Turning a bow into a shield

[NemoOfCalh]

Good news! I kept looking and remembered Ambidextrie, a mod that lets you switch weapons to shields or change the number of hands you need for a weapon. Anyway, it is also a modders resource and it tells you how to change backweapons to shields. It was meant for claymores, but it works for bows too. Just go into NifSkope and change the NiStringExtraData from "backweapon" to "torch" and make a new shield in the CS that uses that mesh. It's that simple.

[LoginToDownload]

Ooo, that's useful to know. Many thanks for sharing. :)

[tyreil829]

making a bow into a shield i would love to see that

 

Col John Sheppard

[Vagrant0]

Like everything else that uses the same system, the downside is that you would still need to have both 2 sets of meshes and 2 CS definitions for every item you wanted to do this with. You also need a way of swapping between the two. The actual mesh stuff can probably be done in nifscope, it's making it work in game that is the hard part.

[NemoOfCalh]

Yeah, that's the annoying part. I used two separate items and just made the "shield" weigh nothing to simulate the fact that there is only one of the items in my inventory. It works nicely switching from archery to melee since it the shield is already equipped and it looks like the same item. The other way around doesn't work at all, literally. If I have melee out, and then equip the bow, the game crashes. So, I use two hotkey slots. When I go from melee to archery, I just use the hotkey to unequip the shield first, then equip the bow. Problem solved. Sure the system is a bit unwieldy, but it works and looks awesome.

[Khet]

I might not be grasping the concept here, but wouldn't it be just as easy to say take a shield, go into the 'edit' and just redirect the mesh/texture to the bow you want a voila instant bow-shield thing? Then just change the ID and save it as a newform so you don't mess anything else up... unless it's a custom designed bow, then I could see it but... :biggrin: I just might not be getting the concept.

[LoginToDownload]

The initial problem was that it still behaved like a bow when set to a shield, primarily appearing on the back.

[NemoOfCalh]

Yes, I've tried it before. When you set a normal bow mesh as a shield, the "shield" appears on your back, really high up, like the handle is above your head. It doesn't move from there. And I believe that, when you try to block, the game crashes.

[Khet]

Ah, that explains your problem then, I just figured a normal meshswap would work. Ah well, goodluck to you, hope everything works out nifty-dandy! (And any chance you're going to release it? My characters are all primarily ranged-based so I know what you're talking about with melee!)