Elseagoat's Magic Overhaul

[elseagoat]

This will be my first large scale mod. I intend to overhaul most if not all of the magic perks rather extensively, and make necessary changes to base spells in order to incorporate these new perks into the game.

 

Because Conjuration is my favorite school, I will be modifying Conjuration first. I will also welcome any assistance with this project if anyone is interested in helping me out. I am capable of doing all of this on my own, but the process would go much quicker if I had help from anyone with experience in scripting because I am learning this as I go. I have a basic knowledge of scripting and I am pretty good at modifying magic effects, but without much experience, the process of making something like this goes pretty slow since I have to learn how to do things on the way.

 

 

 

Conjuration

 

Tentative Perk Tree

 

 

Key:

Red = Planning Stage

Yellow = In Progress

Green = Completed

 

 

TO DO LIST

 

 

Banish spells

-Basic functionality: Works on all NPC types, temporarily makes NPC invulnerable but paralyzed, multiple versions effective against different level ranges, new versions available at trainers, appropriate enchantment changes reflecting this.

-Visual effects: not sure on this, but probably just make the NPC partially transparent with some shaders or some purplish effects swirling around.

 

Curse of Reanimation

-Basic functionality: Magic effect lasting 5 real minutes, checks every 15 seconds for nearby combat targets to spread to with a % chance of spreading, creates a weak but scaling undead minion when cursed NPC dies.

-Visual effects: Black smoke ring over corpse, skeleton "rising" animation, perhaps turning victims body to dust.

 

Conjurer

-Basic functionality: Single rank giving Novice-Master Conjuration perk effects automatically as the player levels up Conjuration skill.

 

Void Storage

-Basic functionality: accessing a container on spellcast.

-Visual effects: Simple portal effect.

 

Mark/Recall

-Basic functionality, marking locations and teleporting back to that location.

-Visual effects: Visible portal placement on Mark spell, IsMods on Recall spell.

 

Trinity

-Basic functionality: No longer applies to anything but Atronachs, player bonus for having 3 of the same type of Atronach.

 

Elemental Potency

-Basic functionality: Just using the vanilla perk, it adds new abilities and stats to the Atronachs which is interesting and fun.

 

Entropy

-Basic functionality: Conditions for use (undetermined as of yet) and explosion effect.

-Visual effects: Explosion corresponding to atronach type.

 

Atromancy

-Basic functionality: Just merging Atromancy and Summoner together, and removing the benefits from necromantic spells.

 

Reaping:

-Basic functionality: creating a portal that summons shades to harvest souls of enemies.

-Visual effects: unique IsMods and portal effects.

 

Aberration

-Basic functionality: Checking available soul gems/Azura's or Black Star, prioritizing which to use, and empowering reanimated minion for a specific duration by healing it and increasing damage.

-Visual effects: Black smoke coming off of Reanimated minion's body, or completely transforming it to a new model?

 

Virulence

-Basic functionality: Chance to apply Curse of Reanimation on damaging attack or during periodic in-combat radius check.

 

Necromancy

-Basic functionality: Either multiple ranks leading to permanent minions, or a single rank.

 

Elemental Binding

-Basic functionality: Opening menu to apply permanent effect which grants fire/frost/lightning effects when using bound weapons, scaling with level.

-Visual effects: Likely only target FX, but may also include FX on the bound weapon itself.

 

Necrotic Binding

-Basic functionality: Chance on hit with bound weapon to apply Curse of Reanimation.

-Visual effects: Again, likely to be none to remove chance of conflicting, buggy, or ugly effect combinations with Elemental Binding.

 

Soul Stealer

-Basic functionality: Using original vanilla perk.

 

Precision Binding

-Basic functionality: Likely 3 ranks, each giving a % damage increase such as 0.2% per level along with a static damage increase. Idea is to make bound weapons feasible at higher levels while remaining about the same at lower/middle levels.

 

 

 

 

Again, if you are decent at scripting and modding, would love to have some assistance, so let me know if you are interested! I would also appreciate creative ideas or suggestions for Conjuration or any of the other treas. Something that you don't like about a perk tree or magic school? Have a cool spell idea that would make a good perk? Something doesn't scale properly or is too weak/strong? Let me know!

Edited March 25, 2012 by elseagoat

[stoanadin]

So I would like to make the magic perk trees in Skyrim a bit more interesting, rather than the current incarnation of about 20+ "this costs less, that does more damage, these last longer" perks with 1 or 2 perks that actually do something.

 

For example, almost every tree has 5 casting perks that reduce magicka costs by half. You spend 5 points on these perks alone. It doesn't get any less exciting than that.

 

So far, I have only come up with ideas for Conjuration, and that will be my first part. Then I plan on working on Destruction and Illusion, but I feel Conjuration and Destruction require the most attention.

 

 

 

 

So I have attached a tentative diagram of a new conjuration tree. Tell me what you think, like, or dislike about it. If anyone is interested in the specifics of a perk, I can explain what I meant in its description in more detail.

 

Some notes:

 

- Curse of Reanimation is a debuff that lasts for 5 minutes, and every 15 seconds it will look for a nearby enemy and try, with a 15% chance, to spread to them, afflicting them with the same debuff. Any enemy afflicted with this curse will spawn a skeleton that will exist for a short time and attack your enemies. Currently working on making the animations for this look good, but I am having trouble getting the skeletons to "rise" out of the body.

 

-Conjurer is all the 5 half-magicka perks rolled into one, except now you will earn the other 4 automatically when you have this perk and you reach the appropriate conjuration level, so you only have to dump 1 point in this and not 5.

