Ever notice that no matter what character you play as, there's really no reason to use anything other than the best armor of whatever you chose as your skill? I'd like if all armors had their pros and cons, based on how you want to play the game. That's why I started this mod. Currently, I'm working on armor set bonuses. Now, these won't all be good. Every set will have it's downsides as well. Currently most things are just concept right now, as I'm working out the scripting kinks on the Dark Brotherhood armor before I move on.

Beyond armor, there's the same issue with weapons. What reason is there to use anything other than the best? I'm not sure how doable this will be, but I want to incorporate things that are true about certain weapons, and that other games show. Things like blunt weapons being more effective against heavier armor than blades. Again, not sure how doable that will be, and I'm going to wait til armor is done til I even attempt it.

Now, I'm planning on doing this as a global script, instead of adding a script to every piece of armor. That way, I can cut down on conflicts, as well as the annoying issue of scripted items not stacking. Currently I've run into a slight problem with this, where I can't get the armor bonus to go away once the armor set is no longer equipped. If anyone would like to offer a bit of insight to this, I have a thread open in the CS section about this scripting issue http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1075614&pid=15648642&st=0&#entry15648642.

Any suggestions on pluses and downsides of a certain set will also be appreciated.

Edit:Scratch the scripting issues. I got everything worked out.

Here are some screens of the mod in action.

http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt325/NazoX9/MGEScreenshot1-1.jpg
http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt325/NazoX9/MGEScreenshot2-1.jpg
http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt325/NazoX9/MGEScreenshot3-1.jpg
http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt325/NazoX9/MGEScreenshot4-1.jpg
http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt325/NazoX9/MGEScreenshot5-1.jpg
http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt325/NazoX9/MGEScreenshot6-1.jpg
http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt325/NazoX9/MGEScreenshot7-1.jpg
http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt325/NazoX9/MGEScreenshot8-1.jpg
http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt325/NazoX9/MGEScreenshot9-2.jpg

This has been tested, and any piece that is removed will remove the bonus, and once reequipped, will bring the bonus back.

I think daedric armor should scare people
I mean, it's scary looking armor, but even the most tender merchant won't flinch at the sight of me!

Alright, I have the armor set appearing and disappearing all worked out. Here are some of the things I have planned right now.

Dark Brotherhood armor-
Increase to sneak
Drain Personality

Nordic, and fur type armors-
Resist frost damage

Imperial-
Perhaps an increase to personality.

Netch Leather-
Again, a stealth increase because of it's color. Also because of the fact that it's worn by the morag tong.
Probably a seperate armor bonus for if you have the morag tong helm equipped instead of the normal one.

Orcish-
Definitely seems like it would be personality draining because of the appearance.

Light Armors-
Increase to agility, or a sanctuary effect, not sure which.

Medium Armors
Some sort of middleground between the effects of heavy, and light

Heavy Armors-
I want a penalty to casting in heavy armor of some sorts. Not sure how to work it out quite yet.


All of this is just in early conceptual phases, and is subject to change. There will also be more effects for everything.

This is something I would certainly use

I would provide a dodge bonus (not sure exactly what that maps to). That, or do like in D&D and have light armor not provide any penalties, while medium has slight and heavy harsh.


There are spells effects (Sound, IIRC) that will make casting fail more often.

Sounds awesome. I'm a fan of casting penalty in bulky armor. It makes sense, since spells obviously involve physical gestures, and big bulky armor hinders slight gestures. Also it seemed that with no penalties in heavy armor, characters could become almost unfairly powerful indestructible tanks of armageddon. Same goes for baddies too, sometimes.

That's why I was considering the sanctuary to simulate a dodge bonus. I didn't think about a sound effect. I was thinking along the lines of like dragon age, where the heavier armor makes spells cost more to cast, but I don't know how I would do something like that.

It'd take some scripting to check for heavy armor and then make spells cost more. Plus, you could still cast the spell and just knock yourself down into negative magicka, so it might not work perfectly. I don't know if it'd work at all on mod-added heavy armor, at least not without MWSE (which would let you check the weight for each armor piece). Unless you really want it to take more magicka and don't mind the scripting, I'd go with a simple chance for failure/sound effect.

