Oblivion:Gripes/Strength

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This article provides Strength gripes, as part of the Game Balance section of the Gripes article.

The reordering of skills has made Strength a deciding factor for all forms of melee combat (as opposed to Morrowind having Hand-To-Hand and Short Blade in different categories). This makes strength far too necessary for characters following a stealthier class.

Tamriel is a world where a lot of things want to kill you. Of course a player focusing on stealth would have a more difficult time.

A highly trained assassin should not have a harder time killing something than a musclebound barbarian. They should just have to go about it differently.

Hm... good thing that's the case then. Seriously, I have never had any problem killing through stealth.

There's a reason sneak kills offer bonuses... those who are sneaking probably won't be focusing on strength, it's balenced fine in this respect.

Encumbrance is implemented rather oddly. The player has an encumbrance limit, after passing which the player becomes completely immobile, fixed in place. The player should not be immobile when carrying more than he/she can easily carry but should simply move slower and slower, as more things are piled on.

you do move slower when you carry more items.

If so, it needs to be made more obvious, because it's not easy to tell. The difference between wearing armor and not wearing armor is obvious and readily apparent, but carrying 200 lbs rather than 300 lbs with an encumbrance of 325...there's no apparent difference. If 325 is the maximum for a character, carrying 324 should make them move incredibly slowly, just barely putting one foot in front of the other. As it is now, there's no apparent change in speed until you reach/break the encumbrance limit, at which point you are immobilized.

That would make for incredibly frustrating gameplay. How would you battle if you could barely put one foot in front of the other? Also, I always noticed that I was walking more slowly as I approached my max weight, although it IS subtle. Cast a feathering spell and you should see the difference immediately.

Yeah, actually I even managed to get blocked in place when struck by enemy's arrow which arrived at my inventory. Neat.

The More Realistic Encumbrance and Fatigue mod changes encumbrance so that it gradually fatigues you and may cause you to fall flat down. It has optional settings so you can decide whether it acts as you approach your maximum (potentially decreasing your capacity), or it acts only after you've passed your maximum (potentially increasing your capacity).

Raising strength past a hundred only effects your encumbrance it does not raise the damage dealt by the blade, blunt and hand to hand skills. This is a big let down because once your character masters any/all of the strength skills, the strength attribute and becomes a master armorer you can no longer increase the damage of your blade, blunt, or hand to hand skills, through enchantments.

The Legendary Mastery mod changes Oblivion so at high levels fortify skill gear is still as useful and worthwhile an investment as at any other level. In addition, you cannot raise skills and stats above 100- that limitation too can optionally be removed in this mod. You still cannot level anything above 200, to prevent you hitting the hard-coded 255 limit on stats.

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