I really loved OOO till the point I recognized I could stack up 80 or more Resist Magic without much effort to get immunity to magic effects - or almost immunity, it does not matter, because with 80 Resist Magic you can humiliate every caster, even Mannimarco and the Vampire King make a laughable performance. I read OOO delivers content for characters up to level 40 (this is estimately the level cap of the strongest enemies). But what`s the point if I can stack 100 Resist Magic and beat the two most dangerous enemies with level 20 or even less? In other words: Stacking Resist Magic is like enabling god mode.

To rebalance Magic Resist I would scale its effect to 25% percent. Let`s say you have 100 Resist Magic. With the mod applied Magic Resists would reduce the magic damage by 25% instead of 100%. Well, you can argue here, what the right value is, but that`s not the problem.

Now I`m looking for a solution. I guess there are many ways to do it, but I don`t have much experiencing with TES CS and coding, at least not as much as you guys do, so maybe you can give me some advice. I can imagine the following solutions:

1. Manual Rebalancing: Load up TES CS and rebalance every race stat and every item and every potion and every cast to the value I want. That`s a lot of work, but I guess it could be possible to do.
2. Game Settings: Maybe there`s a value for that in the game settings?
3. Scripts: Maybe someone could write a script to reduce the effectivity of Resist Magic. Let`s say you have 100 Resist Magic. The script would make the engine think you have only 25 Resist Magic.
...
...

I think I could manage solution 1, but everything else is above my knowledge and skill. Maybe there`s even an easier way I don`t know about.

So what do you guys think?

There are no game settings that control the actual behavior of Resist Magic. A mod could raise it's cost (to make it much harder to get high values); add in some tweaks to the Mundane ring & a few other items you might not have such an issue. And depending on how smooth of a result you want, you can always use scripts to adjust it on the fly.

You could also try http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34841. It's an obse plugin that was designed to address exactly this problem. It's not very polished at the moment, but it does more or less exactly what you want. It does a lot of other things, too, but you can turn all of those off. The caveat is that I made this plugin, so of course I'm going to suggest it. I'm sure there are other mods that could achieve the results you're looking for as well.

I would certainly like to see something like that as well, not only for resist magic. I think many of Oblivion's enchantments are overpowered. It's simply too easy to get a super powerful (or invincible) character at level 20. You have 9 slots for enchantments (not counting weapons, with tail slot items like the circlets added by Fran's it's 10). That means you can easily get 100 resist magic and 100 resist normal weapons - and that even without counting in vanilla enchantments that come with multiple effects. You also get racial and birthsign bonuses additionally to that. Even armor becomes obsolete. A Daedric cuirass has an AR of 18.5 with 100 in heavy armor. A simple ring can be enchanted with 20 shield, giving off better protection than the most powerful cuirass in the whole game at the highest skill level possible. All you need is a grand soulgem (can be obtained quite easily in mid-game already) and a bit of money. That is silly.

I have no idea how you could adjust that, but I think it would be possible. OBSE has a lot of functions for magic effects, I'm sure an OBSE wizard could make a script based mod.

And the maximum resistance to arrows is zero! It does seem silly to have armor - i.e. normal weapon resistance - capped, but not magical defense. But I'd disagree about whether physical armor or enchantment should have the upper hand in providing any of it. That's a separate subject that confuses the basic issue of caps.

Another related issue is whether spell effectiveness should be related only to armor or to encompass all resistances. It might help balance if mages had to be generally vulnerable in order to cast the most offense, even if they get to toggle it on and off with hotkeys. It just like you can't block and swing at the same time, right?

Thank you so far for the answers, it looks like you guys agree with me. I`m bumping this topic now to get more statements.

@ JRoush

Thank you for the link to your mod, I`m gonna look into it.

*Edit*

@JRoush

I`ve looked into it and your mod looks pretty impressive. Are you still working on it and will a non-beta version be released?

Unfortunately I must admit I don`t know enough to understand the mathematical formulas and stuff at first look, but maybe you can help me?

