[WiPz?] Changing the base spell costs : III

» Tue May 17, 2011 11:51 am

I've been pondering this for a while. I know there are other mods out there that do the same thing, like Wakim's mods, but of course I wanted to do it my way...

I'm actually satisfied with the costs for most summons, they do depend on creature attack strength (and taking in to consideration spells/abilities). But, feel free to let me know if, in your experience (since I have no experience with Conjuration spells) a cost is too high or too low with respect to the combat value of the summoned creature. I did try to match the combat value of the Bear, Wolf, and Fabricant to lesser daedra/undead of similar attack strengths.

In fact, the only spells I am familiar with casting are Restoration spells, since that was a skill my Knight had. Most of my sense of "too much!" or "too little!" comes from looking at spell costs when creating spells in the CS.

Pleeeeeease give me feedback! :sorcerer:

Some feature:
damage x = restore x
drain x = fortify x
weakness to x = resist x
affect creature/humanoid = turn undead = all equal
absorb = drain (or damage) + fortify (or restore)
open = lock
affect fatigue = 1/2 * affect health or magicka (simply because characters tends to have waaaay more fatigue than hp and mp)

Let me know what you think of this:

Spoiler

Burden = 0.5 = Feather = 0.25 * (cost of fortify attribute)
Fire Shield = 2.5 = Frost Shield = Lightning Shield = (cost of resist element) + (0.1 * (cost of element damage)) //0.1 because 1pt damage per 10pts element shield
Jump = 4 = 2 * (fortify skill) //jump is so much more potent than just increasing your acrobatics
Levitate = 3 (unchanged)
Lock = 16 = Open
Shield = 2 (unchanged)
Slowfall = 1 (dec. from 3) //not much use as a spell, seemed to expensive for its value
Swift Swim = 0.5 = 0.25 * (cost for fortify attribute [speed])
Water Breathing = 1.5 = 0.5 * (cost of water walking)
Water Walking = 3 (unchanged)
Bound [daedric item] = 4 (inc. from 2)
Command Creature = 10 (dec. from 15)
Command Humanoid = 10 (dec. from 15)
Summon Ancestral Ghost = 7 (unchanged)
Summon Bonelord = 25 (unchanged)
Summon Bonewalker = 13 (unchanged)
Summon Bonewolf = 30 (unchanged)
Summon Centurion Sphere = 25 (unchanged)
Summon Clannfear = 22 (unchanged)
Summon Daedroth = 32 (unchanged)
Summon Dremora = 28 (unchanged)
Summon Flame Atronach = 23 (unchanged)
Summon Frost Atronach = 27 = Call Bear
Summon Golden Saint = 55 (unchanged)
Summon Greater Bonewalker = 15 (unchanged)
Summon Hunger = 29 = Summon Fabricant
Summon Scamp = 12 = Call Wolf
Summon Skeletal Minion = 13 (unchanged)
Summon Storm Atronach = 38 (unchanged)
Summon Winged Twilight = 52 (unchanged)
Corprus = 2500 (unchanged)
Damage Attribute = 8 (unchanged)
Damage Fatigue = 3 = 0.5 * (cost of damage health)
Damage Health = 6 = (cost of restore health)
Damage Magicka = 4.5 = 0.5 * (cost of damage health)
Damage Skill = 8 = (cost of restore skill)
Disintegrate Armor = 3 (dec from 6)
Disintegrate Weapon = 3 (dec. from 6)
Drain Attribute = 2 = (cost of fortify attribute)
Drain Fatigue = 1 = 0.5 * (cost of drain health)
Drain Health = 2 = (cost of fortify health)
Drain Magicka = 1.5 = 0.75 * (cost of damage health)
Drain Skill = 2 = (cost of fortify skill)
Fire Damage = 5 (unchanged)
Frost Damage = 5 (unchanged)
Poison = 5 (dec. from 9)
Shock Damage = 5 (dec. from 7)
Stunted Magicka = 1 (unchanged)
Sun Damage = 1 (unchanged)
Vampirism = 5 (unchanged)
Weakness to Blight Disease = 5 = (cost of resist blight)
Weakness to Common Disease = 2 = (cost of resist common disease)
Weakness to Corprus Disease = 5 = (cost of resist corprus disease)
