Between the complexity of Oblivion's leveling model and the variety of gameplay possibilities, it is very difficult to give advice. However, in this section I will try to give you a few guidelines and suggestions from my own personal experience and observations. Perhaps most important is this:

There is no wrong way to create or level your character!

Don't get bogged down in the numbers unless that's what appeals to you. Oblivion is a game that can be conquered many, many different ways. Remember to focus on having fun first!

Fun aside, the following sections should help give you a framework from which you can make an informed decision for your character's long-term potency. Basically, the process goes like this:

  1. You can't plan for the unknown, so first learn about Oblivion's Mechanics.
  2. Break down the general playstyle you have in mind into a Gameplay Profile that details exactly how you will conquer Oblivion's challenges.
  3. Using a major skills paradigm (Most Used Skills as Majors, Least Used Skills as Majors, etc), create a Custom Class based on your profile.
  4. Create a tentative attribute leveling order based on your profile and the Leveling Paradigm (+5/+5/+5 vs +5/+5/+1) you've chosen.
  5. Follow the Instructions to enter and then tweak your information in OCP until you are satisfied with your character's setup and leveling plan.
  6. Read through the Key Concerns to ensure you don't make any common mistakes.

If you get stuck, poke around the Internet looking for Oblivion character templates. For example, there is a fairly detailed FAQ with several templates in GameFAQ's Character Build FAQ (PC) document. It is doubtful that any template will match exactly what you have in mind, but if you input the template info into OCP, you can see the exact impact of your tweaks.

Finally, as an abolsute last resort, don't forget that you can adjust the game's difficulty or (on the PC version) use the console to fix any mistakes you've made while leveling. If you are using OCP to plan your character, you probably don't want to resort to these tactics, but it's probably better to tweak something rather than scrap all the work you put into your level 35+ character.

If you are going to build a potent character, you have to understand what constitutes your potency. You can learn some of this information from just playing the game, but to really understand things you need to dig into the formulas and algorithms used. Here are a few references (in the rough order you should read them) that should help:

  1. You won't get anywhere if you don't understand your core attributes, derived attributes, and skills. These are explained in the game manual, but UESP's Attributes and Skills pages provide some additional insights. Pay particular attention to how Luck works since it affects all skills and has a dramatic impact on your leveling plan.
  2. Although they are listed in the game manual and OCP itself, UESP's Races, Birthsigns, and Classes pages have some good tips about these selections.
  3. UESP's Leveling page explains the basic leveling mechanics (with some examples) and explains the "Leveling Problem."
  4. UESP's Efficient Leveling page explores how to maximize attribute bonuses from skill ups. The Leveling Paradigm section is an important part of deciding your attribute Leveling Order.
  5. UESP's Increasing Attributes and Increasing Skills pages gives you an analysis of every attribute and skill. When you start forming your Gameplay Profile, the skill up difficulty information will be key.
  6. UESP's Character Creation page tries to sum up all character creation and leveling issues into one coherent discussion. Of particular importance is the Custom Classes section that describes the different major skill paramdigms.

Note: If you are totally new to Oblivion, there is no way you will be able to understand all of Oblivion's mechanics. But that's ok -- just learn what you can. Remember that just by using OCP you are helping to ensure your character will be adequately powerful by game's end.

With so many different ways to solve problems in Oblivion, if you try to do them all, you'll end up a Jack of all Traits and Master of None. It's best to pick a few ways to solve Oblivion's problems and stick with them. Which solutions you opt for is your Gameplay Profile.

For each of the following obstacles, you should select one primary solution. The goal is to align your solutions among a select set of skills and attributes. You can then focus your efforts on those and largely ignore the rest. Don't forget that choosing to avoid the problem (e.g. not having any way to avoid fights because you want to kill everything!) or waiting until you are a higher level to address a problem (e.g. paying NPCs to recharge items later in the game because you can easily afford it) is perfectly viable.

