LE Classical Staff Overhaul

[CredibleJoe]

I want to preface this by saying I plan on making this mod myself. I'm linking to this post from a sister post in Mod Talk, where I want to start a discussion on learning resources that could pertain to the changes and additions I want to accomplish.

 

That thread can be found Here.

Just for the sake of avoiding a massive wall of text and pertinence to their respective forums, I'll keep the threads separate.

 

This mod will be a staff overhaul-- but will do little to alter staves that are already in-game. Vanilla staves, and all staff-type weapons will be scaled down slightly, and have "Staff" replaced with "Rod", or "Wand". They will retain their classification as a weapon, and will function more or less exactly as they always have.

After that, new staves will be added into the game and leveled lists, classified as equipment instead of weapons. They could easily fit in the shield equipment slot, and will function as any other piece of clothing. They will have enchantments that increase the magnitude of spells, as opposed to reducing the cost. They will have varietals ranging from novice to master, and will buff whichever school of magic they're associated with.

Those are the bare fundamentals I wish to accomplish with this mod. With patience and time, however, I do have quite a lot of polish and stretch goals I'd like to accomplish.

• Craft and Enchantment of staves / rods / wands, at an arcane enchanter, as opposed to Neloth's Heartstone enchanter. This also means a true master enchanter would be able to craft a staff aligned with multiple schools of magic.
  • I plan on Stave enchantments requiring multiple grand soul gems-- as opposed to Neloth's enchanter which will only require a Heartstone. Making his quests actually worth the time.
• Appropriate animations for casting magic through your staff-- Including new dual casting, and ritual spell animations. I imagine something quite similar to Gandalf's famous moment at the bridge, facing the Balrog.
• Idle animations for walking and standing with the staff. It'd look kind of silly wielding it combat-ready in the middle of the market, or college courtyard. Also, I'm tired of staves vanishing into the nether upon being sheathed.

Edited October 19, 2015 by Voltage_Joe

[pyrotx]

Sounds good, but I would like to suggest adding the ability to block and attack in melee while staves are equipped. Maybe use the shout button to either toggle modes or just use the shout button to block at least, if you cant actually make them hybrids. Or maybe repurpose the sneak button or jump button while holding a staff. That way you could have two buttons, one for each hand. The two attack buttons might use the staff features, but the reused buttons would allow for melee and blocking. Also wouldn't be a good idea to make it so staves cast your equipped spell, so you could equip any spell and the same staff would cast different ones? This is what I think of when I think of overhaul, changing the effects are good, but not really worth using staves instead of spells for. Also you could still use heartstones for crafting if you add them to skyrim's vendor's leveled lists.

[CredibleJoe]

At this point, I'm just hoping to be able to get the new staves into a different equipment slot, AND have the player be able to cast with it equipped. I've encountered mods similar to this on the Nexus-- they get the staves to work like equipment, but you can't cast with the hand it's equipped to.

 

After I get that fundamental aspect of the mod working, I'll look into giving it proper animations, and additional features. What you want could easily be done by changing it to a two-handed weapon, for instance. But I definitely won't consider that aspect until I'm sure the casting and buffs are working.