Shade Race - Very hard, but interesting variant :wallbash:

[DZmaster]

Shades don't have body. They have to use another persons body and live in it. They gain body's stats but have their own skills. When a body dies, then shade in it dies with that body. When shade is "bodyless" then it:

 

Can fly

Cannot carry anything

Cannot talk(can still hear people)

Cannot fight or get hurt

Cannot Use spells

Cannot be arrested.

Cannot activate anything except cell-to-cell doors. All cell-to-cell doors areunlocked by activating them and relocked after it.

It whould be cool if it cold have a collisonless (like TCL command), but could not go underground. OPTIONAL

You can enter to only a non-hostile body what doesn't look at you.

Most pople who dare, attack shades, but only soul trap can kill them

 

But life in a strange body is not easy:

 

Body's soul is dieing slowly when it has a shade in it. (loses soul points and can be refilled by eating soulgems) when it reaches zero, the body's mind dies, but shade doesn,t die with it. It lives in that body, but when he leaves from it, the body dies.

When leaving a body, there is a chance to accidentaly kill the body.

When shade enters a body, the body is set non-essential (for previous effects to take effect).

 

 

It has to had too:

Some soul trap spells for npc-s

A prisoner to capture in jail.

[ninja_lord666]

Um...yeah. This is impossible in every conceivable way.

 

[1] Mods have made flying possible.

[2] The inventory is hard coded. I don't think this is possible. Now, I could be wrong, and someone could make a script that does this in a roundabout way, but then it would probably require a lot of scripting.

[3] Not getting hurt is certainly possible, but I, even with tons on scripting, I don't think it's possible to eliminate fighting. You could make fists do no damage, but they'd still be a hostile action.

[4] I guess you could have a constant effect drain magicka 100 points.

[5] This would be possible by making guards not arrest. Period. However, then they'd never arrest you ever. Even when you're not a shade.

[6] This wouldn't be very feasible. People could go outside the walls into the blank cell space, which is very immersion breaking.

[8] NPCs don't cast soul trap.

 

Now, you'll see I skipped [7], and that's because it has to do with the main impossibility:

YOU CANNOT TAKE CONTROL OF NPCS!

Now, some sort of scripting god could potentially have the PC change race into a replica of the NPC then delete the NPC, but I doubt it would work right, even if a team of scripting gods worked on it.

 

In short, never expect this to be done, ever.

[GreenSaint]

Maby it just changes into a copy of the npc and the npc dies, and when the shade "leaves" the copy the npc is resurrected like with the resurrect console command.

[Vagrant0]

Maby it just changes into a copy of the npc and the npc dies, and when the shade "leaves" the copy the npc is resurrected like with the resurrect console command.

There is no copy appearance, or change race function other than "showracemenu" which for your purposes wouldn't exactly cut it. Additionally, since most of the NPCs in the game are ones which can't really be removed without causing some sort of issue, the idea really doesn't work too well even if you could do it.

[LoginToDownload]

You wouldn't have to kill the NPC, necessarily. Just restrain/KO/disable AI and plop it in a holding cell.

If you restrained or knocked an NPC unconscious, would PlayGroup on it still work? If so, you wouldn't even need to do the whole copying business.

 

A lot of it sounds undoable, but it all seems like it could be worked around to me... Sometimes in better ways than the impossibilities.

[LoginToDownload]

Turns out you can quite easily drag a restrained NPC around using PlayGroup, and most all the problems arising from it are successfully dealt with in Terran Vampires. SetAlert causes a bit of trouble and jumping would have to be hardcoded, though, but doably so.

Here's a proposal as to how it could be handled:

 

Natural Shade attributes (of importance): Strength 15, Endurance 15, Willpower 50. (Maybe more)

Natural Shade abilities: Resist Normal Weapons 100, (I prefer this way to SetGhost. The concept of player invincibility doesn't sit well with me) Stunted Magicka, Damage Magicka 1, Invisibility.

That last one probably needs some explanation. The invisibility would dispel as normal if you activate anything or initiate combat, and would re-cast in five seconds.

 

Technical Shadey Stuff:

Initiating dialogue while un-posessed, which would make you visible, results in non-vampires/necromancers either fleeing or attacking, depending on confidence.

Any weapons the Shade attempts to wield are automatically dropped.

 

Posession:

Attempting to posess is done by a touch lesser power. You can attempt to posess instantly or slowly and either way can't be detected by the victim. If you attempt to posess instantly, it fails (and you're revealed to the target) if the target has over 2/3 your Willpower. If you posess slowly, it takes five seconds (And will fail if you're detected in that time, since casting removes invisibility). Posession always succeeds if your target is asleep/unconscious/etc, and always fails if the victim has no low level processing or is essential. (But in these cases, restore invisibility right away and don't reveal you)

When posessed, you lose Stunted/Damage Magicka, are removed from the "Everyone Hates Me" faction, Resist Normal Weapons becomes SetGhost, and invisibility becomes Chameleon 150. A spell is added, allowing you to completely exchange anything in the inventories of shade and posessee.

