Hello everyone,

I'm new to this forum and relatively new to Morrowind (loving it so far, took a while to set up all the mods but it was worth it.) and I just wanted to suggest an improvement for the levelling system featured in Morrowind, which I hope some Modder(s) may see and take up. If there are any other places I can post this for Morrowind Modders to see, please let me know.

I absolutely love the Elder Scrolls games but one of their major flaws is with awkward levelling and having to meticulously plan the skills you need to level up to get the best character. I have searched through Planet Elder Scrolls and could not find a mod that only changed the original levelling slightly (wanted to preserve the original feel of Morrowind for my first real playthrough).

Now in Morrowind, as I understand it, you level up by increasing 10 Major/Minor skills and resting. If you levelled up 15 Major/Minor skills, you would have 5 points left over, and they would contribute to the next level. This part of the system works fine, but the skill increases don't carry over to later levels like the Major/Minor increases count towards the next level.

Flaw in the Current System

Reference: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Level <- Page showing the way Morrowind levelling works.

As mentioned the flaw in the system comes with levelling skills efficiently to give maximum multipliers. To level 'perfectly' you would get 10+ skill increases, in 3 skills that are linked to different stats (Or any combinations of skills). Simple Example: You would gain 10 long blade increases, 10 Heavy Armour increases, and 10 Block increases and this would give you +5 Strength, +5 Endurance, and +5 Agility when you came to level up.

An efficient leveller would also avoid getting extra skill increases or increases for other skills, example: 2 restoration increases, as this would give you a +2 Multiplier that you would not use, and would be completely wasted as those 2 restoration increases would not carry over to the next level.

Main Change

This is where the system needs to be changed. What I suggest is that we need to make sure no skills are wasted in the levelling process. Basically if you over level some skills, or level some you didn't want to then they would count towards the next level after the level up screen. For clarification, if started a new game and then increase 16 in Long Blade (Long Blade as Major/Minor Skill) when you came to level up, you choose Strength to level up, you gain a +5 to Strength and the 6 extra increases would count toward the next level's multiplier for Strength.

With this system it would be easy to gain efficient levelling without having to plan skill increases, all that is required is that sufficient skill increases are performed before you go to the level up screen. Players would still be able to take a non-maximised character progression aswell, they could just choose to level up when they have a +3 increase if they wanted (which is not an option with all +5 modifier plugins, and you also lose a sense of accomplishment with those plugins).

Other Changes

Now I haven't played Morrowind very far (up to about level 10 once), so I don't know what problems may arrise with higher level characters. The 100 cap on Stats may have to be taken off, but the Stats would not go too far above as players can only level skills to 100. This may lead to it being too easy to get to higher levels. A Plugin to make skill increases harder overall, or exponentially harder as they increase may do the trick.

The value of the modifiers and/or the number of skill increases needed could also be changed.
Suggestion: 0 skill increases -> +1 Modifier, 1-3 increases -> +2, 4-6 increases -> +3, 7-9 increases -> +4, 10 increases -> +5.
Note: In this suggestion 4-6 increases yields a +3 increase, so if a player had 5 total 'increase points' for Strength, they would get +3 Strength on level up. After level up they would have 1 increase point for strength left as the +3 interval require 4 'increase points'. It would be unfair to take the 5 points when they could have gotten the +3 with only 4 'increase points'. So the bottom of the interval would be the amount of 'increase points' for the relevant Stat taken off after choosing the Multiplier.

I think players trying to play without having to worry about efficient levelling would have a much better time with this system, and the only way I can see players undermining the system would be to aim for higher levels by going for low multipliers, which would be difficult and the reward would not be worth the effort, so players would not have to worry about character optimisation.

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Thanks for taking the time to reading and considering this idea and I welcome any discussion and criticisms of it. Like I said, I am relatively new to Morrowind (Took many hours to get Morrowind with lots of graphical mods working perfectly) and I haven't played much of the game, so veteran players will be better judges of level progression at later levels.

Also if this idea appeals to people then some Modder(s) will have to make it, as the my knowledge on Morrowind Modding only extends to installing mods and using MGE a bit. I assume the mod would be made as a .esp file, but haven't the faintest clue where to start.

Nuclear Grandad

Small Edit: The Number of 'Increase points' for each Attribute/Stat could be displayed on the character sheet, just to reduce any frustration in trying to remember how many you have, having to write things down, or having quicksave, level up and quickload if you don't have the desired multiplier.

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=7904 addresses this problem, with a lengthy explaination of my reasoning in the readme.

First of all, after reading the some of the readme (Must have taken hours to just write that thing) I can see that you mod is absolutely enormous and that you put loads of effort into the mod. There are so many changes, I don't think I've seen a readme that detailed and huge.

I mainly looked at the settings plugin part as that seemed the right section. There are lots of changes that are great, some that are of a personal taste and that I don't think I would enjoy on my first playthrough (Your knowledge of Morrowind is much more vast than mine so there will be things you want to change and I will be clueless about. Obviously it's your mod so you should keep them how you like it. ) and then there are changes to fix exploits in the game (which I am not bothered about, as I will happily explore Vvardenfell in ignorance, never finding easy ways to make money or find armour.).

I see you changed the skill increases needed for multipliers to exactly as I would have thought to do it. The only bit that I can't seem to find is the fixing of skill increases carrying over to the next level to remove any wasted skill increasing. Does your mod fix that in anyway, and if it does could you give me a small bit of text from the readme so I can use ctrl+f to find it.

Thanks a lot. I appreciate the work all the modders do, and I'm certain your mod appeals to the more experienced Morrowind player who wants to improve their experience, but for a Beginner it is too extensive for me.

That's very likely hard-coded into the game, and cannot be changed.
Perhaps the Code Patch could alter it, though.... but it's pretty easy to just sleep and level-up before raising your Skills more.

Seemed like a simple change to at first, but I suppose it would affect a lot of other things and could create a lot of conflicts with any other mods that change progression.

I'm not really that bothered for my first time playing, I don't expect to perfectly level at all and the idea of it doesn't seem fun, so I guess on my first playthrough I will just keep an eye on my skills a bit and see how my character progresses.
A bit of trial and error will probably be the best plan of action.

If you've got multipliers in your game at all you've already failed. There is no way to salvage them IMO. Just use GCD or something similar.

I've looked at GCD and I looks like something I might add at a later date, but it changes too much for me at the moment. I liked the idea of getting rid of the multipliers completely as this would also save me having to worry about levelling so much.

Unfortunately I've been looking through Planet Elder Scrolls and I can't seem to find a mod which changes all multipliers to +1. Is there a mod that can do this or can I easily do it in the Editor somehow.

Try Madd Leveler. It changes all multipliers to +1. It is somewhat customizable, but default version means you get +1 to an ability for every three raises to a skill which is related to that ability. And you get +1 to luck every 30 such raises. Of course you can raise three skills with +1 every level up. And some optional stuff, you should read the docs carefully.

PES link: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=5316

It conflicts somewhat with BTB's mod, and it also conflicts badly with mods that skip or shorten the tutorial.