Chargable Spells

[forgerofsouls]

So, I have never noticed this thread before. But, chargeable spells have been something I have been interested in for a while. So I decided to dl and try it out. So I decided to make a new character for testing. A male imperial. Starts with 5 destruction, and 88 magika. And yet when I fully charged a fireball I fired one that had a 62 strength and an aoe of 5ft. And no, I was not holding block. So I thought what would it be like if I got the apprentice birthsign? So I got it and found that a fully charged fireball's power with 5 destruction was 128 in 5ft. So, I just fired a spell that you can't even make. So I find this to be a tad bit Overpowered. So here is some suggestions...

 

(And if anyone is interested, the base damage for a fire damage on target spell with 0 aoe and 1 sec duration (the base version) is:

3-16 Novice

17-30 Apprentice

31-59 Journeyman

60-100 Expert

 

So yeah, a novice was fireing an expert level spell...and with the apprentice birthsign...most likely a Master level spell. I find this to be...totally wrong and overpowered. So, I will give three different ways to limit this:

 

First and most strict:

You can only charge a spell up so that it can't go above your current level (Novice, Apprentice, etc) in terms of damage, area, and duration. Thus a novice would be able to charge up a fire ball up to 16 power (or 7 damage with 20 area for another example of fireball) at best (and have it automatically cast when fully charged to their level). And a master would be able to charge fully as normal (IE: Can charge to that 128 damage).

 

Second, and not as strict:

You can charge a spell up to the next level, though charging it past your current level takes more time. This would allow an apprentice to charge a spell up to Journeyman level for example. So this would allow some more power, but not a whole lot.

 

Third, and least strict:

You can charge up to any level (as normal for your mod), only that there is a possiblity that when you cast a spell that is above you level that it will backfire and instead hurt you. It could be said that you could use a percentile to do this, for example 100- you ranks in the skill would give you the backfire percent when overcharging (going above you level). So obviously a Novice wouldn't be able to overcharge often without suffering. But an expert would have a good chance of casting a master level spell. And of course a master can overchage all he wants.

 

But, beyond that, I like what I saw.

[grmblf]

There's something wrong here. Did you load some other mod that might affect magic somehow? In my tests a character with destruction skill at 5 and 90 of magicka only is able of 40-45 of damage.

 

What you said could/should only be possible with a very high magicka regeneration rate (ie INT and WIL very high) because the faster you regenerate the more time you're able to charge.

 

I'd ask you please when you try it again, if you do, type in:

set grmCSQ.debug to 1

This will enable a message prompting after each casting. If timer is above 10 seconds or timerFactor is greater that 2 then something is wrong or you're regenerating a lot of magicka per second.

 

Btw, does this happens with other spells or did u only try the fire ball?

 

Anyway, thanks for your interest and suggestions. I don't plan scaling or leveling spells, in fact this is something I want to avoid, but if it proves to be wrong the solution is tweaking the maths. I want the character to be able to concentrate all his magicka in a single spell, but then the results should be according to his skill level.

[forgerofsouls]

Hm...I tested more spells, but the fireball one was the best example of what happened. And that damage was at base stats. But I do see what your saying, for I did increase my will to help increase my mana increase rate. And taking in conscideration that, than ya, I can see why I was doing more damage. lol

 

But still 40-45 damage is still way more than any spell a novice can cast. And that still falls into the journeyman range. But I wasn't suggesting scaling the spells with character level, but more so along the character's skill level. But, I have no skill at scripting, so don't really know how that would work out. Actually if you look at it, it wouldn't be "scaling", more like a skill check to see if they could go above that limit. That way, if someone spent several hours in the beginning area firing of flare or fireball and maxed out destruction, than they would be able to use the spells in destruction at full power (within magicka limits of course). In other words, there would be no new spells, just that the already existing spells would check your character's existing skills and be cast based off that.

 

And before anyone blasts me about how the time it takes to charge up helps balance that out, I will have to disagree by stating that my strongest skills in Oblivion is archery and blowingthingsupwithfireballs. So, even with ten seconds before casting a spell, I can not only keep myself alive, but make sure my spell really hits and is effective at killing my target. Yeah, I kinda suck with melee combat... XD

 

Update:

Not sure if this because of your mod or not. But I was not able to "charge" my arrows for my bow to fire them far. Instead, it acted almost like a machinegun and kept spewing out arrows (at a rate of fire arrow, quick reload like normal, fire again) as if I wasn't holding down the attack button. I was able to fire arrows normally before getting your mod. So, I'm not 100% on why that is happening.

[paladicprince]

Well 40 damage might be more than a novice can cast, but consider that regular spells are instant cast and cost X mana. If you instead used all your mana and charged for 5 seconds (or however long I forgot the max time), then hopeully it would be stronger than a single norma fireball.

 

Consider the starting fireball spell. (Using characters without classes.)

 

As a Male Nord (lowest possible starting Int and Wilpower) I was able to cast the starting fireball 4 times. Which is 6*4= 24 damage, and less than a second later I cast it again. For 30 damage.

