SSE Animals and Perk-Derived Contact Spells

[PastChristmas]

I'm trying to create a new means of catching diseases from animals. In the base game, diseases are spells attached to the attacks of some animals. These attacks have a 10% likelihood of infecting the target, because the associated effects themselves have this condition directly applied to them. The drawbacks to this system are that this means that diseases unless scripted, can only have one magic effect and more importantly for my case is that it costs a contact spell slot on the creature's attack data that I would like to be used for something else.

 

My solution was to create perks for each disease. This is how Falmer poison works in the base game, their weapons are not actually poisoned, but the Falmer have a perk which causes poison damage when they wield weapons. I attached the 10% condition there as opposed to the magic effects themselves, thereby in theory allowing diseases to have multiple effects again without recourse to scripting. The trouble here is that it doesn't work in practice. This leads me to think that the perk method will not work for animals, as they don't wield weapons, which are necessary for the method to work. Am I wrong? I really don't want to script these effects in.

[cumbrianlad]

According to the Creation Kit Apply Combat Hit Spell won't work for anything other than melee weapons, although I could have sworn that Falmer bows poisoned the player... maybe I'm wrong on that. It specifically rules out hand to hand as a method of applying the spell. From that, I think you're right and that's why the perk can't be applied.

 

I've looked through the list of entry points and can't see anything like what you need. The only one that looked remotely similar was...

 

Apply Weapon Swing Spell

 

Targets attacking the perk owner appear to gain a perk with 'Apply Combat Hit Spell' using the specified spell.

Spell archetype must be Fire and Forget - Contact, Constant Effect - Contact, or Constant Effect - Self

 

It's not too specific but I'd guess that this will only apply if the player attacks the creature with a melee weapon. Might be worth a quick try though. I doubt you'd need any conditions in the perk itself, just see if attacking the creature with melee weapons, bows and magic gave the player the disease.

 

If it gives the player a disease with any type of attack, that might do. Basically most players will try to fight off the atttacking creature, even if they have to retreat to down a potion or apply a healing spell. Obviously the player would never get the disease if they were cowardly milk-drinkers and simply ran away from every skeever, mudcrab, wolf and bear in the game, even if they got hit a few times in the process!

 

I've also looked through all the alternatives to 'WeapMaterialFalmer' to see if anything looked like 'unarmed' or 'HandToHand', but I couldn't find anything. maybe that just reinforces the notion that hand to hand or 'unarmed' can't be used this way.

[PastChristmas]

I'm sorry for not updating sooner! I was excited to give your suggestion a try and I could get it to trigger, however the spell was placed on the animal rather than myself. The irony!

 

Thanks for your help though, I'm now acutely aware on how to use a brand new entry point. This will no doubt prove useful.

[cumbrianlad]

Just sorry I couldn't think of anything more useful. That's a really pointless mechanic then... not at all what I understood from reading the Creation Kit quote.

 

Hope you get something sorted.