Geldonyetich's Entertaining Oblivion:

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Overview
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The goal of this mod is to make combat in Oblivion much more visceral and involving. In short: fun. This is done through complete reunderstanding and revisioning of the Elder Scrolls RPG mechanic.

Installation:
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Copy or Unzip GEO.zip into your Oblivion/Data Directory

Enable these: GEO-CoreRules, GEO-OblivionCreatures.
The former is the core changes done to the Oblivion global settings, while the later is an updated creature table using new health point and damage values suiting the new settings.

If you want to use more diversified and challenging spawn tables for Oblivion, enable the Oblivion Spawn Tables plugin: GEO-OblivionSpawnTables

The next build will include additional plugins for the Shivering Isle expansion content.

Compatibility Note:
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Because GEO-CoreRules is simply a batch of Oblivion setting changes, it should work if loaded on top of overriding) any mod and it will work. However, because many creatures' health points and damage values are not automatically scaled to suit the new core rules system, any mod that was developed to add content developed with the old balance in mind may seem out of place.

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Main Gameplay Changes
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It can be summarized in two points:

1. Accelerated Speed Of Resolution.
2. Greater Rewards For Player Involvement.

Or possibly just one point:

1. Greater Risk, Greater Reward

As fitting the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion perspective, combat now resolves much quicker at all levels. No longer do you stab a monster 50 times with a dagger to defeat it. No longer do you loose an entire quiver of arrows to produce results. No longer do you sit on a massive bank of health yourself. In general, this is a system where (much like real life) you can't take that many stabs to the stomach or
fireballs to the head before going down, and neither can your foes. It's a much quicker, visceral experience on all levels.

Spell users, too, will notice that their spells are a lot more effective. While base regeneration rate remains much the same as the stock game (where you'll soon run out of spells and be forced to quaff potions for rapid-fire casting) you will find that your spells have a lot more bang for the buck now. Consequently, all classes will enjoy spells as being emergency trump cards, with magic specialists commanding quite a lot of power in the later game.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion offers a small number of interactive elements in combat, and these have been enhanced. Performing blocking is now a lot more important, and will mitigate a considerable amount of damage. Given the lower base health points all around, Power Attacks and Sneak Attacks are much more lucrative at all levels.

Hand-To-Hand combat has become much more viable. It starts rather feeble, you reach the maximum weapon damage in the game at about 75% skill and it continues on to be even more devastating from there. However, it is the least defensively powerful means of combat, with the lowest block rating.

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Technical Details Behind The Changes
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* Health points decreased all across the game. Consequently, all weapons and spells will seem a lot more effective even though they have been reduced in effectiveness a bit.

The hard-coded health formula is this:
Base health = Endurance * FPCBaseHealthMulti (For PCs)
Base Health = Endurance * FNPCAttributeHealthMulti (For Scaled NPCs)
Health increase on leveling = Endurance * fStatsHealthLevelMult (For Either)

-- FPCBaseHealthMulti changed from 2 to 0.5
-- FNPCAttributeHealthMult changed from 0.5 to 0.25
-- Some NPCs have non-scaled health. Theirs will be manually changed.
-- FStatsHealthLevelMult changed from 0.1 to 0.05 (5% of endurance per level).

With 20 (starting) endurance you'll have 10 health points where you once had 40.
With 100 endurance and level 20, you'll have 50 health points plus your level up
gains where you may have had 400.

NPCs will generally have about 5 health points per level where they used to have
about 10 health points per level.

* Damage Adjustment.

Many aspects related to fatigue-levels, weapon conditions, the strength attribute, and the weapon skill have been adjusted to provide a flatter weapon balance.

Previously, the damage you'd inflict with an upper-level weapon would vary somewhere between 3 and 124 depending on several factors, and that's simply impossible to balance well. Now, weapons now do somewhere between 3 (feeble weapon with the worst conditions) to 35 (best weapon under best end-game conditions) damage. This was done entirely be mitigating the influences of fatigue, attributes, skill, and weapon condition.
-fDamageWeaponMult remains at 0.5

Fatigue used to make a 200% damage difference, doing 100% more or 100% less depending on if you were fully fatigued or fully rested. Now, it has about a 45% difference, doing full damage at 3/4th fatigue, slightly (about 12%) more when fully rested, and about 45% less than that when fully fatigued. (e.g. 9 damage becomes 5 damage.)
- fFatigueBase changed from 1 to 1.25
- fFatigueMult remains at 0.5 to 0.5

Attributes used to make about a 50% damage difference between most and least amount of the involved attribute. I think that's a good balance, so it has been preserved.
- fDamageStrengthBase left at 0.75.
- fDamageStrengthMult left at 0.5

Weapon skill (e.g. the �blade� skill) used to make about a 400% damage difference between most and least amount of the involved skill. This radical of a change seems overcompensation for upper health point amounts, which have just been reduced, so it is no longer necessary. Skill influence has been reduced to 50% between most and least amount, the same as with attributes.
- fDamageSkillBase changed from 0.2 to 0.75
- fDamageSkillMult changed from 1.5 to 0.5

The intended balance is about four good weapon strokes will dispatch the toughest enemy in the end game, with you being about an equal to the toughest enemy. Since the toughest enemy now has something like 100 health points, and the damage level of weapons stays steadily at about 15, you can take them down in about 3 good power attacks.

Important note: the damage adjustment was two-way. You will want to block and be quick on your feet to avoid certain doom.

