[LE] New way of using conjuration

[poncington]

What if instead of placing hard limits on the number of summons you just have your magicka tied up until the summon dies? Then you would get to summon more minions by having more magicka, getting perks and items to reduce conjuration cost, and using potions/items to raise maximum magicka. You would still have to be careful and save enough magicka to use other spells of course. if you want to summon an elder god that uses all of your magicka up at once feel free but until it dies your magicka stays gone and you either hide or use your dagger. Or take the balanced approach and just throw a few cheap skeletons out as distractions so you'll have enough power left for other spells. I think it would be cool. :whistling:

[InDarkestNight]

Honestly, this does sound rather interesting on the surface.

 

Thinking about this though, I see a few problems. How much magicka should each summon remove? Also, what do you do then with the twin souls perk and the thrall spells? Another problem is this may nerf the summons, making them less useful. On the other hand, being able to have 3 or more out at a low level could be game-breaking, even if you can't cast anything else. If your max magicka is reduced while they're out, then your ability to use destruction spells will be greatly reduced unless you get 100% fortify destruction on your gear. Also, how would this interact with the fortify conjuration effect? Could that be used to give yourself infinite summons? Honestly even if it doesn't do that, the fortify conjuration effect may be necessary to get a large number of summons out, given that your max magicka is going down with every cast. Another issue is compatibility; pretty much every magic mod would need a patch. It may be necessary to make some sort of automatic patcher to mitigate this, similar to Spell Perk Item Distributer. I wouldn't have the knowledge to make such myself, even though I'm a certified programmer. I may be able to learn however, but I've never made a program that can interact with another program, at least one I didn't make myself.

 

This would require a lot more work than it looks like. How would it interact with all the other game mechanics, and how would you balance it? It may look like a simple change on the surface, but quite a lot of work would have to go into developing something like this. It may even require scripting, which I cannot do myself due to my inability to compile skyrim scripts.

[poncington]

100% of the magicka used to summon would be on hold until the summons death

 

Maybe twin souls would just half the amount of magicka tied up with your summons.

 

Thralls would be a special case and stay the same as before

 

In order to have that many summons at once in early game you would have to put everything into magicka therefore becoming vulnerable in other ways

 

if you want to use destruction along with summons then you need to allocate stats and perks properly creating weakness in other areas. nothing wrong with it IMO

 

If someone chooses to game the system to make the game easy they only cheat themselves. then again if having zero cost spells is how they enjoy the game then so be it. I personally use the "no stacking enchantments" mod so you can only have one layer of fortify or whatever. if someone decides to go with free summons the limit would be the game engine and the stability of their pc. personal choice.

 

maybe instead of patching every mod it could just look for whatever flag is associated with summoning spells and apply a reverse fortify magicka spell that ends when the summon dies? I can't really speak to this since I don't know the system well enough but maybe there's a common thread with all summons regardless of whether they're vanilla? I don't know.

 

Either way thanks for thinking about it.

Edited October 8, 2022 by poncington