"Evil" magic system for Necro's, ShadowKnights, etc.

[BobSob2020]

I have a great idea. Seeing as there is "Soul Trap" why not let their be "Soul Emplacement" to let you emplace a soul in a creature who already has a soul, therefore giving them split-personality / mania etc. (could give you negotiation abilities; good for demons)

 

Even better, how about soul travel; you could posses a soul by exiting your body (leaving it paralyzed), and entering an NPC (fly towards it as in swimming mode and "use" the NPC). This would paralyze your own body, but give you a full access to the NPC:s inventory and physical abilities (saving your mental), making you possible to guide this NPC to jump off the ledge. I'm not sure if this should be temporary or permanent. The first would let you survive from a fall without leaving the body in time, the latter might add some extra challenge in the game if you use the spell for avoiding getting killed in bottomless canyon :) And think about the places you could access with this.

 

I believe that the limitation to this should be measured by the willpower and personality of the NPC.

[Germandeathkittiez]

Great idea. I'm not so sure about personality so much as intelligence though... it depends on how much of a mental thing or spiritual this is? And if it's spiritual, then maybe it would be required to add an attribute like "spirit-power" or something. (then again "Spirit power" could be something we just see as luck.) If you keep your mental abilities, though, then wouldn't intelligence have some weight in this?

[BobSob2020]

Great idea. I'm not so sure about personality so much as intelligence though... it depends on how much of a mental thing or spiritual this is? And if it's spiritual, then maybe it would be required to add an attribute like "spirit-power" or something. (then again "Spirit power" could be something we just see as luck.) If you keep your mental abilities, though, then wouldn't intelligence have some weight in this?

 

Maybe as the Willpower is the attribute for magical regeneration, and has commonly been known as the ability to control oneself, may we define the spirit power as: Luck+Willpower divided by two?

 

However I'd personally prefer something like Willpower+Personality divided by two (with a random factor of luck), since I'd classify the personality as well presence in the body it is occupying, as the presence of attention.

[Germandeathkittiez]

I feel that spiritual power is something beyond our reality, and therefore is more complex than one's personality. But I suppose it could work... then again magic and spirit power are rather synonymous to dark matter, and thusly are one and the same, and therefore could be determined by willpower and intelligence.

 

Moving on, here is a quote from the edits of my post on the previous page, just to make sure you all read it, cuz I have some great ideas on it.

 

QUOTE(gdarknight @ Nov 10 2008, 02:57 PM) *

QUOTE(Maegfaer @ Nov 10 2008, 10:58 AM) *

What I would like to see in such a mod is REAL necromancy. The current necromancers ingame are just some dudes who summon skeletens and zombies, just like the player can do. The King of Worms has some lame Reanimation spell that makes a dead NPC alive to fight for you a short time.

 

But what is REAL necromancy? I am not sure, but I imagine it involves an advanced way of soul trapping. In "normal" soul trapping you just take the energy of soul in a soul gem, but I imagine necromancy would require to really capture that particular soul, so you can put it into it's body again but then under your control.

 

Ingame this would work out that you would need the NPC's own soul to reanimate that person. I was thinking about some underground personal graveyard where you keep the bodies of your killed and trapped NPC's. They could be lying on those stone beds in the vampire way (looks kinda cool). You should be able to summon those NPC's from anywhere in the game, until they are killed. To balance this strong power you could give the player an Intelligence debuff per currently summoned NPC. When one of your necromanced NPC's dies his body would return to the underground graveyard, and you are not able to summon him/her again until you visited the graveyard to "reactive" the body in some way by a ritual (if this would be too great a fuss, there could also be a timer on it, just to balance all this)

 

What do you think of that? It sounds like real(er) necromancy to me than what is currently ingame, which is basically just summoning.

 

 

QUOTE

Sounds similar to the system I was thinking about...I was considering a system where you could cast a spell that ACTUALLY traps the soul, not just convert to energy. These souls could then be used to reanimate NPC corpses, or any Undead. The renewed "body" would then follow you until it died. At that point the soul would be lost, and you would have to use another soul to reanimate the 'body'.

 

I also thought about EQ type spells (e.g. Necro Pet) to buff/heal your reanimated corpses.

 

 

QUOTE

That sounds good as well, and should be less complicated than my idea. But would the reanimated person get the stats of the one you soultrapped, or the stats of the body? Perhaps it's possible to attach some stats to the Soul, like Intelligence, Willpower and perhaps Luck? This way you can make it interesting since you can mix and match souls and bodies to get a specific build of NPC minion.

 

Another idea would be a spell that Unsummons/Resummons all your current undead companions, so you don't have to kill them to get rid of them, and you can enter cities and the like without being attacked.

 

And please don't forget a small debuff per reanimated minion, or this could become too overpowering as well. Intelligence/Max Magicka debuff (perhaps a larger debuff if you have a low conjuration skill, and a smaller debuff if you have a high conjuration skill?) would fit the lore, as it would make sense that the King of Worms needed the Necromancer Amulet (which gives 140 Magicka points buff at highest level) to improve his power.

