LE New Armour system

[Rhorwulf]

Dear modders of skyrim I call upon you!

 

I will give a brief description of my mod idea, and reasons why I think it should be made. And then if you are still interested there will be further details below regarding how I think it may work. (bearing in mind I know close to nothing about modding ha)

 

Feel free to add constructive criticism.

 

Essentially a mod which combines both light and heavy armour skills into a single skill tree, or removes the armour skill altogether. And instead has armours distinguished based on their individual properties, which provides the player with greater choice and customization of playstyle.

 

Reasons:

 

-To me an armour skill makes no real sense, especially in comparison to the weapon skills. How do you master wearing something.....?

 

Quite honestly to me it just seems like another skill to grind, when there are plenty of more exciting skills to put points into, which are often ignored as a consequnce. Speechcraft or heavy armour hmmmm...yep heavy armour.

 

-While technically your presented with more choices in vanilla skyrim with heavy and light armour skill trees, I feel that this system limits the player more for choice than my mod would.

 

With the current system you have to specialise in either heavy or light armor, therefore you have to approach each situation based on which skill path you have chosen. There are no inbetween's. With individual armours, each with pros and cons, you can decide exactly whats best for you. You see a cave full of loot, but also full of giant trolls.....Come back with some light armour and take the sneaky approach. Or perhaps you are about to besiege Whiterun? then slap on some Heavy armour to deal with those pesky arrows!

 

-A player can really find an armour that suits their playstyle, but not only that, they can adapt their playstyle when needed with a change of armour.

 

With this mod you will be able to adapt to different situations, just by changing your armour. Some situations you may be better off sneaking others you may choose to be in the center of the action. Each situation requires a different approach and different equipment. In a shooter you would'nt get into close quarter fighting with a bolt action sniper when you could use an automatic shotgun....Well maybe you would, but then you would be showing off.

 

-Compare two high level heavy armour characters from different playthroughs and you will find they will be wearing exactly the same sets of armour, for the simple reason that each tier of armour is better than the last.

 

With this mod no one piece or set of armour is overpowered they all have their pros and cons. That beautiful steel armour doesnt suddenly become redundant now that magically a higher tier of armour, which is in everyway better starts spawning into your world. You wont find yourself clad in full elven armour while fighting the stormcloak cause.

 

 

Armour types

 

Armour can be broken into catergories:

 

Textile: Hardened Leather, fur, Padded cloth (think of gambesons etc)

Mail: Chainmail, Scalemail

Plated: Brigadines, lamellar (Essentially large plates held together by textiles)

Full plate: A typical knights armour

 

General Idea's

 

All forms of non- textile armour should be rarer and more expensive than they currently are. It should be a rewarding experience and a sign of your prowess that you can afford armour.

 

Weapons need to be adapted to a similar system (havent got round to that yet)

 

You should feel like your wearing the armour your wearing, so in full plate you feel like a tank, with arrows glancing off and doing no damage on occasion. And in light armour you should feel light and nimble.

 

Armour for mages! certain armours should appeal to a mage and enrich their playstyle.

 

All armours are available from the start, from shops and to a degree in spawn lists.

 

Armour stats

 

These types will then have further stats along the line of:

 

Durability: How quickly the item degrades, this will depend on material, and each material will have its perks.

Material: How enchantable an item is, cost to repair or make. Governs most other attributes of the armour.

Weight: How heavy it is and therefore how draining it is on your stamina. Also effects running speed, jumping height.

Manevourability: Effects the use of skills while in the armour, so your fighting ability. you have more freedom of movement in textile armour for example. The less manevourable the greater the penalty to fighting skills.

Resistance:

-Piercing: Effectiveness at dealing with arrows and stabs

-Cutting: Effectiveness at dealing with cuts from swords and axes

-Blunt: Effectiveness at absorbing shock from Maces and to some degree axes.

-Magic: Ability to protect from magic.

Noise: How loud the armour is too move in, which obviously effects sneak.

