Please tell us what you find to be "overpowered" in Oblivion.

I understand that the word overpowered isn't the best way to describe what I'm getting at. You can make the argument that anything in the game can't be overpowered simply because it is part of the game. So, maybe it would be better to ask what, in Oblivion, you find to be so powerful that it makes to game too easy for you.

For instance, I found that once my character could summon the expert level creatures, like Spider Daedra and Frost Atronachs, and I could cast Chameleon... the game became too easy.

I'm plotting out a new character and I want to avoid anything that will make the game too easy. I'm sure this will vary from person to person, so please just post what you personally find to be too powerful in Oblivion.

The "Overpowered" List
- 100% Magic Resistance
- 100% Chameleon Enchantments
- Maxing a bunch of Attributes
- Maxing a bunch of Skills
- Cheats ie. duplication glitch
- 100% Damage Reflection
- Drain Health 100 for 1 second
- Absorb Health Enchantment on weapons
- Conjuration + Running Away
- Weakness Stacking
- Power leveling Endurance
- Permanent immunity effects
- Long Range Bow to Dagger Sneak Attack Exploit

Here are some of the things that I tend to avoid:

100% resist magic (easy to obtain on a Breton). I don't quite mind 100% spell absorption as much on an atronach because of the stunted magicka.
100% chameleon except when only rarely used as a short duration (8-10 sec) spell.
Maxing a bunch of attributes. I tend to ignore several to help define the image of my character. My current character, for example, ignores luck, endurance and strength for example.
Maxing a bunch of skills. I intentionally ignore some, while focusing on others - again, to sharply define and limit my character.

In many cases, I make these decisions based on tradeoffs. My current character is as lethal as a dragon, but frail as a butterfly - the proverbial glass cannon.

The only things I'd find overpowered are 100% Chameleon enchantments (but 100% Chameleon with spells or potions for short duration is okay). And also cheats (like the duplication glitch, etc). Maybe 100% damage reflection.

There are other powerful things, but I don't consider them overpowered.

Drain health 100 for 1 second is pretty overpowered, far worse if you add weakness to magic. Drain health 100 area effect on high levels is ok as you can only kill critters.

Also depend on character type, a glass cannon can do things who would be overpowered for a tank, strangest character I have played was a mage in Morrowind who abused fortify intelligence potions, so she had unlimited magic, and spells capabel of killing most enemies with one hit, now to compensate I used Morrowind advance who added high level monsters and played at max difficulty without armor making many monsters lethal in one hit.

Absorb health enchant on melee weapons. Especially the absorb health max level sigil stones. While they're in the game you're pretty much a God with such a weapon.

Good stuff guys, please keep it coming.

Acadian... I'd like to do what you are doing, I can limit my Attributes without a problem, but I'm having a hard time with the idea of limiting my skills. I will choose three Major skills to completely ignore, this helps me cap out at level 30. After that I can't bring myself to not level a skill to max. It feels like... unfinished business. Maybe I should see a shrink

Heh. Anymore, I go for level 20 (since I don't care about leveled loot). That means I max 2 majors, take another one up to around 80 or so and ignore the other 4. Thank Mara for speechcraft, hand to hand and a couple other skills I can do without. Buffy made level 20 a long time ago, but it took her 400 hours to get there. We actually like the very slow leveling pace as well. It makes the gradual appearance of new creatures and armor/weaponry seem somehow more natural/believable. Lol.

When you think you want to max all your skills, just calculate how many hitpoints a goblin warlord has at level 50. Maybe that can save you a trip to the shrink.

Conjuration in general can be very over-powered if used in conjunction with running away.

i guess weakness stacking is overpowered. I only use it on weapons, but having a weapon where a series of strikes can do hundreds, even thousands, of damage probably counts as overpowered. Thats all I can think of that hasn't already been said. What I DONT think is overpowered and I love to do is combining resistances (to magic). Like having 75% resist, 35% reflect, and 50% absorb.

Second most overpowered after the 100% chameleon suit is power levelling endurance, this gives you boatloads of health at high levels making you pretty much impossible to kill.
Again depend on character type, for a barbarian playing with no armor it would not be overpowering, for a batlemage in heavy armor using summons it would be pretty overpowered.

Permanent effects, specially immunities. Part of the challenge for facing a spider is avoiding its poison, same for zombies (and rats!) with their diseases. Now if you wear something like a Ring of Vitality, 3 of the deadliest effects are gone. Making them as enchantments aslo tips the balance too much in favor of the palyer.

These enchantments (herein included chameleon and reflect spell / damage) should be available only through magic, for a short duration and be allowed to use like 3x / day on enchanted items.

Oh - and as some say, the ridiculous spell design concerning weakness stacking. I do not actually think Drain Health 100 is overpowered, but capping the spell power at certain level, then allowing the weakness thing + the 'different spell name' to stack its weakness and effects onto another, thats just lame. Should be something like damages increasing by level and cost accordingly, or something at least different from what it is....

One big thing that I avoid is the exploit of doing a long-range sneak attack with a bow, then immediately equipping a dagger to increase the sneak attack bonus from 2x/3x to 5x/6x. That's a bug in the code, certainly not an intentional game play mechanic.

100% shield, obviously.

You can get pretty close to it on vanilla, using grand souls.
Shoes/boots + Pants/greaves + Shirt/cuirass + 2 rings + amulet + gloves/gauntlets = 70% already.
Add a shield, 80% - helmet, 90%.

Using mods you can have more rings, more amulets, a cape, and several other ways to find a last item to enchant with 10% shield.
Also, running FCOM I noticed that I get shield 10% with common souls. Haven't tried grand yet, but that'll make it even easier to abuse.

No matter how much shielding you amass in vanilla, the most the game will recognize is 85%.

Ah, I wasn't aware of that.
Thanks for the correction!

Armor would work better for this anyway as it would raise your armor rating physically and leave room for other enchantments. Add a fire shield 25 from a sigil stone to get fire protection 25%, now if the armor rating is over 60 it jump to 85, if not add a shock shield.
85 in armor is serious protection anyway. if you are hit with 40 in damage you will only take 6.

The 100% chameleon is definitely OP - guilty as charged on my first couple of characters. especially 100% chameleon for 120 seconds or some combination of clothing items with constant effect + spell.

I don't know if the following would be considered overpowered, but if not, it's pretty close.

- I have crafted touch spells that cause weakness to fire for 10 seconds and 100 pts fire damage for 7 seconds. Same goes for frost, shock, drain health/absorb health (with weakness to magic). Kills just about anything in one shot or two at most.

- I usually use quicksave/quickload to make sure I get sigil stones that fortify magicka and then apply one to every article of clothing, two rings, shield & necklace (+50 magicka each clothing item, for a total of +400 constant magicka)

- I've crafted a spell that provides 100% shield but I can't cast it because my alteration isn't high enough. I was able to craft it while wearing one of the Ayelid helmets.

I want to follow up on power leveling endurance. First I want to pose this question... Could you create an endurance power leveled tank character that you wouldn't feel was overpowered? Furthermore, could you max out said character's health (via sigil stone enchantments) and not be overpowered. Finally, could you max out health and have an armor rating of 85 (maxed) without being overpowered?

I'm in to creating characters that are maxed out in some aspects and extremely weak or vulnerable in other aspects (ie a glass cannon) in hopes to have an awesome character that is also challenging to play. Right now I'm trying to envision how a maxed out health, maxed out armor rating, melee style orc would play out if they didn't have any extra resistance to magic other than their innate 25% resistance. Would this character be completely overpowered by virtue of their massive health pool, or would not having any extra resistance to magic balance out him out?

I think that anything like
- 50% Magic Resistance
- 50% Chameleon
-100% Damage Reflection
& Permanent immunity effects
= 'overpowered', but I don't feel the same way about maxing attributes and skills; they are meant to be this way and the game allows for other creatures to level alongside you.

Cheats ie. duplication glitch:
Obviously that is 'overpowering', I don't see the point in playing at all if you play like that. Surely it makes it no fun? :shrug:
I also think that power-levelling or abusing the training system counts as cheating; and i'd never use it.

- Drain Health 100 for 1 second - I think with a powerful mage character, this spell is fine as well as both,
- Absorb Health Enchantment on weapons
- Conjuration + Running Away
It's part of the game, and therefore okay to use it to gain an advantage in combat. It can also be a factor of roleplaying so I wouldn't discount it.

- Long Range Bow to Dagger Sneak Attack Exploit
I can see the multiplier being a little bit of an issue for those who really like a challenge, but I don't see why the element of suprise shouldn't give you a helping hand; and it would make assasins drastically underpowered in the combat system if it were to not exist.

Yes. My current mage has Master Conjuration, so can summon a lich or Xivilai. But her endurance and strength are still at base level, her health is minimal, and she's an Altmer with the Apprentice sign (very weak to magic.) She runs away and lets her summons do her fighting, even though, in reality, she has high enough Destruction, and good enough Shield potions, that she could destroy her enemies faster herself.

She sees the world from the viewpoint of weakness. She casts summons, then invisibility, then hides behind the furniture.

I see a big difference between a role-play character using the "reality" of Tamriel, and a player exploiting a glitch.

I would approach your orc this way:

Cannon: Max blade, endurance, strength, agility, alchemy.
Glass: Poor orc can't cast a spell to save his life.

Swing factors: Adjust your challenge to taste by making choices about light/heavy/no armor, blocking and if you will allow him a bow for a basic ranged attack.

I like the sound of this. I didn't see this character as much of a spell caster anyway. I was thinking of just casting utility spells like water breathing and night vision, but I could forgo that as well.

Would adding health gear to a maxed endurance character bee too much. I was thinking that even with maxed health he'd still be in grave danger in the face of casters.

And um, speaking of maxed health ... Is it possible, and/or beneficial to get the +5 endurance bonus (ie Mara's Blessing) from the Knights of the Nine quest, prior to turning level 2? If I'm going to go for maxed health I'd like to shoot for truly maxed health.

Not so sure, I seldom cast heal in active combat but use potions, self made or the in game ones if badly hurt. Use healing after the fight and to heal all sort of minor damage from fall and skirmishes. So the orc would not have any problems in fights but might be redundant to waste a potion to heal a minor injury. Pretty much like how it was in fallout 3 where you just continued with 80% health.

Sure. Remember that chapels and wayshrines can be used for healing.

How about an Altmer Apprentice with maxed hit points and maxed armor? Overpowered?