Lichdom

[Deleted1308005User]

I hope your computer issues get resolved there mate, if you can when your pc can boot could you throw the files up on a cloud or server so that in the event of it all going to hell someone could examine what you've done. If you can't that's understandable and if you don't want to I completely respect that.

 

In regards to the skeletal thing a WAAAAAY easier way to do this would be to make a new race and just have a spell that changes your race back to normal for a set period of time. Or make new equip slots not used by anything else and have the 'armor' equip there so you see the aesthetics but don't get issues. Still a much bigger fan of changin your race for a set period of time then reverting or something to that effect. Like lich variants for all races and then hidden lich variants for when you are masking your appearance so you stay undead but lose some of your abilities when cloaking.

 

I think there's SOME sense here.

 

As you can already set up the mod page, upload the file there, but set it to hidden.

Voilá! Your mod is on cloud server and can't be broken.

 

Also, equip slot thing you mentioned is probably something similar to what I suggested earlier?

[kromey]

I did not mean add new undead textures I meant replace the bandits with draugr or skeletons maybe add some skulls here and there, possibly a bunch of coffins. I know the place is already meant to be a ancient nordic tomb but it really doesn't look like a particularly evil looking place.

I realize the Lunar Forge doesn't really look "evil", but then again I take exception to the notion that some magic is "evil" anyway -- magic itself is merely a tool, and is therefore itself amoral. For that reason, becoming a lich is not inherently "evil", although it does require some "evil-like" things (e.g. a filled black soul gem, while many people consider the use of black soul gems and the capture of human/mer souls to be evil acts) and therefore is easier for evil (or at least evil-leaning) characters -- hence the common misconception that liches are evil, simply because many are, but ultimately that's no less racist an idea than that all black guys are great at basketball. (Side note: Has anyone else ever noticed just how racist fantasy settings tend to be? Races all conform to certain stereotypes, and any suggestion of an individual being, well, an individual is dismissed as being in contradiction to their race!)

 

The reason I'm using the Lunar Forge is because lore-wise it has some interesting magical properties -- properties which go completely unused in the game. That always bugged me, and now I have an excuse to fix that -- so I am. :) Is the Lunar Forge "evil"? Nope, just magically infused somehow. And it's that magic that we need to create the phylactery -- an otherwise normal crafting that alters the magical properties of the black soul gem that goes into its creation.

 

Really, using the Lunar Forge is no different than an evil character using a common stone chisel in the construction of his Evil Tower of Badness -- it's merely a tool, and doesn't have to be evil at all.

 

Now, all of that being said -- I like the idea of replacing the bandits with undead and/or necromancers. I may do that in an optional file; my goal for the main mod is to avoid as much as possible editing any vanilla assets, making it a strictly additive mod that is therefore fully compatible with everything out there.

 

Lunar forge is used to make Lunar Weapons, which are effective against enemies at night, amirite?

And Lunar weapons are sometimes used by Silver Hand, thus they have visited the forge, possibly quite often?

(I am not sure, but I think some of the Companions radiant quests are related to silver hand + Lunar forge)

I don't feel right that the place would be full of undeads when Silver Hand regularly visit the place to make some weapons.

Though I might be wrong.

Or maybe part of the reason the Silver Hand visits it so often is because it attracts undead?

 

I don't know, I haven't done any of the Companions quests, and to be honest I don't know anything about the Silver Hand really (other than that they exist, and don't like werewolves). But wouldn't the bandit presence in vanilla be counter to frequent visits from, well, anyone anyway?

 

Anyhow, I just read the Original post again to check the facts, And I gotta admit I LOVE the stat/ability/perk ideas.

(also, have you thought about achieving some things with perks?)

As Twin souls is quite similar to the "More conjured and summoned things", but you might need to edit spells to achieve the effect :/

I looked at Twin Souls, and it modifies an inherent actor value to allow the conjuration/raising of more minions. Which means I could do the same thing -- only catch is working around how to handle the situation when a character becomes a lich, and then gains the Twin Souls perk afterward -- Twin Souls doesn't play nicely, and actually sets the value to 2, rather than multiply it by 2. Not sure yet what I can do about that aside from modifying Twin Souls.