 

-I have already completed the Reaping perk. You can see the spell in standalone form here: Vid and DL

 

-The buff gained by trinity would be designed to give a little synergy with destruction. It would increase fire, frost, or lightning damage by a percentage, including the damage done by explosions caused by the Entropy ability earlier in the tree. Trinity would also no longer effect reanimation spells or summon Dremora spells.

 

-I am still working on the details of Entropy. It may just be a spell you cast and immediately blows up all atronachs, or just the nearest or furthest atronach. It may require that the atronach sustain X or deal X number of hits or damage, or exist for a minimum amount of time before you can use it, or perhaps these variables would modify the damage or effects instead of usability. I also realize this ability conflicts with a longer duration for the atronachs, so I am still fleshing out this idea.

 

-Elemental Binding would give you a spell that when used, activates a menu wher eyou can select between fire, frost, or shock. Once selected, you gain a permanent buff which would then give your bound weapons a fire, frost, or shock enchant that would scale with your level.

 

-Thralls would no longer be permanent. Dead Thrall would go to level 100, while Atronachs Thralls would simply be as-is with possibly a slightly reduced Magicka cost. The idea is that reanimated undead are somewhere in between "fodder" and "companion" as they integrate with your perks and necromancy abilities, making your minion a core part of necromancy, while atronachs are more like "fodder" where you use them in great numbers. The reason for this is because reanimating a minion is time consuming, it should be rewarding and choosing a body to reanimate to fight for you should be fun and engaging, but summoning atronachs is easy.

 

-Atronachs would no longer explode on death, (for some reason this only worked for Fire Atronachs for me anyways.)

 

-Aberration would bring up a menu when cast, asking which soul gem to consume. Depending on the type of gem and size of the soul, the duration would last different amounts of time. I plan on adding visual effect to this as well.

 

-I have NO idea what to do with Summon Dremora or Summon Familiar. I want to keep it, but I don't use these spells and don't know how to work them into the tree I have. Perhaps having them not count towards the actor limit and giving them unique dual cast properties, making a separate branch for them. Summon familiar would be cool if you had some way to choose what your familiar looked like.

 

 

this remake looks amazing! I especially like what you do with necromancy and the reanimation curse. I tried a different necro mod, but it felt more like a WoW warlock than a necromancer, I love this idea.

[elseagoat]

this remake looks amazing! I especially like what you do with necromancy and the reanimation curse. I tried a different necro mod, but it felt more like a WoW warlock than a necromancer, I love this idea.

 

Thanks! The general idea, at least with Conjuration is to do the following:

 

-Preserve the feel of vanilla TES:IV Conjuration while remaking many of the talents to be more interesting, fun, and immersive.

 

-Fix balance issues that arise with players wanting to use Bound Weapons as a primary source of damage.

 

-Give more defined playstyles to both Necromancy and Atromancy, Necromancy focusing on choosing a minion to reanimate and using that minion as a "Focal Point" for necromancy abilities while also utilizing "hordes" of weak, lesser minions at the same time. Atromancy focusing on utilizing 1-3 powerful atronachs as sources of additional damage.

 

-Get rid of mechanics that conflict with the above or are otherwise "non-fluid" with respect to their integration into Conjuration as a whole.

 

-Allow players to dip into conjuration as a sub-specialization or as a primary combat tree.

 

 

The idea is that Entropy and Aberration become "primary attacks" for conjurers focused on either or both of those aspects of conjuration, with the other perks existing to augment these attacks and the minions that they are centered on.

[elseagoat]

Bump for feedback/ideas!

[scrivener07]

I love it. Ive never been happy with conjuration in these games. This might make me give it a shot. Do you have plans to expand the illusion perk tree?

My only feedback/request is a regenerative soul feed ability with a heavy price. Like casting a soul feed spell on a target will gain you health but make you half as effective with magic for a certain time or even make your target stronger in some area. Something like that. I know theres restoration for that sort of thing but its always more fun to RP a specific type of magic user and having a regenerative ability, though limited, would be very nice for this class.

[elseagoat]

I love it. Ive never been happy with conjuration in these games. This might make me give it a shot. Do you have plans to expand the illusion perk tree?

My only feedback/request is a regenerative soul feed ability with a heavy price. Like casting a soul feed spell on a target will gain you health but make you half as effective with magic for a certain time or even make your target stronger in some area. Something like that. I know theres restoration for that sort of thing but its always more fun to RP a specific type of magic user and having a regenerative ability, though limited, would be very nice for this class.

 

 

Interesting idea. What about a perk that causes reanimated undead to heal you when they do damage? Sort of like a drain health proxy.

 

I have always thought that would be a good fit for the "Vampire's Servant" abilities, as right now they are rather bland and are pretty much just copies of the current reanimation spells. Maybe I should have a perk that lets you consume souls from soul gems to heal you.

 

Right now I am thinking that Aberration would only accept filled black soul gems because of the complications with prioritizing which soul gems are used without pausing the game and bringing up a menu, but a healing ability could be different.

 

 

I haven't played with illusion yet, but if you have any thoughts on the tree let me know. I like the idea of the tree a lot, but having not used it before, I have trouble picking out which talents look boring or problematic. Though as with all magic trees, there are a bunch of "wasted" perks on half magicka and "works on higher level" stuff, but I am at a loss right now as to what I could replace them with that would be interesting.

Edited March 26, 2012 by elseagoat

[djroby]

Bump for feedback/ideas!

 

maybe i'm in late

 

and ive a little idea about conjuration,a really good magic way but useless in skyrim now! at level100 is "nice" to conjure an atronach until he dies..but why only this thing ?!?!?!?!?!?!if i'm the master of conjuration,the best one,with the enough magicka why i can't conjure more ghosts/spiders/rats/animals/etc that like an "undeath army" fight for me until they die one by one or that they disappear when the enchant ends always one by one???

Edited September 16, 2012 by djroby