Revylrie

No problem. I'll take a look at the duel cast grow rate. The problem with the setting a minimum size is that SetNodeScale doesn't have a minimum cap, but I'll try to do some experimentation at some point. Absorb Victim? I like it. I'm just not sure how to make the script though. The concept alone makes it a more complex script then normal. Revylrie, do you have any advice for this? The rates of Macromancy 3's growing and shrinking spells (including the dual cast variants) can be found in their respective scripts. You can impose a "minimum cap" of sorts by adding an If statement to the script that only shrinks an actor if they're above a certain size (though it may require a bit of math in order to work right); indeed, I tried to do this very thing, but it didn't always work (mostly because I wasn't sure how actor values worked at the time). Hmm... as for 'Absorb Victim,' you might try replicating whatever effect turns a killed NPC into ash and replacing the ashes object with something meant to represent their equipment. I wouldn't know how to make it any more complex than that, though.

For whatever reason, the player's arms seem to disappear in first person camera when the player shrinks below 0.3 scale; just a minor visual bug, but still very odd.

I wrote a "lore book" a couple of weeks ago out of boredom; the plan is to incorporate it into my Special Edition Macromancy project somehow. It might be of use to your project as well. I might edit it a bit later, but for now, here it is: A Study of Scale byValgus Rienus, Attendant In response to a ludicrous assertion by the College of Whispers - namely, that the so-called size-changing spells belong to the School of Alteration - the Synod tasked me with the study of magically-induced growth and shrinking. It would have been most helpful if the College had rescinded their statement before I had undertaken this endeavor; the results of my experiments, while possibly a surprise to their ignorant order, were all too predictable. For posterity's sake, allow me to share what I've uncovered. Let us begin by dispelling the notion that the "macromantic arts," as it were, alter the world in any way. While it may appear that an individual who has been enlarged or reduced by one of these idiosyncratic spells has gained or lost mass, rigorous testing has led me to the conclusion that their mass has, in fact, remained perfectly constant - they are simply perceived, both by themselves and all who observe them, to be larger or smaller. The most basic spells simply impose an illusion that challenges our innate sense of scale; more nuanced ones apply additional effects - some of which, I admit, may be tied to the School of Alteration - that give the affected targets increased or decreased movement speed, carrying capacity, and/or sneaking ability in order to reinforce this shift in perspective. (Still other spells fall back on fear and courage - tricks that are all too familiar to a seasoned illusionist - to take advantage of any superstitions we may have regarding size.) Perception, as those who have studied magic surely know well by now, does not dictate reality. Contrary to appearance, these spells can't really alter an individual's actual height and weight - indeed, without the presence of a secondary effect, enchanted targets are no stronger, faster, weaker, or slower than they would be otherwise. This limits the battle applications of macromancy substantially; any enemy that knows the secret of these spells can simply aim their attacks where a supposedly-gigantic (or supposedly-miniscule) mage is actually standing; even if they do fall for the trick and aim where the mage appears to be, they will quickly learn from that mistake. Despite the overwhelming evidence in favor of these spells belonging to the School of Illusion, I did, at the Synod's behest, attempt to learn just enough about Alteration to make small changes to the actual scale of a living being. My test subjects were, of course, wild animals; I quickly discovered that true macromancy is far too dangerous to be attempted on sapient lifeforms. Attempts to enlarge creatures resulted in either organ failure or collapse under their own weight, and shrunken creatures tended to die of hyperventilation or heart attacks. Needless to say, the Synod prohibited me from practicing or teaching this sort of magic after I told them of my findings. Correspondence with mathematicians in the Imperial City helped me to realize my error; while Alteration mages can impose or lighten burdens through the artificial presence or absence of mass, making concrete changes to an individual's scale is a different story entirely. They informed me of a principle called the square-cube law: evidently, the ratio of two volumes is greater than the ratio of their surfaces. In macromancy-related terms, that means that as an individual grows in size, their volume will grow far faster than their surface area, resulting in many unfortunate implications like the ones I saw in my experiments. Indeed, magically altering a creature's true scale would inevitably result in a drastic reduction in its relative muscular strength, efficiency of bodily functions, and air resistance; this is why, for example, giants have a far different bone structure than that of men and mer. Perhaps it's for the best that mages have only achieved success at simulating a change in scale. Even as an illusionist, I'm disappointed with how the reality of the so-called size-changing spells compares to their appearance; functionally, they're almost worthless! I implore my fellow mages to engage in more practical pursuits, and the Synod to give me an assignment more deserving of my time and effort. I would like to conclude by saying that macromancy may have a few minor uses; these spells do make for relatively amusing parlor tricks, after all. And, who knows: maybe a society that treats all forms of magic with great superstition - for instance, our neighbors to the north - might be more intimidated by artificial giants and dwarves.

While not exactly what you're looking for, from what you describe, this might interest you. It allows you to change an NPCs sandbox patterns (in other words, where they reside when they're not following you) so long as they're your follower.

The ownership of objects in a cell is often tied to an actor or faction - if you're friends with a certain actor or a member of a certain faction, all items up to a certain value in gold are able to be taken (e.g. 25, 50, 100, 500 for each of the four positive relationship ranks). The obvious solution would be to use a mod that rebalances the base prices of items such that every item you would consider junk costs less than 25 gold - or whichever of the above values you'd like to draw the line at - whereas the rest costs more. (I believe some of the major overhauls include something like that as a feature.)

I don't know about shout replacers, but I do know that some mod authors have created spells based on shout effects (usually something like Unrelenting Force). I created one by request myself, actually. It adds a Master-level Destruction spell version of Storm Call: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/73907/?

Let me put it this way: If it were/is possible to do what you describe, then mod authors wouldn't need to use the obsolete actor values, and that would be good news indeed for me and my own custom spells mod.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "you can't" - in the words of Farengar Secret-Fire, "one sure mark of a fool is to dismiss anything that falls outside his experience as being impossible" - but you're right that you wouldn't be able to call and update integer timesHit within the same script in the example you gave because the script is only supposed to run once every time the custom firebolt spell is cast. I know for a fact that you can use actor values to store integer values (more accurately, floats - actor values have decimal places) and call the information you're looking for, but what I don't know is whether you could use additional scripts to accomplish the same. (I would assume not.)

The easiest way to accomplish this would be to use a dummied actor value to "store" the timesHit variable. (Of course, this may result in incompatibility with mods that edit the same value.) For the sake of demonstration, let's say that this AV is Fame, which, fortunately, is set to 0 by default in vanilla Skyrim. You'd then want your script to look something like this: Scriptname SuperSpecialAwesomeFireboltExplosionModThingy extends ActiveMagicEffect Event OnEffectStart(Actor Target, Actor Caster) If Target.IsDead() == 0 If Target.GetAV("Fame") < 3 Target.ModAV("Fame", 1) EndIf If Target.GetAV("Fame") >= 3 Target.AddSpell (Kablooie) Target.SetAV("Fame", 0) EndIf EndIf EndEvent With "SuperSpecialAwesomeFireboltExplosionModThingy" being whatever you want to call your script and "Kablooie" being an explosion magic effect centered on the target. (Although I'm not sure magic effects work like that. I'm just giving a proof-of-concept example.) Does that help?