Yeah, I'll likely stick with the sound thing.

I have a question for anyone experienced with scripting. I've been looking at http://www.uesp.net/morrow/editor/mw_cscommands.shtml#getspelleffects for ideas of how to get everything worked out. While doing this, I noticed a few functions that I was confused about. The moddefensebonus, modattackbonus, and mod castpenalty. It doesn't really give a description about what they do, or anything like that.

Judging from the names, they should modify exactly what they sound like. A lot of the spell effects are really just visuals for a script command (Sound would be the visual/spell effect for ModCastPenalty, Chameleon and Sanctuary for ModDefenseBonus, etc). You could try just using those commands. Morrowind Scripting for Dummies will probably have more info and any compatibility notes.

That's what I was wondering, if it was simply like that, or if would be something that could be used in making certain weapons do more damage against certain types of armors. If I could have things like crossbows, and blunt weapons be more effective when they hit someone in heavy armor, and have bows, and blades be mroe effective against lighter armors, then that would be wonderful.

Eh.... Theoretically, using those commands and MWSE, you might be able to pull it off. Actually, MWSE alone could do it (without using these commands). However, you need to know both the attacker's weapon and the defender's armor, which can't be done from a single script. So, you'd almost have to do it with MWSE and the xGetTarget command.

This.

It svcked hard how eventually you'd either end up in:

Full Daedric armor
Full Glass Armor
or full Her Hand armor(could be wrong)
(Not accounting for uniques)
I'll be keeping an eye on this, I wish you the best of luck.

DURN DOUBLE POST
XP

That's the way I feel too. Even when I made a caster, I would use heavy armor and wind up in deadric. I want every armor to have a purpose.

I don't like armor sets I like matching random bits of amors, uniques and self-enchanted stuff.

But having armor sets available would be awesome

What happens when the armor is enchanted? Can they be enchanted? Does it affect the scripts?

This takes place in multiple different ways. First, there is the bonus based on what type of armor you're wearing on which slot. For the base bonuses, helms, and hands aren't included. They're figured in by cuirass, greaves, boots, pauldrons, and shields.

This is far from being complete, and balanced, so right now these are just rough figures.

Unarmored recieves the highest boost to dodge, simulated by sanctuary. Currently you recieve 30 points to sanctuary if you're unarmored. Twenty points to sanctuary if you're light armored. Medium Armor I haven't done yet. Heavy armor gets a 20 point penalty to casting, done through sound, and a 25 point penalty to agility.

These are just the bases now. These are what you recieve just for being equipped with that kind of armor. Heavy won't be all bad, I promise.

These are broken down further, and can be mixed and matched. Those figures are only if you're fully equipped in that type. If I'm wearing no armor, but a light chest, and a heavy shield, I'm getting 25 points to sanctuary, because of the unarmored and the light, but also recieving a 2 point penalty to casting and agility because of the heavy shield. Each slot gives its own bonus, which adds up to that base figure.

That way, you're still recieving something for wearing certain types of armor. It wouldn't make sense for heavy armor to only make casting harder if you were wearing all the same type. This does, however make some things more viable for the character. Perhaps you don't switch out your full set of daedric armor just to equip that lord's mail. Perhaps losing the positive effects isn't worth having only the negative effects, plus whatever the enchants you have are.

Perhaps it's better for your assassin character to wear the dark brotherhood armor, instead of glass, because dark brotherhood gives that nice stealth bonus. Perhaps glass even reduces sneak, because of the reflections, and bright colors.

These are the things I'm hoping to make people think about with this mod.

As far as I know, enchanting something in game shouldn't effect the item's ID, which is what determines the item set bonus. I'm not sure if I'll be working on adding some of the already enchanted pieces in the game. I am planning however, on adding in different set bonuses to daedric, depending on which helm you have equipped with it.

