Mod Idea: Dynamic Spellcasting

[Alte77]

So there are plenty of combat mods out there that change the actual mechanics of weapon combat, but I haven't seen any that modify that of spell combat (At least I haven't found any if find makes magic less of a grind). Combat is Skyrim can get pretty dull, especially where magic is concerned. This is an idea of how that can be, dare I say, rectified? (NB: I'm currently using SkyRe and while it doesn't add that much depth to destruction (albeit it does fix its flaws), it does make the other magic schools far, far, FAR more interesting, so mega kudos to T3nd0... and while I'm at it, this mod idea could work very well with SkyRe *wink wink*)

 

Ahem, anyway...

 

WHAT IS IT?

The way a pure mage would go about defeating his foes in Skyrim is to spam whatever the most potent destruction spell he currently has (and has the mana to cast it repeatedly), and switch to the next he will eventually acquire, forever leaving the older spells behind because they've outlived their usefulness. The idea here is to A) make these spells retain their usefulness throughout the game and B) punctuate the staple 'dps' spells with other more situational ones.

 

Here's an example:

 

You're a fire-oriented destruction mage. You love tossing fireballs... but fireballs cost a lot of mana... and using Flames instead does so little damage that it's pointless to use it. The way I propose to fix the issue with dynamic spellcasting is to alter the effectiveness of the Flames spell by giving it a steady increase in firepower as you bath the enemy is waves of fire (if you want to get technical, say every second your Flames spell gets 10% boost in damage the longer you keep it flowing until it reaches a maximum of, say 250%. The mana cost remains constant - and you could even add perks to the destruction tree that causes fire spells to deal DoT, which further boosts damage.) Now this is already an improvement, but it's still spamming the same spell - so from time to time, you can toss a Fireball in the fray. The Fireball spell is hotkeyed to whichever key you want and when you tap it your Dovahkiin immediately stops casting Flames and tosses a Fireball.

 

Alright, this can more or less already be achieved with hotkey modifier mods (although sadly I haven't seen one that allows automatic dual-casting), but one additional function I think would work well here would be spell cooldowns. Not punishingly long ones, but ones that would prevent you from spamming your most powerful spell even if you have the mana for it, and also maybe help regulate how you spend your own mana. What cooldowns imply, however, is for a way for you to actually be able to see when the cooldown is over, which means additional UI elements in the form of icons.

 

Now how would that work? Imagine you have your cooldown spells hotkeyed numpad*, numpad-, numpad9, numpad6 and numpad+ for easy access. Those are five hotkeys, thus 5 spells. You have your Flames spell in both hands and are wandering the wilds when suddenly you are ambushed by a group of bandits, and they have a mage. You hit your first cooldown spell, and you cast Ironflesh on yourself. Next maybe you Fus Ro Dah the approaching bandits away, and fire away with your Flames spells, and take out a few bandits, but the chief and mage are still there. The mage hits your with an icicle, but you can't deal with her yet - a psycho with a massive axe is headed straight for your face. You hit the next cooldown spell and unleashe a thunderbolt at the mage which doesn't kill her but drains her mana. She won't have much ammonution for a short while, which gives you time to deal with the bandit chief (granted, I don't think the enemy actually uses mana and can just spam spells at you till kingdom come, but you get the idea). You could also hit another hotkey and quickly summon an atronach to help you out. The thing here is to provide strategy.

 

Maybe you will be able to create packages of cooldown spells that you could maybe be able to hotkey (1 - 8) and swap them out for the other (MCM menu anyone?). One package could be pure support (Ironflesh, Summon Atronach, Fast Healing, Courage and Feather) and another could be pure offense (Fireball, Chain Lightning, Ice Storm, Thunderbolt and Fire Rune). You start the combat with your support package, cast maybe Ironflesh and Atronach and quickly switch to your offense package. Maybe you switch back to suppport midway to heal, or maybe your heal spell is in your offense package. You choose!)

 

By introducing cooldowns to spells and giving them secondary effects (besides the usual ice drains stamina, shock drains mana), I feel that magic combat could greatly benefit from it. Here are some ideas of what the vanilla spells could be updated into:

 

No cooldown:

Flames/Flame Cloak/Wall of Flames (steady dmg increase with max dps - extra damage of fire spells sounds silly)

Frostbite/Frost Cloak/Wall of Frost (steady slow increase with a 'brittle' debuff that reduces armor rating)

Sparks/Lightning Cloak/Wall of Storms (constant damage, but mana burn effect increases, and any additional mana burn deals health damage)

Vampiric Drain (steady dmg increase with max dps threshold)

 

5 seconds cooldown:

Firebolt (faster cast rate)

Ice Spike (bleed damage and maybe stagger)

Lightning bolt (few seconds of paralysis)

 

10 seconds cooldown:

Fireball/Fire Rune (stagger)

Ice STorm/Frost Rune (brittle, can stack)

Chain Lightning/Lightning Rune (few seconds paralysis)

 

15 seconds cooldown:

Icy Spear (stagger and can strike multiple enemies in a line)

Incinerate (paralysing burning for a few seconds. stacks with perk DoT)

Thunderbolt (flings the target away)

 

25 seconds cooldown:

Blizzard (steady slow increase with a 'brittle' debuff that reduces armor rating)

Fire Storm (paralysing burning for a few seconds)

Lightning Storm (constant damage, but mana burn effect increases, and any additional mana burn deals health damage)

 

Now, these are on the fly ideas. There could also be spells that have both cooldown and charges, like runes. You can have two or three rune charges and the second you use one an individual cooldown for that charge begins. I'll photoshop an example of the UI I mentioned above soon.

 

What do you think? Let me know!

[GrimyBunyip]

well here's a hotkey mod that lets you cast existing spells with adjustable cooldowns:

 

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/33395

 

now if you want the different spells to have different cooldowns you can just tweak their casting times in the creation kit.

and the reason there's no hotkey mod for dual casting because the spell cast function in papyrus doesn't have a dualcast option.

 

maybe the use magic procedure thing would work:

http://www.creationkit.com/Procedure_UseMagic

 

but honestly I've never messed with it.

edit: took a look, i think procedures are just for AI packages. so there you go.

Edited April 28, 2013 by GrimyBunyip

[Urwy]

well here's a hotkey mod that lets you cast existing spells with adjustable cooldowns:

 

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/33395

 

now if you want the different spells to have different cooldowns you can just tweak their casting times in the creation kit.

and the reason there's no hotkey mod for dual casting because the spell cast function in papyrus doesn't have a dualcast option.

 

maybe the use magic procedure thing would work:

http://www.creationkit.com/Procedure_UseMagic

 

but honestly I've never messed with it.

edit: took a look, i think procedures are just for AI packages. so there you go.

 

Well, there is "more hotkeys please". It allowes the player to assign spells to left, right or both hands. Combine that with the auto-cast option it provides and you're golden. =)

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/23416

[ThresherMaw]

SkyRe makes all spells retain usefullness.For example, a firebolt and a fireball have the same damage.The difference is that firebolt hits a single target, and fireball costs more magicka to cast.Continuous spells like flames do less damage but are still very useful, and are good to not overuse magicka or if you just don't have magicka for the others.

[Alte77]

Oh that's awesome! Thanks all for the quick replies, I'll test out these mods :)

[EnaiSiaion]

Tbh I tried giving people an incentive to use multiple spells in combat in Apocalypse and they just ignored all other spells and spammed the same spell over and over anyway.

 

With an interface like this, you really can't make spell switching fun.

[jackowonderful]

i'm sure that's not true.