I really like a lot of things Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul does for the game, but, my biggest gripe, one, that if not solved, could lead to me removing the mod, is that OOO seems to give NPC characters unlimited Magicka. They can cast spells continuously, until the end of time. Which makes my game into a very frustrating grind when I come up against an enemy spellcaster, and nearly impossible when I come up against an enemy spellcaster that keeps healing.

I tested this with only OOO and the official DLCs active, compared to everything else without OOO, and my only conclusion is that OOO is responsible. I've looked through the changes the OOO.esp makes, and I can't figure out what is responsible for this. Can someone help?

Sounds about right. Best thing against spellcasters is to equip sword and close in.

Also, items with spell reflection or absorption, potions of reflection, are things you can use. Weapons with dispel also help. Summons of your own can distract them.

What level are you and what is your character?

My character is a level 7 spellsword, at the time of the incident I am referring to. The problem is, I did "Equip sword and close in". Since the spellcasters can still cast magic, they will be constantly running away if you try to get close, running away while casting destruction magick at you. Even with me and an imperial guardsman, we couldn't take out a little goblin shaman, even though we got her health down to less than 10 percent 3 or 4 times, she just ran away, healed, and sent more deadly shock spells at us, along with that headless zombie. She finally killed us both. I then loaded a quicksave, turned on god mode, forced her into a corner, and hacked away with my sword for a minute straight, while she cast nothing but healing spells. That is not fun gameplay. I've had the same thing with marauder battlemages, just can't get them below their heal threshold, because they can cast it over and over, without pause.

So, I ask again, what part of the .esp causes this functionality, and how would I remove it?

I do not think you can. The problem is you cannot deal enough damage quick enough. A better weapon with extra magic damage may do the trick. I use Phitts Phiting fixes to deal double damage so I can dispatch them quicker. The downside is they do double damage also.

May be a good idea to look for some of the meteoric swords and bows. Also, pelt him with arrows from a distance. Find a staff. The goblin shaman staff is pretty powerful.

I'm curious about something. Can you give me the results of these console commands?

GetGameSetting fMagickaReturnBase
GetGameSetting fMagickaReturnMult
GetGameSetting fNPCBaseMagickaMult

fMagickaReturnBase = 0.40
fMagickaReturnMult = 0.05
fNPCBaseMagickaMult = 1.50



I don't see it that way, seeing as one little Goblin Shaman was able to take on both the player, and an imperial legion patrolman. I'd need a magic resistance of at least 50, just to stand a chance of surviving. It doesn't feel fair, for magic using npcs to have such an advantage over non-magic npcs, and an advantage over the player, whether they are highly skilled magic user or not. (No matter how much magicka reserves the player has, he or she can't cast spells to infinity)

A player character, just starting out, doesn't have the resources to get high-level enchantments and items, just to defeat one little spellcaster, unless you want to cheat, which is basically what the NPCs are with unlimited magicka. I could take on an enemy twice my level, easily, if I had a few good spells, and unlimited magicka. This is a balance issue, plain and simple; it's also an issue of the game being fun, or not being fun. To me, just because an enemy has magic spells, doesn't mean they should be a high-level boss.

Why would the Mages Guild even have BattleMages, with a sword, and armor, if their magical abilities were so powerful? They wouldn't need to use that sword, ever, since a single destruction spell of average strength can to multitudes more than a single melee weapon of average strength. Magic would also have another advantage, they would never, ever, tire, unlike a sword-wielding person.



I was already using a sword with an enchantment that doubled the damage dealt on each strike. Although, I have doubts as to how effective this enchantment was, since the Goblin Shaman seemed to resist over half the shocks from the sword. (Flashed purple, half of the time I hit)

If those are the actual OOO numbers, that might be the problem. The vanilla values of those settings are 0.75 and 0.02. I haven't a clue why OOO would set regeneration numbers so high... a character with 100 Willpower will be regenerating 5.4% of their magicka per second, compared to vanilla 2.75%. Even at 30 Willpower it's a major buff, from 1.35% to 1.9%. Lots of spellcaster NPCs have abnormally high Willpower -- 100 isn't uncommon -- and NPCs have 25% higher base magicka, which increases regeneration by the same amount. So, it's very possible that this is the cause of what you're seeing... it's not that NPC mages don't use magicka, it's that they're just regenerating it too fast.

In the specific case of the goblin shaman: the vanilla version has 15xLevel magicka with a minimum level of 13 (=195 magicka), 75 Willpower, and 54 Magic skill. So at the very least she's recovering 8 magicka per second with your numbers. That's enough for a Heal Greater every 10 seconds... even if the creature itself hasn't been buffed by OOO. Furthermore, those purple flashes weren't resists: Goblin Shamans have 30% spell absorption.

Are you sure those numbers are from OOO? Maybe they come from somewhere else, and OOO makes things crazy by increasing enemy stats. Do you use any sort of spellcasting mod? nGCD sets those to zero and uses a script for regeneration, but I don't know about other leveling mods... Realistic, or Oblivion XP?

Okay, I changed the MagickaReturnMult to 0.02, and I was able to defeat the shaman, after several tries, with no use of the tgm or kill commands. Funny thing is, when looking through the game settings changes of OOO.esp, I looked at those 2 values, and didn't see how it could be causing my problem, as it seemed that the NPCs had unlimited magicka. I hadn't considered a really high regeneration rate, since some of them seemed to be casting non-stop spells.

I'm happy with it now.
tejon, thank you very much. You are da man. :thanks:

I've been using OOO for so long I don't remember anything different. Happy I stumbled onto this thread. Every spell caster seems to have this characteristic in OOO I guess then. I like to dodge spells for a while and always expect them to run out of mana, then either drink a mana potion or draw a weapon and charge. But that never happens. Imps, curiously, do stop casting ranged spells after a while and fly over to you in order to smack you around. But maybe that has to do with their combat scripting.

More likely to do with capping out at level 3 with 60 magicka. Even with 70 willpower, that's only 2.3/sec regeneration. They can actually run out!

Yea, or that

By the way,
I wonder why guards always have infinite arrows to use when they are alive while I can merely find few arrows from their corpses...
Is there any mod to limit NPCs to use the amount of arrows they actually have?

http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/file/514-duke-patricks-combat-archery/

Be sure to read the "Readme" amnes, it is required reading for this mod, so that way you know what it is doing to your game.