I loaded your esp into TES CS and I checked all the new game settings. I guess I need to alter the following settings:

For Resist Magic on Items and Enchantments (?):

favuMagicItemResistGrowthRate
favuMagicItemResistDecayRate
favuMagicItemResistUseDR

For Resist Magic on Spells (?):

favuMagicEffectResistGrowthRate
favuMagicEectResistDecayRate
and favuMagicEectResistUseDR

The purpose of the UseDR is to make use of your Diminishing Return formula. I see the Growth Rate and Decay Rate are part of the DR formula. Does that mean I can only use these along the DR formula? I don`t understand what those rates those anyway, because I do not understand the formula, which they are part of. What values would you recommend, if I want to set the Magic Resist mechanic for items and spells to a 25% value of the vanilla one? And my last question is: What shall I do, if I only want to alter the settings above? How can I make sure, nothing else is changed by the mod (like Chameleon etc.)?

/bump

It is a lot to swallow, especially if you don't have a mathematical background, and the pdf is targeted mostly at other modders. Here's a basic breakdown:

The mod allows the player & other actors to have skills, attributes, resistances, etc. above 100. In most cases this just means replacing a hard-coded value of '100' with an adjustable game setting. In cases like resistance, though, this isn't enough - stopping more than 100% of damage has no meaning, unless you're reflecting or absorbing it. Plus, like you, I felt that it was too easy to max out these values and break the game (especially chameleon).

I'll use Resist Magic as an example. In the vanilla game, every point of RM blocks 1% of total magical damage - very easy to understand. AV Uncapped replaces this 1:1 relationship with an exponential decay. The best way to describe this is every 1pts RM block 1% of the damage you are still taking. So an RM of 50 blocks 50% of total damage, but adding 50 more pts of RM will only block 1/2 of the 50% you are still taking, e.g. 75% of total damage. 150 pts RM blocks 87.5%, etc. It doesn't have to be 50pts->50% - you can adjust the numbers - but the principle is always the same.

In your case I'd recommend something closer to 20pts -> 20%. Here's a comparison chart:

• RM = % Damage Blocked
  
• 0 = 0%
  
• 10 = 11%
  
• 20 = 20%
  
• 30 = 28%
  
• 40 = 36%
  
• 50 = 43%
  
• 60 = 49%
  
• 80 = 59%
  
• 100 = 67%
  
• 150 = 81%
  
• 200 = 89%

For low values of RM, the difference from vanilla is barely noticeable. As you get higher, though, you start to see very diminished returns (hence the name of the formula). You estimated that 80% damage reduction was enough to break the game, and under this scheme you would need 150 points of RM to accomplish that. Still doable, if you're determined, but you'd probably have no armor or other buffs whatsoever.

If this sounds good, then here's how you set it up. You will need the latest version (v1.2) of the TES Construction Set, which you can download http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/The_Elder_Scrolls_Construction_Set.

• Download & install AV Uncapper from TESNexus. Installation instructions are in the readme; they boild down to 'copy a folder'. Don't activate the 'ActorValueUncapper_Example.esp' file unless you want to see everything that the mod does.
  
• Open the TES CS. Don't load any files, just open it.
  
• Go to Gameplay -> Settings to bring up the game settings dialog.
  
• Find ifavuMagicItemResistUseDR and iavuMagicEffectResistUseDR. Change both values to 1. This enables the new diminished returns formula.
  
• Find favuMagicItemResistDecayRate and favuMagicEffectResistDecayRate. Change both values to 1.12. The sets the relationship between magical resistances and % damage reduction. You can play with this value if you want to make resistances weaker or stronger.
  
• Find favuMagicItemResistGrowthRate and favuMagicEffectResistGrowthRate. Change both values to 0.83. This sets the relationship between magical weaknesses and % damage increase.
  
• Click OK, then save the changes (File-> Save).
  
• Activate the new plugin in your load order & play.

Note that the mod can't affect just Resist Magic. This procedure will change the behavior of all magical resistances and weaknesses, e.g. Resist Fire or Resist Poison. This may be more than you intended, but I think it will work pretty well. And you won't get any of the other features of the mod - you skills & attributes will still be capped like normal.

