This isn't really one of my mod projects, in fact, if anything, it's more of an experiment.

There's a good number of mods out there that deal with turning the Unarmored skill into a more useful one. The best I've seen thus far handles this task by granting Sanctuary bonuses that increase in magnitude as you level up in Unarmored. It's a good method, since the premise of Unarmored is that your character is mostly dodging attempts to harm them, rather than just taking the hit and having it do less damage.

However, my preference is to have a character that, despite not being covered in high quality armor, can shrug off a good portion of the blows they receive. Not just because their HP is ridiculously high, but because their hide is just that f-ing tough. (Being able to utterly dismiss strikes from sub-standard weapons at a certain point would make a nice addition to this, but that's for anther time. )

To this end, I've begun toying around with the game settings, trying to raise the armor rating one achieves at any given level in Unarmored. Thus far, the results have been encouraging:



My target for the armor rating attained by an Unarmored skill level of 100 was initially 166 (equal to wearing a full suit of Glass @ Unarmored 100), but now I'm thinking I might aim for the 200-250 range, since I can't really think of a good reason to limit Unarmored players (especially myself) to so far below what Heavy Armor users can achieve protection-wise.

Obviously that won't be the end of it though, since such alterations will have some rather adverse and undesirable effects on just about every NPC in the game (I imagine). Originally this turned me off to doing this mod, but after thinking about it, and finishing Demolank's Shop, I've since realized that those potential problems can probably be rectified if I just spend some time with it, make plenty of notes, and test, test, test. I also, if this works out well enough, want to expand upon this by creating related abilities (such as resistance/immunity to Normal Weapons) which the player can earn in some way (probably through leveling up).

Any thoughts/suggestions/questions, are all welcome.

Looks awesome If you need a tester, let me know.

I can email you the plug-in right now if you want. It's perfectly functional as is, I just don't know how many NPCs players are going to run into that are either no longer going to be wearing their armor, or ridiculously more difficult to beat. Werewolves come to mind when I think about the latter.

Well, my initial thought is that unarmored characters are limited so far below the protection that heavy armor provides is because they don't wear armor. I've always preferred the sanctuary approach myself. The only reason I can see the protection they have making sense is because it's a magic-based skill, and somehow magic is making a sword not flay them. Then again, someone who gets used to being smacked with weapons all day would come to be more durable, provided they didn't die. I'm thinking it might be cool if your mod actually made raising your unarmored skill buff your health instead after a while (topping out the max armor rating kind of low in comparison to everything else), nodding to the fact that when you injure yourself, if you're healing right things heal to be stronger. I'm not sure exactly how possible that is, though. I suppose it could be done the same way that the sanctuary buff is added in some mods.

It kind of breaks the game balance, making unarmored have the same top AR as wearing heavy armor. You'd be getting the benefit of wearing it without any of the drawbacks.

Yea go ahead; I'll test it tonight.