» Wed Aug 18, 2010 4:34 pm ==========================================================
Version: 1.1
Author: koschwarz
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34043
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=6403
Changes v1.1
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Fixing some grammatical mistake and clarifying some things in the readmes. No changes in the plugins!
Known issues:
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Because of a bug in OBME the Lord birthsign's Weakness to Fire and the Altmer weaknesses are set to zero. The author of OBME claims this issue will be fixed in the next release of OBME.
OBSOLATE!!!: OBME v1.0 released which fix this issue! You no longer need the temporary fix!!!
Short description:
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This mod tweaks spells, enchanments, potions, sigil stones, ingredients in order to:
- make enemy-level dependent spells usable for overhauls like TIE, RIBO, CUO;
- make before useless spells actually useful;
- make exploitable magic effects harder to exploit.
It changes some setting related magic to make harder some of the magic aspects of the game.
Requirements:
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Basic part:
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Oblivion & Shivering Isles v1.2.0416.
(however it works without SI)
Oblivion Script Extender v0018 or higher
http://obse.silverlock.org/
Oblivion Magic Extender v1.0 or higher
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=31981
DLC Spell Tomes:
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There are two separate plugins that change spells added by Spell Tomes DLC. You should have this DLC to use this part of the mod.
Other DLCs:
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Load them before the mod in order to let the mod effect to these DLCs. No separate plugin was needed, i left them alone by design. See details inside the folders.
Detailed description:
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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. And i didn't want to create new (not lore friendly) "uber-killer-cheater-half god" spells either.
I tried to change only what i found necessary to change, i forced myself to be austere because as to myself i like simple mods.
Anyway, 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.
So i removed the magnitude of those spells that depend on the level of the enemy and they only have duration. This means they always work, no matter what level enemy you face.
Your skill level determines only the duration of the spell. Of course if spell effectiveness drops below 100% only the duration will decrease. As your skills grow you can access longer duration spells.
Don't expect 60 sec Demoralize spells...at novice level you can get a spell with 2-4 sec. With low skills these 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. But even the highest level spells won't last more than 20 sec. But you know...it always will work. Note that touch spells last longer than targeted spells.
At least this is my goal. These changes are possible because of a great new Oblivion Script Extender (OBSE) based tool: JRoush's Oblivion Magic Extender (OBME). So this part of the mod needs OBSE and OBME. If you already use OBSE, installing OBME is not an issue.
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. So Chameleon, Invisibility, Drain Health, Charm, Elemental Shields are generally harder to cast, they need more magicka, provide lower magnitude or duration.
Now it's impossible to create Drain Health spell or enchanting items with it. My first idea was i make from it a "kill" spell (inspired by OOO), so it would take away a certain amount of health for 1 second and can be used 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. However i threw away this idea because it seems these spells are used by many actors and i didn't want to take away their ability to defeat the player. The player can time the usage of Drain Health but actors can not. So i only disabled this effect in spellmaking and enchanting.
100% Chameleon destroys the gameplay (i know the player can choose not to use it but you know how it is...).
Charm: it's easy to create a 100 magnitude spell for 1 sec duration at a low magicka cost, you can easily skip persuasion and can steal anything from a charmed NPC without consequences (not mentioned the fact that one of the greater powers of the Imperial race or vampires or the Mage Staff are worth nothing...).
Elemental Shieds make plain Shields useless so now they need more magicka and provide smaller magnitude and duration compared to plain Shield.
I tried to make useful a couple of before useless spells and to tweak some other spell for the sake of reason. Burden will make your target encumber much more. Bounding armor and weapon lasts longer (uniformly 45 sec). I left alone creature summons as they won't be alive for long anyway in these overhauls...
Shields (both plain and elemental) lasts longer so you don't have to cast it and cast it and cast it and cast it...and than gain multiple skill-increasing after a small dungeon.
Other tweaks:
- All Restore Health, Fatigue and Magicka potions need time for the full effect, no more instant regeneration. Be more tactical during fights. Spells with the same effects are intact.
- Default spells (Heal Minor Wounds and Flare) are made a bit more useful. They have duration but heal/damage more over time than default. They are still novice level.
- There are 2 magical stones changed too: Jone Stone (it gives Invisibility, duration is halved but still very long), Shadow Stone (it gives Chameleon, duration lowered but still very long).
- Optional: 2x faster spell projectile speed, you need to use more tactics and to be more agile. Before, it was easy to dodge enemy spells, now you have to be faster. Of course your spells will be 2x faster.
- Optional: enchanting cost raised to 13 x of the original value, because in TIE or RIBO you hardly find any enchanted item, they are rare and not only another piece of junk to sell, so why should i let it easy to create enchanted weapons?