If you're already familiar with the CS then I apologize for the step-by-step explanation

What we need is a mod that puts an 85% cap on Resist Magic. Armor rating (and by extension the Shield magic effect) is already capped at 85%, and Resist Magic is essentially armor rating for spells. So why isn't it capped too? Doesn't make any sense.

And since it wouldn't make much sense to cap armor rating and Resist Magic but not superior magic effects, there should also include cap on Reflect Damage, Resist Normal Weapons, Resist Magic, Spell Absorption, Reflect Spell and Chameleon. Probably less than 85% for them (excluding Chameleon), Because they're so powerful and you can stack them all to get pretty darn close to invincible (85 Reflect Spell and 85 Spell Absorption means about 2.25% chance of the spell affecting you)

It could optionally include caps on Resist Poison, Resist Paralysis, Resist Disease, Resist Fire, Resist Cold and Resist Shock, but those aren't nearly as powerful and getting all of them maxed is much more of a chore so they aren't as necessary to nerf.

I would love to have a mod like that.

[Edit] Though that diminishing returns system sounds pretty nice too JRoush. Is there any way to apply a system like that to armor rating as well? The cap of 85 is really easy to hit, and makes wearing further armor pointless. My character has a heavy armor skill of 100 and he can nearly max out his armor rating with two Deadric armor pieces with Transcendent Sigil Stone shield enchantments. It rather bugs me that the remaining armor slots are only useful for enchanting anymore.

Only problem with that Jupiah, is that Resist Magic stacks with every other resist(except weapons and paralysis). Resist Magic 50% is somewhat easy to get. Breton's get it in Vanilla. But that's 50% resist to fire, frost, shock, poison, and any other hostile effect.

Resist Magic doesn't effect poison actually, but yeah, I get what you mean. I don't blame Resist Magic for that fault though, that's more a case of Bretons being ridiculously overpowered. It's not like any of the other races start with a +50 bonus to armor rating. I personally use a race overhaul mod that nerfs Bretons.

AVUncapper addresses armor as well; it just wasn't what Klaus was asking about. The same procedure applies.

As someone who is not the author of AVUncapper, I'd like to step in and give it a sound recommendation. AVUncapper will be part of the foundation of my own magic mod, Ars Gratia Artaeum; before AVUncapper came out, I was going to do something similar with scripts, based on Flyflightflea's Magick Overlap (which would incidentally be the current answer to your original question if JRoush hadn't stepped up to bat).

Ars will also implement your "solution #1" so that the reduction in effectiveness doesn't have to be so steep, but I'm waiting for DragoonWraith's ARES to come out because it will let me do this in a far more elegant fashion. (I.e., if I find I need to make a slight change in the overall balance, I won't have to manually re-edit hundreds of item entries...)

Really? I'm going to have to read the documentation and learn how to use this plugin then. It sounds perfect, but it sure looks complicated and I've never used the construction set before. JRoush's instructions are pretty clear though, so I'm sure I'll figure it out.


Thank you so much for recommending this mod! This mod plus AVUncapper together should completely eliminate all cheap and easy routes to ultimate power in the game. Enchantment and armor rating diminishing returns plus nerfs to spell stacking, awesome!

@ JRoush

Thanks alot for your very detailed explanations. I didn`t have the time to read them yet, but I will do in a few hours. Don`t forget to come back to this topic, I`m sure further questions will arise (by myself and others).

Here, here! I have a question!

AVUncapper sounds really interesting, I have 2 questions about it...

1) By loading the provided .esp I'll get all the changes described in the .pdf ? I ask this because, as I understand it, the provided .dll(s) recreate Vanilla values, but I would like to have everything uncapped and diminishing returns on every effect, is loading the Example .esp (in addition to the .dll(s) obviously) enough to get that or do I need to work in the CS?

2) I've been using the old S.P.A.M (Simbacca's Player Advancement System) for ages, my favourite levelling system and very compatible with everything I tried so far. When you start a new character and SPAM is initialized it asks if you're using Ely's uncapper or (IIRC) Toaster legendary ability (older, deprecated mod). Does someone know if AVUncapper somehow conflicts with S.P.A.M?

