Enchant without souls Meridia themed enchanting mod.[I need feedback]

[Dantw2]

I am planning to make a role-playing mod for "good guys" to enchant without the use of souls by receiving power from Meridia[and possibly one of the divines as a non-daedric alternative as a possible future version].

I am open to ideas and input on how to balance this and I am curious whether this is lore-friendly. [if not lore friendly, it will still at least be immersive and fitting in my opinion]

It will only be of interest to role-players whose characters have qualms about using souls to enchant items since the indiscriminate trapping of souls will still be more convenient[but I could potentially implement advantages besides mere role-playing advantages]. I am making this post to ask for ideas and to share my roleplaying related ideas with others. No guarantees, but I have made three different small mods before, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/3068141?tab=user+files so I am pretty confident that I will figure it out and follow through with making this mod.

Planned features.
1.Meridia themed "soul gems" which are renamed and visually different to offer to be more immersive alternative to vanilla soul gems[this will still require a little imagination on the player's part, since it will probably still say that they are filled with souls in the inventory screen]. I might make them function a bit differently than vanilla soul gems.

I've come up with a few ideas of how they might function differently.

A. I am not decided on the naming and I am open to suggestions but I will probably simply name them something like Meridia's Blessing.

B.In terms of appearance, I will probably just use the Meridia's beacon mesh. If I can easily do so without making them undroppable, I will make them show up in the inventory with the same visual effect of candlelight or turn undead[i forget whether separate meshes can be chosen for the inventory screen, I will have to check later]. Otherwise, it will be visually the same as Meridia's Beacon in the inventory.

C.Make them function like weightless Azura's Star and give players a limited amount like maybe ten grand sized ones or five of each size[players can balance this by committing to never sell soul gems, but balancing is one of the main things I want feedback on.]

D.Alternatively, I could make them weightless but lost upon use[unlike Azura's Star]. I will probably NOT make them undroppable or untransferable to containers[since ], but I definitely plan on making them weightless since the are meant to be representative of Meridia directly lending you power to enchant/recharge items and will only be "items" for gameplay purposes.



3."How will players receive these 'blessings'?[custom soul gems]"
I am undecided on this. At the moment, I have three different ideas...

 

A. Make a custom renamed soul trap spell "Devote to Meridia"[i am open to other naming suggestions] which will have a light themed appearance, exclusively affect undead, vampires, necromancers, POSSIBLY briar-hearts and daedra if the lore supports it...[Are there any other non-unique enemies that Meridia might bless you for killing?]. If I go this route, I may design the spell to do some weak damage or debuff to the affected enemies of Meridia.

B.Players can simply use their imagination and commit to only soul trap certain enemies while engaging their suspension of disbelief[unfortunately, I don't think I can figure out how to make a soul trap spell that exclusively fills custom soul gems, so players will need to throw away vanilla soul gems unless they want those to get filled.] I will probably NOT go this route except maybe for a first draft of the mod, since the whole point of the mod is to reduce the demands on a role-player's imagination and suspension of disbelief.

C.I do not have the required modding knowledge to implement an activator or spell/power to replace vanilla soul gems with the custom Meridia ones, but if I make the mod and another modder likes it and wants to release a submod for it, I have no problem with that and might be interested in downloading it myself. :smile:

One anticipated problem with making my own soul trap spell would be that the animation and sound of the soul trap upon death will probably be just like the vanilla soul trap[which might be fixable if through the use of supplementary mods that make soul trap effects less dark and "evil" looking/sounding, if such mods exist]. Also, anyone who is under a soul trap effect will absorb into the Meridia's Blessings[soul gems] since I don't know how to make them only accept undead souls.

[7531Leonidas]

What if the enchanter has to imbue the artifact with their own health and magica combined (they must commit an equal amount of each to the process)? There is the mod Martyr - Restoration Sacrifice and Solar Spells ( https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/82633 ). Maybe you could use a similar mechanic for putting power into 'storage' for enchanting, but make different levels of power reflect the level of soul gem equivalent. In my mind, it should be a bit burdensome to the enchanter, even more so for higher level gems, like starting at 1500-2000 for petty gem enchantments, and 20 000 or more for grand gems, and could be instilled into the artifact in stages. I am not a modder, and don't know how you could do this (maybe a reference alias assigned when the enchanter chooses to commit to an enchantment), but at least it is an idea to work from.

