At level up, we have attributes and skills that can be increased varying amounts with or without bonuses.

Attributes can go up as much as five points per level, except for luck - which is quite limited.

Skills can go up as much as you want them to, but the smart method is to go in groups of ten total points for each group of three skills associated with a particular attribute.

The skills that drive leveling up are those selected as "MAJOR" skills, and so it is a good idea to spread out those skills through the range of various attributes. This is why there are three times as many skills as attributes, discounting LUCK.

Now, it may seem clear that this limits how many absolute levels you can raise a Player Character, but that isn't necessarily so....

Suppose I have a major skill of conjuration, and it isn't all the way up to 100% yet, but the attribute (Intelligence?) is at the max.

There are potions we can make that will DAMAGE INTELLIGENCE, and apparently this means we can develop the attribute further. When we go to a church or use a restoration potion or the like, if we have raised that attribute while it was damaged, we now have a skill that is ABOVE 100...

This idea fascinates me.

I'm looking for potion ingredients that also damage individual skills, not just attributes. A "DRAIN WHATEVER" potion will not work, the effect is temporary.

Something else I noted too is that you can't use a strictly "DAMAGE X ATTRIBUTE" potion on your char - the damage has to be a secondary effect, otherwise what you have made is a poison that can only be used on weapons.

This is all very puzzling and intrigueing...

AND THERE ARE ONLY SO MANY POTIONS you can use at once, but presumably the damage effect will last...

* You have to use something like this in order to do the Mephala shrine quest - I think it is - if your personality is higher than 20.

There are some creatures and enemies that will also effectively damage attributes and skills, but that isn't a "READY TO HAND" way of going about it.

I think it was Turija who once told me that "Yes, there is a way to do this" and if I wanted to know badly enough just ask...

Well now I'm asking!

It also seems to me that the absolute limit of level ups we can get in a game can also be tinkered with in this way - without installing any mods or console commands to it, which is admittedly the hard way...

But I like to use only what is in the game in its "Vanilla" version.