You might have read Sah's post in the DiD competition thread earlier stating that her character can no longer be killed by anything Skyrim has to offer. I got to thinking about that, and honestly, it sounds really boring. I mean, I congratulate her on her success in reaching that point and level, but I realized that I would personally be very unhappy with that sort of environment. I mean, I play DiD because I want that extra element of danger, but if there's no danger, then what would be the point of DiD?

So... I got to thinking about how I could rectify that situation, and I came up with this...

I use Deadly Dragons/Monsters. You may have that mod, or be familiar with it, but let me explain how it works. and the health, melee damage, magical damage, armor rating, and magical resistance can be increased to I think a maximum of 1500%, and that's on a vanilla difficulty setting in the mod configuration menu. I have no idea how high it would go if set to "insane".

At starting levels in the game, almost any increase makes the game way too deadly for DiD when playing on Master, especially with other mods working like SkyTEST or immersive creatures, so I thought what if... every ten or fifteen levels of player increase, the stats for dragons, and all other creatures was increased by 10%? Not necessarily magic resistance, but suppose health, melee, and magical damage were to be increased by 10 percent say every 10 levels?

At that rate, by the time the PC reaches level 50, damage from all melee sources would be 150% of normal Master damage. By the time one reached the level Sah is currently at, damage would be 164%, so if a bandit archer did 200 points of damage in vanilla, that would mean one arrow of damage would be 528 points, and heaven only knows what dragon breath would do. If that wasn't enough to kill off the character, you could still go to Legendary and start adding another 25% damage every 5 levels.

I think I'm going to try it and see how it works out... but does anybody have any input? Did I miss something in my calculations?

I know a lot of players increase damage (either via mods or difficulty slider) as they level up. If it suits a player, I say go for it.

Myself, I like the feeling of accomplishment that accompanies getting stronger with each level. Adjusting enemy stats upwards as one gains new levels sounds a bit too much like Oblivion level-scaling to me. I prefer to see the effects of leveling. I find satisfaction in coming back after a few levels and wiping the floor with that bandit boss who wiped the floor with me a few levels ago.

With Deadly Monsters, Immersive Creatures and other mods I generally shoot for a nice "average medium" for the character I'm playing. And then I leave it there. After years of playing Bethesda's games I've developed a pretty good feel for finding the "sweet spot" for each character I play, in terms of difficulty.

That's an interesting take, and I like it, but... have you ever hit a point where nothing in Skyrim was capable of killing your character? ...and if you did, was it as boring as I think it would be?

I say go for it, too. We all get fun from different levels (and types) of challenge, so try to tweak the game to make it work best for you.

I think I'm more like PW in this. I don't mind "crazy difficult," but I hate "tedious."

If a boss fight involves a lot of planning, maneuvering, risk, and timing, I find that a pleasant challenge. But I hate situations where it's just a long wear-down-the-enemy battle with lots of potion-swilling; to me, that's just tedious and boring. I've seen your videos, and while they're fun to watch, I'd find the long fights too much, if I had to do them all the time.

Edit:

Yes, I have a character who, for all practical purposes, reached that point at level 50. I no longer actively play the character, although I do load her up and do a quest or two once in a while, when I don't feel like being challenged.

I don't really play roleplaying games to experience "difficulty." Difficulty is pretty low on my list of priorities. I've played characters that were godl-like at level one, because that was part of their story. Other characters have struggled to stay alive for their entire games, from start to finish, because that was part of their stories.

I "write" a story when I roleplay. To me, it's not much different than writing a story using words at a word processor. Instead of words I use the game assets provided by Bethesda.

So I am mainly concerned with difficulty when it plays a part in my character's story. If difficulty plays no part in the story I go for a happy medium, as I mentioned above. Boring, to me, is not one-shot killing enemies. Boring, to me, is not finding an interesting character to play.

Basically, I guess I'm fine with almost any level of difficulty, as long as it doesn't interfere with roleplaying.

I quite agree about long battles of attrition, and that is my major grip regarding the Legendary difficulty setting in the vanilla game. Any battle with a high-level opponent is going to take forever if you win. That's why with my progressive scheme, I intend to only increase opponent health and damage by small increments, rather than raising armor rating and magic resistance. Ideally it should make any combat possibly lethal, but without extending combat time unduly.

I also roleplay my characters, (although my definition of roleplay is somewhat different than some other people's definition) I'm not dishonest with myself, like pretending I don't know where something is, or when a true baddie lies inside a dungeon. My version of roleplay is that mages are mages, thieves are thieves, warriors are warriors, and there is some motivational factor behind what they do and a reason why they are what they are. I won't have a pure mage spending time smithing, for instance, or a warrior learning high level conjuration spells. Sometimes classes may be mixed, but again there is a reason that defines them.

As far as difficulty goes, well, it's not about difficulty at all. I don't enjoy a truly difficult game, that's why I don't play legendary. I do enjoy a lethal game, especially when combined with DiD. Difficulty is actually boring, but what I seek is risk and challenge vs reward. It may not seem so at first glance, but it's really a far cry from simple difficulty.

Difficulty is disposable, but a game without risk is just dull...