I've decided to keep this myself, since the birthsigns make more sense from a role playing POV.
For example, with other mods that change the Birthsigns the Warrior sign gives pluses to Strength and Endurance and the Thief sign to Speed and Agility. But with leveling mods like nGCD and Realistic Leveling and probably also vanilla, warriors need the Speed and Agility bonus far more then they need the extra Str and End which they get enough of as they level up anway. Same thing with thieves - they usually get enough Speed and Agility, but always suffer from low Str and End.
But with APB is actually makes sense to use the Birthsign that are supposed to be assoicated with your characters' class.

Exactly. The sign you choose should add more depth to your class, instead of just an enchant or some situational power that can only be used so often. I feel APB is on the way there.

This is, after all, a role playing game

Not to mention the Roughing It mod, where you just sleep on the ground (but risk vagrancy violations if seen by appropriate NPCs during the 12 second count down).

My first character in the game is a thief, which I tried to model after the one-and-only master, Garrett. I like some of the Serpent things but not the "evil" tag. The Thief should have some arrow skills for those not playing an assassin.

I use DR / bow sway/head bob mods, making shooting a bit harder. I toned down the defaults as they are unrealistic imo...your head doesn't move up and down that much when simply standing there breathing, and I doubt your aim moves all over the place as a novice to shooting a bow and arrow.

The mod sounds wonderful - however, I think you may have overlooked one of those "so incredibly obvious it sneaks right by you like a neon clown playing a punk polka" problems regarding the Lady and Serpent birthsigns.

Lady gives water breathing and 100% disease immunity, Serpent gives 100% poison immunity. An Argonian character starts with water breathing, 75% disease immunity, and 100% poison immunity. While Slither and poisoned arrows are probably the biggest draw of the Serpent and the regen and spell reflect are for the Lady, the simple fact is those signs are undeniably weaker for an Argonian - much as a sign that granted an automatic Night Eye effect would be less useful for a Khajiit, especially with the downsides those signs come with. Magicka and other "base stat and skill" bonuses are Ok with birthsigns, because they stack. After all, hitting Adrenaline Rush won't cap your stats until very late-game(especially if using something like Realistic Leveling), and an Altmer Atronach is always going to have +150 Magicka over one that isn't an Atronach, plus the unique scripted effects of each sign have no real map to any current game or race effect, so they're "pure bonus", or partially negated by them(best examples being Mage and Shadow - with the right equipment, all those negatives get washed away, and in the case of Shadow, the buffs stack if/when the tipping point is reached). But because stacking poison resist and water breathing does nothing for an Argonian, and stacking disease resist only matters for 25% of it, using those as bonuses might be a bad idea, as they make the sign significantly less attractive, especially as there's no equivalent current game function that can partially mitigate any of the sign's downsides. This is especially jarring for the Serpent, as the automatic mental leap there is "serpent = snake = lizard = lizardperson".

Not sure what you could change right offhand - is it possible to make those two signs race-sensitive so they give Argonians effects that aren't duplicative? IE, for everyone else, Lady is as listed - for an Argonian, the water breathing and disease resist get replaced on the fly with something else; maybe a water-speed movement boost, as Argonians are natural swimmers, plus a weaker effect to make up for the "wasted" 75% disease resist, maybe something to do with regeneration or a loosening of the weapon prohibition? Similar with Serpent, overwrite the poison immunity with something else - perhaps for Argonians allow "poison spit" on demand with a Fatigue cost, or the arrow poison chance is higher, or it also applies to melee weapons?

hi,

I've got some problems with the apprentice birthsign: when I chose it, all magic-related skills went to zero. I had to change my class to something without magic skills and then switch back to the caster class to get normal values. the other thing is as soon as I use up all my mana it instantly refills to 50% (I could cast a day without ever having to drink a potion) and sometimes when I cast a spell (e.g. fireball) nothing happens so that I have to cast it again. is that intended? and where can I find those reference books to increase my specialisation?