Weakness to Fire = 2 = (cost of resist fire)
Weakness to Frost = 2 = (cost of resist frost)
Weakness to Magicka = 2 = (cost of resist magicka)
Weakness to Poison = 2 = (cost of resist poison)
Weakness to Normal Weapons = 2 = (cost of resist normal weapons)
Weakness to Shock = 2 = (cost of resist shock)
Blind = 1 = Sanctuary // they are kind of like opposites...
Sound = 0.5 = 0.5 * (cost of blind)
Calm Creature = 1 = Calm Humanoid = Turn Undead = Demoralize Creature = Demoralize Humanoid = Frenzy Creature = Frenzy Humanoid = Rally Creature = Rally Humanoid
Chameleon = 1.5 = 1.5 * (cost of Sanctuary)
Charm = 5 (unchanged)
Invisibility = 30 (inc. from 20)
Light = 0.1 = 0.5 * (cost of Night Eye)
Night Eye = 0.2 (unchanged)
Paralyze = 40 (unchanged)
Silence = 20 (dec. from 40)
Absorb Attribute = 4 = (cost of Drain Attribute) + (cost of Fortify Attribute)
Absorb Fatigue = 5 = (cost of damage fatigue) + (cost of restore fatigue)
Absorb Health = 10 = (cost of damage health) + (cost of restore health)
Absorb Magicka = 10 = (cost of damage magicka) + (cost of restore magicka)
Absorb Skill = 4 = (cost of drain skill) + (cost of fortify skill)
Almsivi Intervention = 150 = Divine Intervention = Mark = Recall
Detect Animal = 0.75 = Detect Animal = Detect Enchantment
Dispel = 5 (unchanged)
Reflect = 12 = (sum of costs of resist fire, frost, shock, poison, magicka, and paralysis)
Soul Trap = 6 (inc. from 1)
Spell Absorption = 10 = cost of absorb magicka
Telekinesis = 1 (unchanged)
Cure Blight Diseas = 2000 (unchanged)
Cure Common Disease = 300 (unchanged)
Cure Corprus Disease = 2500 (unchanged)
Cure Paralyzation = 100 (unchanged)
Cure Poison = 100 (unchanged)
Fortify Attack = 3 = (cost of fortify skill) + (cost of sanctuary) //fortify melee weapon skill + increase chance to hit (= sanctuary's 'chance to miss')
Fortify Attribute = 2 = Fortify Skill
Fortify Fatigue = 1 = 0.5 * (cost of fortify health)
Fortify Health = 2 = Fortify Magicka
Fortify Maximum Magicka = 4 (unchanged)
Remove Curse = 15 (unchanged)
Resist Blight Disease = 5 (unchanged)
Resist Common Disease = 2 (unchanged)
Resist Corprus Disease = 5 (unchanged)
Resist Fire = 2 (unchanged)
Resist Frost = 2 (unchanged)
Resist Magicka = 2 (unchanged)
Resist Normal Weapons = 2 (dec. from 5)
Resist Paralysis = 2 (inc. from 0.2)
Resist Poison = 2 (unchanged)
Resist Shock = 2 (unchanged)
Restore Attribute = 8 = restore skill
Restore Fatigue = 3 = 0.5 * (cost of restore health)
Restore Health = 6
Restore Magicka = 4.5 = 0.5 * (cost of restore health)

» Tue May 17, 2011 4:48 am

Recently, I went and balanced all the spell effects and vanilla spells to my taste. I could have used BTB's mod, but we each have our own idea of what is balanced and what is not. It's interesting to see how you changed the different values.

Now, for some feedback...

I see you have set all damaging spell effects to 5. One problem may surface ingame. Due to the resistances of most enemies, there will be no reason to use anything but Damage Health and Shock. (that's my powergamer half talking here

)

In my case, I lowered Burden to a quarter of its vanilla value. My idea was to make it a valid alternative to Damage Strength. Otherwise, it's just a time limited, weaker version of DS that doesn't affect the enemy's damage. Also, lowering this value gives more weight to the changes of BTB's alchemy mod. (potion side-effects)

Disintegrate Weapon. A powerful version of this spell can range from 50 to 100 pts. The problem is, most weapons have durability ranging from 800 to several thousands! So, if you want to slice and dice the value of this spell effect, I say go all out.

