Hello everybody.
I have absolutely no experience with modding games, and don't really plan on ever having any. However, I am an avid supporter of the modding community. I followed the mod scene with Oblivion, and had tonnes of mods for Morrowind too, but I never really knew what mods NOT to expect, because I never knew what restrictions modders had. I was wondering if anybody could tell me what the Creation Kit cannot do. I know it doesn't let you create new skills, for example. But what else will I never find while browsing through the Steam Workshop or Skyrim Nexus?
Also, as a little side note, does anybody know of a mod that activates dragon spawns so that I don't have to go and do the first part of the main quest with all my characters? Or maybe this is possible through a simple console command?

Thanks for you help everybody.

with enough skills u can do just about anything, i think the user is more limited rather than the CK

im no pro modder but.. the only reason i cant do things is coz i dont know how not that it cant be done.

I agree with Under7ow. I am repeatedly amazed by both others and myself with what we are able to do with this tool. With enough ingenuity, creativity and mastery of the tools, you can do damn near anything.

Wow, that's pretty exciting. I look forward to a prosperous life downloading previously impossible mods! Thanks a lot.

However, does anybody know of that dragon-activating mod?

Well it can't cook dinner for me, at least not yet....

The only limitations really are if you need to change the engine. Things like new skills are out of the question, but almost everything about the existing skills are customizable.

Define Skills? Cause I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to create things like spells, shouts, or perks that are 100% genuine. Sure, some things do require way more work and finesse then they should, but in the end it's still possible.

I think he/she means skills like Lockpicking, One-Handed, Two-Handed, etc.

Also: You can't edit anything hardcoded in the engine, and a decent amount of subrecords can't be edited (or even retrieved).

Hmmm why not?
As we can obviously edit the perk tree we should be able to add or replace stuff there and make scripts that fetch information from our new/modified perk tree to create novel skills.
I realize that we at the moment cant add new trees with the ck but it can be scripted. you could also make an existing tree branch an extra time at the bottom and use one tree for 2 skills and make that tree level slower.
So we have our communicator skill that is avalible from the start that allows you to phone Colonel roy, at skill level 10 we instead get a hold of Mr Ota and so on and these guys give you more and more relevant tips or more and more valuable missions. There you have your new skill.

If you approach it the same way you could even make a martial art skill that when different levels are reached boosts your unarmed damage and adds new unarmed fighting animations.

Lots of work but not really hard.

Because adding new skills requires adding a new Actor Value, something I've tried relentlessly to do and you can't do it. They're hard-coded into the game. And even if you did manage to add an actor value, you'd have to find a way to modify the Perk Tree UI too, which is flash, and we don't have the source for that.

Basically adding real skills, modifying anything that's hard coded (actor values, game settings, soul gems). Also a lot of graphical stuff as shown in the GameJam video we can't do without a lot of effort as we don't have access to the graphics engine. And while the scripting language is very flexible now, there are still some stuff you simply cannot do without SKSE (input boxes, buttonpresses etc.), and some stuff you simply cannot do at all.

I know this thread is dead, but I was pleasantly surprised when I booted up Skyrim today and found that the Unarmed combat mod I have has changed to make Unarmed a new skill. It seems anything is possible!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=7803

The author of that mod just renamed Pickpocketing to Unarmed, and moved the Pickpocketing perks into the Sneak skill tree.

Actually, this isn't a new perk tree. The author merged lockpicking with sneak, and then renamed the perk tree as Unarmed. It's worth noting that the underlying skill code is still called AVLockpicking. As SomeWelshGuy pointed out, the values are completely hard coded into the engine. I'm currently trying to work bowyery and fletching into the Archery skill tree, but this is just adding new perk points to an existing tree.

It seems everyone is doing that. At this rate, no perk tree mods are going to be compatible with eachother.