SSE Attaching magic effects to Arrows/Bolts

[redeyedtreefrogthesecond]

Hello everyone,

 

I've just started playing around with the creation kit, and my first focus is on arrows. The specific effect I have in mind is transferring the dragonrend effect to an arrow(inspired by geralt using crossbows to force airborne enemies to level ground). As a proof of concept, I've applied it to a poison, and it works remarkably well. However, for flavor and balancing reasons, I'd prefer the effect be inherent to a special arrow. I dislike the idea of using an enchantment, as it creates a bit of an 'all-or-nothing' economy where once you get the enchantment, you have it for good. I've also toyed with the idea of attaching an "explosion" to the arrow, to deliver the effect that way, but that comes with 2 downsides: first, the arrow is destroyed upon impact with a non-entity, and second, I've heard that the explosion radius has to catch a certain point on an entity to actually take effect, so, for a dragon, that radius would have to be rather large for a "guarantee". This also results in the arrow potentially affecting other nearby entities, including other dragons. Admittedly, this is an extremely edge case, but I would prefer to explicitly apply the effect to the entity that just got stuck with the arrow. Do I have any options available to me, or are explosions the only way to achieve this?

 

Final note, the ultimate goal is to apply this effect to a bolt. I would assume this does not change the process at all, but figured I'd add the info just in case.

[IsharaMeradin]

Bolts and arrows use the same records (ammo and projectile). Only difference aside from graphic appearance being that bolts have a check box marked that indicates they are bolts. So... the process would be the same.

 

There were some ammo mods on original Skyrim that had a whole bunch of arrows with different magic effects. You could take a look at it to see how it was done. The process would be the same for SSE.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9799

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9280

[cumbrianlad]

You can also take a look at the DLC1 crossbow bolts. They have the fire frost and shock explosions attached to them. The fire/frost/shock damage is done by an enchantment but you don't need to worry about the player learning the enchantment. You can't disenchant a projectile, nor can you add enchantments to one at an arcane enchanter. If for some reason your enchantment can be learned at an arcane enchanter, simply add the keyword 'MagicDisallowEnchanting' to the ammo form. That blocks the enchantment from being learned by the player. Very useful keyword for all sorts of things.

[redeyedtreefrogthesecond]

Thank you all for the replies. After looking at the arrows from the linked mods (and at the bolts in the dawnguard dlc), I'm able to confirm that they all use the "explosion" feature of arrows. Given this information, using the explosions feature may be my only option for getting the effect I'm looking for. However, that still doesn't quite leave me with the effect I want. As previously stated, I would ideally eliminate the edge case of 2 close-flying dragons being affected by the arrow (though the more I think about it, the more ludicrous that edge case sounds), and more importantly, I'd rather the arrow didn't disappear on impact because of the explosion effect.

 

Now, one thing I can observe about the game is that enchanted bows can deliver an effect to a target without having to worry about potentially affecting multiple targets(or not affecting the main target). How viable would it be to instead let an arbitrary bow deliver my magic effect, based on what arrows are equipped?

[redeyedtreefrogthesecond]

An update on my progress; I've decided that I can live with the projectile disappearing and the edge case of multiple targets being affected sometimes, but, my next issue is that the explosion will ALWAYS turn NPCs hostile. In short, anything near the dragon you hit with it (city guards, namely) will immediately become hostile towards you. The only way I've found of getting around this is by making the crossbow that fired it non-hostile, but, I can't do that as it will 1. allow you to hit any npc with the crossbow without repercussions and 2. I don't want to be restricted to a specific weapon in order to use the arrow.

 

If anyone has a way around this heap of problems, let me know.

[thumbincubation]

You might have some luck with creating a custom explosion and dialing the radius down very small. Then, instead of choosing a vanilla explosion, when you check the box, your new custom one should appear in the drop down.

[maxarturo]

"my next issue is that the explosion will ALWAYS turn NPCs hostile"

1) In the "Active Magic Effect" that is used by your Enchantment that is attached to the explosion put a condition "IsHostileToActor" (or something like this, i don't remember the correct name right now).

Although this has the disadvantage that the enchantment / damage will never run on any target that is not hostile to the caster.

2) Your explosion must NOT apply any force - damage - knock down, otherwise it will still affect all npcs either if they are hostile or not, It must be as an FX ONLY.

Edited May 2, 2020 by maxarturo

[redeyedtreefrogthesecond]

You might have some luck with creating a custom explosion and dialing the radius down very small. Then, instead of choosing a vanilla explosion, when you check the box, your new custom one should appear in the drop down.

If I lower the radius of the explosion, it will be less likely to hit nearby entities, but it will also be more likely to "miss" the dragon due to how explosions seem to behave. I considered making a very small explosion whose magic effect scripted a larger explosion to spawn, in hopes that the scripted explosion may not remember me as the owner. But, in order to have the magic effect spawn an explosion, it'd need to affect an NPC, which wouldn't solve anything. Also, for reference, I have created a custom explosion, and I've played around with a bunch of settings. Unfortunately, none of them alter the hostility of the explosion itself.

 

 

"my next issue is that the explosion will ALWAYS turn NPCs hostile"

1) In the "Active Magic Effect" that is used by your Enchantment that is attached to the explosion put a condition "IsHostileToActor" (or something like this, i don't remember the correct name right now).

Although this has the disadvantage that the enchantment / damage will never run on any target that is not hostile to the caster.

2) Your explosion must NOT apply any force - damage - knock down, otherwise it will still affect all npcs either if they are hostile or not, It must be as an FX ONLY.

 

This behaviour occurs independent of magic effect (as in, even with NO enchantment/magic effect attached to the explosion, I still aggro NPCs). I've already made sure the force and damage of the explosion is set to 0, and that the sound level is set to 'silent'. I've also attached a snip of the explosion window. What am I missing?

[redeyedtreefrogthesecond]

A quick follow-up to this for anyone else looking into a similar issue: I've gotten the effect to work quite well via the use of a perk. I used the bullseye perk effect as a base, replacing the paralysis effect with a spell of my own, and checking that the player has an item with the keywordweapontypebow keyword AND the arrows/bolts from my mod equipped. Thus far, I haven't run into any bugs, though, if I understand the way perks work correctly, it will overwrite the bullseye perk, preventing it from functioning properly while you have these arrows/bolts equipped.