- Optional: when choosing a magic school as a major skill you will get one apprentice level spell. I'm not able to make possible choosing the starting spells, sorry, so i set them, but if you are familiar with CS you may want change them (starting spells are apprentice level Shield, Summon Skeleton, Weakness to Fire, Calm, Detect Life, Fortify Speed). Default spells (Flare, Heal Minor Wounds) still need only novice level skill.
NOTE: this will work only by starting a new character!!! There are 2 versions: one is for existing character or if you don't want the alternative starting spells, the other is for new characters. See details inside the folders!!!
- Optional: a fighter in full armor still have to bear the consequences... spell effectiveness will suffer much more by wearing armor and weapon (max effectiveness is 85%, minimum effectiveness is 50%). A mage should be mage, a warrior should be more warrior. If spell effectiveness drops to eg 50% your low level calm or demoralize spells may last only 1 sec or practically don't effect at all.
- Optional: consumable potions depends on Alchemy skill. A novice in Alchemy can drink one potion, an apprentice 2, a journeyman 3, an expert 4, a master 5 potions simultaneously. Alchemy skill perk descriptions are also changed accordingly.
Next bigger part of my mod is tweaking the enchanments, sigil stones, ingredients and potions so they will correspond with the tweaked spells. Enchanted weapons, scrolls, apparel, potions and anything can be found will have the similar effect (magnitude, duration) of the default spells. That's it.
Note that i didn't want to uniform everything. I know there are greater powers, lesser powers, birthsigns, abilities that could be changed like the above mentioned stock spells but i left them unchanged by design because i think these special "knowledges" should be really special. Although some of them is changed, generally i lowered the duration of some effect. Moreover some potion, apparel, scroll values are untouched or has different values. These things don't always have to be standard (have the same values as the spells) like generally in vanilla Oblivion. I think this diversity will give more tactics and variety to the gamplay, when you combine e.g. your chameleon spell, chameleon potion and chameleon scroll.
Compatibility:
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I made this mod primarily for Veritas Secreto's Tamriel Immersion Experience (TIE), Giskard's Cyrodiil Upgrade Overhaul (CUO), Librapoet's Realism Immersion and Balance Overhaul (RIBO). It should work any other overhaul that makes Oblivion un-leveled.
TIE 1.35 changes the same spells as this mod. TIE sets the magnitude of these spells to the maximum possible level. If spell effectiveness drops below 100%, the magnitude decreasing (in most cases) won't effect the actual gameplay with a warrior type PC who is in full armor, because even in TIE you don't encounter often really high (40-50) level enemies. So these TIE-modified spells probably will always work. Only "problem" with this is that in most cases a fully armored warrior will be as strong illusionist as a pure mage which is unfair, i think.
As i wrote above, in my mod these spells has NO magnitude at all, only duration, and this way spell effectiveness effects only duration. So a warrior with e.g. 70% spell effectiveness can use the spells i modified only a very very short time, even it can be only 1 sec (with low level illusion skill).
So, load my mod after TIE.
Of course you can also use it with vanilla Oblivion but it may unbalance some gameplay element. You can use it even with OOO or FCOM but note that OOO changes spells, sigil stones, magic effects and magic settings too, so you have to load this mod later than any of the OOO plugin related magic, birthsigns or potions.
Load this mod after any of the above mentioned overhauls.
Probably this mod is not compatible with the big magic mods like Supreme Magicka, LAME or others (as far as i know Mighty Magic doesn't touch stock spells so it may be compatible). I don't use any of them, for my taste these mods makes magic too overpowered, even lore-unfriendly. And i like simple mods that doesn't change much in vanilla Oblivion only if it's absolutely necessary.
Installation:
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Unpack the file in a temporary folder, copy/paste the proper esp files into Oblivion/Data folder. There are 2 versions: one is for new characters, one is for existing characters or if you don't want the alternative starting spells.
Every version of the mod is divided in 2 parts. One part needs OBSE and OBME, this is responsible for the level-dependent spells, the other is responsible for the other tweaks that don't need OBSE and OBME. I think in this way the mod will be more mod user friendly, they can decide if they want to use OBME (although it's not a big issue especially if OBSE is already in use). And OBME is in beta state and i don't want to "force" anyone to use a beta tool, so they can use the only "other" tweaks they want to, without needing OBME.
No worries, as i experience, with my mod the beta OBME works fine.
Remove it by deleting these esp files. Always make a save and keep it in case you want to uninstall the mod!
See more installation and load order details inside the folders.
Final thoughts:
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Please tell me your opinion and suggestions and notify me about any bug you may experience!!!
You can use this mod to create another but give me credit and give your mod a name that is different from this mod's name, please!
Acknowledgement:
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JRoush for making OBME and
Ian Patterson (ianpatt), Stephen Abel (behippo), Paul Connelly (scruggsywuggsy the ferret) for making OBSE!
