Supreme Magicka addon

[Maegfaer]

The Idea

I love the Supreme Magicka mod, but often there is no reason to use (de)buffs in the game. When you encounter an enemy, it's way smarter to just quickly cast some destructive spells at it than to cast debuffs or start buffing yourself. This mod/addon attempts to fix that, by making buffs (and some debuffs) maintained.

 

It does this by removing the timer from the (de)buff spells and instead making it a constant effect. The price you pay for this, is a (significant) decrease of your total Magicka for as long as the effect is active. When the enemy is killed, or when you remove/dispell the (de)buff, your total Magicka goes back to normal again. The decrease of the total Magicka should be a percentage to make sure the system doesn't get overpowered.

 

Example

For example, a character skilled in Alteration magic, can cast a constant effect "Shield for 15%" spell at him/herself, at the cost of (made up number) 20% of his/her total Magicka. This way it's actually doable to play a pure Mage character dressed in clothes only.

 

 

List of included Magic Effects

 

There are several ways to calculate the cost of the effect:

 

1. About the same as normal spells. School skill level, magnitude, area and range are taken into account. (Duration not included, that's the point of this mod)

2. The same as the first, except a much higher increase of cost as magnitude increases. This is for balancing reasons.

3. There is no magnitude involved. School skill level, area, range AND opponent values (level, total magicka, or attribute) are taken into account.

 

Restoration

Fortify Fatigue

Fortify Health

Fortify Skill

Resist Fire

Resist Frost

Resist Shock

Resist Magic

Resist Paralysis

Resist Poison

 

Destruction

Damage Attribute

Damage Fatigue

Damage Health

Damage Magicka

Drain Attribute

Drain Fatigue

Drain Health

Drain Magicka

Drain Skill

Weakness to Fire

Weakness to Frost

Weakness to Shock

Weakness to Magic

Weakness to Poison

 

Alteration

Burden

Feather

Fire Shield

Frost Shield

Shock Shield

Shield

Water Breathing

Water Walking

 

Illusion

Chameleon

Command Creature

Command Humanoid

Calm

Frenzy

Light

Night-Eye

Silence

 

Mysticism

Detect Life

Reflect Damage

Reflect Spell

Soul Trap

Spell Absorption

 

Conjuration

None

Constant summon spells would be overpowered and lorebreaking

 

Statements, goals, questions to myself

* The goal is to make this system work for all magic users in the game, not just the player

* There must be a system to dispell these effects. The easiest way would be to give 2 Lesser Powers, onSelf and onTarget, that just removes all these constant effects. A better way for selfbuffs would be to make the effects in the "Active Effects" sheet in the player menu clickable to cancel them.

* These effects must be dispellable by the Mysticism "Dispell" effect.

* A choice must be made whether a spell should be converted to an ability at the moment it hits the target, or that the spell should recycle itself.

* What do we do with the current spells in the game that have a duration?

* How does this affect Spellmaking

* How does this affect Enchantments on weapons. This can be tricky.

 

 

Detailed rambling

Concerning Command Creature, Command Humanoid, Calm and Frenzy

These spells originally involve Magnitude as the maximum level the target is allowed to have in order for the spell effect to work. In this mod, the spell will work on any target as long as you have enough Magicka. Instead of "Command Creature up to level 20 for 30 seconds on target", the spell will now say "Command Creature on target". At the moment the spell hits the target, the level of the creature is read, and based on that value the decrease of your total Magicka is calculated. If this exceeds your current total Magicka, the spell fails and will decrease your current magicka by 50% of the cost.

 

Concerning Silence

Works the same as above, but the Silence effect stops when the target's current Magicka is higher than the caster's current Magicka. This makes it so that you are unable to Silence a strong mage at the start of a fight when (s)he still has a full Magicka pool, but after (s)he casts some spells you will be able to do so. Casting spells yourself will drain your Magicka pool, which enables the target to escape from the Silence effect.

 

This system makes the cost of these spells unpredictable and thus dangerous. If your current and total Magicka is 200, and you cast "Command Creature" and the cost turns out to be 180 Magicka, you only have 20 total Magicka left, which cripples your ability to cast other spells. In this case it's often smart to be quick to cancel/dispell the effect.

If the "Command Creature" spell turns out to cost 240 Magicka the spell cost exceeds your current Magicka by 40 points. The spell will fail, and your current Magicka will be decreased by 50% of the spell cost, which is 240/2=120. You had 200 current Magicka so, 200-120=80. The spell failure leaves you with 80 Magicka points. Note that your Total Magicka is not affected by spell failure.

 

 

 

Last words

This is just a concept, quickly written down without considering the full impact this mod has on the gameplay. The idea isn't nearly finished, so feel free to contribute your thoughts.

 

I cannot make this mod myself, at least not in the coming months. I am very busy with my study, and have very limited experience with the CS. Because of that, I really hope someone else will start making this mod/addon.

 

I will offer a lot of help with ideas, testing and balancing though.

[grmblf]

Hey that's pretty interesting, very innovative actualy, but really I can't see how it could affect gameplay. On a first thought:

 

- effects should drain less magicka than it would cost to cast the spell for a short duration, otherwise there's no point in casting this permanent effects, 'cause if the cost is the same it's always better casting it again and again, as a second later you'd have more magicka than if you've buffed yourself.

 

- some arbitrary duration has to be set as a reference to calculate it's cost, considering no duration (1 sec) would probably make them way too cheap.

