Whole player rebalance

[Jay_H]

Daggerfall is a game made to last only about 10 levels (as compared to 40+ for Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim) before you've already exceeded the enemies in the game. If you've made it to level 20, there's likely no challenge you haven't already beaten or can't. Thus, to increase the lifespan of a single character, we'd probably want to begin at the start:

1. All attributes begin at 30, not 50
2. Minor skills start at 8, major at 13, primary at 18 (I think they're currently 13/18/28)
3. Rebalance monsters and other mechanics to compensate.

Obviously this would require a massive rework of many existing values, but it'd make Daggerfall a much longer game.

[dani26795]

Yeah, it kind of bugged me out that I could deal with not much trouble level 16-17 melee enemies such as atronachs and gargoyles when I was only level 2-3. The main character not being able to start game with STR and SPE at 90 would be a good first step, and melee enemies really need some buffs because magic users of much lower level could wreck me

[Ralzar]

Actually, you could probably do a lot of this with the mods Level Adjuster, Unleveled Mobs and Meaner Monsters.

I have been tempted to try playing with 1 Attribute Point per level and Level Curving activated. Which should result in getting a decent amount of Attribute Points in the early levels and then petering off to 1 per level at mid levels.

For Attributes, it would be possible to run a constant debuff of all attributes, but then they would be visually marked as debuffed.

Still though, being able to actually mod the character creation? Yes please. There’s a bunch os stuff that could be done. Like applying racial attributes to custom classes, having Attribute over 50 cost 2 AP to increase 1 or limiting how many points you can shuffle around.

[L57]

Yeah, it kind of bugged me out that I could deal with not much trouble level 16-17 melee enemies such as atronachs and gargoyles when I was only level 2-3. The main character not being able to start game with STR and SPE at 90 would be a good first step, and melee enemies really need some buffs because magic users of much lower level could wreck me

Well, haven't you made kinda over-powered PC intentionally in the first place? Don't play with that high STR and SPE in the beginning and it would be okay. It coincided that your initial benefits provided you an advantage in fight with melee-based enemies. And don't forget you're supposed to clear huge dungeons with quite tight time limits sometimes - you're not supposed to sleep after each battle to regain your health.

[pango]

I just want to mention that with each level, skills get 4% harder to improve, so increasing the max number of levels has non-linear effects...
Halving skill bonuses per level to double the number of levels will make reaching the same skill % much more than twice as long.

And don't forget you're supposed to clear huge dungeons with quite tight time limits sometimes - you're not supposed to sleep after each battle to regain your health.

I don't want to sidetrack that interesting thread too much, but currently quests are often less time-constrained in Daggerfall Unity than in classic Daggerfall, because the implementation of clocks (timers) is more conservative.