 

Oh and by the way, gdarknight, if you need any modding help with this mod at all, I am available to assist you. If you weren't making this mod already, I'd probably start creating it. If you think I can help you, either with ideas, scripting or beta testing, just say so and I will give you direct contact info (MSN perhaps?)

 

 

(The Black Ninja) I think the prospect of this is a dangerous idea (not that it would be in game). Realistically, it's a bad idea to give the one you are controlling a will of its own. When you take its soul, you take its will, which is what gives you control over it in the way necromancers do it. If you give them back their soul, they have a chance at rebelling and destroying their necromancer. By giving these characters natural skills that are attached to them, you leave them partially under nature's, or god's control and not yours. By giving them objective enchanted items that are not naturally attached to them, or maybe even just spells to enchant their flesh, you still decide when to render them helpless. Not that this would matter too much in-game, but I think makes a good alternative trail of necromancy, and may make it easier to control minions. Basically, if you give them unlimited power, you may want that power to be your power and not theirs.

 

Another thing that would be really cool is if you could turn your character into a lich, (with its own character custimization screen, classes, and un-birth signs of the undead). You could join the undead legion of Cyrodiil. You would do this exactly according to the formula in that Dark Brotherhood quest(...?) where you kill that guy who's becoming a lich and find his formula for doing it. (It's been years since I did that quest, so I don't remember)

The possibilities are endless.

 

And this could be added to my last idea... Being a lich you would be soulless so you would be able to control the soulless voids of the undead and the soul-captured dead, as opposed to souls.

 

Also, I have about 0% modding experience, but I would love to help out in this in any way I can.

[Maegfaer]

Concerning the Lich idea... It's already been made, check Modular Oblivion mod :)

 

I played a lich myself for a short time but it's not really that cool, because there are almost no quests left for you to do and everyone is your enemy. Killing everything around you becomes boring after a short time.

 

I personally don't think that if you reanimate an NPC with it's own soul you also give the NPC's will back to him/her, as you make the soul your slave after you captured it.

 

Letting souls enter another's NPC's body (like a Demon) to make them kinda crazy may perhaps work, but what should the victim do in your opinion? Kill everyone around him in rage? There are already standard Illusion spells for that... I can't think of anything at this moment.

 

Leaving your own body and letting your soul enter another's body sounds really cool, but I think it's technically impossible... Your controls are really attached to your own character, I cannot think of any command or function to change this.

 

Perhaps it's possible to loosely control the NPC. It could perhaps be done by first calling a CreateFullActorCopy and PlaceAtMe on the player, and then paralyzing/making it unconscious, meanwhile making the player 100% invisible and removing footsteps and disabling any possibility to fight and putting a levitation spell on the player... That would create the illusion that you now control your soul.

 

After that the player could float to a NPC, and on activating it could start a script that watches your keyboard input... so that when you press the "W" key the NPC is forced to move forward by a script. Meanwhile there should be a constant "NPC.PlaceAtMe Player" to keep the player's soul at the NPC's location.

 

The control over the NPC would be limited, it will probably be just basic movement and an attack order. This will also be pretty overpowering, so there should be limits to who you can enter and how far you can travel away from your body...

 

I think I have the knowledge to create this, except that I do not know how to remove footstep sounds (it should be possible I think) and disabling the player to attack. There are already several mods with levitation spells so that should not be a problem.

[Germandeathkittiez]

Well then I think there should be a more thorough lich mod and it would be great if we could add it in to this mod. I think it should branch off of the dark brotherhood quest, and when you find the scroll of that guy you're supposed to kill you follow the instructions and become a lich...then it creates a new character with the same skills as your previous character, except altered for the dark arts. You would now start to see the world with some strange motion blur effect or maybe a difference in color (ie night eye) and then there will be various differences (detect life becomes detect undead, poisons become potions, vice versa etc.) Now you will start to see the undead as normal interactive citizens / pawns / enemies. There would be an entire underground, or invisible (hidden) legion of undead to be discovered, with cities all throughout Cyrodiil, disparate from the original ones, with quests strewn among them. I think this would be a really awesome add on to this mod, if it could be done. It would have to be huge, but with enough effort it may be accomplishable.

