Recently, when building characters, I've started to use custom spells to emulate 'abilities' which fit the character's nature, and then using a self-imposed rule I've limited myself to only those abilities to keep in tune with the thematic and challenging aspects of the game.

For example, on my beserker character, I have taken Alteration and Restoration, and applied them both to add to the 'beserker' feel without making him feel like a battlemage, limiting myself to two spells:
"Dull Pain", an alteration shield spell which is thematicly very similar to just going into a beserk rage and being immune to pain due to anger.
"Beserker Rage", a restoration buff which increases my strength (May change it to blunt for more of a damage boost), thematicly very similar to just going into a blind rage and hitting everything.

I've designed both of these spells in such a way that they both take a full mana bar to cast, which actually makes combat incredibley fun, as it's a situational toss-up between using 'Dull Pain' and being able to soak up damage, or using 'Beserker Rage' and then being more vunrable as a result, due to the fact that my character uses a mix of both heavy and light armor. Meaning I essentially treat my character's relatively small mana pool as a "Fatigue" function, meaning that he has to rest and take a breather before charging into battle again.

So, I'd like to ask you, oblivion forums. Has anyone ever done something similar to spice up their characters? What are your ideas for custom 'Abilities' for your character to use, which are limited in use by their nature?

Also just realised this belongs in general. Derp.

I don't exactly do this, but it is a neat idea!

I do make several spells that are very very RP. A couple examples:
1. To dry off after coming out of the water we use a combo spell with a strong dispel and a touch of waterwalk to dispel and repel the water away. Lol.
2. My character is a mystic archer and refuses to fight with melee weapons. Nevertheless, arrows don't grow on trees so she has to cut them free from her victims and try to salvage them. She summons a dagger to simulate doing this. She also routinely summons the dagger to help harvest things like troll fat or to field dress a deer or skin a wolf/bear/lion. She would never ever fight with it though. Nice thing about a summoned knife is that she doesn't have to clean it when she is done. She simply dispels it.

We 'invented' a special ability for her to use with her horse. She doesn't actually fast travel, but she has learned what she calls the 'Call of Corsair' based loosely on the story of King Rislav and his battle near Skingrad. With a lock of her mare's mane in a pouch in her hand and her finger pointing at the map, she can summon her mare to her side from any distance. In the game she is simply fast traveling to her present location which causes her horse to join her. She only moves a few feet but her horse can be called from wherever she left it this way. We can also accomplish this with the console command 'moveto player' with the horse selected (via the PRID command if necessary); the advantage of the console command is that the horse can be 'summoned' to any location like inside a town or even inside a building/dungeon if required.