I thought it was only daggers to reduce the risk of it happening accidentally (i.e. it only happens in certain conditions). I guess it could also work for swords, but as it's an instakill (right?) they could carry around any old dagger purely for throat slitting purposes, and use their decent sword for actual fighting.

Great! And is ther going to be a % chance for success?

i.e. 'sneak skill *1.5' for slit throat and unarmed *1.5 for knocking people out? or just 100% success

Any chance of adding something for sneaky archers? I'm not sure what but archery and sneak is a popular playstyle.

Nah, at first I only allowed daggers because to me it made sense, daggers are for slitting throats But slitting throats does seem perfectly possible with a sword to me too, so I might as well allow that too. Maybe when I get to not making these moves 100% guarantueed succesful, I can give daggers a bonus because they would be easier to handle though..


It is mentioned in my future plans yet. Although I currently think I'll more be going for something like:

knockout chance % = 100 + (gauntlets weight)*ArmorTypeMult - (helmet weight)*ArmorTypeMult
throat slit % = 50 + oneHandedSkill - (helmet armor)*ArmorTypeMult

Where ArmorTypeMult would be a low value for light armor (0.5 maybe?), 0 for clothing and a higher value (2 maybe?) for heavy armor.


Someone on skyrimnexus comments asked me this:


to which I answered this:

No comment on that, other than that I also used to like that mod in oblivion and got bored yesterday night and might accidentally have been putting a bit of work on one of those things you mentioned already... no promises though

lol the nerve of some people! Thats fine with me, I was thinking though that if people decide that the time with fists is too long and you shorten the time then there will be others who thought it was fine. I was thinking that you could make Maces knock out (with the chance of accidental death) but if it doesnt kill them make them unconscious longer than with fists.

Hey Borgut,
I had a go with the beta, here's what I found so far:
I've yet to successfully disguise myself when I have a bounty. I murdered some people with a mask on (I think, see later) and ran away. It said Iwas hidden, so I took it off, and then found a guard, who tried to kill me. I might not have been properly hidden, mind.
I tried waiting for several days nearby, while hidden. They still attacked me when I went back with a mask on. (how long do you have to wait in vanilla before the bounty is removed?)
I'm off to another hold, to try it again. Slitting throats is fun, had a little trouble with knockouts but haven't tried much.

Note: Auto-unequip helmet is being a pain, it keeps removing the mask. Worth mentioning.

Well it wouldn't really be so much a chance of accidental death as it either happening because of weapon damage or it not happening. These swings knocking people unconscious also really do count as an attack as well, and deal appropriate damage (receiving sneak bonuses and all that). For fists it is generally no issue since noone deals enough damage to instantly kill someone with their fists without mods (and I might implement a safeguard for fists later in case people with unarmed mods do run into issues).


That auto-unequip helmet, is that a mod automatically unequipping your helmet? Because of it is I'd definitely recommend turning it off for testing these masks

In vanilla, bounties are never removed. You can only get rid of them by paying your fines, going to jail or paying the bounty off at a reduced rate at the thieves guild. This mod does not change that, so if you had a vanilla bounty already you will never be able to walk safely without a mask if you don't want to get rid of them in the ways mentioned above. With a mask it should be possible to walk around safely, but if you commit crimes with that mask on too you will have to unequip it and then wait 48 hours if you were seen equipping/unequipping or 24 hours if you weren't seen to reset the mask bounty.

If you're absolutely sure any of this does not correspond with what happened in your game, plz describe in as much detail as possible exactly what you did in what order so I can try to recreate the issue and see where it goes wrong.

maybe add

1. A blunt arrow - Knockouts opponent if headshot, if not alerts them.
2 Key arrow - open doors from a distance, if locked it engages lockpick mini game maybe a retex of the lockpick to make it look like the arrow is picking it.
3 Activation Arrow - an arrow that activates objects
4. trip wire arrows - you shoot into a wall and shoot into the wall opposite to make a trip wire that will trip enemys and leave them incapicated for a certain amount of time

Earlier today I said I was going to release a new version today, but I'll be delaying that to tomorrow. Made some good progress on a feature I didn't originally plan (Rope arrows, inspired by the Thief series and the oblivion mod Thieves Arsenal) but it's not 100% finished yet and don't think it will be today, and I do want that finished first.


Some nice ideas there (especially liking the tripwire one), not sure yet about something like key arrow But either way, I'll put it on my list to think about for later, no promises yet.

the blunt arrow idea was just so that players focusing in archery and long distance can still apply the knockout effect to enemies, the trip wire idea would be great for dungeons with small walkways. You could alert guards and then as they run towards you...they hit the wire, it would have to withstand more than one enemy crossing it though for times when a few enemys charge at you at once. Maybe a explosive version or poison cloud could help with groups.

Certaintly liking the tripwire idea although wouldn't it be weird if it is automatical? I mean, you shoot at one wall then at the opposite wall and, suddenly, a tripwire appears out of the blue? It would be more believable if shooting the arrows only provided the supports for the trap and then you had to activate them in order to make the 'rope' of the tripwire appear.

