About this mod
Unused attribute points carry over to your next level. My take on disincentivizing min-maxing approaches to gameplay while also preserving the balance and intent of Oblivion's design as elegantly as possible.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
With this mod, any attribute points you don't spend at level up are carried over to the next one. Accidentally raise your restoration while training your combat skills? That willpower point can be saved for another level. Athletics go up while you were rushing around town spamming the speechcraft minigame? No problem. You can use the point whenever you're ready to boost your speed, regardless of how many levels that takes.
Details
Mitigating Min-Maxing: Efficient leveling in Oblivion seeks to avoid over-leveling, under-leveling, and leveling more than three attributes per level. With this mod, it isn't possible to over-level anymore. Extra skill increases (>10 per attribute) are stored in a pool that can be drawn from at later levels. This pool also stores the increases for attributes you didn't grow at all, meaning that raising skills from a variety of attributes is not a problem. Under-leveling issues are avoided because when an attribute bonus is applied, only the minimum number of skill increases to get that bonus are removed from the pool.
Preserving Balance: Even though you might have more options to choose from, it's still only possible to raise your attributes by a maximum of 5x3 points per level. This means that the best and worst rates of attribute progression are identical to vanilla Oblivion, all without the tedium of min-maxing. Other mods that forego Oblivion's traditional level-up system and automatically increase your attributes or provide flat attribute bonuses are very likely altering Oblivion's progression curve.
Reinforcing Oblivion's Design: There are a lot of ways you can redesign Oblivion to disincentivize min-maxing. Most of those methods also significantly alter the design and process of progression in Oblivion. Flat-rate attribute bonuses and experience-based leveling detach the areas your character grows from the areas they practice. Automatic leveling and attribute development removes the sense of clearing a hurdle and the choice that the level-up screen provides. This mod changes as few systems possible, focusing instead on enhancing Oblivion's vanilla gameplay experience.
Requirements, Compatibility, and Installation
Requires OBSE. Installation is standard.
Compatible with all mods except those that change the number of attribute points provided at level-up.
Other Oblivion Mods
Mortal Magic
Have fun.