Oh, so the bonuses come from a calculation of the total armor you have on? Not from a specific armor set, like in Diablo2? That's what I was thinking - a full set of armor that MUST be worn in its entirety in order to get the bonus. If the effects are calculated based on what you are actually wearing, then that's good

Will wearing an artifact armor give you a bonus for what it is? So if you're wearing Hircine's Hide, do you get a bonus for light armor on top of the enchants on the armor? Or w/e the name of the cuirass is >.>

Also, I imagine this will conflict with the Dodge mod I'm using... at 100 Unarmored, it gives 50 Sanctuary. The effect is reduced with each piece of armor you're wearing.

It comes from both. What you're wearing has it's own bonuses, and each set has it's own bonuses. If you're wearing wolf armor, for example. You recieve the base light armor bonus, but also a set bonus as well if you're wearing all wolf. Since it's a thick fur armor, it gives you a resistance to frost damage of 25%. You will get a bonus for wearing a full set, like diablo, but that's not the only place the bonus and penalties comes from. Heavy armor will always give a penalty to casting, medium armor will always give a lesser penalty to casting.

Slight quibble: the whole point of killing Snow Bear and Snow Wolves to get armor was that it was frost-resistant via enchantment. You'll have to take a look at things like that to make sure you preserve the bonuses of armor that is supposed to be better.

I made an Armour Sets mod, it's on PES (check my sig). You might like to incorporate a feature like this so that the user may equip all pieces of an armour at once if they wish. Then you could add in a whole-set bonus; for example, each piece may increase your frost resist by 5%, but all pieces together add a 10% bonus over that.

This is a good idea, but it's going to take a lot of balancing to make sure that you're not making other armours obsolete, as StormFalcon said.

Heavy Armour can decrease fatigue a little faster (don't remember if it does already, but don't think so) and reduce all the magicka-related skills by a bit, making it harder to cast. The "bonus" for heavy armour is that it provides a lot more protection by default. Not sure if it really needs a bonus. Maybe fortify health by a bit?

As far as script optimization, I'd break the scripts up per-slot. Have one script running for helmets, one for cuirass, one for gauntlets, etc. Then, fire those from a main global control script. In the global script, run a check for each piece of equipment: if something is equipped in that slot, fire that slot's script, which will check for what exactly is equipped there and update the bonus appropriately; otherwise, tell that slot's script that nothing is equipped there so it can remove the spell effect and terminate itself.

Thinking it out in my head, that seems to be appropriate.

What about a slight built-in resistance to all magicka, instead? If it prevents stuff going out, maybe it prevents stuff coming in. Just a thought. Or tailor different suits to provide a specific elemental resistance. But I have no objections to your idea. I'm just trying to come up with a reason, other than enchanting, that heavy armor would provide a hit points boost. In game, I can certainly accept it with or without a roleplaying reason.

There will be bonuses for having a set of armor equipped as well. That's going to be based more on what type of armor it is, etc.. I know the snow wolf, and bear are enchanted with frost resistance, That's still going to be there, so now on top of a small cold resistance you get from the set, you also get that larger bonus from the armors enchantments. Snow wolf will still be just as useful as before, as the wolf armor only gives a very small resistance, and the snow wolf armor will have that same bonus.

Heavy armor won't have any kind of base bonus. Like you said, it provides much more defense. With the extra weight, it makes you less agile. On top of that, it's also going to be much harder to perform the physical gestures required of you to call forth that fireball, hence the spellcasting penalty. However, perhaps you're in full imperial steel armor. That's going to provide a small increase to personality, because you look like a guard. Most people would be more willing to talk to a guard. Say you're wearing a set of ebony armor. UESP says, "Ebony weapons and armor are created from a rare form of volcanic glass buried in the lava flows from Vvardenfell's Red Mountain." so I think logically, it would provide a bit of fire resistance.

The health boost would be to simulate the added protection you get from the heavy armour. As in, it takes more damage to take away the same amount of health.

And it's not that the heavy armour stops magicka from leaving, it just makes it harder to make the hand motions required to form the magicka. Thus the penalty.

Also, heavy armour made of metal could provide a weakness to lightning damage.

This is really exciting to me. I've never been able to wright a script completely on my own, that worked. I just tested how things went with multiple sets running under the same script. I have a total of four done, and just had a small problem with netch, because of how I wrote it. So far though, everything is going pretty smoothly with having just the one script that detects all the sets.