 

Wearing Full Iron Plate armour will mean you will be more protected, but run slower than if you were wearing Iron Mail. Also you will have lower manervourability and recieve a penalty to your combat abilities. For example:

 

Full Iron Plate: -15 one handed, archery, two handed etc.

Iron Mail: -5 one handed, archery, two handed etc.

 

Using plated and full plate gauntlets prevents you from doing archery entirely, so an archer may want to opt for textile gauntlets or none at all.

 

Using Mail, Plated or Full Plate gauntlets prevent you from more dexterious skills, such as pickpocketing and lockpicking.

 

 

Types of armour and their effect on stats

 

The weight, durability, resistance, noise and repair costs of the different armour types follows this trend- lowest to highest (left to right)

 

Textile- Mail- Plated- Full plate

 

For manevourability its reversed.

 

Full Plate- Plated- Mail- Textile

 

The resistances have greater range and overlap, for example padded cloth armour absorbs alot of blunt damage close to that of mail armour, however the mail armour protects very well against cuts unlike the cloth. But it is still a poor defense against peircing damage unlike full plate armour.

 

So if you want to sneak or just travel light, and know you may be coming up against opponents using blunt force, you may want to stay with padded cloth armour.

 

 

Materials

 

Material effects Durability, weight, resistance, repair costs, enchantability, noise

Armour type effects Manevourbility, weight, durability, resistance, repair costs, noise

Weight effects Manevourability, noise (partly)

 

Material values highest to lowest (left to right)

Durability: Daedric- Ebony- Orcish- Steel- Dwemer- Elven -Dragon- Iron- Glass -Leather -Cloth -Fur

Weight: Daedric- Ebony- Dragon- Dwemer- Orcish- Iron- Steel- Glass- Elven -Leather -Cloth -Fur

Manevourability: Fur- Cloth - Leather -Elven- Glass- Steel- Iron- Orcish- Dwemer- Dragon- Ebony- Daedric

Resistance

piercing: Daedric- Ebony- Elven- Dragon- Orcish- Steel- Glass- Dwemer- Iron -Leather -Cloth -Fur

Cutting: Deadric- Ebony- Dragon- Orcish- Elven- Glass- Steel- Dwemer- Iron -Leather -Cloth -Fur

Blunt: Daedric- Glass- Dwemer- Steel- Dragon- Ebony- Orcish- Elven- Iron -Leather -Cloth -Fur

Magic: Ebony- Daedric- Dwemer- Glass- Dragon- Elven- Steel- Orcish- Iron -Cloth -Fur -Leather

Repair costs: Daedric- Ebony- Dragon- Glass- Dwemer- Elven- Orcish- Steel- Iron -Leather -Fur -Cloth

Enchantability: Daedric- Ebony- Dragon- Dwemer- Glass- Elven -Cloth Steel- Orcish- Iron -Fur -Leather

Noise (loud): Daedric- Ebony- Dwemer- Iron- Steel- Orcish- Dragon- Elven -Glass -Leather -Cloth -Fur

 

Glass according to lore is shock absorbant. So glass is very resistant to blunt damage and also quiet to move in.

 

This is just the rough order, so for example while Steel might have a lower resistance to piercing than Orcish, the exact value may be similar. Steel might have 110 resistance and Orcish might have 115 etc.

 

All of the materials have a variety of unique proterties which affect each stat, for example I see Elven as strong, light but also brittle. (Im not sure if that is the case in the lore)

 

Iron Mail has higher manvourability than Iron full plate, but offers less resistance especially to peircing.

But Ebony Mail offers similar resistance to Iron full Plate, but weighs more than Iron Mail.

 

Iron while not as effective as alot of the other armours may appeal to you simply because its cheap to repair, and having a fully repaired peice of iron armour is better than having a damaged piece of elven armour.

 

Thats all of the points I can think of for now, but overall I think a system like this will greatly improve the feel of skyrim's combat without having to completely overhaul it with new animations and a higher skill level. If it can't be made or if no one feels they have the time to make this mod then fair enough, it was worth a shot. However that being said, Thank you for your time.