 

Waterbreathing + No sleep bonus combo is really nice. Makes it really feel like you are undead.

I still don't understand why they removed waterbreathing from vampires after Dawnguard was released. Was it too OP?

Vampires had it before Dawnguard? I didn't know that -- never did become a vampire, because frankly they seemed to suck (no pun intended), and I felt quite let down after loving being a vampire in Oblivion.

 

This will become great mod for all mage-lovers, alchemists, and everyone who likes the idea of being undead, but don't like to become a bloodsucker :biggrin:

I certainly hope so! :biggrin:

 

Perks are useful when achieving complex stuff like this. And with perks I don't mean those you pick from the perk trees. I mean invisible ones that players are never aware of.

Reverse engineer "Targe of The Blooded" and "Torches" and you will understand what I mean.

Effects of those are gained with PERK. Only players + the NPC with the targe can cause the bleeding effect because those two are the only ones who have the perk.

Multiple summons could be achieved with similar perk as Twin Souls, but you'd probably need to edit the spells as well to gain the bonus from that. I'm not sure.

Yup, I plan on using "hidden" perks to accomplish most of the abilities, if not all of them. (Since a given perk can apparently have multiple entries under it, which apparently don't have to all be the same type, I could probably do a single perk for lich, a single perk for demilich, and a third perk for the common abilities.)

 

New spells, couple of ideas:

Conjure Skeleton, really basic stuff, yet vanilla game lacks that

Mark of the Lich, Rune, when enemy is killed by the effect, he is raised as undead to accompany the lich. (Powerful reanimate spell) You could check how "Soul Tear" was made to have such effect. (if actor is killed by the shout/ soon after the shout, it's reanimated)

Wrath of the Lich, summon two - three wisps to help you defeat your enemies (amount depends on max amount of conjured allies), lasts for 60 seconds and can be used once a day, negates magicka regen for as long as the minions are active.

Don't know about Conjure Skeleton, there's already a lot of mods out there that add spells just like that. It is a nice flavor addition, certainly. Actually, thinking about this... What if Conjure Skeleton was cast just like any of the Resurrection-type spells, i.e. you have to cast it on a dead body? It would "raise" the body but as a skeleton, more powerful than the zombie form would have been. Ooh, I really like that...

 

LOVE Mark of the Lich -- that's definitely going in!

 

Wrath of the Lich is pretty cool, too. I'm assuming with the strong penalty attached you're envisioning these wisps to be pretty powerful?

 

Negate health regen / stamina regen

Undead flesh doesn't heal naturally as effectively.

 

Weak against blunt weapons/ sharp weapons

Ooh, like these. Adds more flavor to being a lich. Perks can easily accomplish this, too.

 

However, what is there besides blunt and sharp weapons? Or did you mean to offer the suggestion as weak to either blunt or sharp?

 

Increased shout recovery times ( how I'm supposed to say it?)

You don't breath! You can swim underwater as long as you want! Hooray! You can't shout as often as your lungs aren't used to the air they receive when inhaling before shouting! Argh!

Somewhat Balancing the Lich(yness?). Many might dislike this feature.

But I think there needs to be negative effects in powerful buffs like this. And somehow it fits the theme of being undead quite well.

Hm, interesting. I agree that too many buffs without any balancing cons can easily get OP. And longer shout recovery does make at least some sense re: you're dead, you don't use your lungs for much at all anymore...

 

Also, ONLY thing I am HOPING FOR:

Non-visual spell absorbing effect. I find it super annoying to see the effect all the time enemies cast spell at me when I have The Atronach perk or stone.

Oh? Hm, I have to admit I've never actually seen spell absorb in-game. I'll take a look at it, and unless I think the effect looks really cool I'll see what I can do to remove or at least reduce it.

