LE Werewolf Overhaul

[dianacat777]

First off - I'm sorry if this has been said before. It probably has. I'm new to using these forums, and I don't even know where the search function is.

 

What I'm proposing is something that really can't be done without the CS. I'm no modder, sadly, but I can help in any sort of writing necessary for this.

 

So. *rubs hands* Werewolf overhaul. I was one of the people that was absolutely thrilled to find lycanthropy in Skyrim again, after its omission in Oblivion. And I was one of the people that found myself not devastated, but quite let down, with its actual implementation. It wasn't lycanthropy - it was the ability to polymorph into an angry meat blender for a few minutes. There was no loss of control, no 'curse', and hardly any downsides. While some less hardcore and roleplay-enjoying players prefer it, I certainly don't. It doesn't feel authentic or true to lore, and I imagine I can't be the only person who feels this way.

 

The sort of lycanthropy I'm imagining will draw from Bloodmoon werewolves and the wonderfully wrought Oblivion mod 'Curse of Hircine', and will take ideas from both. I imagine that adding this sort of lycanthropy to the existing NPC werewolves in the game would screw them up and get them killed/cause massive wars wherever they are, so I'd say add this to the player, and new werewolves the mod creates - and leave the existing ones alone.

 

First off - multiple colors. There are plenty of mods that have several coat colors, and I've created a small mod with 16 different eye colors that I'd be happy to lend to this hypothetical mod. The player would be able to choose his or her fur and eye color, with the current model being default. This is a purely aesthetic change, of course. Of course, no werewolf experience - like Skyrim's - is complete without NPC werewolves. Create some insane wanderers and the like. These will be humanoid during the day, and follow the same transformation schedule/chance as the player at night. NPC werewolves are friendly during the day (or non-transformed nights) to everyone, if not a little confused. But during their werewolf form, they will attack any non-werewolf NPC (Unlike the current werewolves in the game you can find in Silver Hand forts, these can recognize a werewolf player as a werewolf no matter what form they're in, and will be friendly.) If you are in werewolf form, and you meet one of these werewolves, you can have them as a follower until one of you changes back (which would be both of you, considering you turn back at a set time in the morning). The player could have a levelled amount of followers in their 'pack'. These wild werewolves will howl/roar randomly and can be heard from a distance, meaning it's easier to avoid them or find one. If possible, their rarity depends entirely on your level, and whether or not you're a werewolf. You won't find too many if you're a new player and don't carry the curse, but if you're high-levelled, either watch out, or rejoice in sharing the night with your packmates. Non-werewolf NPCs are pretty much invariably hostile towards werewolves, with this exception - if you're a werewolf, and you have a non-werewolf companion, that companion isn't aggressive towards werewolves, and isn't attacked by them in turn. (As in, if you're cool with werewolves, so is anyone under your protection)

 

Now, the beast form ability. I say leave it alone. Being able to briefly call out the wolf during the daytime, or nontransformed nights, can play alongside the revamped lycanthropy. But I'm going to ask that this is kept specifically to the Companions questline - I suppose it would become the ability to control the wolf to an extent. Doing that quest will infect you and turn you into a full werewolf by the standards of this mod, but if you're already one, it will just bestow that ability, because yes - I want to see lycanthropy as a disease again. *

 

*Another possibility is that the two are completely separate strains, and mutually exclusive, with the Companions strain having their greater control over the beast, and the disease strain being the traditional curse. Both are werewolves, but their state depends on how they contracted the curse - by being bitten, or by willingly imbibing the blood of the beast. Hircine bestows more control over those who accept his blessing of their own will, et cetera.

 

I don't think I need to explain this. Sanies Lupinus, or whatever else you may wish to call it, considering that Skyrim renamed vampirism for whatever reason (why, I have no idea). A disease you can catch from wild werewolves - for three days, it's merely a disease that just drains fatigue or something. Don't cure it for 72 hours, and you're a werewolf. To cure it, you still need to do the Companions questline - nothing changes in that sense. Your first transformation would likely have different messages and warnings beforehand than the later-described 'usual', alongside with you (as the player) not understanding/expecting what's going on.

