I have no programming experience but I had an idea that I thought might be interesting. I'm hoping just to put it out there and see if someone thinks it would be possible.

The idea would be that while visiting the Greybeards you come upon an alter. At this alter, the dragonborn has the ability to create their own shouts. Of course your creation would based on the words you have learned and the amount of dragon souls you have available. Perhaps gold would also play a part since I always believe making currency more useful is never a bad thing.

Currently the game game allows for each shout to contain three words, but those words really just enhance the same shout. But at this alter, similar to the spell creation system in Oblivion, you could create a shout with whatever desired effects you wanted.

For example, if you could put the words FEIM + HAAL + YOL together in a single shout you would have a shout that would allow you to be invincible (FEIM), Disarm your opponent (HAAL), and Create fire damage (YOL), all at once. Thus, through this idea, gamers would have the ability to create their own shouts, and tailor them to the skills they wish to use.

Any thoughts to doing something like this?

Even if folks believe this may be a poor use of a mod, how difficult would it be to learn the programming needed to create something like this?

I certainly do not mean to demean any person with great programming skills that someone with no experience could come in right away and begin programming. But modding is something I've always wished to try, but would a project with this scope be a bad place to start?

I figure there are already files of alters that can be reused as the Altery of Dragon Shout Creation. The animations for each shout also already exists so I wouldn't have to recreate any of that either. It's simply putting the active consequence of each word together to form the final shout. How you do that in code is beyond me, but I'd live to learn it and give it a try.

I'm afraid that yes, this mod is of a very large scope even for an experienced modder (not that I am one). You should at the very least wait until the Creation Kit comes out before giving this a try. I'd encourage trying a much smaller mod first. Like creating a single premade mixed shout. For example, you could start by making an Unrelenting Force/Whirlwind Sprint (Unrelenting Sprint?)