Letting two souls in one body would allow one to negotiate with both personalities, therefore giving a higher chance of bargaining with people (guards) for instance, if you took some crazy fool's soul from Mania and emplaced it on a guard, you may have a chance of the other personality responding and then talk to them about what they talk about and eventually try to convince them of their awareness to get the city guard to let you off the hook or something. Other possibilities could be mercantile, combat stalling, wreaking various kinds of insanity, creating armies etc. As far as removing yourself to another person's body, the soul-mode would have to have some kind of intense motion blur effect, so much so that you cannot see anything except what's directly ahead of you, for souls would not be able to view the world on the same perspective as normal beings. I think this should be timed, but there shouldn't be a limit on distance. I don't think there should be a limit on who can be possessed for that would just too restricting and an annoyance (in my opinion). When the body is possessed, the timer on the (spell) should end and you should be able to remain as this character for as long as you like, but there should be some restriction like minor-to-major diseases and attribute restrictions that stack up over time. I think this would come primarily into play for near-death experiences as your character, and you preserve yourself by possessing (an enemy). This would also be a great way to evade guards / sneak into places! One question though is, what if you're falling off a cliff and you manage to cast this at someone and your soul transports but your body loses all health? what would you do then?

It seems like there would be some issues with this seeing as your soul would still technically be in a possessable being, and therefore you're still alive.

[reaper9111]

i dont tink this a been mention before, i didint read alls post ! a "repulse undead" spell would be nice...

base on the turn undead effect this would allow player to be protect against melle attack since alls undead around cannot come closer then (let's say 10 feet) the difference with the turn undead would be that casting once on self would effect alls future encountered undead ! (would not effect renge attack) having this as an enchantment would be sweet too !

see [repulse undead amulet] request for details !

[gdarknight]

i dont tink this a been mention before, i didint read alls post ! a "repulse undead" spell would be nice...

base on the turn undead effect this would allow player to be protect against melle attack since alls undead around cannot come closer then (let's say 10 feet) the difference with the turn undead would be that casting once on self would effect alls future encountered undead ! (would not effect renge attack) having this as an enchantment would be sweet too !

see [repulse undead amulet] request for details !

 

Easily done. I can have an Aura type spell that forces a temporary stop combat on the player if an undead is close enough. I can even force a stagger animation (done in Judgement of the Nine) that would enhance the "repulse" concept.

[Maegfaer]

Well then I think there should be a more thorough lich mod and it would be great if we could add it in to this mod. I think it should branch off of the dark brotherhood quest, and when you find the scroll of that guy you're supposed to kill you follow the instructions and become a lich...then it creates a new character with the same skills as your previous character, except altered for the dark arts. You would now start to see the world with some strange motion blur effect or maybe a difference in color (ie night eye) and then there will be various differences (detect life becomes detect undead, poisons become potions, vice versa etc.) Now you will start to see the undead as normal interactive citizens / pawns / enemies. There would be an entire underground, or invisible (hidden) legion of undead to be discovered, with cities all throughout Cyrodiil, disparate from the original ones, with quests strewn among them. I think this would be a really awesome add on to this mod, if it could be done. It would have to be huge, but with enough effort it may be accomplishable.

 

That's a completely different kind of mod than what is being made here, this is supposed to add a magic system for Evil characters. What you are proposing might be very awesome if it's done right, but the amount of work is immense. And btw, the quest to become a Lich in Modular Oblivion is very well done, and it gives you many new special powers, and there are different types of Liches you can become:)

Letting two souls in one body would allow one to negotiate with both personalities, therefore giving a higher chance of bargaining with people (guards) for instance, if you took some crazy fool's soul from Mania and emplaced it on a guard, you may have a chance of the other personality responding and then talk to them about what they talk about and eventually try to convince them of their awareness to get the city guard to let you off the hook or something. Other possibilities could be mercantile, combat stalling, wreaking various kinds of insanity, creating armies etc. As far as removing yourself to another person's body, the soul-mode would have to have some kind of intense motion blur effect, so much so that you cannot see anything except what's directly ahead of you, for souls would not be able to view the world on the same perspective as normal beings. I think this should be timed, but there shouldn't be a limit on distance. I don't think there should be a limit on who can be possessed for that would just too restricting and an annoyance (in my opinion). When the body is possessed, the timer on the (spell) should end and you should be able to remain as this character for as long as you like, but there should be some restriction like minor-to-major diseases and attribute restrictions that stack up over time. I think this would come primarily into play for near-death experiences as your character, and you preserve yourself by possessing (an enemy). This would also be a great way to evade guards / sneak into places! One question though is, what if you're falling off a cliff and you manage to cast this at someone and your soul transports but your body loses all health? what would you do then?

It seems like there would be some issues with this seeing as your soul would still technically be in a possessable being, and therefore you're still alive.

 

Some nice ideas in here. Some are hard to make, some are not. Concerning the soul transfer when you are falling off a cliff... It would be awesome if you can really "become that character", but it's impossible (I think) to change the race of your character with a script, and to set your face to the face of the NPC you cast it on. It's possible to set your stats and level to the target NPC though, but it's not possible to create the illusion that you really have become that character.

[gdarknight]

Concerning becoming a Lich as it would apply to the magic system....it would be possible (although I may need meshing help) to have a spell that temporarily makes you a Lich. Your weapons and armor could be removed (not permanently) and a Lich "suit" put on with the addition of a staff. You would then gain some strong powers, but also some strong weaknesses (game balance).