Make new skill tree without cannibalizing another?

[RedDaemonFox]

Admittedly I haven't had the time to crack open the construction kit much, but it seems all the mods that add new skill trees have to cannibalize off other trees, do we have a fix for this as I want to improve on a vampire mod that adds a skill tree but I want to restore the tree it cannibalized so they're separate. Any help?

[Dienes]

No the skill trees seem to be hard coded. You can change what's in them but not add new ones.

[Pevey]

Sadly, they are hardcoded. The approach some modders have used is to combine the pickpocketing and lockpicking trees since that combination makes more logical sense than the others. You could also take out the speechcraft tree and probably not miss much.

[RedDaemonFox]

What about the Block Tree? I barely use that, combining that into the Heavy Armor Tree could work. Does doing this affect whether the removed skill levels the character?

Edited May 24, 2013 by RedDaemonFox

[Pevey]

If you go the replacement route, you would use the actor value that governed the tree you're replacing (such as the block tree) and repurpose it as the actor value that governs your new skill. So you have to find a way to keep the skill from increasing the way it the game engine intended it to and instead manually increase it (via scripts) each time your skill is used. SkyRe has a good example of this with the Traveler or Wayfarer skill (can't remember). The tree that was removed was lockpicking. The advancement increment was changed to 0 so that picking locks no longer increased that skill.

 

I could go into more detail, but first I'll say this: you really don't want to go this route unless you're planning to use this mod only for yourself. Users generally hate these sorts of skill tree changes.

 

Another option is to track the skill in some other way besides the constellation. Who says it has to be listed in the stars to be a skill? Just set up a global variable that you increase as the player performs whatever actions, and find some other way to display it to the player other than the constellation. You can still do perks, etc. Menus are very useful. I did this with my Become a Bard mod because users complained when I made some minor alterations to the Speechcraft tree. You think only a few people use block, but imagine how many more care about block than speechcraft of all things.

[RedDaemonFox]

Good point. I'll have to look into it

[Pevey]

If you want to go the independent skill route, take a look at my mod or at Hunterborn in the CK to see what I'm talking about. Mostly modders learn by looking at how Bethesda accomplished certain quests/features in the game and/or deconstructing the work of other modders.