1) The example esp will provide all of the features mentioned in the pdf. The cap on 'base' skills & attributes is raised to 255, the 'Diminished Returns' parameters are configured to something I thought was appropriate, and all other skill & attribute formulas are uncapped so that they accept arbitrarily high values. You should probably change the cap on base skills+attr to 200 (change the values of iavuMaxAttributeBase and iavuMaxSkillBase to 200 using the CS), since SPAM does not expect values higher than that.

2) I've had a look at SPAM, and it should work fine with AV Uncapper. At least, it should work as well as it did with Elys' Uncapper. When it asks, just tell it that you are using Elys' Uncapper, so that it will deal with values > 100 properly.

Nice! I'l thinker with it tomorrow! IIRC Ely's Uncapper reaches 255 as upper limit, so I think S.P.A.M. is actually aware of 200+ attributes, still I'll tweak those values if some problem arise...
One last (dumb) question, I should directly modify the Example plugin? Or create a new one with iavuMaxAttributeBase and iavuMaxSkillBase set to 200?


Thank you! Both for the plugin and for the explanation

Edit: Double checked SPAM's readme, and no mention is made of a 200 limit. I think that AVUncapper .esp should work nicely as it is! Or is there something that you know and I don't about an hard limit set to 200? Thanks again!

Not quite. Oblivion has a hard limit of 255 for the base values of skills. However, "the base value" includes certain fortify effects, specifically those with the "Ability" type. There are only a few of these which affect skills in the base game -- Grey Prince Training, Skeleton Key -- but they're pretty popular with modders because they're the only way to get an effect with unlimited duration that doesn't take up an enchantment slot. To reduce the possibility of such effects pushing a skill over 255, Elys only allows normal advancement up to 200, even though the formulas recognize higher values.

Oh! Ok then, I'll tweak those values in the CS... Thanks Tejon!

I`ve read your instructions now, I thank you again for taking the time to explain everything in detail.

I also looked through all the new settings and studied the PDF a bit more. Nevertheless some additional questions popped up as I went through all the game settings to set them to my liking. I hope you can answer them:

1. If I want to keep the attributes and skills capped vanilla-like, I need to set "iavuMaxSkillBase" and "iavuMaxAttributeBase" to 100, right? It`s the same with

-"favuMaxAlchemyEffectiveSkill"?
-"favuMaxCasterSkillCostSkill"?
-"favuMaxDetectionSneakSkill"?
-"favuMaxWeaponDamageAttribute"?
-"favuMaxHandDamageAttribute"?
-"favuMaxHandDamageSkill"?
-"favuMaxWeaponDamageSkill"?
-"favuMaxWornArmorSkill"?

2. To disable a game setting, I need to set the according ***UseDR value to 0, right?

3. This also "disables" the according growth and decay rate, right?

4. I don`t want to use any formulas, that are important for a pure melee aspect like for example DefendBonus and Worn Armor Rating. If I want to have it vanilla-like, what value need the following game settings:
- "fmaxArmorRating"?
- "fBlockMax"?

5. Is there a problem I miss, if I apply the values you proposed above (1.12 DecayRate and 0.83 GrowthRate) also to the Reflect Damage, Resist Normal Weapons, Spell Absorb, Spell Reflect settings? This way I can fix the potential exploitation of other values too, the question is, if these numbers should be applied to these settings too.

6. Last but no least: What about compatibility? If I want to use OOO or LAME and keep its spell cost system improvements, but I want to use your DR improvements of the Resist Magic system, I need to load this esp after OOO/LAME, right? The problem that occurs now is, that those game settings of your mod that I set to a vanilla value will override the improvements of OOO/LAME, right? So wouldn`t be the best way to solve this problem to delete the game settings of your mod that I don`t want to be used, so they do not override the OOO/LAME tweaks? If that`s a good solution, how can I delete the game settings I don`t need?

Thanks in advance for everything!

Before answering, let me be clear: you should not load the example esp. Since you want the majority of the features left disabled, just open the CS and create a new esp that changes only the settings you're interested in.

