Welcome to OCP!

OCP is a browser-based tool that evaluates the potential maximums of any new or existing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion character. Aside from being a fun exercise, why do you need to plan your character's creation and leveling?

If you don't plan your character's creation and leveling path, it is very likely that your character will get comparatively weaker as you level up.

The "Leveling Problem"

Getting weaker as you level up is known as the "Leveling Problem". Oblivion's leveling process is a fairly complex process to fully understand (a good starting point is UESP's Leveling page), but essentially it happens because of two aspects of Oblivion's design:

  1. The potency of all monsters is tied to your character's level. As your level increases, you will face monsters with more health, better quality weapons, more spells and abilities, etc. The key point is that the amount monsters are increased in potency is fixed for each level.
  2. When you character levels up, the amount you can increase an attribute by ranges from 1 to 5 depending on how much you increased that attribute's associated skills. This is unquestionably most important when dealing with your Endurance attribute because your Health is derived from it.

So essentially the problem boils down to how much potency you gain per level versus how much potentcy the monsters gain per level. If you plan poorly and raise your attributes 1-3 points per level, the game will get harder and harder as you fall farther and farther behind the monsters. However, if you plan smartly and raise your attributes by 4 or 5 points per level, you can stay even or perhaps exceed the gains of the monsters.

The Leveling Solution

Unfortunately, neither the in-game descriptions, the game manual, nor the Official Game Guide by Prima properly discusses the "Leveling Problem". In fact, 19 of the default 21 classes are designed so that leveling them is extremely tricky (at least one attribute has all major skills). Plus, when the game manual and the Official Game Guide discuss how to create your character, they ignore the "Leveling Problem" encouraging you to make selections that are hard (if not impossible) to level effectively.

Sites like Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP) do a great job discussing the issues, but it's hard to go from an abstract discussion of leveling mechanics to a working character you'll enjoy playing for 30-40 levels. There are plenty of places where character templates are listed with people espousing the pros and cons of each one, but with so many permutations possible, these templates work best as a starting point for you to tweak into a unique character that matches your desires. Unfortunately, without a tool, it's difficult to determine the impact of such tweaks.

The only complete solution is a tool that not only lets you pick the starting configuration of your character, but also simulates what will happen as you level up. Because this is such a daunting task, no such tool has ever done it... until OCP!

OCP presents a complete menu of race, birthsign, and class choices letting you zoom in on the best ones for you. As you build your character, OCP automatically simulates leveling up and analyzes the results for you. This immediate feedback makes it simple to tweak your character for maximum effectiveness. And if you have an existing character, OCP can be used to analyze the impact of your future leveling choices.

OCP is the essential Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion character planning tool!