The next one depends on how you want to balance it. If you compare Open to Security, the Security skill is at a serious disadvantage. If I remember correctly, at the vanilla value, you can cast an Open 100pts around lvl 45 of Alteration without much problem. Both to give Security a chance and the Open spell effect a smoother progression, I increased its value to 16. (Can cast open 100pts at Alteration lvl80) But I realize not everyone will agree with me on this one. ^^

I could continue like that for a while, but I'll stop here for now.
Good luck on your balancing!

» Tue May 17, 2011 6:17 am

Thank you for the feedback, your arguments make a lot of sense. Like I've mentioned before, I don't have a whole lot of experience with spellcasting characters. I like your ideas about reducing burden - and I think the same could be said of feather, since, although it increases encumbrance like Strength, it doesn't affect combat.

You are right, disintegrate should definitely be lower since the health of armor and weapons can get very high. What would be a balanced cost, in your experience? Halving the vanilla cost?

I had actually considered increasing the cost of open, but I wasn't sure... thank you for the info about alteration skill level and achievable open magnitude. From what you say, 16 seems like it make Open not the easy-route-out of using Security, and increase the usefulness of those Open Lock spells. :nod:

Is shock more favored because fewer creatures have resistances to it? Should I decrease elemental damage to, say, 3pts, or leave them the same and instead increase damage health to a higher cost? Should drain health also cost more? :unsure: What about fortify and restore health? Should those costs increase, too?

Please, do continue, I appreciate your suggestions and feedback a lot! I will update the Opening Post soon with the new values.

EDIT: Okay, I think I updated everything. I made anything that affects magicka to be 75% of the cost of affecting health. I also put damage health at 6 and elemental damage at 5. Is that a big enough difference? Restore health is now also 6.

» Tue May 17, 2011 11:42 am

Thank you for the feedback, your arguments make a lot of sense. Like I've mentioned before, I don't have a whole lot of experience with spellcasting characters. I like your ideas about reducing burden - and I think the same could be said of feather, since, although it increases encumbrance like Strength, it doesn't affect combat.

Be careful with feather though. If you go too low, the potions you make with Alchemy will get crazy values. I wouldn't advice anything below 0.30 for feather.

You are right, disintegrate should definitely be lower since the health of armor and weapons can get very high. What would be a balanced cost, in your experience? Halving the vanilla cost?

For weapons I set it to 1.50, but 2.00 would probably be good enough. I used a slightly lower cost to encourage myself to use it more, instead of just zapping my targets. Armors don't have as much health, so 4.00 or 5.00 is quite satisfying in my experience.

I had actually considered increasing the cost of open, but I wasn't sure... thank you for the info about alteration skill level and achievable open magnitude. From what you say, 16 seems like it make Open not the easy-route-out of using Security, and increase the usefulness of those Open Lock spells. :nod:

Glad I could help.

Is shock more favored because fewer creatures have resistances to it? Should I decrease elemental damage to, say, 3pts, or leave them the same and instead increase damage health to a higher cost? Should drain health also cost more? :unsure: What about fortify and restore health? Should those costs increase, too?

Yeah, very few enemies resist shock or pure magic. In the case of shock damage, we got the storm atronach and...hum, the Nords? Anyway, not many. So I always keep the cost of Shock higher than the other elements. Damage health, I left untouched. Simply because you can almost completely disregard resistances when you use it. I mean, apart from Bretons (and Orcs to a lesser degree), pure magic resistance is pretty rare, so I think it's okay if it cost a lot more than the others. Drain Health, I'm still experimenting with. I'm trying to convert it to be used with 1sec duration. That way, it can only be used as a finishing blow. But it's still giving me trouble. For Restore Health and Fortify, it depends on the potential you want to keep for constant effect enchantments (which also depends on if you have equipment mods installed), so I can only say I left mine vanilla.

