Oblivion:Feather

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	Feather
School		Alteration
Type		Defensive
Effect ID		FTHR
Base Cost		0.01
Barter Factor		25
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Spells Custom Potions Built-In Potions Scrolls Sigil Stones Apparel

Feather M points for D seconds

Feather increases the amount of weight you can carry. Your allowed weight (encumbrance) is increased by M pts; the spell lasts for D seconds and the effect disappears after that time.

[edit] Notes

Feather is one of the few spells that you can create a maximum permissible custom spell and still be able to cast it in-game. In fact, creating a Feather with an M of 100 pts and a D of 120 seconds (maximum allowed in the spell creation altars) is only an Apprentice level spell. To get around this, simply create multiple versions of the same spell and give them different names. Since they all stack, you can do this many times. In other words, if you create one 100 point spell named "Feather 1" and a second 100 point spell named "Feather 2", you can cast them both and get 200 points of Feather. Add "Feather 3" and get 300 points, etc.

Another way to increase the effectiveness of the Feather spell (or any other positive effect spell) is to exploit the Weakness to Magic effect (either from a spell or the Apprentice birth sign). This is done by first creating and casting a 100% Weakness to Magic on yourself. Follow this up with a custom Feather spell that also has a minor detrimental effect (like Drain Fatigue 3 pts. for 1 second on self). The Weakness to Magic will now apply to the positive effect as well as the negative effect. This effectively gives you a 6 pt. Fatigue Drain for 1 second and a 200 pt. Feather for 120 seconds.

Using Feather has the benefit of making you run faster as it lowers your encumbrance by reducing the weight of your load; the more you're encumbered the slower you run. It's not by a huge amount, and is only noticeable when you are already carrying a heavy load.

[edit] Fortify Strength

Another way of obtaining a Feather effect is with Fortify Strength. Fortify Strength spells are more effective (1 point of Fortify Strength allows you to carry 5 points more) and have additional bonuses, such as increasing your melee damage and speed-of-attack (for Blade and Blunt).
- When creating an enchanted item, Fortify Strength can provide a much more powerful enchantment than Feather, at least when creating custom enchantments.
  - For example, a Petty Soul Gem provides 14 points of Feather vs 6 points (equivalent to 30 points Feather) of Fortify Strength
  - For a Grand Soul Gem the comparison is 50 points of Feather vs 10 points (equivalent to 50 points Feather) of Fortify Strength
  - However, for Transcendent Sigil Stones Feather turns out to be better: 125 points of Feather vs 12 points (equivalent to 60 points Feather) of Fortify Strength.
- As a spell Fortify Strength is significantly more expensive than Feather, even if your Restoration skill is better than your Alteration skill.
The benefit of running faster due to lowering the weight of items carried and therefore lowering total encumbrance is only available by using feather, and not fortify strength.

[edit] Bug

On your screen, Feather appears to increase your maximum encumbrance (so instead of carrying 250 pounds of an allowed 225, your inventory now says that you are carrying 250 of an allowed 325). However, behind the scenes, the game actually implements Feather by reducing the weight of the items that you are carrying (so in fact you are carrying 150 pounds of an allowed 225). Although the difference is often semantic, at other times it leads to a glitch: the magnitudes of your Feather spells and potions become set to zero.

If you are trying to bolster up your encumbrance to carry a dungeon's worth of loot, and start casting spells before picking up all of the loot, most of those spells will actually have zero magnitude. If you look in the Active Effects page, all the spells will be listed under Feather, but the magnitude next to many of them will be zero. What has happened is that internally the game has reduced the weight of the items you are currently carrying to zero; casting further spells can not reduce the weight past zero.

The implication is that if you want to carry a lot of loot, you must first pick it all up, become over-encumbered, and then cast your spells/drink your potions. Unfortunately, you can then find out that you've picked up too much loot, and you have to put some back down.

A further implication of this glitch is that it is impossible, even in the Construction Set, to add permanent Feather effects to characters using abilities. Regardless of the effect's specified magnitude, in game its magnitude always ends up being zero, presumably since the abilities are resolved before encumbrance.