  1. Offense (Killing Things) You always need a way to kill stuff. You should concentrate on a single skill and its associated attribute(s): either Blade (Strength), Blunt (Strength), Hand-to-Hand (Strength), Marksmanship (Agility), or Destruction (Intelligence and Willpower). If you choose Blade, Blunt, or Marksmanship, you can get a sizeable first attack bonus if you attack while Sneaking (Agility). Also, if you want an edge when fighting multiple enemies, a summoned minion from Conjuration spells (Intelligence and Willpower) and/or an Atronach Familiar (from the Atronach Altars in the Frostcrag Spire official plug-in) can be very helpful.
  2. Defense (Staying Alive) While killing stuff, you will inevitably be hit. You can specialize in Light Armor (Speed), Heavy Armor (Endurance), Block (Endurance), or Shield/Resistance spells (Alteration) to help keep you alive during a fight. Note that higher Health (which comes from Endurance) is usually a priority for all but the most aggressive players.
  3. Avoiding Fights If you want to avoid a fight, you'll need a way to detect enemies and a way to get past them. For detection, you can supplement simply seeing them with Detect Life/Night-Eye potions (Alchemy), spells (Mysticism), enchanted items, or the Khajiit Night-Eye racial ability. Aside from just moving around them, to avoid enemies you can use Sneak (Agility) or Chameleon/Invisibility potions (Alchemy), spells (Illusion), or enchanted items.
  4. Dealing with Darkness Whether you are crawling into dungeons or just out in the world on a cloudy night, you'll have to deal with finding things in darkness. Aside from the freely available torches in the game, you can use Light spells (Illusion) or enchanted items to create visible light. If you prefer a more stealthy approach, you can use Night-Eye potions (Alchemy), spells (Mysticism), enchanted items, or the Khajiit racial ability.
  5. Recovery Both during and after a fight, you'll need a way to heal yourself, recover Magicka (if applicable), recover Fatigue (if applicable), cure diseases/poisons/etc, and restore damaged attributes/skills. For all of these, you can use potions (Alchemy) or Restoration (Intelligence and Willpower) spells. Although it won't cure damaged attributes/skills nor can you do it while enemies are nearby, you can recover all Health, Magicka, and Fatigue by simply Waiting.
  6. Making Money Whether it's for gear, reagents, or to open up official plug-in areas, you'll need cash. The three best ways to make cash are by selling potions you've made via Alchemy, selling stuff you've stolen to a Fence, and by selling the loot from fallen enemies. Whether stealing or looting items, remember that the more you can carry, the more you are earning. You can increase your Encumbrance by increasing your Strength from leveling, Restoration spells, and item enchantments or by Feather potions (Alchemy), spells (Alteration), and item enchantments.
  7. Unlocking Things There are plenty of chests and locked doors throughout Tamriel and you'll generally want to open them all. You can use Alteration spells to open locks, but it is far easier to always have a few lockpicks (which are fairly easy and cheap to acquire even for non-Thieves Guild members) and just learn how to patiently open any lock with a low lockpicking skill.
  8. Getting Information There are a few times where you'll need to earn some trust with someone to advance a quest. You can do this with Bribes (if you are rich), the Speechcraft (Personality) skill game, Charm spells (Illusion), Fortify Personality spells (Restoration), or enchanted items. However, even with a low Personality and a low Speechcraft skill, you can (with some practice) play the Speechcraft game and then throw in 50ish gold in Bribes to make this generally not a concern.
  9. Repairing Items As you attack and take damage, your weapons and armor will need repairs. Since the potency of your armor and weapons decreases as they wear, you'll probably want to ensure they are fully repaired. Pure casters or those relying on Conjured gear (from Conjuration spells) can safely rely on NPCs for infrequent repairs, but everyone else should probably count on using their Armorer (Endurance) skill.
  10. Enchanted Items If you want to rely on using enchanted items in your higher levels, you'll want access to an Enchantment Altar. The only two altars are in the Mage's Guild (which requires going through the very long recommendation process to access) and in the Frostcrag Spire official plug-in (which just requires some cash to activate). To recharge your enchanted weapons, you can rely on NPC vendors if you are rich enough, but most likely you'll want to Soul Trap enemies into soul gems via Mysticism spells (Intelligence and Willpower) or a weapon enchant (which is very handy if you aren't otherwise Mysticism oriented and don't mind switching weapons).

Note: Scrolls are not considered a viable solution here because they cannot be reliably found in loot or bought from vendors. Although, scrolls you do find make great supplemental solutions, especially when you consider using them does not generate any skill XP.

There are a few other minor obstacles in Oblivion (e.g. breathing under water), but they don't really require specific character planning. You can usually find a solution without impacting your character's creation and leveling plan.