1. All of these values should be 100. This is the default value, so you will not need to change them.

2. The various ***UseDR settings can be set to 1 to enable the diminished return behavior for whatever *** is, or they can be set to 0 to keep the 1:1 vanilla behavior. For example, setting iavuMagicItemResistUseDR to 0 will make Resist Magic behave just like it does in vanilla oblivion. Again, 0 is the default value for all of these settings, so you can just leave them be if you don't want the associated DR features.

3. If you set ***UseDR to 0, then ***GrowthRate and ***DecayRate do nothing at all.

4. fMaxArmorRating and fBlockMax control the max % armor (usually 85) and the max fraction of damage that can be stopped by blocking (usually 0.75, or 75%). Unlike all the settings that start with 'avu', which are completely new to this mod, these two settings are part of the vanilla game. They are only mentioned in the pdf because the new formulas incorporate them. Since you're leaving all of the armor & block related features off, you can just leave these settings alone.

5. You can apply the numbers I gave you (1.12 DecayRate and 0.83 GrowthRate) to any DR function. Those values mean that every 20 pts of Resistance/Absorption/Reflection will reduce the damage you take by 20% = 1/5.

6. Since most of the settings used by AV Uncapper are new, your changes to them won't conflict with any other mods, so it doesn't matter where you put this in the load order. If you changed a vanilla setting (like fMaxArmorRating) then you would need to be more careful, but I don't think that either OOO or LAME changes those settings anyway. Currently, here aren't any mods that can be overriden by the changes you will be making.

Finally, something important that I should have mentioned clearly before: Changes to the formulas affect all actors, not just the player. Specifically, any enemies that were previously immune to magic/poison/fire/etc will only be 65% resistant in your case. For example, undead are supposed to be completely immune to poison, but now they would only be about 2/3 immune. This isn't really a bad thing, but the vanilla content of the game was not designed for it. This is the reason I haven't made more of an effort to polish this mod - it's incomplete until I or somebody else addresses this issue.

Just wanted to pop in and say that your plugin looks really interesting, JRoush. I feel exactly the same as the OP about Resist Magic (/damage and Reflect magic/damage), so I'm very interested in a mod for this. It seems like it would make good sense to have an esp that reads many of the settings from an ini file, and then applies them.

Could you add a simple check for any one effect providing a 100% resistance? If such an effect is in place, the intent is pretty obviously immunity.

Between spellmaking, enchanting, and alchemy there are precious few magic effects that don't break the game. I actually like that about Oblivion - I have a lot of fun thinking of creative ways to make myself invincible. But yes, I think in the long run it really detracts from the rest of the game.


Actor Values are just numbers, there is no good way to tell what has been changing them. I could check all of the actor's active effects for 'Resist Magic 100%', but I would need to do it every time the AV is accessed, which is brutally inefficient (some AVs are accessed dozens of times per frame). Plus, it breaks locality - my code would be essentially trying to reproduce the work of the magic system, which is bad for compatibility. The ideal approach to a change in mechanics like this is to also change the content that relies on those mechanics, i.e. making a mod that tweaks all of the 'Immunity' abilities individually. I'm still considering how to best approach that.

Thank you, I understand almost everything now on the practical side. Not so on the theoretical though. I`m gonna look into the formula and try to understand it to some extent and will come back for questions.

*Edit*

Ok, just this quick question, because I have to go back to the university now. You posted this:

In your case I'd recommend something closer to 20pts -> 20%. Here's a comparison chart:

* RM = % Damage Blocked
* 0 = 0%
* 10 = 11%
* 20 = 20%
* 30 = 28%
* 40 = 36%
* 50 = 43%
* 60 = 49%
* 80 = 59%
* 100 = 67%
* 150 = 81%
* 200 = 89%

Would it be possible to make this system even more "strict", like 100 = 30%. What numbers would that be and how can I get to those numbers? For school I had once a calculator that could process such a formula, but today I would not even know how to type it in.

Oh, yeah, ouch.

Okay, what about a three-part work-around: could AVUncapper explicitly recognize a set of Boolean "immunity" AVs, which could be created by AddActorValues and placed in a few appropriate effects with OBME?