BleakEyes Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 I had an idea about how weak the dragon born is in skyrim. When fully leveled the dragon born is little more than a normal high level character. The shouts are close to useless and under powered and the cooldown time is just sad compared to a real dragon. In the end I felt like the dragon born was an asthmatic genius with a stutter. The genius comes from grasping the shouts easily. But the long ass cooldown made me think the dragon born has issues with asthma and needs extra time to catch their breath. Then if that weren't enough of a problem, the dragon born has a speech impediment of some kind because the dragon born version of shouts are the weakest. So my idea was to have the dragon born become more like a dragon. True Dragonblood by Vohcaz already touches on this idea with lowering shout cooldowns to closer reflect a real dragons shout cooldown. My idea expands on this. As a vampire is it's own creature after the change, so should a dragon born be. So here are my proposed changes that the mod should include. Dragon blood: A leveled magic effect that lowers your shout cooldown as it levels. The shout cooldown buff will top out with level three fire/ice breath cooldowns at five seconds like the real dragons version. Most likely all the shouts would need some amount of adjustment so the dragon blood buff reduces the cooldowns more smoothly. Want more dragonyness and less asthmatastickness. Dragon claws: A leveled magic effect that increases unarmed bonus damage as it levels. Dragon claws will add a base 6 additional unarmed damage at the start. As it levels it will top out at 25 bonus unarmed damage. This will be a nice way of having an unarmed character. This will also add a feel of fighting like a dragon. Just with less nibbling and hip-checking. Dragon skin: A leveled magic effect that increases magic resistance as it levels. Magic resistance will start at 1% and top out at 20% magic resistance, plus a 1% resistance to each element, topping out at 20%. The dragon born screams fire but can't take a fireball without singeing off all his ass hairs and dieing a pussies death? Unacceptable. Dragon scales: A leveled magic effect that increases armor as it levels. The first level of this effect will grant 10 armor and top out at 200. This will make a dragon born feel like they were meant for fighting dragons as a dragon. As it stands now, the dragon born feels like a chicken s*** that needs to run away from the big boys and only turn and slap at the dragons with the limp wristed dragon born versions of shouts. At least with this buff, the dragon born could actually withstand a bite or two. There is a size difference after all. Dragon strength: A leveled magic effect that increases melee damage as it levels (includes unarmed). This effect will start at a 5% bonus to melee damage to one-handed, two-handed and unarmed. This effect will top out at 50%. What can be said here? The dragon born should be able to hit harder than normal people. Even if he is a dragon born mage. At least when the dragon born mage decides to use his slap fight skills it will sting. Dragon swiftness: A leveled magic effect that Increases run speed and jump height as it levels. When fully leveled it will triple jump height, triple sprint speed and increase run speed by 50%. Adjusting stamina loss from sprinting should be adjusted as well. I am already moding that personally since I am against the dragon born sprinting as long as an anorexic asthmatic. I can sprint longer in full plate armor. In fact I have. The sprint speed and jump height are just an alteration that will give that powerful feel that you got in Oblivion from athletics and acrobatics. But with more control and less absurdity. The leveling system I am thinking of for this is based on dragon kills. After killing your first dragon the lowest versions of these buffs will be added to your magic effects list. After your twentieth kill the buffs will be at their most powerful. This way you gain something more as a dragon born as you kill dragons. One possible amendment to this leveling could be level gains through the main quest where you gain a word and experience from the grey beards and parthunax as well as dragon kills. So each word you learn from a grey beard and parthunax would count as a dragon kill. That alteration would be good for a more immersive feel. If this can not be done it would still be fine. Shout alterations could be made so that when you level, shouts level in power with you. Just as dragons do. So by the end levels your shouts would be as strong as an ancient dragons. Also the level caps on non-damaging shouts would grow with your characters level. The other shout alteration I would like to see is unlocking true dragon shouts. So when you get the third word of fire breath, the dragon version is unlocked. I personally did this for myself with just console commands and it has a totally different feel when having a shouting match with an ancient dragon and you are both blasting each other with torrents of fire in the same dragon voice. This will apply to the frost breath also with the possibility of adding in the projectile shouts that dragons use. I just wondered why the dragon born can't use the same shouts as the dragons and why do the grey beards have better versions of the dragon born shouts. The dragons place on the food chain falls somewhere above a troll and a little bellow a bear. They should be stomping mud holes in the asses of mammoths, giants and you. So the last thing is the fact that dragons are crap in vanilla. I have been using a mod called More Powerful Dragons by RPM. When you first encounter a dragon with his mod you are most likely to eat dirt if you are not careful. So the intent for this mod is to be pared with a dragon buffing mod. Otherwise the weak-ass dragons in vanilla would feel the wrath, and the dragon born would be over powered. But if this mod could also have a dragon buffing option it would be nice as well. I think these changes I have proposed are mostly just scripting. If this is done maybe there could be a version that has a more visual reflection on the dragon born changes. I hope this sounds like a fun and good idea and somebody wants to make it. I was already trying and failing miserably in even figuring out how to make a mod. So thank you for your time and for reading this far if you did make it this far. BleakEyes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChromeWarriorXIII Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 I like a lot of the ideas in this, but I think that only 20 kills to be at the maximum level is way to low. Perhaps if you made it so that it took 20 kills for each of the skills to be at max, then that would be more reasonable. Getting to the maximum should be real reward since it's going to make you so much more powerful. There's only 20 shouts in the game as it is and according to the wiki you need a total of 44 souls to get all the shouts that aren't taught to you. So you gotta figure that you're going to become an unstoppable badass before you even know all the shouts. Maybe a possibilty could be to line it up with the shouts so that by the time you have all the shouts, that's when you reach the peak of your power? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BleakEyes Posted February 15, 2012 Author Share Posted February 15, 2012 (edited) That is a very good point ChromeWarriorXIII. So maybe if it is changed to 40 kills it would balance out better. Or maybe using dragon souls as a way of leveling could be done. Is there a better number or method anyone had in mind? Edited February 16, 2012 by BleakEyes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BleakEyes Posted February 22, 2012 Author Share Posted February 22, 2012 Out of everyone that has seen my ideas here, do the buffs themselves sound balanced enough? Is the idea interesting enough that anyone would want to use it? Also has anyone had the same thoughts on how unimpressive the dragon born is and wanted some kind of change as well? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gremtack Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 let me say 'dragonborn in context ' well what i mean is hes part dragon right therefore should he also not look the part ie though human his skin is scaled Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BleakEyes Posted February 27, 2012 Author Share Posted February 27, 2012 That is a good point Gremtack. If this mod was ever made, and a visualization was possible, I was thinking something along the lines of a specular mapping on the characters to depict the dragon skin buff by looking like there is an iridescent scaling over the skin and maybe finger nail color change to a dark grey tone based on your skin choice. If you ever saw the movie "The never ending story", the khajiit version of the scales buff could look similar to Falcor how he has fur and scales. But it would still just be a specular change and not a re-texture. I am not sure what could be done with Argonians. It would also be nice if the hand to hand animation could be changed to the khajiit clawing animation so the dragon claw buff would make more sense in the unarmed buffing. A good optional file would be growing horns that grow as you gain power. There would just need to be a way to figure out what horns people would like most in that case. The only other changes I can think of that would be pretty awesome would be a black smoke particle effect added to the characters mouth, Like breathing vapors in cold areas, and a shadow replacement for the character. The shadow could be turned into a dragon shadow or maybe a large pair of dragon wings could be made and turned transparent, but keep the ability to cast shadows on. This one could be fun because when you turn on something like one of the flesh spells you could see phantom wings on the character. I hope those are the type of ideas you were thinking about Gremtack. If anyone else has any ideas that could make this mod interesting enough to grab the attention of a modder and the people that would want the mod, that would be great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gremtack Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 That is a good point Gremtack. If this mod was ever made, and a visualization was possible, I was thinking something along the lines of a specular mapping on the characters to depict the dragon skin buff by looking like there is an iridescent scaling over the skin and maybe finger nail color change to a dark grey tone based on your skin choice. If you ever saw the movie "The never ending story", the khajiit version of the scales buff could look similar to Falcor how he has fur and scales. But it would still just be a specular change and not a re-texture. I am not sure what could be done with Argonians. It would also be nice if the hand to hand animation could be changed to the khajiit clawing animation so the dragon claw buff would make more sense in the unarmed buffing. A good optional file would be growing horns that grow as you gain power. There would just need to be a way to figure out what horns people would like most in that case. The only other changes I can think of that would be pretty awesome would be a black smoke particle effect added to the characters mouth, Like breathing vapors in cold areas, and a shadow replacement for the character. The shadow could be turned into a dragon shadow or maybe a large pair of dragon wings could be made and turned transparent, but keep the ability to cast shadows on. This one could be fun because when you turn on something like one of the flesh spells you could see phantom wings on the character. I hope those are the type of ideas you were thinking about Gremtack. If anyone else has any ideas that could make this mod interesting enough to grab the attention of a modder and the people that would want the mod, that would be great. I read a series of books 'polity series ' a few years ago an in these books was a version of a humanoid/ draco man the thread reminded me of these 'draco' men and yes the horns idea sounds good /but would'nt a breath animation be quite hard to pull off in skyrim as there is no 'wind' would need a wet atmosphere mod of some kind to make the breahing look viable or some sort of light fog effect Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leirynot Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 I like it other than the change in appearance of the Dragonborn, but it could just be made as an optional file with the mod. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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