The Sneak tree is boring to me. The entire right branch is just a series of redundant sneak damage multipliers, and the left has equally redundant muffle perks as well as Light Feet, which just feels lazy to me. Shadow Warrior is the only interesting perk in the bunch. Sneaking in general doesn’t make much sense. After a certain point, you can crouch right up in front of someone and they won’t see you in broad daylight. The final straw for me was during the Honningbrew heist quest, when towards the end there is a guard in the corner of a narrow hallway sitting in a chair below a hanging lantern. I was ecstatic that I happened to have an invisibility potion on me, so that I didn’t have to kill this guard who obviously could not be snuck past, given all of the above criteria. Curiosity got the better of me, however, so I quick saved and tried it anyway. I was able to shuffle back and forth right in front of his face without him being any the wiser. There are a lot of rebalancing mods for sneaking, but I don’t like any of them. They try to go for low-magic realism in a world where you run errands for gods and travel through time and space. In the end they always just make sneaking tedious and oftentimes broken. The Creation Kit is awesome, but I don’t think it’s possible to turn Skyrim into Splinter Cell. I don’t have a problem with my character being “invisible,” with enough skill/perks/etc., but it just doesn't make any sense to me for crouching to mean invisible. We have an Invisibility spell, but it is very annoying to re-cast it before every single room in every single dungeon. So I set out to design a sneak overhaul mod to solve some of these issues as well as add some of my favorite Rogue/Assassin/Thief/etc. abilities from other games. I have prototypes for most of this in place, but I figured I would try to get some preliminary feedback before I really put time into this. I'm creating this for myself first, but any comments or ideas are welcome. My goal was to make fun, useful, and balanced abilities (while also giving the player some ways to make them not-so-balanced should they prefer). I haven't decided on the Skill requirements for any of these yet, either. Stealth You are 20%/25%/30%/35%/40% harder to detect while sneaking. With 1/5 points in the perk, you are granted an Ability called Turn Invisible. Turn Invisible applies the Invisibility spell indefinitely. Options: 1. Cosmetic Only. If checked, then the Invisibility effect will only be cosmetic, and will not apply the Invisibility spell’s effects. 2. Keybind. Defaults to the player’s Crouch key. The idea is that whenever the player crouches he or she has the "Invisible" effect, so that when you crouch right up to someone's face, it makes a little more sense. You can bind it to any key, though. Assassination (Right Side) Ambush Your sneak attacks do more damage. Options: 1. The player will be able to set the damage bonus per weapon type from 0x to 5x of base sneak attack damage (e.g., at 5x, Daggers do 3 * 5 = 15x damage, the same as with Assassin’s Blade) This should provide a decent number of options and condense those redundant perks into one. Cloak of Shadows For 5 seconds, you are immune to magical and physical damage. When this effect wears off, the caster gains Shadow Exhaustion, preventing the use of Shadow abilities for 20 seconds. Options: 1. The player will be able to set the length of the spell from 5, 10, 15, and 20. 2. Keybind. A lot of these abilities are here to mitigate damage taken to reduce potion chugging or the need for Restoration (which I never feel fits my stealth characters) Shadow Step Time slows for 5 seconds as you step into the shadows. When this effect wears off, the caster gains Shadow Exhaustion, preventing the use of Shadow abilities for 20 seconds. Options: 1. The player will be able to set the length of the spell from 5, 10, 15, and 20. 2. Keybind I really would prefer a teleportation spell, but all of my tests with moving the player have resulted in too many issues with falling through the world. Shadow Warrior No change. Options: 1. The player will be able to set the length of the spell, from 1, 3, 5 seconds. Summon Darkspawn Summons a random creature of darkness (Troll, Bear, etc.) for 5 seconds to draw the attention of nearby enemies. When this effect wears off, the caster gains Shadow Exhaustion, preventing the use of Shadow abilities for 20 seconds. Options: 1. The player will be able to set the length of the spell from 5, 10, 15, and 20. 2. The player will be able to set a specific creature type, rather than random. 3. Keybind. Infiltration (Left Side) Muffled Movement Noise from armor is reduced. Options: 1. The player will be able to set the Muffle value from 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% Infiltrator’s Intuition Your intuition allows you to sense nearby traps (e.g. Detect Life for traps). Toggle On/Off. Options: 1. Keybind. I felt like just blundering over traps and not having them activate didn't make much sense and was boringly passive. Silent Roll Unchanged Veteran Infiltrator Your Infiltrator’s Intuition ability is now a full Detect Life/Death. It shows traps and NPCs. Shadow Affliction Afflict your target with the Shadows, rendering it immobile and unconscious for 5 seconds. The Afflicted target is removed from combat and is no longer alerted. Hitting the Afflicted target will remove this effect. Afflicted targets gain Shadow Immunity, and cannot become Afflicted again for 20 seconds. Options: 1. The player will be able to set the length of the spell from 5, 10, 15, and 20 2. Keybind. This can be used to get by one particularly perceptive enemy, or reset one enemy that has discovered you, or immobilize one enemy of a group attacking you. Master Infiltrator Your Infiltrator’s Intuition now color codes NPCs based on their strength. Weak friendly targets glow white, strong friendly targets glow blue. Weak enemy targets glow orange, Strong enemy targets glow red. I hate blowing my sneak attack on the toughest enemy in a group and not even being able to kill it. This should let you plan out sneak attacks better. I currently don't have a great way to actually evaluate each enemy. I'm trying to calculate the player's sneak attack damage (based on weapon damage, perks, skill, etc.) versus the target's health, but some of that is proving difficult. Does anyone have any ideas? Like I said, any input is welcome.
