A Realistic Overhaul (Help Wanted)

[duinnin]

Greetings,

 

I have been writing down notes and ideas for an overhaul mod to make Skyrim more reflective of the real world for awhile now, and I would like to present these ideas, garner interest and hopefully assistance.

 

The premise of the overhaul is to make things in Skyrim function as if in the real world. The health of humans are the same; we all cut and bleed the same, so all humans would have the same health rating throughout the game; say 100 base that doesn't change, or very very little by level (to reflect your tolerance for pain/injury as a hardened warrior). Levels and leveling may reflect this weak/strong status, as stronger actors could be viewed as having a better physical/mental health allowing them to handle and fight through more pain/wounds, but it would be small increments. Similar would apply for each race and creature based on their appearance. Dragons would be very deadly and hard to kill at any level.

 

Simiarly, weapons of a similar type would be changed. All swords will cut and kill a human with little variation in damage. That Iron Sword you pick up at game start will be just as useful at the end of game, though swords would vary in length, weight, speed and possibly critical damage. Weapon types would vary still, so blunt weapons would cause staggering, and weighter weapons use more stamina to wield. A dagger can be very deadly being both fast and low stamina drain, but need to be close to use and not that effective against armor (unless you're sneaking).

 

While these ideas may seem like I'm making the game "easier" by having lower health and equalized weapons, lets not forget that your enemies and your character have the same advantages and disadvantages so I think its a more even playing field, except in many cases you'll be outnumbered in battles so will need to be more aware and prepared since be so much easier to die, as much as it is to kill.

Magic would be necessarily deadly here, at least any offensive spells, as things like fireballs would likely kill anyone upon impact, or at least cause severe burns, depending on armor and any defensive spells. I could offset this by having high mana cost for using certain spells so one couldn't throw a bunch of fireballs in a row, but need to recuperate more often, as if magic wielding is a drain on your mental and physical being.

This would all require a bunch of changes to the game and probably a lot of things I am not aware of since I've never attempted this before. I was much more comfortable with the Morrowind editor, so I'm a bit behind the times.

 

I welcome any feedback, suggestions, criticisms and help.

[duinnin]

In conjunction, I have an idea for transforming the skills and perk tree, merging some to make way for others, and ultimately adding a lot more perks appropriate to this overhaul, but this too would require a lot of work.

 

I wouldn't have requirements or prereqs for perks, unless its absolutely necessary, so you can pick anything, any time and customize your character.

 

The skills I've concocted...

 

COMBAT
- Defense: Rename of Block.
- Melee: Combine one-handed and two-handed with some overlapping perks.
- Physical: Athletics, acrobatics, stamina-based perks.
- Protection: Combine Light Armor and Heavy Armor with new Unarmored.
- Ranged: Rename; bows and crossbows.

- Unarmed: New skill to cover using your fists.

MAGIC

- Alteration: Unchanged.

- Conjuration: Unchanged.

- Destruction: Unchanged.

- Illusion: Unchanged.

- Restoration: Unchanged.

- Thaumaturgy: Enchanting merged with potion-making perks from Alchemy.

STEALTH
- Crafting: Rename of Smithing.
- Sneak: Unchanged.
- Speech: Unchanged.
- Survival (or Nature?): Skinning and hunting creatures, cooking/plant perks from Alchemy, Frostfall support?
- Thievery: Combine Lockpicking and Pickpocket.

So Combat skills are strictly those that deal with combat, Magic skills with mages and Stealth is more like knowledge-based skills. Stealth has an extra empty skill I haven't came up with yet too.

 

Everything is up for debate.

[Honorgirl]

about the magic part, what about enemy mages? They seem to have an unlimited amount of magicka on them. Having a few fireballs kill a person could make enemy mages extremely op.

[duinnin]

I suppose I'm unsure exactly how NPC mana works, if they use it like the player or not. If they do have an unlimited amount, like NPCs do with arrows (editable), something would need to be done to restrict them.

[Urwy]

I suppose I'm unsure exactly how NPC mana works, if they use it like the player or not. If they do have an unlimited amount, like NPCs do with arrows (editable), something would need to be done to restrict them.

What about casting time? Instead of making spells cost more, make them take longer to cast. I can imagine a simple fire bolt to take just about as long as the vanilla rune. Something as devastating as chain lightning, however, should take quite a bit longer as it'll be able to take out several foes at once.

[Dhegonus]

how about making all weapons that are old or low grade give a risk of infection to the unlucky recipient Tetanus, so if your character suffers heavy damage from, lets say, a draugr, with one of t emany ancient weapons, you have 3 or 4 in game days to get a cure or you die,, heh,, food for thought

[duinnin]

 

I suppose I'm unsure exactly how NPC mana works, if they use it like the player or not. If they do have an unlimited amount, like NPCs do with arrows (editable), something would need to be done to restrict them.

What about casting time? Instead of making spells cost more, make them take longer to cast. I can imagine a simple fire bolt to take just about as long as the vanilla rune. Something as devastating as chain lightning, however, should take quite a bit longer as it'll be able to take out several foes at once.

 

That is something to explore too.

[duinnin]

I am looking at using 100 as the base health, stamina and magicka from on which to base everything else. I have changed the iAVDhmsLevelUp setting to 0 so for each level up you can gain nothing. I want perks to handle things.

 

One problem I notice, so I'm unsure if there is another settings I need to tweak, when I go to an NPC and change their level, the autocalc stats do not reflect my 0 health per level, and still increases each level by 5 health. Any ideas??

[duinnin]

Tested in game, and when I level up I gain no points to health, but NPCs gain 5 pts per level. I just don't know what setting is causing this.

[duinnin]

I'm dumb. Filtered the general settings for "health" and found it immediately, fNPCHealthLevelBonus. Changed it from 5 to 0. Problem solved. No more health increase with level for anybody. Now I'm fearing no one will care about this mod, but then again I'm doing it for myself, as it should be. Moving forward!