I was playing around with scripting and came up with this idea, to change the effect of 'Turn Undead' into 'Banish Undead'. A script would be placed on undead creatures that would check for the spell effect, and measure the spell strength from the change in Flee AI, which would then determine the damage dealt during the duration (and also cause fleeing if high enough). It would work like a 'Holy Bolt', and would be safe to use around companions.

It works fine for creatures, magic resist will decrease the effect. However, high magnitudes will cause some strange abnormalities since Flee AI will rollover to 0 past 255. Can't think of a way to get it to work on vampires though, since turn undead doesn't effect them in any way (could argue that they're still protected by Arkay's Law). NPCs can't cast the spell either it seems.

Anyone interesting in this work? It makes turn undead fairly useful for tomb crawlers, and the Ritual can now slay the undead with impunity. It rebalances the spell costs and available spells, and it'll add a script to all undead creatures, and require a patch to add the script to new undead creatures.

Sounds interesting. I never use Turn Undead in Morrowind as I find it completely useless, but I loved it in Baldur's Gate as it dispelled them on higher levels, which was quite satisfying.

It'll work like a cheaper costing 'Damage Health' spell to specifically target undead.

That would be really cool! I always thought that Morrowind needed a Holy Bolt spell! /shifty3.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':shifty:' />

Turn Undead is utterly useless... /meh.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':meh:' />

This is reminding me of a suggestion that came up recently of somehow linking the "Light" spell to "Sun Damage" for Vampires... effectively making Light a useful offensive weapon in the proper context. Using Turn Undead as some sort of Holy damage in addition to crowd control would be really neat... and like you said, The Ritual will make good use of it (one of my favorite signs)!


It'd be really awesome to see those sorts of ideas rolled together (and maybe with Creatures / MCA addons) -- new dimensions to magicka characters are always great.

i did a similar thing a whlie back. I caused Undead creatures to check is they had the spell cast upon them thne had a check which if proved positive would kill them. It was something like 30% chance of killing the undead creature. But i never released it as it wasnt compatible with creatures (which i got flammed for) and it Crashed my game once so thought it unstable.

I like the idea alot, and would be intrested in a release /smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

Well, upon further testing, it seems the turn undead effect will make NPCs and other creatures hostile if they are within range, even though the effect ignores them. So perhaps it's not as bystander-friendly as planned (at least companions will tolerate a few casts).

I'll have the download available momentarily for anyone to test out.

...there was a Turn undead spell in morrowind? /thlmfao.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lmao:' />

Here's the download: http://www.sendspace.com/file/bbz346

It's more of a proof of concept than an official mod, it showcases the effects and scripting well. Turn Undead is now refered to as Banish Undead, and damages scripted Undead creatures. Also included is "Meridia's Star", an ebony mace enchanted with Banish Undead, which can be bought in the High Fane.

Perhaps MWSE could implement this much easier, if it can read spell magnitude and creature type on-the-fly upon a target. The current method is a bit heavy-handed in how it must apply a portion of the script to any undead creature to work.

No, unfortunately MWSE can't determine the creature type. If it could, I would have made a lot of REALLY neat stuff I had planned at one point. /shrug.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':shrug:' />

Yes, but unfortunately it was more useless than the other demoralize spells as the devs didn't really set up the flee ai, and the undead had really low flee ai to begin with. This change gives the effect an interesting role to test out.


That's a shame, would've been interesting to see what you'd come up with. /happy.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='^_^' />

I tried it and it worked with ancestor ghosts and skeletons, but not on zombies or mummies...

I'm sure quorn only scripted vanilla undead creatures.

Thanks for this quorn! Very cool idea, and quite useful /smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> I never used Turn Undead before.

I've only added the script to the original creatures. I forgot to add the script to draugr since the construction set had them set as creatures and I didn't catch it...well, something to fix in the MPP anyways.

It'll sometime glitch the creature on death, and they'll fall through statics, most noticably in interiors.

Oh that explains that. Too bad it can't work all the time. I like the bright glowing ball with runes!