 

As a Male Breton (highest possible Int and Willpower) I was able to cast the starting fireball 12 times. Which is 48 damage.

 

 

Judging from those numbers I'd say that dealing 40ish damage by depleting your entire magickapool is about right.

 

 

And I don't at al mean to blast you just offer some further insight. Obviously you realize that charging the spell takes some time and should have some small benefit attached to it, but I don't know if you factored in the amount of mana actually used, which is actually the biggest factor here.

 

Though I'll admit 128 damage from a test character like that is a bit much I suspect it's mostly a bug.

 

As for your last half of your last paragraph I was somewhat confused, but it seems like ideally with the same amount of magicka you'd do the sameamount of damage with or without this mod. Considering my previous test it took 12 shots to deal 48 damage, wheras with this mod it only takes one and actually less time than casting twelve. Now either way if the monster has more than 48 health you've run out of mana and hve to find another way to deal with the enemy. And in fact if your strong with archery then charging a single large spell gives you more time to pop off an arrow or two while they charge you (assuming the initial blast didn't disintegrate them).

 

 

And if you're worried about missing you should check out my Targetting System mod. :)

 

 

 

Not to say I disagree with everything. Your second option up there sounded interesting. Maybe altering it to make the first 50% of your magicka take X time and the next 25% to take the same amount of time. If that makes sense. Like the first part of the charging process increases in power quickly, but then it starts to slow down the longer you charge. The issue with that is it might be a good idea to disable mana recharge entirely while charging spells otherwise an infinite power spell would be achieved.

 

Option three actually sounded something like the backfire mechanisms grmblf was talking about implementing in the future anyways. He may have different plans for implementation, but if he doesn't that might work.

 

But either way it's grmblf's mod and I'm super happy with its current state.

[paladicprince]

After some testing I did find an issue, if you are charging a spell and a messagebox pops up you are unable to click anything.

 

I'm looking now but I assume you used disablekey to disallow attacking. If so you should perhaps use "disablecontrol 4" instead. And perhaps add some code that reenables it on menu modes?

 

No you did use disablecontrol so I retract that part, but it needs to be reenabled for menus :)

 

After a touch more testing if I open menus while charging it does the same thing. Pretty easy fix though I believe. I even typed enablecontrol 4 into the console and it fixed it.

[forgerofsouls]

In reality, as a novice, you would have no ability to control such power. And if you did, it would be very unstable.

 

And no, the 128 damage from a single spell is not a bug. But the mod taking its addition into practice. So, to test this out further I took my test character and cheated him out. In the end I had s massive magicka regen and int and will (from all the buffs I gave my self), that when I at long last let go of the casting spell (which happened after I depleted my magicka pool), I let loose a fireball that dealt over 3k damage. In one blast that is OP, and if you use your example about many smaller fireballs using up that mana to do the same amount, chances are you would miss sometimes, thus not doing as much damage. But yeah, typically after I sneak attack something with an arrow and charge up a spell, they die.

 

And after careful thought I will have decided that I will try out your targetting system.

 

And like wise, I likeing this new spell mod. I just think the math needs to be...a little more worked on so as to not get OPed shots that can potentially one shot bosses end game wise.

 

And I like the idea of disabiling mana regen. I tested that out with that one birthsign that disabled mana regen, and I say, it was a completely different amount of damage with the same stats, mostly because of the lack

of mana regen.

 

Also, the arrow thing, no, that wasn't the mod. After some testing I found out the reason. My mouse is done for, dead, broken, and burried. It has served me well, and was a very responsive mouse allowing easy movement in games. Reason I know it was broken: when I clicked once it would either 1: act normally, 2: ignore the fact that I clicked completely, or 3: act as is I double clicked. So yeah, mod not reason for wierd arrow thingy. KIA mouse was... ;_;

 

And the mouse I am using temporary sucks.

[paladicprince]

Ew dead mouse sucks. Yeah that explains my inability to replicate that haha.

 

And ok it may not be a "bug" per se, but according to the creator himself it wasn't intended to be so high.

 

I am curious, what's the maximum magicka you could ever obtain? And I suppose willpower is taken into consideration too. Because it could be unfair to "cheat out" a character and base the mods balance on that. I think I once read that the maximum obtainable magicka with max int buffs and magicka buffs is 1082, or some similar number. That's based on memory though so I'm not sure. And assuming willpower of closer to 150 (which sounds.... feasible) see how much damage that does.

 

Though you're right it still may very well be too much power.

 

So to that effect it would be nice to have some sort of a backlash effect... But it should be limited, if you charge up a spell that would do 500 damage (random number) I don't think you should take 500 damage if it fails, unless there's some sort of explicit warning when you reach the range of your abilities. It might be better to have the spell fail, use your magicka (which is a hefty retribution of itself) and do some damage maybe using the above number 50% of your health. Just my thoughts.