It is very easy to get overwhelmed by the multitude of character creation options, so this section will outline a few common do's and dont's. However, keep one overriding key point in mind:

These are generalizations, not rules. So long as you plan for the issue, you can find a way to safely violate these guidelines.

The following are key points for creating your character and forming your leveling plan:

  • Avoid 3 major skills per attribute If you make all three skills for any attribute majors, you cannot reach the maximum bonus for that attribute if any other major skill gets raised. Unfortunately, 19 of the 21 default classes (all except Rogue and Pilgrim) have one (or even two!) attributes with all 3 major skills. For example, if you choose the predefined Warrior class for a "sword and board" gameplay style, leveling one point in Athletics, Armorer, Block, or Heavy Armor (all skills you'd want to use), means you cannot reach the max +5 bonus for Strength because Blade, Blunt, and Hand-to-Hand are all majors (and the 9th point in these skills would increase your level).
  • Always use a custom class Aside from 19 of the 21 predefined classes having 3 major skills for a single attribute, most of them have poor combinations of major skills and poor favored attributes. Your class has the single biggest impact on you character's leveling experience, so take the time and do it right by creating a good custom class that fits your gameplay style.
  • Stack Luck at lower levels Looking at how Luck above 50 impacts every usage of every skill, there is arguably no more important attribute at the lower levels. Starting with the +10 Luck from The Thief birthsign and getting the +5 bonus for making Luck a favored attribute in your custom class effectively raises every one of your skills by 6 points. However, since Luck adjusted skills cannot go above 100, at higher levels Luck becomes less and less important; so if you are going to care about Luck at all, do it from the start.
  • Ensure "unused" major skills are easy to level If you want to make a few major skills ones that you will rarely ever use (so you can better control when you level), make sure they are skills that can be easily leveled. UESP's Increasing Skills page does a great job breaking down how easy or hard it will be to intentionally increase every skill.

To help illustrate the methods outlined in the Advice section, I'll run through the process with my example toon Nullis.

Gameplay Profile

My general idea for Nullis was a stealthy, ranged assassin. I wouldn't rely heavily on magic or melee, but if I could find you at range, you'd probably be dead before you reached me. Plugging this general playstyle into the profile yielded the following:

  1. Offense (Killing Things) My main way of killing things would be with a bow starting from Stealth. This means I'll focus on the Marksmanship and Stealth skills and the Agility attribute.
  2. Defense (Staying Alive) When someone reaches me in combat (or when I'm facing multiple enemies at once), I'll use my Light Armor (which is for the Speed attribute) to help mitigate the damage. And since I will be hit sometimes, Health (and therefore Endurance) will be a priority.
  3. Avoiding Fights I'll use Stealth to avoid any fights, but I'll use the Khajiit Night-Eye racial ability to see enemies that I want to avoid and that I want to kill from range. At the higher levels, adding some Detect Life enchanted items will ensure I can even find enemies around corners and behind obstacles.
  4. Dealing with Darkness I'll use my Khajiit Night-Eye racial most of the time, but I'll rely on Torches when it is safe to do so.
  5. Recovery At the lower levels, I'll use potions mainly from vendors and loot. At higher levels when I'll take more damage, I will level Alchemy and make my own.
  6. Making Money At lower levels, I'll rely exclusively on dungeon loot for cash. At higher levels, I'll supplement my ability to bring back loot with Strength/Feather enchanted items. I'll also be making Alchemy potions in excess that I can sell for cash.
  7. Unlocking Things Being thief-ish, I'll have plenty of lockpicks to use whenever necessary.
  8. Getting Information At the lower levels, I'll use Bribes and the Speechcraft game with a low Personality and a low Speechcraft skill. At higher levels, I'll use a custom Charm spell that only lasts a few seconds, but yields a high Disposition.
  9. Repairing Items I'll be repairing my own gear constantly so my Armorer skill and Endurance attribute will get lots of activity.
  10. Enchanted Items I bought the Frostcrag Spire official plug-in, so at higher levels I will use the Enchantment and Spellmaking Altars from it. Once I start using enchanted weapons, I'll use a special bow with a Soul Trap enchant to acquire souls as needed.
Custom Class

With my profile in mind, I decided to use One Major Skill per Attribute as my custom class paradigm. This was appealing to me because I wouldn't level too fast or too slow and I could ensure that I'd have a major skill to level for every attribute; even when I'm leveling the least used attributes in the higher levels.