Guess that could be done if using MWSE and checking that the target is an Undead?

Fliggerty mentioned it wasn't possible to determine creature type with MWSE. The other option I suppose is to edit the code.

Couldn't you read creature names with MWSE? It wouldn't work with everything, of course, but you could use the keywords Zombie, Zombified, Skeleton, Lich, Undead, Wraith, Ghost, Bonewalker, Bonelord, etc. You can also make checks using the id of the creature.

Haven't tried out Banish Undead yet, but wanted to mention some findings with stock turn undead tests:

Tested against unmodded ancestor ghosts and skeletons with a 1st level character.
Stock flee settings.
Targets were unwounded and I did not try to wound them during the tests.

Conjuration at 30.
Ritual birthsign: Blessed Word - turn undead 100pts for 30sec on target; Blessed Touch - turn undead 100pts for 30sec on touch.

Even though the spells have cast chance 100 (flagged as always succeed), the results do not always turn the target the first time the spell is cast (however the spell fx do get applied). Ghosts (AI flee of zero) usually need two castings to get them to flee; skeletons (AI flee of 20) usually need one.

The reaction to the change in AI flee rating appears to take a second or two to kick-in (after the spell fx completes). When it does, the target will usually flee from the player; sometimes the target will just stop attacking and stay in place unless approached, upon which it will then flee. After the duration wears off, the target will return to fight.

Turn Undead spell (turn undead 50pts for 10sec on touch) had no affect, even after 15 castings. Modding it to 100pts magnitude fixed it. /lightbulb.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lightbulb:' />

That's true, with the original GMSTs, turn undead will work if the magnitude will increase the flee rating above 100 (same with the demoralize spells). Unfortunately, it means that only high magnitude spells will work, and the lower magnitude spells are worthless. With the original settings, wounds don't factor in enough to affect the outcome at all. Wakim's Game Improvements show that Flee AI could work with the right adjustments, though it made almost everything flee at low health. With proper tweaking, flee ratings can work well, but it would require a total revamp of assigned flee AI to NPCs and creatures.

I found it interesting that no matter how many times a lower than 100pt magnitude turning was cast at the same target, it would never get the flee rating high enough to actually make the target flee. The flee rating appears to get reset each time to the base rating for the creature plus the spell magnitude, so subsequent castings fail to stack the flee rating. Actually, that makes sense since a duration of more than 1 would cause repeated stacking which would eventually exceed a rating of 255; my understanding is that would result in the flee rating wrapping back around to zero. 100pt magnitude should be just enough, but probably doesn't work 100% every time due to float errors in the calculation - a lot of calcs miss by 1 - or maybe it's due to an unfortunate rounding off in the downward direction. /dry.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='<_<' />

Basically, I just wanted to bring to everyone's attention that adjusting all the turning spells to be at least 100pts magnitude would be another solution to the problem without needing to change GMSTs.


I think your approach is a good one. It should allow for player-created banish spells that will also turn undead if the magnitude is 100+ pts (assuming the undead has enough health to survive the banish damage). - should be interesting to see how that plays out in testing. /cool.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='B)' />

Is this easy to add to other creatures?

The only issue is that Turn Undead is affected by Resist Magicka, so even 100 magnitude spells would become useless even with minimal resist (same issue with demoralize...Bretons and orcs are naturally resistant), though it could be offset with Weakness to Magicka to an extent (which could possibly wrap the flee rating to zero at excessive magnitudes). From what I could guess from the original spells utilizing Turn Undead and the Demoralize spells, it makes me wonder if the devs were going to implement the spell's magnitude like how magnitude is used for the 'command' style spells (checks target's level for success), but changed it along the way.


You would need to copy/paste the script pieces onto undead creatures or into their assigned scripts. It's easy if you're familiar with scripting, though this was more of a concept than an official release.

Now there's an interesting thought. I wonder if there is any efficient way (perhaps down the line in MCP, or through scripting) to do something like that. It would certainly make sense, and like you said, be consistent with the Command spell.

hey that might actually make those spells useful, wonder how feasible it would be to code though.