Title says it all, really. I'm looking for a mod that increases the duration of summoned critters.

That said, I've played through the game several times by now, so I'm more than a little bit familiar with the Magick system. If you can suggest any mods that spice things up a bit, please do.

Thanks in advance

That lengthen the duration times? There might be mods that add spells with increased times, but I don't see why anyone would go through and change everyyyy single spell for the vanilla conjuration spells.

I could whip up some artifacts that allow you to summon the more powerful Daedra and undead for around 3 minutes a piece. You'll have to find the items though, that's my rule.

I ... find them in the construction set? hehe, just kidding.

I'm no scripter, so I don't know what it would take to do so, and I don't generally summon creatures in game, but I think a neat idea would be to tie the player's magic to the summon time. As long as you have magic, the summoned creatures will stay. When you run out, they are gone. I call it the price of "taming" a creature to your will when it would rather tear you a new one. More powerful/dangerous creatures require more magic to keep on the leash, so to speak, so a shorter summon time. If your own health/willpower/magic gets low, you run the risk of summoned creatures turning on you. You could also "unsummon" them when you are done with them to prevent getting your @$$ handed to you by your own creatures. Probably a huge headache to do, but I like the idea. Somebody with talent get to work on this. :biggrin:

I love this idea!

Gives me some inspiration and I already have scripts in line which work off the players conjuration skill and I also have scripted summons too - each summoned creature would need a new script but thats not a problem. HMmm I might look into this once I have finished some other projects.

Midas Magic for Oblivion has something like that. But those creatures stick around forever unless you unsummoned or got them killed. I don't know if the Morrowind engine could handle that.

I'd much rather you conspired with Midgetalien to make the mod Skinjack just described, because that's a dead cool idea. But thank you very much for offering.

I was mostly thinking about the lowbie summons. It's always annoyed me that summons last just long enough to linger after one fight, and inconveniently vanish just when the next one begins. I never remember to re-summon stuff in a timely fashion, so the "Oh you need me? See ya, ha-ha! *Poof*" thing is a bit of a menace while a skele-archer can still murder poor little me in a couple of shots

But speaking of mod ideas, someone pretty brilliant once made a spell misfire mod for Morrowind. Basically it made (mostly bad) things happen when spells failed. Unfortunately it had a kind of critical flaw, in that it didn't take spell cost & caster skill into consideration. That made it outright hazardous for lowbie characters to cast spells, while mid/high level characters were merely very slightly inconvenienced. If you guys have a go at Skinjack's idea, I'd be thrilled if you tried to incorporate a more balanced take on the misfire mod.

I wouldn't be much help there, not so good with scripting.

Adul made an armorer's hammer that required gold in order to use it, his expertise here could prove valuable.

As for the misfire thing, one could easily make spells (which utilize the "Summon Time = Magicka" scripting or no) that carry negative effects, and insert them into the game. Could make them cheaper and easier to perform for lower level magic-users, so that they'll choose/be stuck with those for the time being.



There's a scroll somewhere that lets you summon a Daedroth for 2 whole minutes, I loved using that. Dunmer have no resistance to poison, which is a Daedroth's main weapon, so they drop like flies against those things.

Which brings me to the point behind summoning being limited: a clever player can do some epic damage with what the vanilla game has to offer alone. When I got the Spear of Bitter Mercy, Scourge, a Messenger Scroll (that's the one that summons a Daedroth for 2 minutes) and had made an amulet that summons a Golden Saint for 20 seconds, on the Xbox mind you, Divayth Fyr didn't stand a chance. And I was Level 15.

TA, I agree that summoning enough creatures can make the game unbalanced. I think a bigger hit against the player's mana level for the initial summons (based on creature's level) followed by a lower, continuous "maintenance" hit for keeping the summoned creature subservient (i.e. not peeling your skin off like a graqe) would discourage such abuses. The higher/more powerful the summoned creature, the bigger the initial hit and maintenance costs. It would probably require some fine tuning after a lot of initial tweaking, but I think a nice balance could be achieved for a more immersive game play experience. Maybe link controlling the summoned creature to the player's willpower as well as mana reserves. The higher the willpower, the less maintenance mana required. Like I said, I don't pretend to know a thing about scripting, so it would all be up to whoever decided to run with the idea. In the end, its all about balance.

And you have to admit, knowing the summoned creatures are going to turn on you when your constantly draining mana runs too low might make players think twice about summoning an army of atronachs.

How about a different approach? Recently, I started playing with "Undead:arise from death" mod, which changes a lot of undead specs. The side effect is to make some standard summons a lot more powerful so that you don't really need higher quantity or duration. For example, the summoned greater bonewalker becomes a Ghoul who is an absolute beast with a strong physical and paralysis attack. With one of these at your side, you just need to follow and mop up. Similar story with the basic ancestor ghost; check this mod out. It's balanced by the fact that when you meet one of these babies in a tomb, they're on you the same way. Getting that Andrano skull is no longer a sure thing at level 1 or 2.

Ah yes, Arise From Death definitely makes the undead a lot scarier. It's one of my favorite mods. I especially like the Banshee, that scream gets me every time.

That sounds great, thank you.

Better find myself an invisibility spell before I go tomb raiding

EDIT: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=6777 in case anyone else wants it.

Actually, going through my mods for a new game, I just found one called Infernal Summoning by Lap that, according to the readme, "lets you summon creatures with no time limitation through a balanced and roleplayish way". It also says it gives you "The ability to summon and forever bind 25 different creatures to your service." Never played it, just downloaded it so it could take up space on my harddrive.

I don't think my tolerance for lore-stomping is quite high enough for dragon summons, but thanks a lot for the suggestion

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=1213, in case anyone else wants it.