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About this mod
This mod aims to improve the depth and balance of the magic system, especially in the late game, for the popular mod, "Requiem: The Roleplaying Overhaul." (WIP) It also adds features such as upkeep buff spells with indefinite durations, requirements for conjuration spells, and keeps lower level spells usable at high levels.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
This mod is a WIP, balancing/bug/typo feed back is greatly appreciated. Also, I recommend updating the mod regularly as I fix things, etc.
Especially if you use a lot of conjuration upkeep spells, you may want to check out HT Casting Regeneration to regen while channeling or casting spells.
Being a Mage at low levels may be more difficult without some combination of innate ability(race,) star sign(standing stone,) training, and gear, (magic robe and hood.) But being a spellsword type with buff spells will be less tedious.
I'm working on Illusion for the next patch. Illusion as all about control, but working out a plan before hand in Requiem can be difficult when you can't know if any of your illusion spells will even work against the "levels" of your targets, and can't rely on them to cast in emergencies. In vanilla this is less of an issue, as most enemies scale to you you can know beforehand if your spells will work. This is an attempt to make the spells usable, but not too powerful for their cost/effect.
In RMR, Illusion control spells will scale with duration rather than target level, with perks to allow particular spells to work against undead/constructs. The power of the spells will instead be balanced by changes to costs reduced by illusion gear, longer cast times for stronger effects, and shorter durations increased by illusion skill.
State of the Mod:
Destruction: Pretty much done, touching up the cost/dmg balance.
Alteration: Pretty much done, 1 lvl 100 perk to finish
Conjuration: Complete
Illusion: About 1/2 done, control spells/perks finished, working on stealth spells/perks, and some extra spells (mirror image, grasping tentacles)
Restoration: Perks are untouched atm, a few buff spells changed to the upkeep system, and a line of magic barrier spells added
In requiem, progressing in gear, skill, perks and spells is great until the power progression system inevitably leads to one shotting 99% of the content while invulnerable, effectively removing all challenge (and motivation to continue past the first dungeon after reaching that point.) Maybe this is how it is or would be in the world of Tamriel, so this is just a different take on it. The idea behind this mod is to increase in depth and complexity as you progress, but with a less exponential power curve, maintaining difficulty. Greater power comes at a greater cost, and new mechanics are introduced to breathe new life in a game many have played for hundreds of hours, (or more.) Many perks add complexity or new mechanics, and perks are generally much more powerful; but base power scaling from core perks has been greatly reduced at higher levels, and power from skill/gear increases its cost as well.
My intention with this mod is to maintain the vision of Requiem as an immersive and challenging game mode and hopefully extend it into the lategame and beyond- so any balancing, (and bug or typo) feedback would be greatly appreciated. Another focus is to create a very new experience with lots of new mechanics and nuances for players to figure out, and play around with.
Previously, an adept spell at adept skill with the adept perk would scale MAG X 2.5, an expert spell etc would scale MAG X 4 and master spell at Mag X 6, with destruction gear further increasing the damage, with the base magnitude of each spell also greatly increasing with the higher tier as well, and with other perks, (cryomancy etc) also further increasing base damage scaling and damage scaling from skill- essentially propelling damage beyond outer orbit by master level.
Under this system- there's a base scaling at adept and higher, a lower scaling at novice and apprentice, (with also a lower cost,) and a slightly lower cost from expert and master- across all spell tiers. In addition, there's a flat scaling from gear and skill level that increases damage as well as cost, linearly. The base magnitude of spells has been normalized, with no scaling difference between a novice and expert spell. Higher level spells often have added effects, or greater power at a comparatively greater cost, etc, and lower level spells can be improved later through perks.
(Also, it's now even possible to use Frost as your main damage source- the 2nd Cryomancy perk gives Ice Shard the ability to reduce frost resistance to targets at least moderately resistant to frost.)
Most Mage enemies will use a Barrier spell of differing ranks, (absorbing a flat amount of magic damage on a 20sec cooldown) instead of a ward (or that combination of extreme magic resistance and a 50%+ chance to be immune to any incoming spell.) Barrier spells, (and magical health regeneration,) can be suspended with a new Destruction spell, Spell Breach, obtained at Apprentice level, removing such effects for 15sec.