Please, do continue, I appreciate your suggestions and feedback a lot! I will update the Opening Post soon with the new values.

EDIT: Okay, I think I updated everything. I made anything that affects magicka to be 75% of the cost of affecting health. I also put damage health at 6 and elemental damage at 5. Is that a big enough difference? Restore health is now also 6.

Concerning the Magicka spells, you might want to give a bigger advantage to your Drain, since it's only temporary. Also, consider that most NPCs on Vvardenfell have relatively small magicka reserve. With a Damage Magicka value like this one, I think you could easily empty most opponents magicka in two shots (medium cost spell).

» Tue May 17, 2011 7:56 am

Again, thank you for your insight.

I've revised the spell costs as follows:

Spoiler

"SPELL NAME":"COST"
"Burden":0.5
"Feather":0.5
"Fire Shield":2.5
"Frost Shield":2.5
"Jump":4
"Levitate":3
"Lightning Shield":2.5
"Lock":16
"Open":16
"Shield":2
"Slowfall":1
"Swift Swim":0.5
"Water Breathing":1.5
"Water Walking":3
"Bound Battle Axe":4
"Bound Boots":4
"Bound Cuirass":4
"Bound Dagger":4
"Bound Gloves":4
"Bound Helm":4
"Bound Longbow":4
"Bound Longsword":4
"Bound Mace":4
"Bound Shield":4
"Bound Spear":4
"Call Bear":27
"Call Wolf":12
"Command Creature":10
"Command Humanoid":10
"Summon Ancestral Ghost":7
"Summon Bonelord":25
"Summon Bonewalker":13
"Summon Bonewolf":30
"Summon Centurion Sphere":25
"Summon Clannfear":22
"Summon Daedroth":32
"Summon Dremora":28
"Summon Fabricant":29
"Summon Flame Atronach":23
"Summon Frost Atronach":27
"Summon Golden Saint":55
"Summon Greater Bonewalker":15
"Summon Hunger":29
"Summon Scamp":12
"Summon Skeletal Minion":13
"Summon Storm Atronach":38
"Summon Winged Twilight":52
"Turn Undead":1
"Corprus":2500
"Damage Attribute":8
"Damage Fatigue":4
"Damage Health":8
"Damage Magicka":8
"Damage Skill":8
"Disintegrate Armor":4
"Disintegrate Weapon":2
"Drain Attribute":2
"Drain Fatigue":0.5
"Drain Health":2
"Drain Magicka":2
"Drain Skill":2
"Fire Damage":5
"Frost Damage":5
"Poison":5
"Shock Damage":5
"Stunted Magicka":1
"Sun Damage":1
"Vampirism":5
"Weakness to Blight Disease":5
"Weakness to Common Disease":2
"Weakness to Corprus Disease":5
"Weakness to Fire":2
"Weakness to Frost":2
"Weakness to Magicka":2
"Weakness to Poison":2
"Weakness to Normal Weapons":2
"Weakness to Shock":2
"Blind":1
"Calm Creature":1
"Calm Humanoid":1
"Chameleon":1.5
"Charm":5
"Demoralize Creature":1
"Demoralize Humanoid":1
"Frenzy Creature":1
"Frenzy Humanoid":1
"Invisibility":30
"Light":0.1
"Night Eye":0.2
"Paralyze":40
"Rally Creature":1
"Rally Humanoid":1
"Sanctuary":1
"Silence":20
"Sound":0.5
"Absorb Attribute":3
"Absorb Fatigue":3.75
"Absorb Health":9
"Absorb Magicka":9
"Absorb Skill":3
"Almsivi Intervention":150
"Detect Animal":0.75
"Detect Enchantment":0.75
"Detect Key":0.75
"Dispel":5
"Divine Intervention":150
"Mark":150
"Recall":150
"Reflect":12
"Soul Trap":6
"Spell Absorption":9
"Telekinesis":1
"Cure Blight Diseas":2000
"Cure Common Disease":300
"Cure Corprus Disease":2500
"Cure Paralyzation":100
"Cure Poison":100
"Fortify Attack":3
"Fortify Attribute":2
"Fortify Fatigue":0.5
"Fortify Health":2
"Fortify Magicka":2
"Fortify Maximum Magicka":4
"Fortify Skill":2
"Remove Curse":15
"Resist Blight Disease":5
"Resist Common Disease":2
"Resist Corprus Disease":5
"Resist Fire":2
"Resist Frost":2
"Resist Magicka":2
"Resist Normal Weapons":2
"Resist Paralysis":2
"Resist Poison":2
"Resist Shock":2
"Restore Attribute":4
"Restore Fatigue":1
"Restore Health":4
"Restore Magicka":4
"Restore Skill":4