For my major skills, I chose a mix of skills I would use (on the attributes I wanted to level first), skills that I may use in later levels but were easy to level up, and skills I would never use except for leveling up. Here is the summary:

  • Blunt (Strength) May be used at higher levels, but otherwise won't be a primary skill. It is very easy to control leveling (just don't equip a Blunt weapon) and ranges from easy to hard to level (it takes a large number of hits to increase at higher skill levels).
  • Conjuration (Intelligence) May use at higher levels to help deal with multiple mobs at once or to skill up a weapon skill (e.g. Blunt), but otherwise won't be used. This is trivial to raise, tho.
  • Destruction (Willpower) Probably will never be used, but this is trivial to level with a custom created spell that damages yourself for 1 point per cast.
  • Marksmanship (Agility) My main damage skill and attribute will get raised constantly until I max them.
  • Athletics (Speed) At higher levels, it is ridiculously annoying to raise Athletics. Making it a major skill helps, but at the lower levels I had to go into Sneak to avoid unintentionally raising this. This was a little annoying, but seems like a worthy trade off to me.
  • Heavy Armor (Endurance) The idea here was that I could control leveling this by suiting up in Heavy Armor and letting the Battlehorn Castle official plug-in's trainer Shagrol gro-Uzug beat on me to raise it. Unfortunately, since you don't take any damage from his attacks, this doesn't raise your Heavy Armor skill. In retrospect, I should have chosen the Block skill here because it can be raised by sparring him.
  • Illusion (Personality) I probably won't use any of these spells, but this is trivial to level anytime.
Leveling Order

For my attribute Leveling Order, I didn't want my first few levels to go as fast as the +5/+5/+1 model would provide, but I didn't want to completely ignore Luck for a full +5/+5/+5 model. My solution was to do +5/+5/+5 for the first three attributes and by making Luck my fourth attribute, the remaining levels would be +5/+5/+1. This results in the following Leveling Order:

  1. Agility - Which gives my Marksmanship more damage
  2. Speed - Useful for kiting mobs, but really here because I'll always be using its associated skills
  3. Endurance - Because you gotta have lots of Health
  4. Luck - For the general plus-to-everything it gives
  5. Strength - Useful if I want to melee, but mainly for higher Encumbrance to carry more loot
  6. Intelligence - For more Magicka when I might cast a few spells in the higher levels
  7. Willpower - Largely useless for me, but more important than Personality
  8. Personality - Last since it is all but useless

Note: In retrospect, I would probably have tried for a full +5/+5/+1 model by swapping Speed and Luck. I'd need to make sure I had enough Spare Skill Points in Speed because I'd be using those skills constantly at the lower levels, but the swap would get me to max level one level earlier (43 instead of 44).

Results

My choice for race was made simple by wanting to use the Khajiit's racial Night-Eye ability for seeing in the dark. My birthsign choice was similarly simple: The Thief gives me a bonus to 3 of my top 4 attributes. So putting it all together, I arrived at this:

  • Race: Khajiit
  • Birthsign: The Thief
  • Custom Class Specialization: Stealth
  • Custom Class Favored Attributes: Endurance and Luck
  • Custom Class Major Skills: Blunt, Conjuration, Destruction, Marksmanship, Athletics, Heavy Armor, and Illusion
  • Leveling Order: Agility, Speed, Endurance, Luck, Strength, Intelligence, Willpower, and Personality

If you load Nullis' data and switch to New Character, you'll see these exact values which yield the following Analysis:

  • Max Level: 44 (all attributes reached 100)
  • Max Health: 588 (Endurance maxed at level 14)
  • Max Magicka: 200 (at level 26)
  • Max Encumbrance: 500 (at level 23)
  • Spare Skill Points per Level: 3.47 and higher

The max level is fairly low (many character configurations max at high 40's/low 50's), but since anything over 40 is largely meaningless, this keeps the excess to a minimum. All attributes get maxed at 100, so this character will reach the maximum possible potency. Since Endurance gets max'ed fairly early, Health is solid. And with over 3 Spare Skill Points per Level for every attribute, I don't have to sweat extraneous skillups. Overall, a solid design that should lead to a fun gameplay experience with more than enough character potency.