Balancing...

[Cydonian_Knight]

Hey everyone, so I'm approaching the finals stages of my first mod and I need to balance all the custom stuff I have put in. But, never having modded before, I'm not sure how to effectively go about doing this. I have armor, weapons, and enemy NPCs to balance and I'm not sure what good values would be for their various stats. I aiming for this mod to be meant for around a level 15-20 character. So my question to all you experienced modders is how do you achieve balance in your mods?

CK

[Critterman]

Hey everyone, so I'm approaching the finals stages of my first mod and I need to balance all the custom stuff I have put in. But, never having modded before, I'm not sure how to effectively go about doing this. I have armor, weapons, and enemy NPCs to balance and I'm not sure what good values would be for their various stats. I aiming for this mod to be meant for around a level 15-20 character. So my question to all you experienced modders is how do you achieve balance in your mods?

CK

I find the best thing to do is to make the creature leveled using the PC level offset or whatever its called, then add leveled items to the inventory of the creatures. Leveled items are scaled to the players level, so it is always balanced.

And if you want it specific only to the 15-20 level range, well I'm not sure about that. You might want to look at the leveled things in vanilla oblivion and see what the damages/ar ratings are for that level range.

Though, most players don't exactly like leveled and static things like this. So maybe put in a boss or two to keep 'em happy

[Cydonian_Knight]

I find the best thing to do is to make the creature leveled using the PC level offset or whatever its called, then add leveled items to the inventory of the creatures. Leveled items are scaled to the players level, so it is always balanced.

And if you want it specific only to the 15-20 level range, well I'm not sure about that. You might want to look at the leveled things in vanilla oblivion and see what the damages/ar ratings are for that level range.

Though, most players don't exactly like leveled and static things like this. So maybe put in a boss or two to keep 'em happy

Thanks for the replay Critterman . Yeah, I'm not a fan of leveled things either, so in my mod I'm planning on making the enemies static. I'll do what you suggested and look at what values Oblivion uses for that level range.

So no one else has any opinion on this?

[GrandDukeAdense]

I prefer static enemies, mostly. With both weak and powerful ones included!

[OdysseusB]

You need to think about what you're giving for an award.

I'd say the worth of an object should be related strongly to how hard it is to get the object - the more of a fight/challenge it is to obtain, the more powerful it is. Therefore, if it's an awesome artifact of doom, enemies should provide insane challenge.

Of course, enemy toughness is tricky. A base that I do is take the enemy, plug in a level, and auto-balance. Then I uncheck auto-balance and tweak the stats to the enemy. I usually lower the health and raise the amount of damage it can deal in a single hit (and raise the fatigue), because I prefer my enemies to have more oomph but not last forever.