 

Technical Posessy Stuff:

Disabling the player's controls would be involved, but with OBSE in its current state, it wouldn't likely get in the way with suitable scripting. Since the Cast function is a pain, non-self spells simply appear in front of the posession victim, (Which isn't too bad flavour-wise either) while On Self spells are cast (using the player's Magicka pool) by the host.

The player will consistently be placed directly in front of the posessee, so activation wouldn't become a problem.

All of the NPCs treating you the same for the purposes of quests and such, no matter who you posess, strikes me as an acceptable break from reality.

 

Posession Side-Effects:

When a shade is inhabiting a body it slowly, but continuously, draws on the host's life force. After an hour, a Damage Magicka 1 effect is added to the victim. After three hours, the effect changes to Damage Magicka 2/Drain Willpower 10. At the five-hour mark, Endurance and Strength are also drained by ten. After ten hours, the three attributes, as well as Agility, are drained by 15, and Damage Magicka increases to 4. After a day, the victim suffers from Stunted Magicka, as well as Damage Health 1.

After the shade moves on, these effects vanish at the rate of five hours per "stage", with the damage effects fading instantly until posession is re-assumed. Here, the Damage Willpower effect actually makes it easier to re-assume control.

 

I'm in the middle of a project right now, but this definitely beats out my other future ideas...

[DarkWarrior45]

I personally think the project is very well feasible if some serious thought is put into it on how to do it. Most of (but not all of) the ideas are very well possible with the help of scripting, and some of the elements are already in use in mods/vanilla quests. (such as not being able to get hurt) Plus, OBSE might be a big help. And I would also like to see this done.

[GenghisKhanIT]

Thumbs up to LoginToDownload for being so optimistic.

 

I have to admit that the idea is very nice and the development method is quite convincing, but...

 

My opinion is that all the possession trick would become a bit annoying after a couple of weeks game time, because of the impact on gameplay. It may be nice for running around in cities and random possessing people and taking a trip in the wild. But imagine clearing out a big (5 levels) dungeon containing creatures, your possessed body becoming too weak right in the middle of it. What would you do ? Go back to a town 1/2 day fast travel away and look for another one, and then return to the dungeon ?

 

Also, inventory management seems quite weak. Where would a shade keep his inventory ? No way. So, before unpossessing a body you would need to empty it of your own belongings, put them into a container, possess another body, return to the container and re-equip everything.

 

And what about levels-up ? How could a shade increase its strength or endurance ? Or should the possessed body's "physycal" attributes be used ?

And what about training ? Should they affect possessed body's skills ?

 

I think that a bit of gameplay improvement focus is in order, to achieve quite an enjoyable result.

 

 

Let me know what you think.

[LoginToDownload]

...Is Drain Strength/Endurace/Agility 15 actually that crippling? Willpower and Magicka are pretty meaningless when you're the one casting the spells. You're probably right about relaxing the damage curve, though.

The idea was that the Shade more-or-less went without an inventory, and by my calculations 15 Strength, un-boosted, becomes 75 Encumbrance. Strikes me as enough, as the idea isn't that you have a huge inventory to transfer from human to human. For example, it's enough for a light armor set/sword and shield, or a full alchemical set/staff, with room to spare. Come to think of it, staves and scrolls would be hugely useful for a Shade.

I would imagine Endurance wouldn't really matter much, since the idea isn't to be the one being attacked. Being feeble when not posessing was rather intentional.

Training is usually knowledge, so I would just handle it normally. I have been toying with the idea of a new method of leveling up, though, probably based on how long you've been in a body. (Manually leveling up, so the leveled stuff doesn't outpace you) I suppose the NPC should use the player's combat skills, though, but it's easy to build an experience-gainer into the attacking script.

 

Many thanks for the input.

[DZmaster]

:thanks: for discussion, but i didn't understand download's possession system compleatly(weak english :wallbash: ). Here are some answers to questions

 

Ok, there will be no TCL.

Shade has its own skills but posessed body's stats.

When body's soul is weakening, it can be restored by eating soulgems.

I've seen NPC-s casting soul trap, but I am using FCOM and lots of oyher mods.//*Dispel will kill sahdes too

The idea about fast and slow posessing was very good, but a minigame whould be best.

Cannot cast spells can be done by silence.

No inventory can be done by 0 strength (and burden if neccessary)

 

Some new Ideas(Mostly corrections) by me :thumbsup: :

 

Leaving a body takes long time.

Dispel will kill sahdes too. Silence paralyzes.(not sure about these)