 

Morrowind's every-night lycanthropy got a bit tedious, despite being drop-dead awesome, and made the game rather difficult to play - I remember some parts of the main quest had to be done at night, and I had to squeeze them into a one-hour window or risk ruining my game. CoH had this much, much better. Tamriel has moons. They wax and wane. As such, the player transformed accordingly. Moon phases could work the same way they did in CoH. Each one lasts three days - New, Waxing/Waning Crescent, First/Last Quarter, Waxing/Waning Gibbous, and Full. It's cyclic, and dominates the player's inner beast. Excluding the new moon phase, the player has a chance to transform every night. The 'greater' the moon phase, the greater the odds, although this would probably be controlled in an ini. During the full moon phase, you always transform. This random check will be performed thirty minutes before the transformation takes place, in game time, to give you some warning and let you escape from a crowded city or somebody's house (CoH's five-minute warning tended to serve as little more than a 'By the way, if you can't fast-travel right now, you're screwed). Your transformation into a werewolf would last from 9 pm to 6 am; as such, if you're going to transform on any night, a message will appear on your screen at 8:30, saying something along the lines of 'You grow restless as the beast stirs within' or 'You feel an inexorable pull towards the moons'. On such nights, you'll transform from nine at night to six in the morning.

 

However, spending that long in the current werewolf state would be terribly tedious. So... more overhaul!

 

First off. First person and sneak. Give them back. Playing as a werewolf currently is very clunky and does not have great aim; also, being outside of first person makes it feel like you're watching your character, not being your character. Sneak is essential, because rushing in blindly tends to get you killed - and isn't the werewolf supposed to be an apex predator anyway? Make him act like one. Pick off your foes from the shadows. Hircine's aspects are strength, speed, and guile, and the current Skyrim werewolf really only has the strength and speed card. And give back the health regeneration. Hell, in Morrowind, werewolves regenerated health while human characters didn't. Why the flip-flop now? However, there's a catch. Until you feed on a human NPC for that night, you don't regenerate health (a -100% regen effect). Losing health at periodic intervals like in Morrowind isn't really necessary, because if you want to do anything that particular night, and you aren't regenerating health, odds are you're going to die anyway. Instead, I think the penalties should come the next day - if you fail to sate your bloodlust, upon turning back into a human, some of your skills and attributes (I'm thinking health, fatigue, magicka, speech, and all magic skills) will be damaged until you transform again (and feed). Feeding on corpses still heals you the same amount it already does.

 

Alongside first person, you can activate items again. However, you still can't use them. You can feed on corpses and open doors, as you currently can, but it still doesn't let you loot bodies and unlock doors. Instead, if you activate something you cannot use, you'll get a message saying 'You cannot do this as a werewolf', and have a short, confused-sounding noise randomly play alongside it, as you did in Bloodmoon. Does this serve any functional purpose? Besides accurately gauging the world around you, no. But it's immersion, and I like immersion. A lot.

 

I'm pretty sure we all want werewolves levelled so they aren't broken at low levels and unusable at high levels, so fix that and improve the armor rating, but also, they should be able to jump significantly higher than normal characters, and climb steeper slopes (as horses do). And more abilities - being furry creatures quite at home in Skyrim's frigid nights, give them a 25 or 50% resistance to frost, and a toggleable night-eye.

 

The ring of Hircine would gain a new function. While you're wearing it, you can't transform into a werewolf via random chance at night, 'controlling the transformations', if you will.

 

And infection. Following CoH mechanics, you should be able to infect other NPCs with lycanthropy. It could either have a chance of transmission via attacking, or a separate option entirely. This way, you can infest a city with your kind, or make your followers beasts alongside you. Preexisting followers would have a special mechanic as werewolves; if both of you are transformed, you can summon them with a howl from anywhere in the world to join you on the hunt. This works for all followers you've infected, both active and inactive (although there'd probably have to be a limit somewhere so that you couldn't have every single follower in the game with you at once). Infected NPCs will transform just like the player does, randomly at night - however, some NPCs that are heavily morally opposed to werewolves, like Vigilants of Stendarr, nonessential priests, and Silver Hands, may hate you for cursing them, and will track you down to try and kill you. In CoH, anyone you infected would immediately love you, and stop fighting as soon as you yielded; while I adored that mod, that was one of the very few things I didn't like, as it seemed unrealistic that everyone would take to the curse, and that you could immediately befriend bandits in the middle of a fight, having them turn on everyone in their faction in favor of a beast that was just savaging them. As the player can choose their own coat and eye color, they can select the coats and eyes of NPCs they infect.

