» Tue Feb 01, 2011 10:46 am Making it clear right now: my main principle is NOT to make cheat spells, i even try to make the game harder. I think Oblivion NEEDS to be harder, the vanilla system is for that lazy casual gamers who play with a controller in their hands…Ok, i know there are several magic system mod (Mighty Magic, Supreme Magicka, etc.) and i raise my hat, but honestly i never ever was really impressed by them. I think they are heavy, change too much, not lore friendly, full of scripts, overpowered, making your character a half god. And i'm a mod purist, I like simple mods (I prefer only esps) and I don't like to use too much and too heavy mods, only if it's absolutely necessary (for me).
Do you play with overhauls that un-level creatures and NPCs, enemies and friendlies like TIE, CUO or RIBO? If yes, you know you can bump into any level opponent with these overhauls.
It’s hard to be a spellcaster in a world like this…and the player should always know what level enemy he/she is up against. There is a bunch of spells that depends on the level of the opponent. Namely: Demoralize, Turn Undead, Calm, Command, Frenzy. So, partly inspired by TIE, i’ve been creating a spell and enchantment tweak or "overhaul" to make spells and enchanment useful for mages or any character in a non-leveled world where you can face random level opponents.
In my mod a Demoralize spell always works but due to your skill level in illusion it lasts different lenght of time. The magnitude of these spells are set to a value which ensure they will always effect (up to theoretical maximum of level 53) and as your skill advances you can use longer duration.
With low skills these ?new” spells will provide only breathing space and and you gain only a short time for escape or plan your next move. If you want longer duration spells you need to be a skilled mage with high magicka and you may benefit from these spells more then just running away.
At least this is my goal.
No more easy 100% chameleon or custom drain health with 500 magnitude for 1 sec you know…so this is the second part of my mod. There are spells easy to exploit. I tried to get rid of them. So Chameleon, Invisibility, Drain Health, Charm, Elemental Shields, Paralyze are harder to cast, they need more magicka, provide lower magnitude. Drain Health is replaced by ?kill” spells (inspired by OOO), it takes away a certain amount of health for 1 second and you can not make custom spell. You can use these to end a fight in short time…or, if the enemy’s health points are under the threshold of your kill spell, he/she/it will die instantly. But you have to be skilled in Destruction to get higher magnitude kill spells.
100% Chameleon…destroys the gameplay (i know the player can choose not to use it but…you know how it is…). Same for Invisibility. Charm: it’s easy to create a 100 magnitude spell for 1 sec duration at a low magicka cost – you can easily skip persuasion. Elemental Shieds make plain Shields useless so now they need more magicka and provide smaller magnitude and duration. Paralyze: although it needs a higher level skill and a large amount of magicka i needed to change a bit…
…because i tried to make useful a couple of before useless spells and tweak some other spell for the sake of reason. Paralyze sends your foe to the ground defensless for a short time. Burden will make your target take root for a bit longer time but he/she will be able to fight and defense (magnitude is set to encumber all the time). Bounding armor and weapon lasts longer (uniformly 45 sec). I left alone creature summons as they won’t be alive for long anyway…Absorb spells go in Mysticism. I put Turn Undead in there too. I know it was Conjuration spell even in Morrowind but i never understand why…demoralizing undead creatures is a mysterious thing for me, nothing to do with bounding or conjuring anything (even if it’s not lore friendly) and i think Mysticism school needs an improvement anyway. Shields (both plain and elemental) lasts longer so you don’t have to cast it and cast it and cast it…
Other tweaks:
- 2x faster spell speed: you need more tactics. Before it was easy to dodge spells, now you have to be faster.
- To get water walking and water breathing spells basically needs to be expert level in Alteration. They are easy and great help to the player so why do i left them untouched? (Or you can get these in other ways, like making a Mages Guild Recommendation Quest or to be an Argonian.)
- Enchanting cost raised to 10x of the original value. Maybe i will raise it more. Because in TIE or RIBO you hardly find any enchanted item, so why should i let it easy to create enchanted weapons?
- All Restore Health and Fatigue spells are changed. Now you need time for the full effect, no more instant regeneration. Be more tactical during fights. Potions are changed too.
- Detect Life tweaked a bit. And i highly recommend Shadowrealm’s Reduced Detect Life mod (TESNEXUS) which simply reduces the "size" of the purple gas cloud effect making you see less of the cloud (if you don’t use other detect life shader…).
- Your starting spells (Heal Minor Wounds and Flare) are made a bit more useful. They have duration but they heal/damage more.
- When you choose a magic school as a major skill you will get one apprentice level spell. I have not yet chose which ones...any suggestion?
- There is some spell which has both touch and target version at novice or apprentice level. Touch spells remained low level spells but targeted spells became higher level spells (like Calm) so at low level you have access only the more dangerous touch spells and have to be more skilled to use target version.
Next bigger part of my mod is tweaking the enchanments, sigil stones and potion effects so they will correspond with the tweaked spells. So enchanted weapons, scrolls, apparel and anything can be found will have similar effects. Doomstones and Runestones are intact. That’s it.
There are other edits in a separate plugin:
- Ritual Birthsign: Blessed Word lesser power (Turn Undead) always works as the stock spell.
- Vampires: Reign of Terror greater power (Demoralize) always works as the stock spell.
- Races: Bosmer Beast Tongue greater power (Command Creature) always works as the stock spell.
- Races: Khajit Eye of Fear greater power (Demoralize) always works as the stock spell.
I know other greater powers, lesser powers, birthsigns, abilities, etc. could be changed but i indentionally left them alone because i think these special ?knowledges” should be special. I didn’t want to uniform everything. I put it in a separate esp because you may use mods that change races, birthsighs, etc.
Final thoughts:
Please tell me your opinion and suggestions. This mod is not a big thing, i only changed values in CS, so no scripts (i don’t know anything about them), no anything fancy in this, although it is a tedious work to edit and edit and edit…i plan it in 2 esp file as mention before.
Once i totally finished the basic parts of the mod i immediatelly start expanding it to all official DLC, mainly to the Spell Tomes, but i will include other DLCs where necessary.