[Dantw2]

What if the enchanter has to imbue the artifact with their own health and magica combined (they must commit an equal amount of each to the process)? There is the mod Martyr - Restoration Sacrifice and Solar Spells ( https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/82633 ). Maybe you could use a similar mechanic for putting power into 'storage' for enchanting, but make different levels of power reflect the level of soul gem equivalent. In my mind, it should be a bit burdensome to the enchanter, even more so for higher level gems, like starting at 1500-2000 for petty gem enchantments, and 20 000 or more for grand gems, and could be instilled into the artifact in stages. I am not a modder, and don't know how you could do this (maybe a reference alias assigned when the enchanter chooses to commit to an enchantment), but at least it is an idea to work from.

I would have no idea how to script that, I just know how to do some really basic stuff using the creation kit, I have pretty much no scripting knowledge. This mod might be close to what you are looking for, I don't know whether it will be compatible with my custom "soul gems" https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/18090?tab=description

 

I am not necessarily looking to create a difficulty mod, Just an alternative way of enchanting for benevolent characters.

[Dantw2]

Okay, I worked on it for a little while and made some custom "soul gems" which I still need to test to see if they are reusable.

But I would like balancing and naming suggestions.

At the moment, the soul Gems are named...

Meridia's Epic Reward [functionally the same as the Azura's Black Star]

Meridia's Grand Reward [Functionally the same as Azura's Star]

Meridia's Petty/Lesser/Common/Greater Reward [in theory, they should be reusuable like azura's star but limited in capacity as their name suggests. I still need to test them]


I considered some other naming schemes like "gift" or "boon" instead of "reward" but "blessing" apperently makes the name too long for the creation kit to handle. The name difference probably won't matter much to most players but I am open to suggestions.

As far as balancing goes. I need to think about it more but my current plan is to either put a chest/container somewhere with Like 300 of size of [reusable] gem and let them decide how many they want to take or to find a way to add them via reading a book or casting a custom spell or something.

Since the purpose of the mod is to provide an immersive alternative to using souls, players can choose for themselves who they are willing to soul trap. I am strongly considering making a custom Meridia themed Spell[or maybe more than one] that will only soul trap undead, necromancers, vampires, and any other enemies of Meridia that might come to mind. I MAY also consider making alternative versions for role play characters who are averse to Meridia.

In regard to balancing, it may balance things out[or at least make it no less balanced than vanilla enchanting] if players restrict themselves to only "soul-trapping" undead/necromancers/vampires. Again I plan on making a spell that will only "soultrap" the correct enemies so that you don't accidentally trap an innocent bunny's soul in the gems. Making the "gems" themselves only accept undead souls is probably beyond my know-how[since the game does not classify undead souls as different from other white souls], but I SHOULD be able to figure out how to make a soul trap spell that only applies to undead/necromancer/vampire souls. That way, you won't every accidentally soul-trap anything unless someone else soul traps them with a soul trap enchanted weapon or something. I may need to find a supplementary mod to remove the dark visual effects and sounds from soul-trapping.

Players can choose their own balancing by choosing how many of the custom "soul gems" to take. For example, a player who wants to be especially restrictive might choose to restrict themselves to carrying five "Meridia's Reward"s to balance out the fact that they are weightless and reusable like Azura's/Black Star. Or a player can be less restrictive and take five of each size[more difficult than vanilla if they throw away any other vanilla soul gems that they find]. Or a player can opt to take like 300 grand sized gems but restrict themselves to filling them with only undead souls. OR a person could take hundreds of every size capacity and use it as a cheat mod and just soul trap everyone and everything they kill. If this is confusing anyone, it will be clear and simple how it works once I release it and add pictures.

[7531Leonidas]

I was just trying to suggest a mechanic that might help you with your divine gems, you could talk to those authors to get ideas on how to script it, if you wanted to. I just thought that it would be a more 'immersive' mod in the sense of devotion and self-sacrifice. I hope that you get things worked out.