 

Stunting magicka while charging is something I really like myself, but I understand the creators intentions with this so it would best be left up to him (plus if I start using it I can change it to suit my tastes :happy: )

 

There are actually several ways to handle charging a spell to much that would be interesting, but I think the creators intention was to only be able to deal a certain amount of damage when your abilities allow you to. So maybe a little tweaking with the math would best serve his purposes.

 

 

 

Another random thought: What kind of uber arch mage would you be if you couldn't do 3k damage?! lol It is overpowered, but it's only possible after a lot of effort so maybe it's kinda a cool end game perk. That's my bigget complaint about Oblivion is that pretty much no matter where I go or how strong I am everything is around my level. It really lacks the fun thatt iother RPGs have of going back to starting areas and laughing as things die just from fear.

 

But that's not so much a real suggestions as a funny/fun idea.

 

 

And cool, I appreciate you checking out my mod. If you read the comments section about it it has a couple issues, but most of them are fixed in the next version I'm finishing up (I still consider it beta at this point, until the next mods stability is proven). Check it out and give me your feedback :) There's also a thread about it somewhere in the oblivion general modding forum if you care to see it as well

[forgerofsouls]

Due to some things I found I was indead able to get my will power up to 150 and my int to 160. And yeah, my magika was indead over 1k.

 

And yeah, for the most part all I was saying is that aa little tweaking of the math might be in order lol.

 

Especially if people also use you mod at the same time. Then what will stop them for just fullchargetargetandfireLULZ? Seriously, your mod is basically a fireturnaroundwalkawayandforget type thing. Makes killing things much faster, but...with this mod...it makes things...well...to easy. Even with the difficulty at full blast, while charging and dodging I was able to oneshot things I shouldn't be able to.

 

And yeah I did that one purpose :P

 

And yeah, I hear ya about the uberarchmage thing. What type of uber arch mage can't do that much damage? Besides Oblivion ones that is...

[grmblf]

Thanks for your inputs, I'll try to comment each 'issue' or matter:

 

- Spell's Magnitude: (ie Damage) it uses EXACTLY the same formula as the spells you can create with the spellmaking altar, based on each spell base cost, considering your skill and even your luck. The only thing I tweaked is that I added a multiplier according to the time it has been charged.

 

A character with stunted magicka will be able to charge for 5 seconds, wich will multiply the result for 1.5, while one with 100 INT and 100 WIL will be able to charge for 10 seconds, wich in turn will multiply the magnitude by 2, so in theory this mod shoudn't increase spell's magnitude more than double of what one is able. Indeed, having a greater magicka regeneration rate could make this multiplier bigger, wich may be dangerous considering the amount of magicka you handle at this stats level, so perhaps I'm adding a cap here to ensure this multiplier isn't above 2. Otherwise, if you play a godly character why won't he cast god-like spells?

 

All this doesn't mean my maths are perfect, there might be errors and things that need to be changed (and sure they are), it's just that this mod is intended to be used from the beggining to the end, I mean that it should be usefull at level 1 too, but I must admit I didn't test it at such high levels... but now that I think of it ... I think I know what's doing huge spells be overpowered. If my suspects are right it's a single value I tweaked a bit from the original formula, I have to test but yeah I fear the smallest change can have big impact.

 

 

- disableControl: you made a good point. I need to find a way to enable attack again when entering the menu and if a box prompts. Damn, the menu seems easy with a MenuMode block, but that thing with the message box makes me worry a little more.

 

 

- Stunted magicka/progressively slowing charge: My first thought was to add stunted magicka and take full control over the process but finally I didn't because this way it benefits characters with higher stats (INT & WIL) by allowing them to regen more magicka and thus charging for longer. It's kinda bonus for veterans and pure-mage characters. IMO it's fair as long as your attribute levels are according to your skills. Bumping one of them may lead to unsuspected behaviour (ie will make them more powerful than was intended), and you've made a good point too, I'd suggest not bumping your stats above 100 for test purpouse until a cap is added, unless you really want to cast very powerful spells. If you have reached this stats 'naturaly' then probably you deserve it :P No, seriously, I'll try to adjust that exponential factor I tweaked and I'll test it at very high levels. It should be ok to single-shot a zombie but not everything that pops up.

 

 

On a side note, I'm aware of the incredible work paladicprince is doing on his targeting system, but this one isn't intended to be played with such a mod like one that auto-target your enemies. Playing with timming and playing skill is part of this mod. But that's only a personal preference, I guess.

 

 

Oh I forgot to add it to the future projects list, I'm planning to add some other perks, like being unable to charge while sneaking (it stands up immediatly maybe), and if I can do it I'd like to make it makes noise while charging so the character draws the attention of who's around, perhaps after 2 seconds of charge or so. This would make more difficult/risky full-charge spells. If noise can't be simulated maybe I'm adding an increasing light effect on the player, but in any case it won't be an 'auto-alert enemies', I have to investigate a little bit.

[paladicprince]

:) I wasn't trying to say it was in general it was just a thought for him. I don't mean to steal from the awesome work you're doing. I love this mod looking forward to the tweaked version. As I've played with it it does seem just a tad too high.