Hi,

First of all, I would like to say that I really love this mod. Sorry for my poor English below..

Here is some questions I wanna ask and some bug report (maybe).

Question:
How can I perform Thieve's Vault? I can't jump higher even I've crouched for 2 sec.

Bug report:
1) When I switch one birthsign to another birthsign, the stats remained.
e.g. When I switch from Tower to Apprentice, the armor rating increased remains unchange.

2) For Apprentice, the Int. and chosen skill can no longer be accumulated by reading books after loading a game but the Int. point and chosen skill point remained the updated stats.
e.g. I collect 8 books, both points increase 2 and let say 40->42 for Int. and 25->27 for skill. I could further increase points by collecting more books. After the game saved and load afterward, the Int. is still 42 and the skill is still 27, but I could not further increase points by collecting more books in anyway.

3) For Apprentice's Destruction: the fire ball do really split into two. However, the next spell become no ball(s). The next become two balls again. This occur alternately.

Suggestion:
Since I didn't apply to the actual combat, I have a thought that would Apprentice's Resilience be overpowered?

Looking forward to the update of this mod.
(Sigh.. the author seems no longer update this brilliant mod)

....he hasn't replied since then so wait and hope

A further thought on balance: The Lady and the Serpent signs also have a fairly heavy balance issue - unlike all the other signs, they close-off questlines. Specifically, the Lady cannot use the Arena(can't wear armor, so no Arena Raiment), cannot complete the Knights Of The Nine(cannot wear the Boots Of The Crusader, so cannot get the Mace Of The Crusader), and cannot complete the Dark Brotherhood(cannot wield the Langourwine Blade for one of the missions). In some ways, this is flavorful, and not excessively harmful. But for the Serpent...let's see. Cannot complete Nocturnal's Shrine quest(need to talk to a guard to get the topic to appear with Weeba-Na), cannot complete Sanguine's Shrine(need to talk to a guard to get access to the dinner), cannot join the Fighter's Guild(requires no bounty on you to join), cannot join the Mage's Guild(same as Fighter's Guild), cannot start Shrine of Hermaeus Mora(requires completing all other Daedric Shrines), and cannot complete Knights Of The Nine(bounty = Infamy = cannot wear the Crusader's gear). That's a LOT of game cut off for 10% chameleon when sneaking and 15% chance of poisoning arrows. As several others have said, a multiplier on any gained bounty may be the way to go, especially since losing the Mage's Guild cuts off spellmaking and crafting items for anyone who doesn't have Frostcrag Spire. For The Lady, it may be OK to leave it as-is - then again, KOTN is a lengthy piece of content to lose access to.

any new news?

I was hoping you were still working on this since you mentioned something earlier about the Thief sign you were still looking at.

I too am unemployed a long time. I hope you find something...SOMETHING...

Looks like Appler has moved on, but you never know people come and go and so he may yet return.

I am going to use this on my playthrough as a Breton Atronach. Mostly though for the challenge. Draining 1 magicka per second does seem a bit much but maybe only at level one with no magicka potions.

Looking over some of the other signs and bonuses though I must say that I'd wish for more work on this. Often I see Birthsign mods as just another take on small bonuses to take when creating a new character instead of integral parts of a character than are always present. So what I'd wish for is this approach of passive powers being set to scale with the character some.

Things like percentage bonuses and resistances versus set in stone point bonuses and resistance.

Also support for more lore centric powers ... powers that show themselves under certain conditions, etc.

Natively NPCs don't have birthsigns so it would be really awesome to also integrate the ideas in another mod (which I lost the link for) where NPCs use racial powers more often (or was it birthsigns) anyway I think the mechanics of it were to assign tokens to NPCs that would then give them the powers. With this then they would just get the bonuses.

I may have other ideas as I ponder, but thanks for this.

