Yes, but I haven't yet got around to fix prefixes.
I'll do that at some point.

MWSE addon is ready with the HUGE help of Fliggerty.

I'll just upload new version.

New version is up and MWSE addon is included.

Fantastic to hear!

Bump

Any thoughts about MWSE version?
I'd like to recieve at least some feedback about it.

I think it's a great idea, spreads the clumsiness around.

How about detecting if the player is playing a specific sound? (destruction casting sound, restoration, alteration, etc.) This way you know what school of spell they were trying to cast (the last time) before failing. I'm not sure it'd work, just an idea. That detect sound function is a lifesaver sometimes.

My mod allready uses getsoundplaying and there is different miscast effects for every spell school.

Thanks for the mod, Teclis. I have a couple of suggestions.

First, it doesn't scale very well. Low level characters are unlikely to be able to compensate for miscasts [read: they're toast], and more likely to miscast spells.

Second, it would be more fun if more stuff could happen, not all of it was bad, and some of it was good.

I have no idea how to do any of that, but perhaps you could modify the chance of a miscast with the cost of the failed spell; pull a random number, add the magick cost to it, and check if it exceeds a third value. If it does, a miscast happens. If not, it's just a failed spell. The third number would have to be some happy compromise between low-level mages never suffering miscasts and high-level mages suffering miscasts every time their spells fail.

You could do something similar with the effect of the miscast. Assign the more limited miscast effects a low value and the more extreme effects a high value, then make the script pick based on a random number plus the cost of the failed spell.

Or if you decide to include neutral and benign miscast effects, you could break the former into two checks instead of one. First a check modified by the cost of the failed spell that determines how severe the miscast effect is, then a second check modified the level or skill of the caster to pick the actual effects (low=negative, average=neutral, high=positive).

If you need ideas for effects, just apply a spell from the relevant school to either all actors, all enemies, or the caster and allies within an area, or apply the spell effect on a massive scale or in an unexpected way. You don't have to be obvious about it either.

Imagine the following, just for example:

A certain Wizzard is standing on a battlement in Ebonheart, trying to get into his Luggage. Alas, when he failed his first try at a Jump spell to get up on to the battlement, he accidentally locked every lockable object in the cell, Luggage included.

Now being a good Wizzard (rather than a capable wizard), he miscasts his first attempt at unlocking the oddly locked Luggage, unknowingly giving himself Jump 1000 for ten minutes in the process. So when he's confronted by oddly locked doors at either end of the battlement, he naturally decides to jump down.. And flies off into the sky.

But again, being a Wizzard, there's a remedy for that sort of thing. So he miscasts Slowfall on the way down and end up giving himself 50% weakness to physical damage for 60 seconds - just enough to hit the ground.

You can do a lot of subtle, surprising and spectacular stuff if you take the standard spell effects and apply them on an unusual scale without telling anyone. And not all of it has to be the death of the Wizzard. You could have a Restoration miscast heal every disease in 100ft, for example. Or have a Mysticism miscast transfer 50% of the health of one random actor to another random actor, possibly the player. Or a more annoying Mysticism effect: cast Mark at 8 random coordinates (that would really svck).
Especially conjuration could do a lot of neat things; imagine for example conjuring weapons or armour from an actor instead of conjuring it out of thing air. The classic would be to bind your own robe on an enemy fighter. Though it is of course hindered some by the inability of NPCs to laugh their asses off in surprise.

- I couldn't script to save my life and I have no idea what's possible and impossible with TES scripting, so you'll have to excuse me if the above is silly. I'm just trying to give you ideas.

As annoying as the crippling of a low level player is, I think it should stay that way. It makes sense that someone who doesn't know magic well yet could mess up and cause something unintended. And if that thing that he messes with happens to be something as unstable as magicka, well, maybe the consequences won't be all that great. It really puts a role-playing spin on magicka. It's like chemistry. You mix chemicals together trying to create what you want. If you put in the wrong chemical, you don't get the right product. And occassionally you might put in the really wrong chemical and *boom* bye bye labroom. Or something like that... Although I like your idea about more effects, that's always a welcome addition.

The problem is it makes for terrible gameplay. Right now casting a spell is potentially lethal to low-level mages. I agree it makes for good story telling, but in terms of gameplay it simply means mages have to play as melee types until they've gained a few hitpoints and enough Drakes to invest in some training and a supply of Restoration scrolls/alchemy.

