First time modding, please help.

[Queso]

So I've been looking at the Creation Kit for a little over two hours now, and I'm a sort of vague dread is dawning on me. I'm at a loss and I want someone to tell me I'm wrong (please).

 

Basically, I've been trying to remove dual wielding from the game. After trying a few mods that supposedly fix combat, and finding that they do little more than move numbers around, I wanted to have a go at it myself. My modifications were to be simple (at first sight, now I see they're not at all).

 

First, disable dual wielding for all weapons. Dual wielding feels unfinished, and adds unnecessary complexity to the game; poisoning individual weapons is tedious, switching loadouts is tedious, and overall it adds very little value to combat while making everything clunkier. At first, I thought that it would be as simple as setting all weapons to Right Hand and Staffs to Left Hand (more on staves and magic later), but the equip slot variables don't seem to do anything. Basically, items are either one handed or two handed, and if they're one handed, they can be dual-wielded and there's nothing I can do about it. Can someone explain this to me?

 

I haven't moved on to learning how to do other things, because I've met an impasse on the cornerstone of my mod, but I was going to continue as follows:

 

Set staves to Left Hand, so they can be equipped with a weapon in the other. Set staves to have an attack value that boosts magic damage, and also a spell enchantment that can be casted as usual (left click). Set all but a few spells to trigger from the power/shout hotkey, so you don't have to have a free hand to cast basic spells. These basic spells would fire out of the left hand/staff. The other spells would be set to equip only on the Right Hand slot, and would be the equivalent of a power attack for mages-- interruptible, long cast time, big payoff. These spells would be nukes like Fireball, while z-key spells would be things like Firebolt.

 

Add enchanted equipment that teach spells while they're worn. Things like rings, gloves, and staves. Set a chance to learn these spells permanently based on the skill level of the magic school (ex. 1% chance per 10 levels in the school, max 10% at level 100). Remove spell tomes from the game.

 

Set a modifier on attack and cast speed based on the total weight of the equipped weapon and shield. And finally, modify the related perks (since dual casting is no longer possible, change it to something staff-related, like reduce weight [cast speed] and increase magnitude, and do the same for the dual wield perks; reduce weight for attack speed etc).

 

So yeah, now I see they're not so simple. I'm a little disheartened. Can someone tell me where to start? What needs scripting? What parts are impossible? Thanks.

 

EDIT: Alright, figured out how to force all weapons to go on the right hand. However, this doesn't work with staves. They bug out, and can't seem to be forced to do anything.

Edited June 30, 2013 by Queso