Sorry for the different format, I'm working in a spreadsheet and I exported as a .txt document to copy and paste into this post.

I increased the cost of damage health. I changed my mind about 'affect magicka', 'affect skill', and 'affect attribute' costs, I put them back to be all about equal. I made 'affect fatigue' 25% of 'affect health' - is that too low? Should the number be higher? Let me know if I'm still missing the mark with the health/magicka/attribute/skill/fatigue stuff. I also made it so that the Absorb spells are 75% of the sum of the destruction and restoration components - that way, there's an incentive to use the mysticism spell.

I do understand that resist magicka and resist shock are not common in the vanilla game. My thoughts are that even though this is true, it doesn't necessarily make shock damage more effective than the other elementals if frost and fire are wielded against enemies that have weaknesses to those elements (and from a cursory glance at the creature properties, it seems some certain creatures can have even 50% or greater weakness to fire and frost). On the one hand, I feel all the elements should be the same, regardless of whether or not the creatures in the vanilla game are resistant or no. On the other hand, I hear what you are saying, shock is less likely to encounter any resistances, and thus is more "useful" on average than fire and frost and poison.

Clearly I must go and edit the creatures to make some of them resistant to shock and magicka. :user:

What are your thoughts on the Bound Items costs? I remember thinking that it seemed very easy to make a cheap "bound item" spell that lasted for a very long duration. But, I could be misremembering.

As for fortify attribute (etc.), I think that 100 Restoration should allow for at most fortify 20pts for 60sec duration (40pts for 30sec). Does that seem fair, or am I being stingy? In the vanilla game, it seemed crazy easy to buff up my attributes to godly levels, but I have little experience with how great a fortify magnitude could be placed on an item as a Constant Effect. It feels like the Helm of Oreyn Bearclaw has too much fortify (40 AGI and 40 END), and that 25/25 should be the "epic" level kind of CE enchantment. I also haven't played with an attribute uncapper, so I'm not sure how that changes the fortify dynamic/usefulness. What are your thoughts? What have you found to be a good balance?

» Tue May 17, 2011 7:00 am

Again, thank you for your insight.

You're quite welcome. I enjoy discussing things related to balancing.

Sorry for the different format, I'm working in a spreadsheet and I exported as a .txt document to copy and paste into this post.

That's ok. You should have seen my spreadsheet when I balanced all the throwing weapons. Even in Excel, it was a real mess. >.>

I increased the cost of damage health. I changed my mind about 'affect magicka', 'affect skill', and 'affect attribute' costs, I put them back to be all about equal. I made 'affect fatigue' 25% of 'affect health' - is that too low? Should the number be higher? Let me know if I'm still missing the mark with the health/magicka/attribute/skill/fatigue stuff. I also made it so that the Absorb spells are 75% of the sum of the destruction and restoration components - that way, there's an incentive to use the mysticism spell.

The way I rank the spell costs: Absorb > Damage > Drain.
I tend to be harsher with Absorb spells, since it's like a 2 in 1 spell. That's why I increased the value of Absorb Health & Fatigue (and didn't lower the others). You might be surprised about Absorb Fatigue, but a lot of the NPCs in Morrowind don't even have 200 fatigue, let alone 300, so a spell like AF is pretty devastating. On the other hand, most creatures have very high fatigue (400 or more!), so I guess it's a matter of preference in this case.

