The Governing Attribute

1. The Concept: The Instruction Booklet that was bundled with the Oblivion DVD, makes a point of explaining that the player\'s Attributes govern a set of associated Skills. I\'ve never actually seen any \"governing\" of skills in Oblivion. I\'m able to train any of the 21 skills to 100 points, if I want to. The governance by the associated Attributes just doesn\'t happen. Now, in the Morrowind game, there definitely was governing of skills. In fact, if your skills had caught up to it\'s associated Attribute, then that was the end of improving that skill until your character Leveled Up. I thought it might be fun to try a different form of Leveling for a change. Instead of being annoyed by the Level Up procedure, I\'ve rediscoverd that having the Governing Attribute makes it interesting and worthwhile for the player to increase levels. With the Governing Attribute, there is now a reason to train the skills that are important to you. Those, Stealth players who could train Sneak to 100 points in one session, will still be able to train, but the benefits of 100 point Sneak are withheld until it\'s governing Attribute, Agility is leveled up to 100 as well. This creates an entirely \"new\" game, and one that is fun again. Now character role-playing has a chance to develop. With Attributes governing your Skills, you can not easily train your character to be a Master of all Trades. Now you must pick and choose, which of the Skills you want to promote and which you will leave behind. 2. The Design: My first design principle involves the safety of the player\'s game. Many of the Bethesda Script Functions are not \"bullet-proof\" and can cause permanent \"bugs\" in the savegame. So I\'ve opted to utilize the Spell Engine for the entire mod. Although it\'s not as elegant as the Script Functions, using spells to manipulate the various attributes has proven to be quite safe. I have also chosen, to leave all the leveling variables at their Vanilla values. This is an attempt on my part to enable \"The Governing Attribute\" to be compatible with various other \"Leveling Mods\" that exist. However, the only \"auto-leveler\" that I\'ve tested with is \"Galerion\'s Natural Leveling\". As long as a mod doesn\'t alter the original game\'s Attribute / Skill linking, then my mod should be able to co-exist with them. For instance, Strength is the Governor for Blunt, Blade, and Hand to Hand. The script was also designed to be low-impact. Except for initialization, attributes and skills are not looked at until the game signals a Skill increase. Then the script goes to work to make any post-skill increase adjustments. However, a once per \"Game Hour\" check may be enabled with the console command: set GovAtt.check to 1 3. The Mechanics: \"The Governing Attribute\" may be loaded onto any game, new, old, high skills with low attributes etc. You don\'t have to worry about \"losing\" skills in case you get a glitched save-game. Skills are never adjuste