Attributes

[Amessagetoyou]

Hello folks, I'm kind of confused about some attributes in Oblivion.

I have always taken it for granted that for example low agility - more staggering for everyone, low intelligence - low magicka, low willpower - lower magicka regeneration.

 

However I was in Crowhaven fighting Lord Lovidicus when I decided to Damage his willpower to 0. Surprisingly even at 0 willpower his magicka was regenerating at a rapid rate.

I would like to ask whether willpower actually affects magicka regeneration in other players or is Lord Lovidicus having some sort of special ability?

After I killed him I found nothing on his body that would provide anything willpower or magicka related, so this is a little confusing...

 

Any comments?

 

Thanks a lot :)

[Striker879]

Not everything with NPCs is calculated the same way as the player (a bit more info is found at NPC Statistics).

[Amessagetoyou]

Not everything with NPCs is calculated the same way as the player (a bit more info is found at NPC Statistics).

I know some attributes of NPCs are calculated quantitatively different.

But NPC's don't use their willpower to regenerate magicka?

[Striker879]

My own research into ways of disabling NPCs hasn't turned up anything about what governs how NPCs regenerate willpower (e.g the UESP Wiki Willpower page only talks about the player's willpower/intelligence).

 

I use Realistic Fatigue and Basic Physical Activities (with their INIs tweaked for compatibility and to suit my taste) and have found that poisons that damage strength and endurance are the most effective tools for disabling NPCs. Spells/poisons affecting fatigue are also effective but NPCs will eventually regenerate fatigue and recover. Health is another option, as once their health gets low enough using those two mods they will collapse with low fatigue, however if the player sleeps in a nearby cell they will also recover their health.

 

Damage to strength and endurance is permanent and not recovered through any means beyond restore potions/spells or using altars. Using one or the other is effective against many NPCs but I have found some who aren't disabled by either strength or endurance damage alone, so the most effective potions damage both or use two attacks using the two different poisons.

 

Because strength and endurance are attributes there aren't any vanilla game damage spells available. Drain spells are effective (especially when coupled with 100% weakness to magic as the bottom listed effect when creating a custom spell), but drain spell effects are only active during the spell duration and then are restored back to their original values. I use a custom 100% weakness to magic followed by a 100% weakness to poison to "soften" them up, and then a single hit with a custom poison damaging both strength and endurance puts any NPC down with minimal health loss. The affected NPC's fatigue will generally be down around -50 to -70 due to the low endurance and strength so they won't run into the "sinking into the ground" problem you get when you re-enter a cell that has an NPC in it with a very low fatigue (values like -2000 or higher allow NPCs to clip through things and sometimes almost disappear into the ground when you leave a very low fatigue NPC's cell and then come back later).

Edited April 4, 2016 by Striker879

[Amessagetoyou]

My own research into ways of disabling NPCs hasn't turned up anything about what governs how NPCs regenerate willpower (e.g the UESP Wiki Willpower page only talks about the player's willpower/intelligence).

 

I use Realistic Fatigue and Basic Physical Activities (with their INIs tweaked for compatibility and to suit my taste) and have found that poisons that damage strength and endurance are the most effective tools for disabling NPCs. Spells/poisons affecting fatigue are also effective but NPCs will eventually regenerate fatigue and recover. Health is another option, as once their health gets low enough using those two mods they will collapse with low fatigue, however if the player sleeps in a nearby cell they will also recover their health.

 

Damage to strength and endurance is permanent and not recovered through any means beyond restore potions/spells or using altars. Using one or the other is effective against many NPCs but I have found some who aren't disabled by either strength or endurance damage alone, so the most effective potions damage both or use two attacks using the two different poisons.

 

Because strength and endurance are attributes there aren't any vanilla game damage spells available. Drain spells are effective (especially when coupled with 100% weakness to magic as the bottom listed effect when creating a custom spell), but drain spell effects are only active during the spell duration and then are restored back to their original values. I use a custom 100% weakness to magic followed by a 100% weakness to poison to "soften" them up, and then a single hit with a custom poison damaging both strength and endurance puts any NPC down with minimal health loss. The affected NPC's fatigue will generally be down around -50 to -70 due to the low endurance and strength so they won't run into the "sinking into the ground" problem you get when you re-enter a cell that has an NPC in it with a very low fatigue (values like -2000 or higher allow NPCs to clip through things and sometimes almost disappear into the ground when you leave a very low fatigue NPC's cell and then come back later).

I just really don't understand why Bethesda almost in every game includes some dirty surprise regarding how NPCs are gonna be different in major aspects of the game...

[Striker879]

They design the games to be used within the framework they used while making their design decisions. They would be looking for a system that allows decent game balance as the player character advances in level that can still deliver an enjoyable gaming experience.

 

Pretty hard to anticipate all the things that modders will come up with and design a system that can evolve along with whatever random combination of mods a user decides to use.

[Amessagetoyou]

They design the games to be used within the framework they used while making their design decisions. They would be looking for a system that allows decent game balance as the player character advances in level that can still deliver an enjoyable gaming experience.

 

Pretty hard to anticipate all the things that modders will come up with and design a system that can evolve along with whatever random combination of mods a user decides to use.

I agree but this has nothing to do with mods, RPG where all characters have the same abilities qualitatively and quantitatively is much more immersive, fun and pleasant to play.

I don't see anything hard or impractical (from a programming perspective) to make all characters use the same formula for their attributes. In fact it would make everything simpler and easier.

 

As I'm writing this I discovered another very disappointing fact, NPC's encumbrance is also calculated differently it seems.

One would have thought that if inventory weight > encumbrance = Being unable to move.

 

But apparently, I can bring someone's strength down to 0 and after changing cells (or reloading) they will be able to move again. But using the "getav strength" command returns 0...

[Striker879]

I got similar results from using strength alone in my own research (I also used the console to explore how things worked while coming up with a strategy for gameplay). I haven't run across any NPCs that are able to resist the strength/endurance poison combo yet.

 

The disadvantage for me is that because their health is only diminished by whatever small amount that either the arrow or single blade strike delivers they aren't ignored by any nearby NPCs, who jump in to "help" if the poisoned NPC is still hostile. Back when I was relying on RF+BPA alone (in combination with NPCs yield - refined INI tweaked to suit my preferences) the "assisting" NPCs would generally ignore the bandit/marauder/etc once/if they had yielded to me. Because their health loss is so small NPCs Yield doesn't kick in for those I've poisoned (generally I'm going the poisoned route so that they hang around disabled and gasping until the cell resets, which is sometime quite a bit longer than vanilla due to the settings I use in SPAWN ... what can I say, I'm a bit of a trophy hunter).

[Amessagetoyou]

Well this is a question of principle for me, there are much easier ways to disable a NPC, what I'm wondering is that why such a simple task (inventory>encumbrance=stop) cannot be achieved...