 

A perk tree may be created for the sole purpose of optimizing your beast form, having several options towards making your wolf-self deadlier - more effective sneaking, faster running, even higher jumping, better defense, improving the effects of your howls (summon spirit werewolves instead of spirit wolves), and perhaps at the very top of the perk tree, things like having animals non-aggressive to you in wolf form. Other abilities may be gained through quests.

 

As in CoH, the player will have a howl that has a high chance of transforming untransformed werewolves in the vicinity.

 

Silver Hand warriors will become more common and can be found in the roads and wilderness, looking to hunt down their prey. Perhaps a new order of werewolf hunters will be created - non-bandits that are generally friendly to non-lycanthropes, more like the Vigilants of Stendarr than the Silver Hand.

 

So... thoughts? Improvements? Anyone willing to try to work on any of this?

Edited December 17, 2011 by dianacat777

[dianacat777]

Oh, a few things I forgot to mention.

 

*Alongside with writing out dialogue, I'll also happily write any quests.

 

*The bounty for going werewolf will be changed. It won't be Morrowind's 'your game is permanently screwed now', but guards won't act like turning into and proving that you're a feared monster is just another murder or spree of grand larceny that can be paid off and forgotten. Perhaps there's a sort of monitoring, and everyone knows what you are, but they fear you instead of attack you? Or you have to pay somebody off to keep things secret. This needs some thought, because I'm not sure I liked how quickly people 'forgot' you were a werewolf in CoH, either. It was like everyone was amnesiac. But there has to be some way to keep one accidental slip-up from permanently altering your game.

 

*This mod has room for strains of different lycanthropy. Of course, those would all be separate projects, but here, they'd all count as separate diseases, like sanies ursus or sanies felinus, and would be contracted via finding their specific werebeast in the wilds. If somebody else creates the other six (or four, I have no idea what to do with werevultures and weresharks) lycanthropes of Tamriel and lets this mod use them, it has ample room for them.

 

*I'd like some way to keep all three of Hircine's totem powers active at once - perhaps different keys, or an available spell interface that lets you pick one at a time (and can switch back and forth as a werewolf?) This would be alongside the other 'howl' I'm suggesting, which would have a howling sound clip rather than a roar, and would summon your werewolf followers and cause nearby untransformed werewolves to transform.

 

*Make the map visible in werewolf form.

Edited December 11, 2011 by dianacat777

[AreeSoothsayer]

Dunno if it means much from me but two thumbs up on this idea.

[dianacat777]

Hey, knowing that anyone else is interested is great to me. :D

 

The way things currently are, not only do I not feel like a werewolf, but it isn't even feasible to run through Skyrim's nightscape. (practically no time, even if you kill obscene amounts of people)

[micryda]

Hey, knowing that anyone else is interested is great to me. :D

 

The way things currently are, not only do I not feel like a werewolf, but it isn't even feasible to run through Skyrim's nightscape. (practically no time, even if you kill obscene amounts of people)

damn iam absolutly whit you greatest werewolf idea if heard from

[Zenchii]

I like the idea. The idea of essentially having two types of cursed people around (the ones that are slowly loosing their humanity... or elf-anity, whatever, XD and the ones that have their mind still intact, like the companions) is a really cool idea. I like RPing as the latter, though. My character is someone who is quite comfortable with the beast within, and can control what she does to an extent by appealing to it using her knowledge of Hircine. (She'll rip bandits, necromancers, etc apart. but will simply scare off a farmer or villager and won't even touch them, convincing the beast that there's no honor in hunting such weak prey) That being said, I'd like to add something:

 

If you are a standard werewolf (Cursed via an encounter like what usually happens) then the Morrowind-esqe prompt that shows up when you try to activate something stays, complete with confused sound. But, when you are a werewolf of the companions things are different, and as a result, the prompt is different. Instead, it makes a frustrated, angry growl sound and a message pops up that says something like: "You give up trying to use this object from the frustration; your hands are too deformed"

 

I REALLY like this idea, though. :thumbsup:

Edited December 12, 2011 by Zenchii

[dianacat777]

It's not so much a matter of having little control, as just less than you currently do. It's like... getting deeper into the werewolf, or something. I never ran around killing innocent people with CoH or in Bloodmoon, but I preferred being 'cursed' in a sense.