 

- it happens that I'm working on a spells mod and that this may fit there or may not, no promises, but I like to consider new ideas to improve it. This may make sense as my spells require to be charged for a while, this way you could save having to charge your shield spell for 3 seconds while in combat, and also deals with the arbitrary duration I mentioned as my mod auto-calculate it according the magnitude, wich is in turn according to stats and magicka, but as I've said I can't see right now how this could affect gameplay and how it would combine with my mod. If finally I'm adding it I'd have no problem releasing a separate version if you don't like it mixed with mine, if not then perhaps some of the maths I've done for my mod could be used for this mod.

 

PD: check out my Chargeable Spells mod!

[Maegfaer]

Hey that's pretty interesting, very innovative actualy, but really I can't see how it could affect gameplay. On a first thought:

 

- effects should drain less magicka than it would cost to cast the spell for a short duration, otherwise there's no point in casting this permanent effects, 'cause if the cost is the same it's always better casting it again and again, as a second later you'd have more magicka than if you've buffed yourself.

 

- some arbitrary duration has to be set as a reference to calculate it's cost, considering no duration (1 sec) would probably make them way too cheap.

 

- it happens that I'm working on a spells mod and that this may fit there or may not, no promises, but I like to consider new ideas to improve it. This may make sense as my spells require to be charged for a while, this way you could save having to charge your shield spell for 3 seconds while in combat, and also deals with the arbitrary duration I mentioned as my mod auto-calculate it according the magnitude, wich is in turn according to stats and magicka, but as I've said I can't see right now how this could affect gameplay and how it would combine with my mod. If finally I'm adding it I'd have no problem releasing a separate version if you don't like it mixed with mine, if not then perhaps some of the maths I've done for my mod could be used for this mod.

 

PD: check out my Chargeable Spells mod!

 

- The idea is to replace/modify all the existing spells, so you won't be able to cast (for example) a Shield spell for 30 seconds only. What you are describing is exactly what I find so annoying. When you are in the middle of a fight, you don't want to spend time re-casting your shield spell again and again.

 

- I haven't really studied cost calculation systems yet. Anyway, the base cost of the spell is not so important, because after you cast a (de)buff, a "Drain Magicka" constant effect is added which keeps your Magicka reduced for as long as the (de)buff is applied. This Drain effect actually serves as the "spell cost" and is calculated by a scripted Magic Effect.

 

- I like your mod! Great idea! Hmm, it's probably best to keep all things modular, so people can mix and match. Use any of these ideas as you like :)

[grmblf]

When I'm talking about the cost I mean the amount of magicka that will be drained. The spell base cost does matter if you want the amount of magicka drained be somehow related to the effect's magnitude and the skill level. You can approach it in two different ways, selecting the desired magnitude and then letting the script calculates the magicka drained, or choosing the amount of magicka you wish to drain and then let the script calculates the magnitude. Perhaps this last one would be easier to play, working on fractions of 10 of your total magicka. So you cast a shield spell and then can choose wich percentage of your magicka will it consume, 10, 20, 30 and so on up to a 90% of your magicka busy or another max value. If you go that way I'd suggest you to calculate the magnitude for a shield spell for 1 second, and then use the sqare root of that value for the constant effect magnitude, for what I've tested that'd be pretty fair.

 

I won't negate that casting a spell over and over may be annoying, what I try to point out is that any alternative has to be interesting. I mean, it would be really sad that someone bothered as well to cast a spell once and again would end up using default spells simply because with them he survives and with that constant effect he doesn't.

[Maegfaer]

You have an entirely different view on the matter compared to me.

 

I'm thinking of a GameMode script that does this:

 

*Player makes his active spell "Protection" which has a single effect: "Shield for 5% for 30 seconds on Self"*

1[script detects spell with GetPlayerSpell]

2[script checks if it is a Shield effect with GetNthEffectItemCode, answer is true]

3[script reads the magnitude of the spell with GetNthEffectItemMagnitude]

4[script reads the school of the Spell with GetNthEffectItemScriptSchool]

5[script checks player Alteration skill with GetActorValue]

6[script calculates the magnitude needed for the Drain Magicka effect (spell "cost")]

7[script adds a second effect to the "Protection" spell, containing a script that adds the Drain Magicka and a 5% Shield ability(!) (constant effect) with AddFullEffectItem]

8[script sets the Shield duration effect in the "Protection" spell to 1 second, to avoid confusion. This is done with SetNthEffectItemDuration]

9[script sets the "Protection" spell cost to the calculated value of the Drain (just as an indicator to show how much Magicka will be drained)]

 

So now the player has the spell "Protection" selected, which contains 2 effects:

1. Shield for 5% for 1 Second on Self

2. (Scripted effect) <Constant effect on self>

 

Effect 2 contains a script that does all the work of adding the Magicka Drain and the constant effect, as I described in script step 7.

 

I hope it's clear now?

[grmblf]

Yep it's clear, and it's not so different from what I'm suggesting. As I've said, you have two aproaches, in your one you 'choose' a magnitude (given by the magnitude of the spell) and the script then calculates the amount of magicka to drain. I simply was suggesting inverting this process so the player could choose the amount of magicka drained on a first instance, and then calculate the magnitude, but that's entirely up to your tastes.

 

Doing it your way you'll still need to have all the shield spells (I mean some of each one for different magnitudes) while doing so the way I mean you could only have one shield spell and that could be useful at every level as long as your skill and total magicka increase. Once again, considering this a feature or an issue is entirely up to your tasted.

 

On point 7, how do you add a scripted effect with addFullEffectItem? I know you can but how the hell can you tell wich script you want it to run? I haven't found how to do this yet.