Fundament is a generalized replacement for countless small mods, including its predecessor, Progress. Through simple initialization files the user can edit skill advancement rates, game settings, and even Oblivion.ini settings (without any permanent changes to Oblivion.ini itself). Fundament edits only what you specify in the initialization file: anything you leave out isn't touched. If Fundament.ini is empty, absolutely nothing happens in-game; it's like the mod isn't installed. Furthermore, each character can have their own unique configuration which overrides or adds to global settings.

Fundament comes with a collection of scripts which change various aspects of gameplay. These are collected into a single mod, Bundlement.esp, but each individual feature can still be enabled or disabled separately. As with the rest of Fundament, everything is disabled by default.

• Global Rate Control
Base skill slowdown and training cost control, with change-over-time options.
• Magic Prices
Adjusts gold prices for enchanting, spellmaking and spell purchase.
• Racial Talents
Skills with a racial bonus also get improved advancement rates.
• Variable Advancement: Armorer
Rate of Armorer advancement depends on amount repaired per swing.
• Variable Advancement: Marksman
Gains are dependent on target's range; bonus for sneak attacks.
• Variable Advancement: Melee
Slower weapons give more skill; bonus for power attacks and sneak attacks.
• Variable Advancement: Mercantile
Rates vary with trade value and vendor's skill; get skill for buying spells.
• Variable Advancement: Spells
Per-effect gains; gains on-cast; magicka-based, range-based, and more!

Fundament is also a modder's toolkit. Fundament-based mods can freely apply separate modifiers to the same game settings, Ini settings and skill use rates, and Fundament sorts it all out. Any time you load a game or quit to the main menu, it resets everything so there's no danger of bleed-over. All of this is done with user functions that are generally more convenient to use than the raw OBSE commands they replace, and even mods which don't have Fundament.esm as a master can make changes to its records through special features of the initialization system.

Several other utility functions are included for convenience and efficiency, including Formulator, a self-managing CloneForm database. This tool greatly simplifies the task of avoiding bloat in mods that make heavy use of CloneForms.