 

But i actually dont like the idea of a magical artifact creating a dead physical thing from nothingness. But i guess its alright, since there isnt much lore about stuff like that and also its a lot easier to do as a mod this way.

Well then, maybe you could conceptualize it as the phylactery summoning a corpse from somewhere?

 

i'm not quite sure i understand your models

Demilich = skeleton type deformed guy?

Lich = just normal character model?

please correct me if i'm wrong

That's pretty much it, yup. As a lich you look just like you did in life; as a weakened demilich, though, you look horrible and grotesque and are very definitely not a living, breathing, person anymore. (Note that I'm also considering using a transparent ghost-like effect instead of a skeletal something-or-other, or perhaps a ghostly skeleton-y thing. I haven't fully decided one way or the other yet...)

 

Don't die on me, mod, DON'T DIEEEE :ohdear:

 

If you die, at least come back undead!

The mod isn't dying, just my computer. Since it's the computer where I also play Skyrim and work (I work from home), it will be fixed, and soon. It's just a matter of I don't know what needs to be replaced yet, and I lack the spare hardware to start swapping out things until I isolate the problem part.

 

I hope your computer issues get resolved there mate, if you can when your pc can boot could you throw the files up on a cloud or server so that in the event of it all going to hell someone could examine what you've done. If you can't that's understandable and if you don't want to I completely respect that.

What? Make backups of my work? That's blasphemy! ;)

 

Fortunately the hard drives appear intact, so I don't think there's any risk that I've lost any of the work I've done thus far (although if I have, this is the time for that to happen, because I haven't done a whole lot yet and could re-create everything in about 20-30 minutes if I had to).

[skulleris]

That's a relief :sweat:

 

Was a bit worried that another Lichdom mod is dooooooomed

[kromey]

Nope, only doom here is that of your enemies! :thumbsup:

[Deleted1308005User]

PHEW! I can breathe again!

 

Also, nice to see you liked some of the suggestions :biggrin:

 

Well, depends on what sort of spell effect you used for the Absorbing.

If you didn't use "The Atronach" effect, I could believe there's no problems.

You'll notice if you have the visual thing attached to it. (believe me. Huge blue circle around character can't go unnoticed)

 

I might pour some more thoughts later :biggrin:

Mind is empty now. :ohdear:

[Zephyr2011]

In regards to the Lunar Forge I kind of like the idea of no one really knowing its true power. There's no literature on it except for the notes of some bored bandit smith at the camp, why would people already know about it? I think it would be cool to add several new books to the game that added lore about lichdom and hinted at what you needed in a forge to make a phylactery or perform the rituals and the player has to deduce that the Lunar Forge is the proper location. This also conveniently explains why there are no modern liches in Skyrim (note modern, the Dragon Priests are also somewhat of an exception), the knowledge of the true power of the Lunar Forge has been lost or perhaps was never really known in the first place. In this way I think it works fine to keep Silent Moons Camp the way it is instead of making it a necromancer lair. I think Silver Hands being there might be a bug, as it really doesn't make sense for them to be there, but they do pop up in a lot of bandit dungeons anyway so it could be a sloppy leveled enemy thing.

 

TANGENT: Why in the world is the Silver Hand the same lot as common bandits? They attack on sight, regardless of whether you're a werewolf or not, aren't hostile to bandits, and generally aren't well equipped. If you ask me, they should have been much more fleshed out. As it stands the only thing special about them (really) is that they have silver weapons and some of their own dungeons. I think if you're not a werewolf and not a companion they shouldn't try to kill you, heck I think they should have been a joinable faction. No one really speaks ill of them except the companions (for obvious reasons). I think they should all be more like knightly figures or witchhunter-types because their goal is, in their minds, noble and if they've dedicated their life to killing werewolves they would probably have dropped more gold on equipment. ANOTHER TANGENT: Why do no wild werewolves exist? There are multiple load screens talking about werewolves, supposedly they are a common problem but without mods none exist. The companions are the only vanilla werewolves. The heck.