I do understand that resist magicka and resist shock are not common in the vanilla game. My thoughts are that even though this is true, it doesn't necessarily make shock damage more effective than the other elementals if frost and fire are wielded against enemies that have weaknesses to those elements (and from a cursory glance at the creature properties, it seems some certain creatures can have even 50% or greater weakness to fire and frost). On the one hand, I feel all the elements should be the same, regardless of whether or not the creatures in the vanilla game are resistant or no. On the other hand, I hear what you are saying, shock is less likely to encounter any resistances, and thus is more "useful" on average than fire and frost and poison.

Clearly I must go and edit the creatures to make some of them resistant to shock and magicka. :user:

I share that feeling about the elements, but the advantage of shock on fire is so absolute that we just can't avoid taking it in consideration. The fact that the elements don't have any special side-effect (like freezing or burning over time) makes it even worse. Ultimately, it's one of my goals to adjust the resistances of every creatures in the game so shock and pure magic don't have such an edge and reduce them back closer to the others. But that's yet to come.

What are your thoughts on the Bound Items costs? I remember thinking that it seemed very easy to make a cheap "bound item" spell that lasted for a very long duration. But, I could be misremembering.

I very rarely use bound equipment. It's just not in my gaming habits for some reason... But looking back at Gix's LP I think you're right, the cost of his bound dagger seemed a bit low.

As for fortify attribute (etc.), I think that 100 Restoration should allow for at most fortify 20pts for 60sec duration (40pts for 30sec). Does that seem fair, or am I being stingy? In the vanilla game, it seemed crazy easy to buff up my attributes to godly levels, but I have little experience with how great a fortify magnitude could be placed on an item as a Constant Effect. It feels like the Helm of Oreyn Bearclaw has too much fortify (40 AGI and 40 END), and that 25/25 should be the "epic" level kind of CE enchantment. I also haven't played with an attribute uncapper, so I'm not sure how that changes the fortify dynamic/usefulness. What are your thoughts? What have you found to be a good balance?

HOLY S...hum, I mean, this Helm of Oreyn Bearclaw sure has a powerful enchantment. I agree, it's a bit overboard. A value of 25/25 sounds good. When I started modding, I originally reduced the value of Fortify spells. I wanted bigger constant enchantments, but I quickly saw that it was a mistake. It was way too easy to create super powerful enchantments (Constant Fortify Strength 1-39, anyone?). Since then, I changed it back to vanilla value. Due to my modding, my last high level character was quite a while ago so I didn't have much opportunity to create constant effects. I still have plenty of testing to do on fortify effects. Anyway, your Fortify magnitudes/durations seem fair, although a bit strict for my tastes, but still fair. Also, I never used an uncapper in Morrowind.

One thing I forgot to mention: Concerning the elemental shields, you can modify their damage per point by tweaking the GMST 'fElementalShieldMult'.
By default, the shields only hit enemies for 1 damage per 10pts of shield. Not exactly useful. But once increased, it could open new combat tactics.

Woo! That one took me a while to write. Gotta go now.

» Tue May 17, 2011 12:33 pm

As for fortify attribute (etc.), I think that 100 Restoration should allow for at most fortify 20pts for 60sec duration (40pts for 30sec). Does that seem fair, or am I being stingy? In the vanilla game, it seemed crazy easy to buff up my attributes to godly levels, but I have little experience with how great a fortify magnitude could be placed on an item as a Constant Effect. It feels like the Helm of Oreyn Bearclaw has too much fortify (40 AGI and 40 END), and that 25/25 should be the "epic" level kind of CE enchantment. I also haven't played with an attribute uncapper, so I'm not sure how that changes the fortify dynamic/usefulness. What are your thoughts? What have you found to be a good balance?

The more you play with spell effects, the more you'll realize that it's very difficult, if not impossible to prevent insane enchantments in many cases through manipulation of the spell cost alone. It's why my mod disables spellmaking and/or enchanting for certain effects and disables constant effect enchantments altogether.