But on second thought, Teclis don't need to worry about that if he can base the severity of miscast effects on the cost of the failed spell. If he can do that, the only gameplay consequence is that it'll be dangerous for low-level mages to attempt difficult spells, and I'm sure most will agree that's as it should be. It also creates good synergy with mods that base caster skill levelling on the amount of magick used, rather than the number of spells cast.

Really, my point is simply that miscast effects are unbalanced right now. For example: getting -10 on strength isn't much of a problem for a level 10+ caster, and even for a level 5 caster it's unlikely to be more than an expensive accident. But for a level 1 caster having her first go at the smugglers in Seyda Neen, it's quite likely to be fatal. Especially if she's not a veteran player who'll know to 'port off to a temple for a 35 Drake blessing.
And that's one of the least dangerous miscast effects right now.

If instead the effect was based on the cost of the spell, the level 1 caster might accidentally turn one of her healing potions into a Drain Strength potion, the level 5 caster might get the -10 to Strength and the level 10 caster might get twice that. In each case, the result is very likely to be a serious drain on the player's resources, but it is highly unlikely to be dangerous. Moreover, it'll make casters disinclined to attempt powerful spells unless they really need to.

Unfortunately, it would just want to make me turn the mod off. I have no wish to continually have to reload because my level one mage keeps having something bad happen, or having my level 20 lose 50pts of health because he cast a fireball a level one player could have cast.

Now that is something that would ensure I turned off the mod

As I am not very good at chemistry, I usally try to stick by the book, and do it exactly how the book says. Never blown everything up.


And isn't 20% really high?

Maybe I should make a version that has teleportation disabled. It is very simple to do and won't take long.

And if you are low level mage, you can install this mod after you have gained a few levels so the effects won't be so terrible.

And Kaoten. your ideas are great and after I start working on this mod again it is sure that I will include at least some of them.

since it only effects failed casts, this just means the player should be smart and create spells within the limits of their abilities, and make sure to keep fatigue in check. Most characters start with spells they are able to cast high 80% chance.

some ideas:
drain fatigue - collapses the player
perma-dispel - this makes no magic effect the player, good or bad

for alteration, it'd be pretty funny if a miscast would scale the player smaller or bigger for a short duration

Teclis if/when you pick up the mod again, can you base the severity of the miscast effect on the magicka cost of the failed spell?

Maybe.
Piratelord has given me a permission to use his scripts as a base, if I remember correctly. That should make things easier.

So.. I cast waterwalking and failed. The miscast caused me to levitate. Now, that isn't a bad thing, though it was annoying The thing is, it lasted for over 5 minutes. In fact, I never actually saw it end. I quit the game after 5 min to ask how long a miscast was supposed to last.

I was casting a healing spell on myself and failed. Instead I damaged my attributes. I went and got a restore attributes potion and used it with no result. So I had a healer cast a restore attributes spell on me also with no result. I'm assuming this may be a conflict with Galsiah's Character Development. Either way, does anyone know of a way to restore myself?

You must buy remove curse scrolls from courtyard of Wolverine hall and use them to end miscast effects.
I may remove levitation miscast effects, because it is just annoying.

I think that both levitation and damage attributes are curses so head to Wolverine hall.

I hope that you have had good time with mod.

At Wolverine Hall? That's great because I was just headed there anyway. Thanks!

I uploaded version 1.5, which is supposed to fix some problems.
I removed MWSE addon, but it will be reuploaded after I improve it a little bit.

I may add some effects, if they are interesting enough, there are already some in this topic, but more will not hurt.


So has anyone really used this mod

I'm assuming at this juncture that the mod does NOT affect NPCs...I was thinking it would totally rock if it did. The only real problem I can see is where they get teleported elsewhere...but you could have them reappear after a set time...

Also, are the affects no longer curses? You state in the changelog that you removed curse scrolls?

You really ought to edit the opening post to reflect all of these neat changes...

Thanks for the hard work and creativity!

I didn't remove remove curse scrolls, I'll correct that in changelog. I just made them to function correctly.

I removed MWSE addon because it wasn't working, it should be trivial task to make it working. Also, I'll make it to support more NPCs at time.
NPCs won't have teleporting effect, I replaced it with something, but can't remember what I used right now.

I'll edit opening post after next release, shouldn't take long.


Oh and thank you for showing interest in this mod