 

Back on my book subject, if you would like some written up for you let me know, or anything writing wise. I enjoy creative writing and I could come up with some stuff if you like as well as do some CK work and some basic texturing (I emphasize basic, don't expect an HD Draugr retexture or anything from me).

[kromey]

In regards to the Lunar Forge I kind of like the idea of no one really knowing its true power. There's no literature on it except for the notes of some bored bandit smith at the camp, why would people already know about it? I think it would be cool to add several new books to the game that added lore about lichdom and hinted at what you needed in a forge to make a phylactery or perform the rituals and the player has to deduce that the Lunar Forge is the proper location. This also conveniently explains why there are no modern liches in Skyrim (note modern, the Dragon Priests are also somewhat of an exception), the knowledge of the true power of the Lunar Forge has been lost or perhaps was never really known in the first place. In this way I think it works fine to keep Silent Moons Camp the way it is instead of making it a necromancer lair. I think Silver Hands being there might be a bug, as it really doesn't make sense for them to be there, but they do pop up in a lot of bandit dungeons anyway so it could be a sloppy leveled enemy thing.

At present there are two books planned:

One will be found locked securely away in the Archmage's quarters, and describes what liches are as well as discussing an ancient necromancer, Artun, who unlocked the secrets to becoming a lich, although nothing more was heard of him after he attempted the transformation. As far as game play goes, this book will be found alongside a note from a "friend", addressed to the Archmage, that will give the player quest markers for the fragments of Artun's journal. (Finding this book and the accompanying note will not be required to become a lich, but it will be the only way to get quest markers for the journal fragments that are required.)

 

Artun's journal will be scattered about Skyrim as fragments; each one will describe one aspect of the process to become a lich, which will also grant the player the ability to recreate it (granting a perk to unlock a crafting recipe in the case of the phylactery and the Elixir, or a spell in the case of the two rituals). There will also be a fifth fragment, not required for the transformation ritual, which will provide more detail about the abilities liches possess.

 

I like the idea of there being more books talking about liches; that would make it feel less like an isolated mod and more like a true piece of Skyrim lore, truly integrated into the game proper. A few could be placed in locations where it would make sense for them to be (the College's library would be one fitting location, for example), while others could be scattered about randomly (e.g. using the Radiant system to enable my own inherent laziness).

 

Back on my book subject, if you would like some written up for you let me know, or anything writing wise. I enjoy creative writing and I could come up with some stuff if you like as well as do some CK work and some basic texturing (I emphasize basic, don't expect an HD Draugr retexture or anything from me).

I'm not going to say "yes" just yet, but that would be awesome -- especially as different authors will make the different books actually sound like they were written by different authors! I will be writing Artun's journal as well as the book in the Archmage's quarters. I do want Artun's journal to be the only detailed description of lich abilities, but some eyewitness accounts describing one or two abilities would be awesome, and would really breath more life into the whole thing.

 

Before I say I'm open to other authors, though, I want to work up some guidelines for what I'd want to see in these books. I'd also want to make it clear that offering a book for the mod is no guarantee that I'll include it -- if I don't like it, well... sorry. :ermm: (Which isn't to say that I wouldn't offer constructive criticism and an opportunity to fix it and get it included.)

[Cyrotek]

But i actually dont like the idea of a magical artifact creating a dead physical thing from nothingness. But i guess its alright, since there isnt much lore about stuff like that and also its a lot easier to do as a mod this way.

Well then, maybe you could conceptualize it as the phylactery summoning a corpse from somewhere?

 

 

Yeh, i coud, but it feels somewhat ... wrong. I actually like stuff that can be explained throughout. How exactly is this thing "teleporting" a fitting corpse in the right moment to the right place? And dont say "by magic" now :P. Just feels like some sort of Deus Ex Machina.

The thing is, most stuff that got suggestet isnt truly unique. If i put everything together we got some sort of not truly killable decently overpowered undead mage with a few new spells/perks and practically no weaknesses. At least it looks to me like that. I dont know if this is your goal or if i misunderstood something.

