I am working on a mod just for my own odd enjoyment, and I was trying to think of different penalties or disadvantages I could attach to a particular race or birthsign.


I tried Drain or Damage of an attribute or skill, and that didn't work so well--I get the constant red throbbing screen and it doesn't really permanently work right anyhow. There are a lot of advantages I can put in, Fortifying this or that or giving Night Eye, Feather, and so on. But going through the entire list of spell effects, and testing many of them, I have found only a few disadvantages I can give a character.

Blind
Burden
Stunted Magicka
Weakness to disease, magicka, fire, etc.

That's about it. I can throw in Sun Damage on a birthsign but if I do that to, say, Dark Elves, then there's an awful lot of dead Dark Elves lying about in the game.

I would like to be able to permanently limit a given character's Intelligence, or Speechcraft, or such, and I don't know if that is even possible or if it has already been done.

I am entirely an amateur modder, having made extensive mods for myself but none that anyone else would want to bother with, so I know a bit but I haven't a clue about scripting or some of the more exotic sorts of things.

The game really isn't designed for that. I think that you should be able to use a script to decrease the PC's starting stats if they choose a certain sign, but creating a damaging spell effect wouldn't look natural like a constant bonus would.

you should be able to change starting values by race in the CS. max values would be accomplished by a global script, and a simple one at that.

have a section for each race, and then put conditionals on the attributes and skills you want to limit, so that -

if ( pcrace == 3 ) ;if player is a dark elf    if ( "player"->getstrength > 65 ) ;if str is 66 or higher        "player"->setstrength 65 ;set str to the maximum you allow    endifendif

Thanks!

I will give this a try

i just thought of something i might have missed.

im not sure how that script will react to fortified attributes. you might want to nest the conditional [ if ("player->getstrength > 65 ) in my example] in another conditional checking to see that the player is NOT under the effect of any fortification.

another thing to remember is this will not stop players from putting points into the things you limit, and you can keep "gaining" points in a skill to infinity. you might want to consider that while writing your script.