Destruction has a new spell, Magic Missiles, which channels X amount of missiles over 1sec and is obtained and improved through perks from novice to master, adding an additional missile. You can also imbue it with additional elemental damage through perks, (+25% damage as fire, etc.) Magic Missiles has potential to do very high burst dmg, at a very high cost.
Fire deals the most total magical damage, but a greater portion of it is over time. (usually over 4sec)
Lightning spells have instant travel times and the shortest cast times, making them the most accurate to land. They also deal a some damage over time, which deals damage quicker than the fire dots, but isn't as strong.
Cold spells often have the most utility with their slowing, and some added unique effects, and most Frost spells also deal additional physical damage. (weak against armor, but slow is good for them anyway)
Some example spells:
Conjuration skill and gear reduces the upkeep cost necessary to maintain control of summoned creatures. The Summon limit has been removed so you can unleash your inner Potema, but balanced in other ways. When starting out you can barely summon a single skeleton every 30sec or maintain a ghost wolf, (some races may need to equip a magicka hood and an enchanted robe even for this.) Also, ghost physical resistance has been reduced to prevent them from removing all challenge against bandits, etc. Eventually you'll be able to raise skeletons 3 at a time or summon a pair of health linked Ghostly Necrolords each capable of raising skeletons of their own. Conjurations come in 3 categories:
A few examples:
A copy of each of the soul cairn spellbooks have been placed in the world in sensible locations, as they are the expert tier for skeletons.
Bound weapons have been enhanced as well. They're advanced versions deal "Daedric damage bonus," last until sheathed, but have an upkeep cost, (that can be removed if summoned immediately after conjuring a daedra, with perk)
Most buff spells last indefinitely, but decrease your magicka by a percentage of its total, rounded down to the nearest hundred and at least 100. Many are reduced to a single spell and scale with the core perks in its skill tree. Also, something to keep in mind is, in Requiem the higher your current Magicka, the faster your regen- this has been changed very little, except at very low magicka levels. A couple examples:
Others implemented: fire/lightning/frost cloak spells, fire/shock/frost imbue weapon spells, candlelight, healing aura, prot from poison, conduit, and muffle. - The idea is to spend how ever much you can afford for the best effects in the particular scenario or build, rather than keeping everything up only at the expense of your patience and hotkey space. Upkeep spells give a little bit of exp every 5 seconds they're active.
Alteration gear increases Alteration skill which increases the damage and cost of damaging spells. Alteration is combined with mysticism to create magic damage over time spells improved by the left perk branch, replacing telekinesis, (which are extremely binary and impossible to balance.) The spells are powerful, but expensive and complicated- requiring mana/health management through converting health to mana and absorbing health from foes. I also gave the spirit of Alteration a much needed attitude adjustment from its boring and overly simplistic Vanilla style, which I don't think properly represented the lore of Alteration.
Another focus is the "traditional" buff based battlemage style improved on the right side of the perk tree. (bonuses for wearing heavy armor, etc)
Offensive alteration spell line:
Absorb stamina and magicka merged with a perk, and the health it recovers is increased and further increased when you're affected by transmute blood regen with a perk.
Transmute Blood has been redesigned as a core alteration spell, (with an improved version...somewhere) to regain a percentage of total magicka over time in exchange for an instant percentage of health, but also reduces incoming restoration healing.
DoT spells all have visual and/or sound notifiers to make due without a dot tracker. eg targets affected by corruption are surrounded by black ooze during their highest damage period.
Various other changes
Compatibility
This mod is compatible with most mods loaded before this with a few exceptions. Mods that add new magic effects for object effects for items, instead of using existing magic effects and object effects will likely do some slight changes due to gear directly effecting skill levels in this mod. (which scale dmg/cost or reduce the cost on summon upkeep through perks, while the vanilla magic effects often used or copied by other mods may operate poorly- such as increasing the upkeep duration of conjuration spells.) And also, mods that add new chest armors will not have the chest regen bonus from their magic enchants.
Alternate start often starts you out with a few "bandit boss gold" marked as "stolen," which gives you a few Soul Magnet (Bandit Boss)... (and a bunch of other kinda lame starting things like 12 gold bars, etc, but that's from alternate start, not RMR)
INSTALL INFO
Load everything after Requiem.esp, and anything affecting the Magic system, and before Requiem for the Indifferent.esp. And run the Reqtifier.
Included in the download is an optional RMR_Requiem Tweaks.esp file. It adds a keys to vampire and bandit bosses for some of the vampire and bandit boss chests.(as I imagine they would have keys to their own chests, while the warlock boss chests would be opened magically, and the draugr and dwarven keys would be lost to the ages.) It also adds the common combat style improvement tweak, and a couple of other minor tweaks, (like reverting the renaming of Elder Scrolls so you know which one to use.)
I recommended playing this on a new game, but if you are set on continuing one in progress you'll need to remove your magic equipment before installing this, as their changed effects would become permanent otherwise. Also, "reimagined magic for requiem.esp" needs to be loaded after anything that touches the magic system and its related perks and gear.
Recommended mods:
Too many to mention, but ones that may compliment this are
Everquest skeletons sounds
skeletons don't breathe
more hotkeys please
alternate summoning visuals
any mod that improve skeleton visuals- amidianborn, etc
Balance Questions, if you care to answer:
Known Issues:
Especially if you use a lot of conjuration upkeep spells, you may want to check out HT Casting Regeneration to regen while channeling or casting spells.
Being a Mage at low levels may be more difficult without some combination of innate ability(race,) star sign(standing stone,) training, and gear, (magic robe and hood.) But being a spellsword type with buff spells will be less tedious.
I'm working on Illusion for the next patch. Illusion as all about control, but working out a plan before hand in Requiem can be difficult when you can't know if any of your illusion spells will even work against the "levels" of your targets, and can't rely on them to cast in emergencies. In vanilla this is less of an issue, as most enemies scale to you you can know beforehand if your spells will work. This is an attempt to make the spells usable, but not too powerful for their cost/effect.
In RMR, Illusion control spells will scale with duration rather than target level, with perks to allow particular spells to work against undead/constructs. The power of the spells will instead be balanced by changes to costs reduced by illusion gear, longer cast times for stronger effects, and shorter durations increased by illusion skill.
State of the Mod:
Destruction: Pretty much done, touching up the cost/dmg balance.
Alteration: Pretty much done, 1 lvl 100 perk to finish
Conjuration: Complete
Illusion: About 1/2 done, control spells/perks finished, working on stealth spells/perks, and some extra spells (mirror image, grasping tentacles)
Restoration: Perks are untouched atm, a few buff spells changed to the upkeep system, and a line of magic barrier spells added
Reimagined Magic for Requiem
In requiem, progressing in gear, skill, perks and spells is great until the power progression system inevitably leads to one shotting 99% of the content while invulnerable, effectively removing all challenge (and motivation to continue past the first dungeon after reaching that point.) Maybe this is how it is or would be in the world of Tamriel, so this is just a different take on it. The idea behind this mod is to increase in depth and complexity as you progress, but with a less exponential power curve, maintaining difficulty. Greater power comes at a greater cost, and new mechanics are introduced to breathe new life in a game many have played for hundreds of hours, (or more.) Many perks add complexity or new mechanics, and perks are generally much more powerful; but base power scaling from core perks has been greatly reduced at higher levels, and power from skill/gear increases its cost as well.
My intention with this mod is to maintain the vision of Requiem as an immersive and challenging game mode and hopefully extend it into the lategame and beyond- so any balancing, (and bug or typo) feedback would be greatly appreciated. Another focus is to create a very new experience with lots of new mechanics and nuances for players to figure out, and play around with.
Destruction
Previously, an adept spell at adept skill with the adept perk would scale MAG X 2.5, an expert spell etc would scale MAG X 4 and master spell at Mag X 6, with destruction gear further increasing the damage, with the base magnitude of each spell also greatly increasing with the higher tier as well, and with other perks, (cryomancy etc) also further increasing base damage scaling and damage scaling from skill- essentially propelling damage beyond outer orbit by master level.
Under this system- there's a base scaling at adept and higher, a lower scaling at novice and apprentice, (with also a lower cost,) and a slightly lower cost from expert and master- across all spell tiers. In addition, there's a flat scaling from gear and skill level that increases damage as well as cost, linearly. The base magnitude of spells has been normalized, with no scaling difference between a novice and expert spell. Higher level spells often have added effects, or greater power at a comparatively greater cost, etc, and lower level spells can be improved later through perks.
(Also, it's now even possible to use Frost as your main damage source- the 2nd Cryomancy perk gives Ice Shard the ability to reduce frost resistance to targets at least moderately resistant to frost.)
Most Mage enemies will use a Barrier spell of differing ranks, (absorbing a flat amount of magic damage on a 20sec cooldown) instead of a ward (or that combination of extreme magic resistance and a 50%+ chance to be immune to any incoming spell.) Barrier spells, (and magical health regeneration,) can be suspended with a new Destruction spell, Spell Breach, obtained at Apprentice level, removing such effects for 15sec.
Destruction has a new spell, Magic Missiles, which channels X amount of missiles over 1sec and is obtained and improved through perks from novice to master, adding an additional missile. You can also imbue it with additional elemental damage through perks, (+25% damage as fire, etc.) Magic Missiles has potential to do very high burst dmg, at a very high cost.
Fire deals the most total magical damage, but a greater portion of it is over time. (usually over 4sec)
Lightning spells have instant travel times and the shortest cast times, making them the most accurate to land. They also deal a some damage over time, which deals damage quicker than the fire dots, but isn't as strong.
Cold spells often have the most utility with their slowing, and some added unique effects, and most Frost spells also deal additional physical damage. (weak against armor, but slow is good for them anyway)
Some example spells:
- Lightning Sparks: Channel Lightning for 1sec, deals above average damage due to its short range and channeling requirement, (with the first Electromancy perk will apply wall of lightning to the ground.)
- Firebolt: Deals 3/4 instant fire damage, ~1/4 damage over 6sec (reduces fire resistance of target if they have moderate resistance, with the 2nd pyromancy perk)
- Icesphere: deals frost damage, slows targets, and deals an additional 50% damage as physical.
Conjuration
Conjuration skill and gear reduces the upkeep cost necessary to maintain control of summoned creatures. The Summon limit has been removed so you can unleash your inner Potema, but balanced in other ways. When starting out you can barely summon a single skeleton every 30sec or maintain a ghost wolf, (some races may need to equip a magicka hood and an enchanted robe even for this.) Also, ghost physical resistance has been reduced to prevent them from removing all challenge against bandits, etc. Eventually you'll be able to raise skeletons 3 at a time or summon a pair of health linked Ghostly Necrolords each capable of raising skeletons of their own. Conjurations come in 3 categories:
- Skeletons: best when summoned out of combat- a constant mana upkeep for 30sec, (longer for upper tiers,) and then it's yours until it dies or you run out of mana. Raising skeletons uses "Piles of Bones," and are returned to you when the skeleton dies or is unsummoned. (They can be looted from skeletons or Harvested from corpses with a spell.)
- Ghosts: Longest cast time, to temper its great strength at resummoning while in combat, and requires possessing a specific Soul Magnet to cast, (looted from specific npcs like master vampires or bandit bosses.)
- Daedra: high initial cast and upkeep, costs more for each summoned within 15sec and only last 30 or 60sec(thralls), but they're still pretty strong.
- Zombies: turn a humanoid or draugr corpse into a Zombie. No upkeep, low damage swipe attacks, high health and resistance.
A few examples:
- Conjure Storm Atronach: Conjure a Storm Atronach. Requires Magicka for 6 seconds to stabilize, and an upkeep cost for half the duration of the spell. The upkeep cost is increased by consecutive Daedric Conjurations.
- Raise Skeletal Soldier: Raise 1-3 Skeletal Soldiers in service to the caster. (depending on perks) Requires possessing 1 Piles of Bones for each Skeleton and <mag> Magicka maintenance for <dur> sec.
- Summon Ghostly Necromancer: Use a Soul Magnet (Necromancer) to bind a Ghostly Necromancer to your will for <mag> Magicka every second. Recast to toggle. (summons his own skeletons)
- Reanimation III: Combine a nearby soul fragment with the meat and bones of a Humanoid corpse to create and reanimate a Zombie Brute.
A copy of each of the soul cairn spellbooks have been placed in the world in sensible locations, as they are the expert tier for skeletons.
Bound weapons have been enhanced as well. They're advanced versions deal "Daedric damage bonus," last until sheathed, but have an upkeep cost, (that can be removed if summoned immediately after conjuring a daedra, with perk)
Percentage Magicka Upkeep for Buffs
Most buff spells last indefinitely, but decrease your magicka by a percentage of its total, rounded down to the nearest hundred and at least 100. Many are reduced to a single spell and scale with the core perks in its skill tree. Also, something to keep in mind is, in Requiem the higher your current Magicka, the faster your regen- this has been changed very little, except at very low magicka levels. A couple examples:
- Mage armor: A versatile shielding spell that increases the caster's armor rating, and scales with the caster's core Alteration perks. (15% Magicka Upkeep) Novice Level
- Transformation: You become a virtual fighting machine- stronger, tougher, faster, and more skilled in combat in exchange for an extreme cost to Magicka. (75% Magicka Upkeep and at least 250 Magicka required to cast) Adept Level
- Blur: The caster's image is blurred to enemies, reducing incoming ranged damage by 0-300, (and 0-50 reduced melee damage.) (10% Magicka Upkeep) Apprentice Level
- Abyssal Blade: Enchant your bladed or piercing weapon to momentarily slice through the fabric of reality dealing damage over time to your target. 20% Magicka Upkeep. (250 Magicka required to cast) Expert Level
Others implemented: fire/lightning/frost cloak spells, fire/shock/frost imbue weapon spells, candlelight, healing aura, prot from poison, conduit, and muffle. - The idea is to spend how ever much you can afford for the best effects in the particular scenario or build, rather than keeping everything up only at the expense of your patience and hotkey space. Upkeep spells give a little bit of exp every 5 seconds they're active.
Alteration
Alteration gear increases Alteration skill which increases the damage and cost of damaging spells. Alteration is combined with mysticism to create magic damage over time spells improved by the left perk branch, replacing telekinesis, (which are extremely binary and impossible to balance.) The spells are powerful, but expensive and complicated- requiring mana/health management through converting health to mana and absorbing health from foes. I also gave the spirit of Alteration a much needed attitude adjustment from its boring and overly simplistic Vanilla style, which I don't think properly represented the lore of Alteration.
Another focus is the "traditional" buff based battlemage style improved on the right side of the perk tree. (bonuses for wearing heavy armor, etc)
Offensive alteration spell line:
- 0: Alter Reality: damage over 9sec, then heal over 18sec if not reapplied - with perk you can stack the dot, at the cost of magicka equal to the added dmg. (can be used to heal friends, if they survive the dot)
- 25: Corruption: Deals damage and 3x armor damage over 14sec, and increases in strength over time. Refreshing Corruption maintains its current damage level.
- 50: Unravel: Explodes for massive unresistable damage after 25sec. Targets affected can't be soul trapped for 5min. (perk reduces duration before explosion on target afflicted by corruption)
- 75: Chaos Beam: Breach the fabric of existence creating a reality warping beam of energy, applying a damage over time effect and randomly afflicting the target with status effects. (5% chance on each for 10 status effects- paralyze, slow, burn, etc)
Absorb stamina and magicka merged with a perk, and the health it recovers is increased and further increased when you're affected by transmute blood regen with a perk.
Transmute Blood has been redesigned as a core alteration spell, (with an improved version...somewhere) to regain a percentage of total magicka over time in exchange for an instant percentage of health, but also reduces incoming restoration healing.
DoT spells all have visual and/or sound notifiers to make due without a dot tracker. eg targets affected by corruption are surrounded by black ooze during their highest damage period.
Various other changes
- Spell book prices have been normalized.
- Many of the magic effecting potions have had their durations greatly increased, usually to 10min durations.
- Chest armor, (and chest enchanting,) has been given magic effects parallel to robes; and the junk robes (necromancer, black mage,) have been improved.
- Enchanting chest armor enchants has been improved.
- Some powerful named mages have been readjusted. Some of their base power has been converted to items they wear, given new spells, etc.
- Dual casting comes at a greater cost. (2.5 cost for 2.25 magnitude.) This is in line with the philosophy of forcing greater power to come at a proportionately greater cost to keep the power curve in check.
- Racial Resistances have been greatly reduced. eg nords get 25% frost resist instead of 50%
- Perk levels are more scattered throughout their trees so you don't need to save up points for the jarring milestones every 25 points.
- Most Channeling spells are peak value, and have a 1sec charge time and 1sec channeling duration to make them act more consistently. (Better for hitting multiple targets with them, worse for "exploiting" them by tapping it over and over on the same target)
- Candlelight was moved back to Illusion, and can't be seen by enemies. (might add a perk requirement or advanced illusion skill later for that part)
Compatibility
This mod is compatible with most mods loaded before this with a few exceptions. Mods that add new magic effects for object effects for items, instead of using existing magic effects and object effects will likely do some slight changes due to gear directly effecting skill levels in this mod. (which scale dmg/cost or reduce the cost on summon upkeep through perks, while the vanilla magic effects often used or copied by other mods may operate poorly- such as increasing the upkeep duration of conjuration spells.) And also, mods that add new chest armors will not have the chest regen bonus from their magic enchants.
Alternate start often starts you out with a few "bandit boss gold" marked as "stolen," which gives you a few Soul Magnet (Bandit Boss)... (and a bunch of other kinda lame starting things like 12 gold bars, etc, but that's from alternate start, not RMR)
INSTALL INFO
Load everything after Requiem.esp, and anything affecting the Magic system, and before Requiem for the Indifferent.esp. And run the Reqtifier.
Included in the download is an optional RMR_Requiem Tweaks.esp file. It adds a keys to vampire and bandit bosses for some of the vampire and bandit boss chests.(as I imagine they would have keys to their own chests, while the warlock boss chests would be opened magically, and the draugr and dwarven keys would be lost to the ages.) It also adds the common combat style improvement tweak, and a couple of other minor tweaks, (like reverting the renaming of Elder Scrolls so you know which one to use.)
I recommended playing this on a new game, but if you are set on continuing one in progress you'll need to remove your magic equipment before installing this, as their changed effects would become permanent otherwise. Also, "reimagined magic for requiem.esp" needs to be loaded after anything that touches the magic system and its related perks and gear.
Recommended mods:
Too many to mention, but ones that may compliment this are
Everquest skeletons sounds
skeletons don't breathe
more hotkeys please
alternate summoning visuals
any mod that improve skeleton visuals- amidianborn, etc
Balance Questions, if you care to answer:
- Is something too powerful, too weak, too cheap, or too expensive- and what gear/perks/skill did you have?
- Has something in this mod predictably and consistently crashed the game?
- What was too easy too abuse? What didn't work?
- What was unbalanced? What did you hate or was unfun? What could be made more realistic?
- Is something leveling up too quickly or too slowly?
Known Issues:
- Magicka upkeep for buffs scale with current magicka, rather than max magicka. Maybe later I'll add conditions requiring >90% magicka for every magic effect, but for now it can be abused if that's what you want to do....
- The Weapon enchant spells make use of a consolidated apply combat hit perk which may conflict with mods that add their own apply combat hit spells. There are a already few high level perks in the game that use apply combat hits, but the operate on a chance to activate and I'm not sure how they'll interact with the spells. (eg paralyze two handed attack chance.)