But what i said earlier, its probaly the best way to do it like you are going to. Just ignore me. Or not. Or whatever.

Edited January 13, 2013 by Cyrotek

[kromey]

Yeh, i coud, but it feels somewhat ... wrong. I actually like stuff that can be explained throughout. How exactly is this thing "teleporting" a fitting corpse in the right moment to the right place? And dont say "by magic" now :P. Just feels like some sort of Deus Ex Machina.

But what i said earlier, its probaly the best way to do it like you are going to. Just ignore me. Or not. Or whatever.

Nah, I'm not going to ignore you. Well, not entirely, anyway... :whistling:

 

If I do ever implement the "distant phylactery" approach, a delayed rejuvenation is certainly possible -- you reappear, but 1d10 days later when a convenient undead happened to wander nearby that your phylactery could commandeer.

 

Another way to look at it though is that, lore-wise (at least how I'm doing it), the magic involved in creating the phylactery is setting up some conditional wards that trigger when your body is destroyed. Remember that "destroyed" is just what happens to an undead when you would otherwise have "killed" them (after all, how can you "kill" what's already dead??) -- when you "destroy" a draugr or dragon priest, their corpse falls to the ground. The phylactery's wards are simply re-resurrecting your body (in exactly the same way that you can raise a draugr you've "killed"), but of course you've taken a lot of damage by this point and are severely weakened, not to mention that your soul's home had to expend much of its own stored energy to get your corpse walking again.

[Cyrotek]

Yeh, i coud, but it feels somewhat ... wrong. I actually like stuff that can be explained throughout. How exactly is this thing "teleporting" a fitting corpse in the right moment to the right place? And dont say "by magic" now :P. Just feels like some sort of Deus Ex Machina.

But what i said earlier, its probaly the best way to do it like you are going to. Just ignore me. Or not. Or whatever.

Nah, I'm not going to ignore you. Well, not entirely, anyway... :whistling:

 

If I do ever implement the "distant phylactery" approach, a delayed rejuvenation is certainly possible -- you reappear, but 1d10 days later when a convenient undead happened to wander nearby that your phylactery could commandeer.

 

Another way to look at it though is that, lore-wise (at least how I'm doing it), the magic involved in creating the phylactery is setting up some conditional wards that trigger when your body is destroyed. Remember that "destroyed" is just what happens to an undead when you would otherwise have "killed" them (after all, how can you "kill" what's already dead??) -- when you "destroy" a draugr or dragon priest, their corpse falls to the ground. The phylactery's wards are simply re-resurrecting your body (in exactly the same way that you can raise a draugr you've "killed"), but of course you've taken a lot of damage by this point and are severely weakened, not to mention that your soul's home had to expend much of its own stored energy to get your corpse walking again.

 

You answered before i was done with editing! >.<

 

Yeah, thats one way to look at it, but how exactly is he "repairing" the damage of its body? Imagine the PC-Lich getting destroyed like hundred times and reanimatet all the time again. Looks like that lich will really need some incredible powerfull illusion spells :P.

 

What i wantet to mention too: You might try to give the PC-Lich some more unique (!) weaknesses/downsides. The only true one is the fire vulnerability, but thats not a thing you cant overcome easily.

Also it is a bit wired that the PC-Lich will probaly the only one, that can run around 100% of the time in normal appearance withhout downsides.

How about stuff like if the PC Magicka is empty, he gets automatically transformed into a undead form that is as powerfull as the normal form but hostile to most factions? I know that you dont want to make a second one. Its just a idea. Maybe it coud just let something of its undead nature "shine through" like glowing eyes or such stuff.

 

Random idea: The PC-Phylactery gets sometimes attacked by dawnguard/hostile lich/whatever and they try to "purge" it. The PC got now a certain amount of time to reach it (mark/teleport spells anyone? :P) and destroy the attackers before they finished the ritual.

Edited January 13, 2013 by Cyrotek