» Tue May 17, 2011 3:14 am

This isn't quite a precise science. In order to determine some spell costs, I'm going to try using the spell cost formula and put in weak/moderate/strong/powerful spells (magnitude, area, duration) and look at the cost, I'd then adjust the cost to fit in a spell cost range that would be castable. For example, disintegrate armor vanilla cost is really high, it would cost several hundred magicka for a spell that wouldn't really have much impact on mid to upper range armors. I would tweak the base cost (which is part of the cost calculation) to bring the cast cost into an appropriate range.So, in a way, I'm working backwards.

But my problem is that I don't know how much magicka spellcasters tend to have available to them.How much magicka do spellcaster characters tend to get? Let's say, by the time your Major Skills magic school skills are between levels 80 to 100.

I need to get an idea of how much magicka certain spells should cost. For instance, a really powerful spell should only be castable once using the PC's own magicka reserves. Put it another way: what's the most expensive spell you've had to cast? 100 magicka? Would you be able to cast something that costs 300 magicka?

please list value ranges for the following:
- weak spell, only useful against weak creatures/as a buff at low character levels
- moderate spell: useful against common enemies (like nix hounds, kagouti)/a buff that gives you a bit of a boost
- strong spell: useful against touch opponents like lesser daedra/a strong buff that gives you a distinct advantage
- powerful spell: takes out most low-level and mid-level creatures, damaging to powerful enemies like winged twilights and ascended sleepers/ spell effect that significantly lowers the victim's combat abilities/ buff that makes you almost super-human

EDIT: or make your own categories, mine were just arbitrary.

» Tue May 17, 2011 4:00 pm

Disintegrate Weapon. A powerful version of this spell can range from 50 to 100 pts. The problem is, most weapons have durability ranging from 800 to several thousands! So, if you want to slice and dice the value of this spell effect, I say go all out.

One handy thing about disintegrate weapon is that it's ideal in a situation where you are fighting an enemy who has reflect at a value below 100. You can just put your weapon away and fire off spells. This could be considered an exploit and, for balance purposes, it would be nice if there was a secondary type of target for the spell but as things are it can be fairly useful or at least not entirely useless. If you can cast a 100 point spell on a Golden Saint carrying a Glass Stormsword a few times you could quickly make the fight one-sided at very little risk to yourself.

» Tue May 17, 2011 12:52 pm

One handy thing about disintegrate weapon is that it's ideal in a situation where you are fighting an enemy who has reflect at a value below 100. You can just put your weapon away and fire off spells. This could be considered an exploit and, for balance purposes, it would be nice if there was a secondary type of target for the spell but as things are it can be fairly useful or at least not entirely useless. If you can cast a 100 point spell on a Golden Saint carrying a Glass Stormsword a few times you could quickly make the fight one-sided at very little risk to yourself.

Against one of the weakest long blade in the entire game, I guess it could be useful. But my opinion is that it should be useful in many more situations than that. Or if we look at it the other way, I think I should fear the Hunger as much as the Like Likes from Zelda.

» Tue May 17, 2011 2:07 pm

So, casting a disintegrate spell that knocks out 80-100% of ebony cuirass HP would be a high-end spell?

I'm still interested in knowing what your spellcasters' magicka reserves tend to max out at. I'm trying to get a sense of the average magicka available, and then craft spells that can be purchased by spell merchants that are castable - and to do that, it would involve tweaking the base spell costs. I mean, disintegrate is definitely too expensive (vanilla cost).

I also compared the base costs of the spells in TESIV, some of them are a bit surprising. For instance, drain health is really cheap in TESIV, as are fortify HP and fortify fatigue. Now, of course mechanics were different in TESIV, so sometimes comparing spell costs doesn't really work (e.g. fire shield has a different effect in TESIV than in TESIII). How much should you be able to buff up your health or magicka? 100 points? 200? 300? Or only 50?

EDIT: I seem to have the reading comprehension of a flea this week, so if I'm being thick (i.e. you've answered me and I haven't picked up on it), please be patient with me.

» Tue May 17, 2011 3:04 pm

I'm still interested in knowing what your spellcasters' magicka reserves tend to max out at.

Been a while since my last pure mage, but my typical mage max out at 300 mana + item bonuses. (Breton arcanist with the Apprentice birthsign)
I could certainly push a little higher if I used something like an Atronach High Elf, but it just doesn't fit my style.