That would explain it I guess I confused it with another game, Fallout or similar.
I'll need to test some more. If I've been seen with a bounty and been seen to unequip the mask, will the mask bounty hang around until the normal one is cleared, or should I be safe to go out in the mask after waiting 48 hours? (That's what you said, just checking. I think i went out after 26 or so hours, assuming that 24 was enough, but I had probably been seen with and without it, hence should have waited 48.)

Pretty sure the only thing that's slightly unintended is that beast races don't have a mask on their cowl. But that's a vanilla thing. (does seem a bit silly as a disguise, but I guess a hood covers you from most angles)

The mask bounty will not hang around until the normal one is cleared (but it WILL be added on to the normal bounty as well and that addition to the normal bounty remains forever until you clear that entire normal bounty). After 48 hours walking around with a mask should be safe again.

No it's not weird, a rope attached to two arrows, one at either end of the rope. Fire one arrow it goes into the wall, your fire the other into the wall opposite. This would create a tripwire with the rope that was attached.

You should be able to attach poisons to it for effect. Poison cloud effect from the battle smashing when the rope is triggered and oil and fire explosion effect as another option. Say you put a tripwire down in a narrow tunnel in a bandit dungeon. Bandit one runs down the tunnel and is followed by a few other bandits, bandit one triggers the wire. That breaks the wire but it also breaks the attached poison vial. The bandits behind him are left incapicated by the poison leaving you to snipe them from a distance.

Uploaded a new version 0.30 BETA. Changelog:

0.3 BETA (1 July 2012)
- Added a new model for the Dark Cowl, with thanks to Sundracon for allowing me to use his models.
- Slightly optimized a few scripts.
- NPCs will treat mask-wearers with greater suspicion now (see the description for details)
- Added Rope Arrows

What would be cool is if you could fire an arrow with a rope attached to it that you can climb. Like fire it at a ledge of a cliff and then climb up the rope to the ledge.... might be beyond skyrims engine though. If not that would be cool.

0.31 BETA (2 July 2012)
- Fixed throat slits not working in version 0.30 BETA.
- Fixed throat slits not working in any version against guards in a certain pose. This pose is
still problematic in that the throat slit will take some time before it happens and is not instant
against these targets, but at least it works now.

Isn't that what Rope Arrows do? (or did Borgut add them after your comment?)

I think his Rope Arrow is more of a trip wire Arrow. I havnt downloaded it yet because i'm trying to balance out a few other things before i add on more mods.

No, the rope arrows are indeed for climbing. Currently they do not work well yet when you shoot your arrow into the side of a vertical wall/cliff because my collision detection often hits the same side of the wall immediately when trying to find the floor below it, but it generally works well when shooting your rope arrows into a more horizontal area above you

....... You just made my thief/assassin characters very, very happy! Hopefully you can get it to work properly..... If Arthmoor can get the city wall collisions to work to where you can go over them in open cities then they can sneak in from the back way!.... Oh the possibilities are ENDLESS!

lol sorry just so excited.

keeping an eye this.....did backstabbing and cut throat have swords added to them yet?

Lots of success with backstabbing and the like.
One error: When attempting to kill someone sleeping in a tent/bedroll combo, as the animation plays I was flung sideways into a rock, and hence my attacks missed and did no damage. (I didn't take any damage myself, so I went round and did him in manually)
Not much of a problem, but I thought I'd mention it.
Rope arrows are fun, but they're not very good on cliffs, as you said. Work fine on trees, but there's not much to do up a tree

Not yet. I'll probably put up a new version tomorrow which won't have many big new features but deal with all kinds of little boring things (like throat slitting with swords, dealing properly with essential NPCs etc.)

A little update on future versions:

Somewhere tomorrow I'm expecting to release 0.40 BETA. It will feature:
- A whole new underground shop accesible through teleportation, with a vendor specializing in Sneak Tools (he'll have some general blades/bows/arrows/lockpicks, but also all new items currently added by the mod and he will be the source of all new items in later versions as well)
- Through dialogue with this vendor, you'll be able to choose whether you want the current system for slitting throats or knocking out (no menus, faster gameplay) or whether you want the confirmation menus back as seen in the videos (menus to choose what you want to do, which means you can pickpocket even with weapons drawn, and this will be compatible with mods such as Belua Sanguinare)
- If you choose to continue using the current system without menu pop-ups, you will see correct text ''Slit Throat'' or ''Knock Out'' when the crosshair is pointing at NPCs replacing ''Pickpocket''.
- Added the Tribal Orcs faction to the list of factions which the masks can conceal your identity from.
- Slitting throats will be possible with swords, and knocking out will be possible with maces.
- NPCs will hopefully never again talk while unconscious (Heimskr the Talos preacher in Whiterun was a notorious individual who wouldn't shut up when unconscious - in this version he stopped talking, so hopefully other NPCs won't be able to get in any circumstances where they can still talk either)

After this version 0.40, I plan to take longer between updates but deliver more new tools in each update. The reason for this is that due to the scripted nature of some parts of the mod, it will always be necessary to make a clean save when upgrading, and clean saves means loss of items crafted/bought so far. So I want to minimise the amount of times you guys lose items and have to obtain them again, and therefore make slower but bigger updates.