tell me your character's Strength/Endurance, level, and current max HP?
My only critique is that on default settings, it does dilute the impact of your major and minor skill choices. All skills are now interchangeable when it comes to level-up progress. Although you can offset this by changing how many progression points major, minor, and misc skills give you, I do find it's a hard balancing act to get "right".
But maybe there could be some options to tweak how much major, minor, and misc contribute to your original level-up progress or experience gain? Not sure if that's possible since I've not played around with the CS myself.
That being said, I'm open to adding settings for major/minor/misc skills contributing different amounts to leveling up. It's possible, I just didn't do it.
If all skills contribute to leveling up then classes are pointless and you have something similiar to Skyrim type progresion where they were made irelevant.
I do think that changing the values for atributes to 0.75, 0.5 and 0.25 (and I would even go lower for misc skills) is a great balance idea but strongly dissagree that misc skills should have any bearings on you leveling up.
EDIT: Hadn't messed with lua scripts before so I wasn't aware of the in-game custom scripts menus. For anyone else who isn't sure where to go to adjust the settings, you'll find it under Options.
Should I arrange this to be before or after the natural growth mod? As that came with the OpenMW mod pack I downloaded.
Or should I add the mod to the folder in a different manner?
* Leveling up doesn't feel exciting at all - there are almost no stats to increase, and even if I have a bunch of potentiated stats I can do increase them at any time, which takes away from excitement.
* I can increase only a few stats, a bunch of free points is left that I won't use since I don't want to increase my strength as a mage, and there is no potential for anything useful.
* Needless to say I won't increase unpotentiated stats because it feels awful to waste points on them
The only thing I can suggest is to add perks that you could take on level ups, so leveling would feel good again
But overall I can't recommend this mod at all