 

As for the 'your hands are too deformed' thing... I like that. It's the difference between being controlled by the curse (to an extent), and just accepting the fact that, no, a werewolf cannot cook vegetable soup without ruining the ladle.

 

Somebody on another forum posted something similar to this, that ties in;

 

Yes. I want this fixed in a mod soon. First person and sneaking. First person - it's an immersion thing. I like to be able to see my character, but I also like to be my character. The lack of sneaking often serves to get you killed, especially since you don't regenerate health without killing NPCs. I also liked in Bloodmoon how you'd activate items, but just get a frustrated growl or confused sound from your werewolf-self, and nothing would happen. I want that back, it was sort of cute.

 

Also... You can mine soul gems? Damn. And you get Black soul gems just as often as you get petty ones...

 

See, they always stuck me as both frustrated and a little distraught. thought it was kind of tragic. Like your character was trying to remember how to be human (Or...you know, whatever it was before.) but just couldn't overcome the curse. It added a bit of pathos in my opinion.

 

There were a few mods that added werewolves to oblivion, but they alll used the same character model, which was essentially a escapee from Furraffinity.

 

So yeah, that really works. I'm all for two different messages; one along the lines of 'after a few moments' worth of frustration, you give up trying to use this', and another like 'try as you might, you just can't remember how to use this'.

 

So two strains of lycanthropy, then? I guess they'd be mutually exclusive. One gained from the wild werewolves, and the other via the Companions. It makes sense even there, given that the Companions are honorable warriors.

[Zenchii]

It's not so much a matter of having little control, as just less than you currently do. It's like... getting deeper into the werewolf, or something. I never ran around killing innocent people with CoH or in Bloodmoon, but I preferred being 'cursed' in a sense.

 

As for the 'your hands are too deformed' thing... I like that. It's the difference between being controlled by the curse (to an extent), and just accepting the fact that, no, a werewolf cannot cook vegetable soup without ruining the ladle.

 

Somebody on another forum posted something similar to this, that ties in;

 

Snippity snip :teehee:

 

So yeah, that really works. I'm all for two different messages; one along the lines of 'after a few moments' worth of frustration, you give up trying to use this', and another like 'try as you might, you just can't remember how to use this'.

 

So two strains of lycanthropy, then? I guess they'd be mutually exclusive. One gained from the wild werewolves, and the other via the Companions. It makes sense even there, given that the Companions are honorable warriors.

 

That's It! That's what I was going for! I meant the "forgetting who you were" thing. I'm gonna go back and edit my post for clarification now. :sweat: But yeah. With the companions I got the feeling that It's not so much a "Remembering how to be human" situation with them, since they not only like their "blessing" but they seem to be in control of it, as it is a "Can't... grab... lock pick. Hands too fat... Gods damn it!" situation.

 

And as for the "Two different strains" idea, it's not that far-fetched. The companions curse is not spread in the same way. With their strain, one must drink the blood of a Companion werewolf -- someone who's already in control -- and in a world where having "the blood of a dragon" lets you use their shouts like one of them, the companions may have unknowingly created a new strand.

 

But now I'm just excitedly hypothesizing. Sorry for the slight derailment. I love looking deeper into game lore/content like that. :tongue:

Edited December 12, 2011 by Zenchii

[Kuramin]

I love this idea... not much else to add. :tongue:

[Zenchii]

Ok, so it's 4 A.M here as I type this but I just thought of something so I gotta post it here. Since we covered the difference between a "Wild" werewolf and a companion werewolf, It would be cool if this mod could allow you to infect someone in both ways. Both forcibly (like the wild variety) and voluntarily (You offer them the gift of the beast by letting them drink your own blood) through a dialogue option.

 

 

Ok, I'm done for now. Sleepy time for me. :dance: