I'm making a mod which redesigns leveling & attribute/skill gain, to produce more diverse characters. [it also uncaps skills + attributes amoungst other things].

Mages in my mod tend to have much lower health than fighters / rogues. This is sensible I think.

To compensate for this - and make pure mages actually playable - I'm having magicka slowly regenerate [rate based on current and original magic skill values].

What I want to know is whether people playing a mage found each individual encounter too difficult (when using mostly magical attacks), or whether it was just that after one fight you had to rest or drink potions before the next one.

At the moment the base rate of regeneration is low, so that it doesn't affect individual encounters much, but allows you to fight many battles without resting / potion drinking. Do people think that this will make enough difference?

Please bear in mind that my goal is to create balanced mage characters - not all-powerful sorcerers.

Thanks
[haven't decided what to do for Atronach yet - will probably provide several options]

Here is teh thing. Places like Solstheim are nigh impossible for a pure mage (outside of conjuration, and a lot of those are relatively useless against what you would experience there :P).

Ok, but one of the goals of my mod is to improve pure mages. I haven't played through all of bloodmoon - could you elaborate on what the problems are for a pure mage. Is it that you run out of magicka in individual encounters or over many encounters, or that your spells just aren't effective?

It's that about a third of Bloodmoon has over 25% reflect.

Ok - so it's a challenge, but not impossible. Any thoughts on sensible speeds of regeneration? I'll probably go for quite slow regen unless someone has a good reason for it to be faster. Approx 1 point per 2 seconds for a 1st level pure mage (rising to about 3 or 4 times as fast at level 50)? Too fast / too slow?

This post has been edited by Galsiah: Jan 29 2005, 09:28 PM

Only a third? that has to be well over eighty percent :P

And here is the thing. With low health (since it looks like you are changing the health gain system) you could very well die with one misfired spell against a Riekling. I know that I learned that the hard way (with high health :P).

Yeah, Reflect is probably the biggest problem facing my mages... Though I do have mods that increase both Magicka and Magicka Regeneration (I have 1354 Magicka and regenerate 4+ Magicka per second with my high level pure Breton/The Apprentice/Aundae Vampire/4 Thread Mage). But given that she's a vampire and level 34, with 163 INT and 186 WIL (compared to 59 STR and 53 END), that seems reasonable to me. At level 34, she only has 159HP. That's not much. If I'm fighting anything Daedric (they all have Reflect of some kind), I need to fire my spell and immediately switch to Hearth Heal and cast it, because if my spell is Reflected, it will kill me faster than I can cast Hearth Heal.

Things to base Magicka Regeneration on, in order of importance: Willpower (given that 4 of the top 5 used Magic skills - Destruction, Alteration, Restoration, and Mysticism - increase Willpower, which isn't terribly useful, especially compared to Intelligence, it seems reasonable to increase Willpower's importance by making it have the biggest effect on your Magicka Regeneration), Intelligence, and then the skills, equally.

that sounds about right, i know I made a mod that sorta did that, but I would say the effectiveness of that would depend on how little health the mages have.

Uhh were where you when you read the manual, willpower is what resists spells, I have a character with 130 willpower, courtesy of several magic rings, that almost never gets hit with a spell.

If you want to cast spells and not worry about getting nailed with reflect create a Dunmer mage and get the Drake's Pride robe or the ring of the Denstagmer. They boost your fire resist from 75% to 100%+ Cast the meanest fire spell you can muster and anything that refelcts back at you is just a tickle.

But as far as magikca balancing goes, level based regen and leveled magicka bonuses make a big difference in a mage's survival. I have both in "Leveled Magicka" and "Dynamic Magika Regen 2.1" . My current magess can cast God's fire once, wait 5 seconds and fire again without draining her magicka dry.

I have 50%+60% Magicka Resistance (50% Weakness to Magicka), 10%+10% Fire Resistance (1% Weakness to Fire). BTW, 50%+60% Magicka Resistance does not make me immune to Magickal attacks - they affect how often I am hit by spells, and it's not 110% of the time, either. First I have a 50% chance of resisting, and then if I don't I have another 60% chance of resisting. Which means all spells have a 20% chance of hitting me. Not to mention my 50% Reflect, which means that half of that 20% is Reflected, so in essence a 10% chance of it getting through. All of that is moot, though, since Reflected spells are affected by neither. Not sure about Fire Resistance, though.

Also, Willpower does increase your chance of resisting spells, but I have a Willpower of 186, and I don't resist too many spells (that actually get through). Even at high Willpower, your chance of resisting isn't terribly good. High Intelligence is a LOT more important, since it is directly proportional to your Magicka pool.

In my opinion, the amount of mana has to be increased. The best way to do this is to change the amount of magicka you get per int from 1 to 2.

I think a regeneration of 2/sec should do nicely.

I made a ring that triples your mana and regens it at 2 a sec, but I still run out occasionally.

if you want to make life easier for mages, get rid of ALL CE REFLECT abilities. give them reflect SPELLS instead.

This post has been edited by Stabbey_the_Clown: Jan 30 2005, 01:16 AM

I agree with the Reflect thing, but the 2x INT thing and the 2/sec things are not good ideas. Both need to be based on your stats, not just base like that. Your solution just makes Magic easier for everyone, not just mages. This is about making Mages as powerful as Warriors.

I made a little mod that gives my a 4.5 multiplyer and constant 1 regeneration :) I have 525 magicka now, so I think I'll up it to 2.5 or something.

I think what you need to do is reduce the spell cost of spell effects, or simply increase the multiplyers of various birthsigns and races.

I would increase the;

-Breton mulitplyer to 2 and Altmer to 3.5 so Breton inferior to Altmer but still viable as pure mages and Altmer can compensate for their inherant weaknesses to Magicka and elements as apposed to Breton resiliance to Magicka.

- Dunmer and Argonian should have a 1.5, so they're slightly less than Breton who are 'pure' mage races- but still viable as mages because Lore describes them as magickal races, still.

Making it dependent mostly on willpower is a good idea I think - since as you say, this makes willpower a bit more worthwhile. The reason I didn't want to base it on intelligence much is because it seemed wrong for someone to spend a load of time training security, and suddenly start regenerating magicka faster. In fact, since my mod links attribute gain directly to skill gain, whether I base it on willpower or on willpower based skills won't make too much difference. Should alchemy / enchant have an effect do you think? Enchant seems useless enough already without preventing it from affecting regen rate.

It think I might leave initial skills having the highest effect though - since I want to make Mages much better at magic than Fighters/Thieves etc.
I want to make magicka regeneration primarily an "innate" ability - so that a 1st level mage will be better than a 15th level fighter with equivalent magicka skills / willpower.

My regeneration system is on by default, but there is an option to turn it off [only suggested if you already use another regen mod which you prefer]. So if you don't like the way I've done things, you can just turn it off.

I also want to measure regeneration in absolute terms, rather than as a proportion of maximum magicka. This is so that while e.g. a High Elf might have very large stocks of magicka, he doesn't gain in regen speed because of this [I think this would be too big a bonus, but I might be wrong].

Isn't 4+ points regen per second a bit fast? Actually, I suppose it's quite slow as a proportion of 1354 magicka, but isn't that an unbalancingly high magicka total anyway? Do you find a total that high necessary? Doesn't it just make anything that doesn't have reflect have no chance?
I might be wrong - I've never tried playing a pure mage long enough to know how to balance things well.

Any input is most welcome, and thanks for the replies so far.

[by the way, do vampire skill / attribute bonuses always correspond exactly to your being a vampie, or is it ever possible to lose the bonuses while still a vampire, or keep the bonuses after being cured - without exploiting bugs]

maugan_ra:
I'd rather not start changing the Races. For two reasons: first I want to make all pure mages playable - irrespective of race. Clearly some will be more suitable than others, but I want to leave the choice there for people. Second, I want my mod to address the Mage issue without altering the races, so that it maintains compatibility with race altering mods, and still solves the problem.

This post has been edited by Galsiah: Jan 30 2005, 11:24 AM

There's not really a way to tell what character a player is using though. There's no way to tell what class was picked (nevermind that you can make custom classes), and doing it based on race is descrimination.

Besides, this is single-player, not multiplayer, so things don't have to be perfectly balanced.

Another alternative to replacing CE Reflect with Reflect spells would be to give them CE Spell Absorbtion. The enemies might not cast Reflect on themselves, and at least this way your own spell won't hurt yourself.

Using willpower as a basis for magical regeneration would be a good idea.

I know there's no way to detect a character's "class", but you can detect their initial choice of skills - which is better really - and base things on those.
It isn't necessary to have perfect balance, but I'd like for things to be a bit more balanced - there's no point trying to make all the characters interesting, and then find out that people don't want to play half of them because they're unbalanced.
Replacing the reflect powers is a thought, but not something that I'm going to do - it increases the chance of incompatibility. Also I think it's more interesting that you have to approach some bad guys with more caution / in different ways from others. Blasting everyone with the same big spell is only going to be fun for so long.

Well, in the Dynamic Magicka Regen mod, all characters have regen of magicka. Only those that have high intellegence, willpower, restoration, and mysticism will have high regeneration rates. I think these are good choices as a pure mage will need to heal themself without potions (my preference) and they need to teleport to saftey when things get too tough. Other character types may have one or two of these attributes, but not all four and it is unlikely that they will train them up to high levels. A spellsword for example will have high willpower and maybe moderate restoration skills, so he will regen one third as much as a pure mage. Also, if you run around alot, low fatigue stunts your regen rate as well.

What do people think about Atronach - should they regenerate VERY slowly / not at all / not, but get other bonuses?

What exactly are the 'safe' ways to approach a creature with CE Reflect?

There is Absorb, and Calm, but that's pretty much it. Everything else has a chance to be bounced back with detrimental effects on YOU.

No, you MUST get rid of CE Reflect or else your goal of making mages better will run into the same problems that are still in the game.

If it was a spell-based Reflect, the player could use a Dispel spell.

Atronach should not regenerate at all.

This post has been edited by Stabbey_the_Clown: Jan 30 2005, 03:08 PM

hmm one of my biggest problems with a pure mage is the start of the game.

i can never do to good in a fight, so i cant fight, and if i cant fight i cant level up, so a pure mage needs to start out a little better so they can actualy handle a warrior.

thats all i have.

I created a new class Staff Mage (same as a mage, but Blunt Weaopn instead of Short Sword, and is now a major skill), and a plugin to increase the damage staves do, and that worked.

I absolutely agree that a pure mage starts out far too weak to survive. LOWERING the health even more as this mod plans to do will be a BAD thing.

I wasn't saying that 1354 Magicka, or 4+ Magicka Regen, was balanced, but I'm using combinations of mods (Magicka Regen, Magical Trinkets of Tamriel, Levelled Magicka), so no one mod is unbalanced. In reality, considering that I am level 34 (a level at which most warriors cannot be touched), and I can't do anything at all without magicka (my weapon of choice skill, Spears, is 32), it doesn't seem that unfair (at least compared to Warriors) that I can cast high level spells at will. And I am more than capable of using up that Magicka with some of my really killer spells (100pt Absord Health, Radius 100 - I can get off maybe five before I am out of Magicka, and it takes at least three to kill most enemies I see). And what is there that stops a Warrior the same way that CE Reflect does?


You can never lose the bonuses while you are a Vampire, and you can never keep them if cured.

Have you looked at the scripted clothing mod by mjp? It does a lot of what you're trying to do. It provides regeneration, shield and sanctuary based on your rank in Telvanni. At archmagister, you get a 2pt magicka regen even if Atronach. I've been using it and it seems reasonably balanced if you have a strict no armor/no weapon character.

One answer is illusion. With a skill of 35, you can cast a calm spell of 1 or 2 points for 25sec. This will allow you to beat on your opponent with impunity.

Thanks for the thoughts - they're all helpful.
First I'd like to say that my mod makes mages much weaker (in terms of health) than fighters etc. It doesn't make much difference at the start, but a fighter is likely to end up with about 3 times as much health [practically every value in my mod is editable though, so all this can be changed]. Also my mod limits the speed of increase of skills / attributes, so that a pure mage will never be much good at melee combat.

The magicka regeneration [and possibly gradually increased maximum magicka] are meant to compensate for this and to make mages more playable. I want to do this as well as possible. But this is not the central goal of my mod. Changing things which have no direct relation to what my mod is doing [e.g. reducing / eliminating CE reflect] reduce people's choice - since they can either use the mod or not, and there is no way to make it optional whether to include CE reflect changes. Most people seem to be in favour, but I'm sure not all are.

The reason that I decided it made sense to implement magicka regen in my mod, rather than directing people to an existing mod, was primarily because I can provide an Off Switch: you don't have to use it, so there's no way it harms the mod to include it. I've tried to make sure my mod is as customizable as possible in every area. Also if I know most people are using my system, I can integrate it well with my mod + ensure there are no conflicts.

Changing CE reflect would rely on nothing in my mod, and not conflict with it at all - it's a separate issue.

The right way to alter CE reflect would be in a separate ESP. [I don't rule out doing this, but it's not a priority]
[I also thought of providing highly enchantable robes that cannot be worn with armor, so that pure unarmored mages can get the benefits of a few decent enchantments, but again, this is a separate issue for a separate ESP]

Mages should start out more powerful in my mod - the magicka regen should see to that. The last time I tested it, a pure mage (i.e. not a custom class) high elf started with 27 Health - this would be more if unarmored were switched to being a major skill. I don't think this is too low [but if you do, you can change it].
It probably will still be necessary for starting mages to be more careful than starting fighters (like if you're a high elf, not picking a fight with that mage in the cave behind the silt strider - ouch). But I think this is fair enough, since eventually they will become pretty good: the magicka regen will make healing between battles trivial.

I agree with Atronach not regenerating, in a way - it does fit in with the description in "The Firmament". But if they don't regenerate, do you think anyone will pick the sign? - I wouldn't. Not without some sort of compensating bonus in any case.

Any more thoughts are welcome - including ways to *compensate* for CE reflect of enemies, but I won't change the bad guys (in this mod).

No, I haven't seen this. What does the scripted clothing do - does it only work without armor? Sounds interesting, but I'm not sure I agree with tying stuff to your rank in Telvanni.
I guess this requires Tribunal though. Does it? I'm trying to avoid relying on Tribunal.

Hmm... compensating for CE Reflect is near impossible to do. You can avoid it if you use Absorb Health spells instead of direct damage spells, but that's not something you can address in your mod. Given that Absorb Health spells are twice as expensive as Damage Health spells... it's not a satisfactory answer, I think.

Compensating for lack of Atronach regeneration - give them levelled Magicka bonuses above and beyond everyone else. Give them so much magicka that you really have to exert yourself in order to use up the Magicka. Perhaps an Atronach SHOULD have 1354 Magicka.

That's a good idea - and it fits perfectly with the Firmament. I think I'll do it. Good stuff.

The real name is MJP Telvanni Clothes, and it does require Tribunal. It's on Tesmods if you want check it out. It works with or without armor but IMO it is unbalancing with armor because of the shield addition.

Um... I'm pretty sure, having made an Illusion-using character, that calm only calms, not pacifies. If you attack they will go hostile again.

I think the idea of making a seperate ESP that changes CE Reflect on enemies is a good idea.

Check out this page - it has my Improved Staves mod, and the Kwerner Complex mod has a ring that gives CE mana regen and gives increased mana to the player. Try it and see how you feel about the balance.

You dont' even have to play the dungeon part, just additem "stc_KwernerRing" to your inventory and see how well it works.

http://www.rubicon-crossing.com/stabbey/

This post has been edited by Stabbey_the_Clown: Jan 30 2005, 05:38 PM

Nope, it's a mainstay of one of my characters. 2-2pts calm creature and humanoid 25sec target 25'. They respond with attack verbalizations but they don't hit you. They'll just stand there saying, your death will be swift, etc.

The firmament is short and simple on Atronach; 1, a deep well of magicka and 2, can't generate your own. Maybe the answer is to activate the absorb magicka spell found on the mace of molag bal. You can't generate your own magicka but you can steal it, just as you can now absorb it passively.

Yes that's true, the point is to have 2pts calm for a long duration, rather than 30 points calm for a few seconds. I've always considered that a bit of a cheat though - I once created some daedric shortsword with calm 1pt 20secs in 50ft radius, but it's totally unbalancing, and made a farce of combat. But if you're in a tight spot, I guess it makes sense to use occasionally.

I agree that it can be unbalancing and I only use it with a no weapon/no armor character. I try to use self imposed restrictions to keep the balance reasonable while still allowing a variety of approaches. This is why I find your ideas interesting since if they are well implemented, they would remove the need for resorting to cheap tricks. As things are now, You just can't have a no weapon/ no armor character unless you resort to some uberness whether it's calm, mega-alchemy, or drain intel.

True - it's a shame.
I don't think my mod will fix everything for mages though - I not doing much about the limitations of unarmored for instance: I can't think of a balanced way to do something about this without tribunal functions. But I might well make a mod that does something (using tribunal) about it afterwards.
For now vampirism and it's annoying affects on skills / attributes are giving me enough to worry about.
Giving Atronach players an absorb magicka spell is a thought though.

I agree with having no magicka regen for the Atronach, as the Atronach is very powerful in the standard game. I don't think it needs any bonuses to make up for not regenerating.

MTT3 handles this kind of stuff really well. Threads give pure mages a great advantage over fighters because you give up items that a pure mage doesn't use. It also balances the Atronach by not allowing threads for that sign.

Reflection cases and stuff: I got killed once by reflection of my own spell. What is isnteresting: I had 100% absorption and 70% reflection. How is it possible I failed to absorb/reflect it ?

Absorb is not a percentage based spell. If you maxed it out, you'd have 100 pts of absorption. Also, reflect only works if the spell was cast at you, not reflected.

the thing is low level pure mages are hard to play but once they get to higher levels (asuming you havent bin an idiot and not taken alchemy) you can carry around an unlimited ammount of potions as thier weight of home made drops to zero and the price you can sell them at is VERY high so i think keepin the magic regeneration low is a good idea because after the first few levels you dont relaly need ot worry about running out of magic

HarryManback: I can't see anyone chooseing atronach if they get no magicka regen, and no compensating bonus. Maybe I'm wrong. I think I'll give them an extra multiplier for their maximum magicka - but this will be easily editable if people think it's too much / too little.

Also I don't want people playing mages in my mod to be forced to follow any particular quests / join particular factions / find items etc in order to gain compensating advatages. My system's aim is to produce diverse, balanced characters with a variety of strengths and weaknesses, but to otherwise have no effect on the content of the game. As regards mages, it will (attempt to) make mages of any race more interesting / playabe, but in a generic way, without any "colourful" in-game alterations. This isn't to say that I think doing interesting things with quests / factions / items... is *bad*, just that not everyone will want the same game content from mods.
If someone doesn't want to use my mod, I want that to be because they don't like the way the core character development system works. I can accept that. All non-core aspects of my mod will have an "Off switch" (very easy to select in the editor, and explained in the readme). My magicka system will not please everyone - my goal is to make it a decent, balanced attempt, but not perfect. All the values used will be editable, but if you already use mods which make improve pure mages and provide interesting game content, then it might make sense to turn mine off. [though bear in mind that a pure mage in my mod will always be a pure mage - i.e. lower health and low strength etc.]

Where did you get that idea from? ^_^

Think of it this way, if a player starts with 50 POINTS of absorption (Atronach), then no mages early on in Morrowind can touch him/her, because IIRC, most spells do less than 50 damage. Plus, I'm not even sure if the Daedroth does that much with the poison/lightning spells. It has to be a percentage.

I think there are two different things here. The spell "spell absorption" is percentage based so if you have 50% absorption, you always absorb 50%. The ability spell absorption you get with Atronach is a 50/50 chance to absorb 100%.

It's the same spell effect. Just open it up in the CS. Plus, you can cast a 1-1 for 10 seconds spell absorption on yourself while using that sign, you'll see that they're additive.

That does not fit my experience, here's an example: I regularly open trapped chests without using a probe. About half the time (as I would expect) I take no damage at all. If the Atronach absorb acted like the regular absorb, I would always take some, although reduced, damage.

That's what I'm trying to say. Both the Atronach's sign and the spell effect do this: % chance to absorb all the damage/effects.

They're the exact same thing. Not just absorb a certain percentage.

This post has been edited by Case: Jan 31 2005, 03:10 PM

OK, sorry, I misunderstood you.

On the whole Atronach Birthsign issue, I've been playing w/a powerful Breton Atronach who's an Aundae Vampire. I created a new "wombburn" Ability and replaced the old one w/it -- so that his Atronach sign now gives him 25 Spell Absorption instead of 50; the points bonus is the same. I haven't started a new character w/this, mind you, but it does feel a little more balanced this way. I added a new one instead of changing the old because I don't know if NPCs have birthsigns and I don't want to weaken them (I'd also changed the Breton 50% Magicka Immunity to 25%, just for me, leaving NPCs alone).

FORGOT (edit): has anyone made a plugin that changes enemy CE Reflect to a spell? I've never played Bloodmoon yet, and I'd like to survive it

This post has been edited by alexandrian_librarian: Feb 11 2005, 07:24 PM

I thought this mod worked well as it was when i got it, ages and ages and ages ago.


but Id love to see an update, I never play without it :hehe: