» Wed Sep 01, 2010 4:15 pm
I'm not sure how close OOO is to Vanilla. It's a ton of fun, and well worth trying, but when you explore an Ayleid ruin that has over two dozen Minotaur Lords in it, you have to wonder how balanced it is (well, at high levels). Why don't they fight Mehrunes Dagon, FFS? Actually, that'd be pretty cool to see. Adding all those extra armors might not be to your taste, as well. Not to mention how radically the birthsigns and such are changed. Stick with earlier versions if you want to stay close to Vanilla -- 1.01 and 1.23 (which adds those stupid worn armors) are good choices, especially the "Light" versions. But wow, all the versions are fun; there are some really cool quests in the later ones.
I like NPC Static Level or Random Oblivion to manage the scaling problem. Pure Vanilla except that the world doesn't revolve around you. Oblivion Adventurers is pretty cool, too, although it changes a lot of the gameplay, so it may not be desirable, depending on one's tastes.
[Edit] As for the player stats leveling problem, just fire up the Construction Set and mod it so that the level up multiplier is 3 for everything. No fuss, no muss, and you get a decent but not overpowered bonus to three stats each level.