LE Arena that is character driven, and non-fatal

[WarrenHam]

So, this mod has 6 steps.

 

I was watching some documentaries on Roman gladiator games and noticed that most of the fights are non-fatal. This makes sense, if every duel was to the death, you’ll run out of gladiators real quick. So I figured arenas on Tamriel should work the same way. Most importantly, since fights are never to the death, that means all the arena competitors could be actual characters rather than generic NPC’s.

 

1. An arena system, where fights end when a fighter yields. To compliment, the arena would have a collection of fighter NPC’s for the player to fight. Since these NPC’s don’t die, they can have persistent back stories, unique weapons etc.

 

Note, the player can lose fights, without dying and without having to reload the game. This could put a sort of rival mindset for players, if the player consistently lose to a certain NPC.

 

2. An inn/lodging/tavern next to the arena where the fighters live at. This gives players the opportunity to speak to these NPC’s when not fighting. The NPC’s themselves could also be followers. (It would be much easier to take advantage of existing follower mods). Effectively you can have them accompany you on journeys and fight them in the arena.

 

3. The arena support staff (The Blademaster, innkeeper, smithy) should also possible participants in the arena. These guys wouldn’t be followers, which means they can be given unique weapons. (The innkeeper could also be a werewolf, so he fights as a werewolf, but is a normal person otherwise).

 

4. This is the main goal of the mod – Named NPC’s around Skyrim can also pop up in the arena, obvious choices would be Lydia, mercenaries like Mercurio, and the companions. But more importantly, non-followers should also be able to pop up in the arena for fights; such as Vex, Irileth, Faralda, Odelmar. Calcemo, Delphene, Hadvar, Isran, Nelacar, Brynjolf etc. This would allow the players to fight some pretty memorable and tough NPC’s that we couldn’t otherwise.

 

5. Arena announcer, hardly essential, but would be cool.

 

Further developments:

 

5. Team fights, such as the player fighting multiple opponents, or 2 v 2’s, 3 v 3’s etc. This is actually complicated, because as soon as a character yields he needs to “leave the arena” so he doesn’t interferes with the rest of the fights. In addition, the game needs to determine winners as last man standing.

 

6. Boss fights, inversely the player can team up with other characters to fight a much tougher one. Such as the Forgemaster, Ebony Warrior, or multiple enemies, such as multiple Dremora Lords, or Dwarven automatons. Imagine teaming up with Vex and Faralda to fight the Forgemaster!

 

With regards to if the player can pick exactly who they fight, I’m unsure, but there definitely needs a fight random person feature. And maybe a feature to pick the type of fighter.

 

I’m not an expert on making mods but thinking through how this could be done.

 

1 and 2. We can probably borrow an arena from another mod, and we can use an existing inn interior. The arena NPC’s we can probably get from existing follower mods. But how do we get them to trigger fights and establish winners without deaths? The game already has fist fight code, could that be utilized? All the arena NPC’s would be essential to avoid accidental deaths.

 

4. This is where it gets tricky, can an arena (or cell) be declared an essential zone where no one can die inside? I doubt it, do we have to set essential and remove essential every time someone comes in to fight? Unless the brawl code already prevents fatalities? Similarly, would teleportation NPC’s to an arena, fighting them, and then teleportation them home cause any bugs? A possible fix would be to create duplicates of NPC’s and have them fight in the arena, but this might have issues with NPC visual overhaul mods.