These look great! I just downloaded them. They look really fun to roleplay. You should make some more that aren't based on vanilla birth signs. I think I'm going to have to start a new character for this, but I can't decide weither to be a mage under the sign of the Lady or a thief under the sign of the, er, Thief.

I guess I should report a mod conflict here too.

the issue with doing the above is that it causes disturbance with other mods.

If the Atronach variety menu were delayed then that would help greatly or if there were a console command other than those two to start it with a relatively new game then even better.

Hmm...try starting the game with only Start Choices installed. Then install Appler's and open the chargen menu from the console: showracemu

That is exactly what I've been doing as described in the ROS thread and what is causing ROS to crash in exit (after doing that).

It is the only way I've found to use APB and Start Choices at the same time and so I need an alternate way of kick starting either APB if activated later or restarting Start Choices if cut off by APB.

Damned, I'm tempted to use this mod after all, as the Serpent sign would fit so beautifully for my new character. I'm even tempted to call him Snake Plissken.
But it means never being able to speak to a guard without being arrested/fined and you can never get, not even by slithering your way, to the top of the Mages Guild, at least not if using Choices&Consequences.
Decisions, decisions...

I was in pm's with Tejon about what to use since reading the Thief here and his I was comparing...Here > It seems the Thief run speed could be used as an always-on buff. Just have a little bounty on you and if near guards in a city (according to the readme), you will run faster. I am not sure how far 3,000 is though.
Having the "vault" ability seems to negate having to rely on acrobatics too.

I haven't tried the mod yet so I can only comment from reading the text.

3000 units is about halfway from the sewer exit to Vilverin. It's also about half of one of the outer districts of the Imperial City. Since there's guards at both ends of most districts I'm guessing that this effect would probably be active wherever you went in the IC.

No idea what Vilverin is but if as you say it is like in IC then that is why I think the Flight of the Magpie might need some adjusting.

Vilverin is the dungeon directly in front of you when you exit the tutorial. It is the first dungeon most players experience.

Except for me if you mean those ruins across the water from the dock. Always seems to be guys in black that one/two shot me using TIE.

Heh, can't even join the Mages Guild with the Serpent Sign.
It's gonna be a challenging game...

Unfortunately this mod may not see any changes judging by no response yet.

You might want to check out class advantages - there is some great ideas in that mod and ideas that could give very similar benefits to the serpent here.

I'm thinking of going with RBP with this, Class Advantages, and Alt Magick System for a very different take on the Atronach experience.

With this the atronach is essentially a sponge that can blow up and release magickal energy. With RBP and a dark elf then the magicka drain not so harsh. Then Class advantages a few powers to bolster magicka and even kick start it by taking fatigue away. Then Alt magick to greatly temper spell availability - wish that Revolution09 would come back though - Alt Magick needs attention.

Hi again

Well I may not be using this mod after all.

Chose the atronach sign just because I thought this was one of the few versions of this sign that felt right.

But I don't think it is working right. If ever my character sleeps or waits then he has 100% magicka again.

Then there are these console errors:
Error in script d0003df0
Call stack is corrupted on return from call to function script
Error in script d0003df0
Call stack is corrupted on return from call to function script

Apparently d0003df0 is the script IsSummon - which I guess tells of the creature is summoned so that magicka can be siphoned.
Not sure why it is failing scripts make my brain hurt. Does it only work with vanilla creatures? These were from WAC, but I also noticed that Si oriented summons from LAME do not give magicka either.

Maybe also from using OBSE19?

I'm posting these in the hopes that you will return and see them.

OBSE should be backwards compatible, but you could try to open the mod in the CS (open OBSE version from Wrye Bash) and recompile the scipts of the mod and see if that helps.

Apart from that it sound like you're trying to cram in too much in your game that affects your character, much of it new and untested stuff still in Beta. I really liked the idea of Class Advantages, but decided to keep things simpler and less experimental, but just like Luke Skywalker you are always looking away...to the future, to the horizon. :nerd: :grad: