WARNING: I am not very confident that this mod is in a state worth releasing, but I've found some crude releases to be lifesavers before, so I figure I might as well. While I expect to keep tinkering with it and expanding which skills are affected for my own enjoyment, I make no promises to deal with bug reports, nor that it will ever become a "complete" or "polished" mod. I just figured I'd share around what I have in case someone else shares my tastes!

Only tested on Starfield version 1.12.32 (a little outdated by now) alongside some other fairly small mods. If updates have broken/will break it, then, um...sorry. :( As a Creation Kit mod without any custom scripts, I suspect it'll be relatively resilient against updates, but you never know. If it breaks or you want to adjust something, feel free to fool around with it in your own Creation Kit and see what happens!

Overview

• By picking certain skills, a melee and/or unarmed character can become much more survivable than before, avoiding enemy attacks, disarming them, or knocking them out! While you can still simply huff chems and hope for the best, the Dueling, Gymnastics, Martial Arts, and Neurostrikes skills are greatly changed and generally much stronger overall, giving you tools to block or dodge your way up to enemies and disarm or knock them out.
• Characters that use Diplomacy, Intimidation, Instigation, or Manipulation (and their alien and robot counterparts) to affect enemy behavior will find these skills buffed, increasing not only in level but also in success chance and duration as skill points are invested.
• Isolation now improves your damage resistance regardless of wearing a spacesuit, and it affects Physical, Energy, and EM resistance, not just Physical.
• Some other miscellaneous changes are present, including the challenges you have to complete to level up some of the affected skills.
  

Extras

My other custom mod files are included as "optional files." I use these all together to tweak my game experience more fully. These are even cruder than the skills plugin, but you might find them helpful if you also want:

• Changed/buffed backgrounds that give 5 skills instead of 3, including some late-game skills (but only 3 are shown in character creation)
• Easier stealth, especially quieter movement (I think I overdid it, but I enjoy it more this way! :P )
• Faster movement while walking, sneaking, and blocking (I may also have overdone sneaking)
• More effective blocking of melee attacks regardless of skills (for you and NPCs)
• Max pickpocket chance of 100% if you're good enough
• Only 1 skill point in each tier will unlock the next, instead of 4 (more build flexibility, especially in the early game)
• No NPC greetings unless you bump into them
• Reduced health per level-up from 20 to 6 for you and some human NPCs
• A longer death reload timer, so you can lie there dead for 10 minutes instead of 3 seconds :P
  

Compatibility

Incompatible with any mods that affect the skills above. If you do install it at the same time as another skill mod, whichever is lower down in the load order will win out and affect these skills.