* Minor change: Power Attack Forward

Power Attack Forward is a bit easier to pull off than the other power attacks. Under the more visceral balance, where the first hit may be the last, this is just a tad exploitive. It has been adjusted from the 2.5X damage default to 1.25X.

* Hand To Hand fighting

Hand to hand damage starts off rather feeble at 3 damage (about as much damage as you'd do with a dagger under the worst conditions) but eventually reaches a hefty 56.25 damage (higher than you could achieve under the best conditions with a Daedric Claymore). The tradeoff of this is that you remain poor at blocking.

- fHandStrengthDamageBase changed from 0 to 0.75
- fHandStrengthDamageMult changed from 0.75 to 0.5
(Strength is pretty much identical to how it is used in weapons now.)
- fDamageSkillBase unchanged at -0.05 (
(Will produce negative results under 5 hand-to-hand skill, but that's unlikely.)
- fDamageSkillMult changed from 1 to 2
- fDamageHealthMin unchanged at 1
- fDamageHealthMax unchanged at 15
(Fatigue damage remains unchanged at about half health damage.)

* Advancement Adjustment

Because combats are about four times quicker, it was necessary to decrease the number of uses required to increase your skill.

In general, attacking skills increase 4 times faster. Marksman remains an
exception, it's only doubled because players are now getting a lot more out
of their arrows.
- Blade use advancement on hit increased from 0.5 to 2
- Blunt use advancement on hit increased from 0.5 to 2
- HandToHand use advancement on hit increased from 0.6 to 2
- Marksman use advancement on hit increased from 0.8 to 1.5

I expect players will be blocking more often than before, but combat remains short, and so a small favorable adjustment was done to blocking. Considering the smaller health point amounts possessed by players, it is riskier to soak damage for advancement purposes than before.
- Block use value increased from 1.250 to 2

There's now an increased emphasis on not getting hit at all, and smaller health amounts make getting hit risky business, and this is why a substantial increase (nearly four times) has been done to the armor skills.
- Light Armor use value increased from 1.5 to 6
- Heavy Armor use value increased from 1.5 to 6

Creatures and NPCs alike are alive to soak spells to a much lesser degree. This necessitates up to a four times increase in advancement. However, affecting yourself counts as a �hit� too. Some creativity was applied towards the solution. To an extent, I'm fixing what wasn't broken here by providing a small amount of gain from simply casting.

- Alteration skill advancement on cast increased from 0 to 0.5. On hit, it remains
at 4.0
- Conjuration skill advancement on cast increased from 0 to 0.5. On hit decreased
from 6.0 to 4.0
- Destruction skill advancement on cast increased from 0 to 0.5. On hit increased
from 1.2 to 4.0
- Illusion skill advancement on cast increased from 0 to 0.5. On hit increased from
3.0 to 4.0
- Mysticism skill advancement on cast increased from 0 to 0.5. On hit increased from
3.0 to 4.0
- Restoration skill advancement on cast increased from 0 to 0.5. On hit increased
from 0.6 to 1.0


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Intended changes which occurred retroactively
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So many favorable changes occurred by simply downscaling the health points and flattening the weapon damage curve, that I suspect I may have accidentally stumbled upon the original intended balance of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Many of these I was planing on doing later.

* Special moves (e.g. directional power attacks), as a form of interaction, increased in importance.

Sneak attacks and Power Attacks keep their relative 2.5x, 3.0x, and 4.0x default settings. Because the influence of Fatigue, Attribute, and Skill has been reduced to a 50% change or less, and weapon values have been further decreased in statistical influence, that these special moves have a 250% or greater effect is actually considerably more effective through relativity.

* Blocking, as a form of interaction, increased in importance.

By default, you can block 75% of your damage with a shield and maximum block skill, 50% of your damage without a shield but with a weapon equipped, and 25% of your damage without a shield or a weapon (an unarmed block).

Because damage is so much more influential with reduced health points, blocking is suddenly a lot more important even with default settings.

fBlockMax remains at 0.75
fBlockScoreNoShieldMult remains at 0.50
fBlockAmountWeaponMult remains at 0.50
fBlockAmountHandToHandMult remains at 0.25
FBlockSkillBase remains at 0.0

* Magic, Potion, Scrolls, And Unique Effects Influence Increased

But magic and scrolls and other effect-possessing devices are generally worth using now. This happened retroactively in a favorable direction by simply adjusting the health point pools.

Offensively, under default Oblivion settings, the most powerful attack spells in the game do about 110 damage. Since the toughest enemies in the game now have about that many health points, the most powerful spell in the game is now custom tailored to handle the toughest enemies in one shot. Since the most powerful spells in the game will also heavily drain your Magicka reserves, that's a pretty good balance. Shocking someone for 40 damage off a Staff of Shocking means a lot more now than it did before.

Defensively, healing spells and related effects have been similarly effected in relative potency. Stock healing potions, by default, top out at about 60 health. As of the adjustments made to the top base health and the weapon damage curve, that is actually a quite formidable and worthy amount now.

Now that base health is down, a number of coded effects are much more valuable: Fortify health, fortify endurance, reflect magic, absorb magic, and more.

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Possible future enhancements
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* Non-scaled NPCs have been adjusted for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion core creatures,
but not for the Shivering Isles expansion.

* Because weapons are so much more effective, their durability should be reduced.

* I think it'd be interesting if armor of varying types had about the same
effectiveness of the same armor of that type, and higher tier materials just lasted
longer. In other words, you could be wearing rusty iron armor and it'd have only
slightly less protection than Daedric armor but would not last as many blows.

* Weapons could be similarly adjusted.