This just occured to me when reading through a previous thread about disenchanting items without destroying the item.

As a fair amount of you already know, the trick to dual enchanting an item was learned by a mage who nearly killed an unnamed dragon, he then parlayed with that dragon and the dragon gave the knowledge to that mage.

My idea is this, and admittadly this would most likely be better for a modding idea thread but i hope bethesda see's this. when fighting dragons, have a 1% or so chance that the dragon will disengage from combat when it's health reaches a certain point, say 5% or less. maybe to make it better, have it be only ancient dragons and above that are capable of this. but when a dragon's health reaches 5% or less, this dice roll takes effect, if the dragon hits the 1% chance, it will force your character into a dialog option, asking if you will let it go, if it gives you something. if you accept you can choose either an item from it's hoard (random ebony or piece of armor or max enchantment jewelry) or a gift of knowledge.

as for options for the gift of knowledge, i would suggest make it racial benefits. each race have several different passives they may randomly recieve. unsure as to what these may be, but it will be similar to prowler's profit or agent of mara benefits.

should you choose to let the dragon live, you will be unable to kill the dragon even if you tried and it would fly off and later be deleted, to try and avoid any bugs it may cause coming across that dragon again.

maybe this will help stem the huge flow of dragon souls you recieve/have extra, add something that actually makes coming across dragons more exciting,

and now... for discussion. feel free to throw the dirt at me, as i am certain the only way this would get into skyrim(or if something similar already is) then it will be a mod. but i am interested in hearing what everyone else thinks about this idea.