Tweaking PerMa Weapons

[drworm73]

First- I like axes. I like using one handed axes in game whenever I can.

Second- I also love stealth, but I am not terribly fond of dagger combat animations. I am actually very meh on daggers from an RP POV.

 

I am about to start a playthrough using PerMa* and noticed the way the weapon.xml file in patchus maximus was structured. I have no experience with scripting or whatever the txt in .xml files is called, but it's not too hard to see the basic connections. What I want to do is make an axe that for almost all intents and purposes is the same as a dagger- the only differences being type and damage type. I think dagger damage scales nicely, and don't want to run into problems with the weapon being OP. The most essential thing is that the weapon be considered a dagger for the relevant perks, not an axe. The idea that seemed the easiest to me (since editing perks seems dangerous for a newb) was to just change the base stats bound to the hatchet to be those of a dagger. This would seem to make them work and show up in leveled lists without much fuss. Making a new weapon all together seems like it would be much more complicated if I want them to show up throughout the game. What I am not sure is how to designate them as daggers for the sake of stealth perks.

 

Can anyone show me how to edit the Patchus Maximus weapon.xml file to make this work? I had thought about using this idea as a way to teach myself modding in the CK, but Patchus Maximus just seems easier since I was going to use the mod anyway.

 

 

*I have not played through the game yet with PerMa so I don't actually know much about how the mod handles sneak attack damage. It is possible that me trying to do this is unnecessary, but in most games and systems daggers are the ideal sneak attack weapon.

Edited September 23, 2017 by drworm73

[JackArbiter]

The XML file modification for weapons is fully explained here. Although I guess "fully explained" is maybe overreaching. Will changing the identifierType in weapon_type_binding do what you want? Will changing an axe to piercing be enough? Do reachBase and speedBase actually overwrite the in-game values (I assume so)? For baseWeaponType says it "influences perk support." In what way? Dunno, have fun figuring it out.

 

Regardless of whether you mod the xml file you'll need to modify/add an esp with the new weapon to have it in game. I personally never use the CK for anything I could do in TES5EDIT, and you can probably do it in TES5Edit, e.g. copy an axe over as a new axe and make sure it has a relatively unique displayed name (used in the xml files under weapon_type_binding).

 

Honestly it'd be simpler to just use someone's modded axe. Google skyrim mod axe and go through a few pages, or just use one of these (from the first page):

 

Crescent Axe at Skyrim Nexus - mods and community

 

War Leader's Axe at Skyrim Nexus - mods and community

 

Thorin s Axe at Skyrim Nexus - mods and community

 

I'd pick Thorin's axe, its blade looks stabby (piercing)... for an axe.

 

You'll still want to make sure you use the correct display name in the xml file, which I'd guess is straight up what it's called in game, tho you can look that up in TES5Edit.

 

Will this work? SURE!? I've never used Perma, so I don't know. I just Googled it.

Edited September 23, 2017 by JackArbiter

[drworm73]

The XML file modification for weapons is fully explained here. Although I guess "fully explained" is maybe overreaching. Will changing the identifierType in weapon_type_binding do what you want? Will changing an axe to piercing be enough? Do reachBase and speedBase actually overwrite the in-game values (I assume so)? For baseWeaponType says it "influences perk support." In what way? Dunno, have fun figuring it out.

 

Regardless of whether you mod the xml file you'll need to modify/add an esp with the new weapon to have it in game. I personally never use the CK for anything I could do in TES5EDIT, and you can probably do it in TES5Edit, e.g. copy an axe over as a new axe and make sure it has a relatively unique displayed name (used in the xml files under weapon_type_binding).

Yea, I read that page a few times. Parsing the terminology took a few reads. After doing that and looking through the .xml file last night I decided to just monkey around with it. I backed up the files and just went in and changed the baseweapon of the hatchet to DAGGER and tweaked values to be that of the dagger for the most part. I left the weaponclass alone. By my read the baseweapon tag is what determines how it is seen by perks.

 

You mention that I would need to make a new .esp, but I don't see why. The game uses this .xml file to set the stats of the weapons (in this case), so changes to the file should be reflected in game. I changed the identifier HATCHET, so this should change all Hatchets that appear in the game to now be considered daggers for the sake of perks.

 

Now, I had some trouble with my load order so I never got around to checking whether I got it right. I could have misread the page entirely.