Something tell me that leveling up is never intended by the original game developers/ director.
For example,
There are probably more examples that hint to this.
Im curious to know what other people think.
I am playtesting a lvl 1 character atm, im curious to see how it affects gameplay.
I will probably post a build after a while of testing, will probably be a dragon that has been cursed to live in a frail human body. "The Downcasted" or "The Cursed Dova"
I already figured out that the max enchanting bonus for alchemy/enchanting is 12%, asuming you are using shallow regent black book, ahzidal armor and falmer helmet + circlet.
which seems to be a fair % because it does not allow for the broken free magic casting, but can still be usefull for various skills.
And because skills can still increase without leveling up, it follows the tradional morrowind mechanic of learning by doing.
dawnguard does not require any lvl, all you have to do is walk to the dawnguard fort.
But some other quests do have hard lvl requirements, but it makes sense that a Dova cast down from the heavens to live as a frail human, would not get much help from aedra daedra in the first place so from a lore point of view that wont be a problem.
Dragon priest lairs are minimum loot lvl24 i think, some are respawning too. i got a + 25% bow enchantment once on some dwarven gauntlets.
But most dungeons have low minimum levels, so ul be fighting mostly lvl 9 max enemies, instead the dragonborn will become more powerfull as his skills raise, like armor/sneak/magicskills, combined with magic reducing gear like dragon priest masks+ robes you can still cast master level spells.
Fists will help alot because of the kajit bonus + gloves from stonefist + vampire ring.
Level 1 characters have been done before.
Im half way in the game and its actually kinda easy, none of the enemies level up with you, so im only getting more powerfull.
They key is in the equipment you wear, you can do pretty much anything, but you will need to swap to that specific gear, which does help immersion. Vokun, necromancer amulet, secret of arcana is good combo, so is Vampirism + schrouded clothes.
The hardest part is probly getting good armor rating, since it requires all 3 enchanting+alchemy+smithing skills to be high lvl, and even then u need good base pieces and combine it with ebonyflesh+dragonaspect+lordstone