I spent the last few days thinking about how bring back attributes so they’re not redundant with the skill trees and a few other player character customization ideas.

All of the attributes from Oblivion would return (with the exception of speed) and would be on a 1 to 10 scale. They would effect the leveling rate of the skills they are attached to with luck effecting the leveling of all skills to a lesser extent. 5 would be normal and have a leveling rate of 100% so a 4 would give a leveling rate of 90% of normal and 6 a 110% of normal increasing or decreasing by 10% per rank. Now each race would have different starting attributes for example:

Nord
5 agility
6 endurance
4 intelligence
5 luck
4 personality
6 strength
4 willpower
(I got these vales from the Oblivion racial attribute table and adjusted them for 5 being normal)

The player character would be give additional attribute points (lets say 5, though this might be to many) to assign as they see fit further allowing customization.

A problem that will occur with leaving attributes the way I stated above would be that they would become pointless once you max the skill out that they were attached to. My solution is putting attribute requirements on gear so that using an item that you don’t meet the requirement would make it less effective all around eg. Slow attack speed and less damage for weapons and slow movement speed and less protection from armor. I don’t know how to really apply this to spells and mage gear perhaps someone on this forum can come up with a way for it to work.

I also thought the addition of background traits that you could chose from at character creation would make each character unique. An example of one of thesw background traits would be:

Mage Blood: Having an ancestry steeped in magik you start with an additional 10 magika and your spells are 10% more effective. (this could be op but its just an example)

Of course racial traits would remain.

I would also bring back birth signs as something that is chosen at character creation. How they whould function and what they would do i'm unsure of. (maybe a combination of how they worked in Morrowind and Oblivion.)

These are just a few ideas I had and would like to know what you guys (and gals) think. Also please forgive any grammar and punctuation mistakes I may have made as neither are my strong suit.