[ Preface: This is something I've started working on for my next set of play throughs, returning to Morrowind following a >10 year hiatus. No idea when I might finish but I'm far enough along I wanted to solicit community feedback, especially on implementation or feasibility. Sincerely, svengineer99 ]

Primary Feature: New IUMS Skill Cap System

I) Indeterminate Starting Skill Caps

Starting skill caps will have some component based on starting skill plus another component that is randomized. Higher starting skills will have higher guaranteed skill cap and smaller random component while lower starting skills will have lower guaranteed skill cap and larger random component. So a major skill (starting >=30) will very likely have a skill cap >100 but could have a skill cap <100 while most minor skills (starting=5) will be more likely to have very low skill caps <30 with a small chance to have much higher skill cap up to 100 or more. The whole distribution of skill caps will be checked to make sure it isn't too unlucky or lucky, in which case they will be re-generated. Skill caps will affect skill progress rates through normal skill use; as skill levels approach their skill caps their progress will be slowed; if a skill level is sufficiently below its skill cap, its progress will be sped up.

U) Unfolding Skill Cap Trajectories

Skill caps will change over time in a way that is predetermined at character creation. This will be handled by mid and end skill caps and start->mid and mid->end skill cap ramp times (on the order of 10-20 levels each), all with base + random components similar as described above for starting skill caps, all predetermined and saved at character generation. This means that even though a particular skill cap may initially start very high or low (meaning it is relatively easy or hard to raise through skill use) it could fall or rise dramatically through the course of game play.

M) Mystical Character Development Journey

At any time, skill cap values will be unknown to the PC, although they may be partially inferred through observing how fast each skill rises through use in game play. Future skill cap values and ramp durations toward them should be more or less impossible for the PC to estimate, except some vague notion of the direction and magnitude; even that may have some noise added to it to increase the mystery.

S) Seamless Mechanics

Skill progression slow downs as skills get close to their caps (or speed ups if they are far enough below their caps) will be completely natural without any change or disruption to game play. Skills will simply advance slower or faster over time as if it was built into the game engine. [ requires MWE skill function ]

Secondary Feature: Improved Game Play Based Skill Progress System

Skill progress will be additionally scaled up or down by the skill level of the character compared to the difficulty of each successful skill use situation [ greatly simplified using MWE skill function ]

a) Improved Offensive Combat Skill Progress

Weapon and hand to hand skill progress will be scaled by some function of the ratio between the targeted creature stats and the PC stats. Hitting weaker creatures will advance skills slower while hitting stronger ones will advance them faster.

b ) Improved Defensive Combat Skill Progress

Armor and unarmored skill progress will be scaled by some function of the ratio between the attacking creature stats and the PC stats. Getting hit by weaker creaturs will advance skills slower while getting hit by stronger ones will advance them faster.

c) Improved Magicka Based Skill Advancement

Spell skill advancement will be scaled by a function of the ratio between the spell difficulty and PC magicka school skill. If the spell has multiple components, the related magic school skill advancements will be individually modulated including correction to the standard game engine handing of multi-component spell skill advancement [requires the MWE spell function]

d) Improved Other Skill Advancement

TBD

Auxiliary sub-module features:

- Unobtrusive attribute and flexible level increases

a) Attributes will organically increase approximately +1 for every +3 skill increase that is close to what could be maximized with the vanilla system; which attributes are tied to which skills will be mostly vanilla with some relatively modest changes and splits to balance game play. This isn'tanything new, just something that I plan to build into this mod.

b ) No level up screen. Leveling criteria will be Daggerfall-like, each level up requiring 10-20 points increase of the PC's highest 5-10 skills (exact mechanics still TBD). This may optionally include in-game PC choice on whether to level up a bit sooner or later, depending on in-game difficulty factors and PC preferences.

c) Luck will default to increasing on a fixed trajectory with PC level. An alternate possibility could be to tie luck increase to how well PC skill progression distributions match their inherent cap distributions, something like good karma for following your true path.

- Skill Use-Training-Study Interactions

a) Training Preparation

You will need to advance through skill use at least one of a trainers favored skills (the highest 3 that they offer training for) before they will agree to train you further in one of those skills; the requirement (# of skill increases / # training lessons) will increase with skill level.

b ) Training or Skill Book Insight

Training a skill several times or reading a skill book will increase that skill's progression rate for several skill use advancement increments; alternatively, not training or reading a skill book will begin to decrease skill use progression rate after some number of skill use advancement increments. Certain trainers and/or skill book combinations may bump up your skill cap trajectory. There could be some trainer/dialog/quest additions to support this in a balanced way.

- Buff abuse limits

Attribute, skill, resistance, chameleon and sanctuary buffs will be limited by a combination of PC level and related base attributes; attempting to buff past these limits will result in clipping; further buffing past them will result in various negative consequences including such things as PC knockdown and, ultimately, death.

- Short spell abuse limits

PC spells with duration shorter than 10 sec will be extended to 10 sec, with proportional decrease in spell magnitude [requires MWE spell function]

- On-target levitation spell abuse limits (probably there are many others in this category)

On-target levitation spells will be set to duration and magnitude zero [requires MWE spell function]

- Potion use, item use, equipment change, etc during combat abuse

If in combat (any creature targeting you) then each potion use, item use or equipment change should pop you back out of menu mode and lock out the menu for some time.

- Level based Magicka

Lower Magicka at lower levels, higher magicka at higher levels; something like fPCbaseMagickaMult = *sqrt(lvl/10)

- Endurance based fatigue regeneration

Something like fFatigueReturnMult=end/20.

- Status based magicka regeneration

Slow or stop magicka regeneration under conditions of lost health or fatigue, weapon drawn, in combat, etc.

- Enchantment balance is tough; I have a few new ideas, that might improve game play combined with other well known tweaks to the enchanting system:

- Soul gem capacities and/or soul trapping capability based on PC enchanting skill [ soulgemmult GMST and/or scripted spells] ( to make it impossible to trap big souls without high enchantment skill )

- Enable constant effect enchanting once per special one-time event (such as becoming a guild head, finishing a Really big quest, etc) [ consteffectcost GMST]

- Scripted spells to recharge items using PC magicka, with enchantment skill chance base and skill increase (to make enchantment useful and skill raises possible at lower skill levels)