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About this mod
An overhaul of all races, birthsigns and the whole Magicka system (Magicka pool, regeneration, armor penalty, spell cost progression). This project has two goals: Make everything equal but different, and keeping things as lore correct as possible.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
You don't like that a few races and birthsigns are clearly superior to all other, because you don't think that they should be additional difficulty sliders?
You have discovered that after a few hours an Imperial feels identical to a Khajiit?
You are disappointed that after a few levels a Breton with Atronach birthsign is a better pure fighter than a Redguard with Warrior birthsign?
You don't like that some races and birthsigns grant permanent bonuses, while other get virtually nothing?
You find it odd that the skill bonuses and starting attributes of many races look like one egg to another?
You are wondering that one point of Intelligence grants a higher Magicka regeneration than a point of Willpower?
You are searching a different game experience, where the race of your opponents, like bandits and necromancers, really matters? Where a Nord is a better fighter than a High Elf? And where every race and birthsigns feel different through the whole game, not just in the early levels?
You don't want to raise Endurance as soon as possible and would like to see it working retroactive?
You do like Morrowind's Magicka bonuses more, which are intelligence dependent and not giving out the full bonus at level 1?
________________________________________
That is what this project aims to achieve. An overhaul of all races, birthsigns and the whole Magicka system (Magicka pool, regeneration, armor penalty, spell cost progression). This project has two goals: Make everything equal but different, and keeping things as lore correct as possible.
Additionally, because this project was started a long time ago, before we had the option of Wrye Bash's race patch feature, very many cosmetic mods are already included. Beside the whole race balancing thing, this is additionally a really big cosmetic mod, too! More than that even - I come to that later!
RBP's readme with a complete list of changes and features is more than twenty pages long, so please forgive me for only summarizing it's main aspects here. This description already is too long. The complete ReadMe is available online, linked under the "mirrors" option.
________________________________________
1. Races and Birthsigns:
The questions at the beginning already tells what I'm thinking about races and birthsigns in Vanilla. So I'm jumping straight ahead to what I'm doing about it:
- I made the Atronach and Bretons weaker, and improved all other races and birthsigns to their new power level. In many different ways! No race or birthsign will look like another.
- Each race and birthsign has unique abilities. Starting skills and attributes don't matter much on the long run (and not at all for NPCs), but abilities do.
- Races and birthsigns are organized in three groups: Some are better wizards (like High Elves), other better warriors (like Nords), others are more Jack of all trades (like Imperials) and have advantages according to them. They are not limited to that role - a High Elf can become a good pure fighter, although he'll never be as good as a Nord. A Nord can become a mighty wizard, but he'll have a much harder time at doing so, and never be quite as great as an Altmer. But he will have other benefits the High Elf doesn't have. The roles help the races as enemies and player characters to feel different from each other. In Vanilla Oblivion there weren't many differences between a Wood Elf and a Khajiit. Now there will be some.
- I have tried to keep the changes as lore correct as possible. Nevertheless some drastic changes were necessary, to create actual differences between all races and birthsigns. Gameplay came first, lore second.
- Races and birthsigns now offer many choices: There are some with small benefits and no drawbacks, other have considerable strengths with a few weaknesses, other have strong bonuses, but severe disadvantages to make up for them.
- There are also some unique powers: Wood Elves can craft bone arrows, those born under the Ritual can spot evil, Warrior born can provoke enemies to draw their attention from allies onto himself, and some more.
- A few bonus races are included: Xivilai (Slof's "Playable Xivilai"), Ohmes-raht (Luchaire's "Tabaxi"), Hidden Elves (Ren's "Mystic Elves"), Daedra Seducer (Chingari's and Ismelda's "Demon"), Sea Elves (Capucine's Aquamer), Ohmes (homebrewn), and of course Aureal (Golden Saints) and Mazken (Dark Seducer).
- Endurance works retroactively now, and also does take race into account. An Orc will always have more health than a Wood Elf with the same level and Endurance.
________________________________________
2. Magicka
RBP includes a new "Magicka" system. While LAME is about spells (magic), this is about Magicka (mana pools in other games). There's a lot of boring math behind it, see for example the FAQ part of RBP's readme. I'd like to spare you with the number crunching, so I'd just like to tell you what RBP does. This part
of RBP is kind of optional, there are files included to switch nearly everything back to how it is in Vanilla, nevertheless I don't recommend using them.
Magicka is a currency for spells. You buy spells for Magicka, so to speak. This is important to keep in mind, because without spell costs numbers don't say much. RBP changes provide a more natural grow of Magicka. That is it's main intention. How does it do this?
- Magicka bonuses from races and birthsigns are now intelligence dependent, kind of like they were in Morrowind. This prevents huge bonuses at the beginning of the game, which then never increased anymore. And more combat heavy characters can't simply pick a Magicka birthsign and never invest points in intelligence anymore.
- How spell costs are calculated is changed (not the spells itself - RBP is fully compatible with Supreme Magicka, LAME and all other magic mods). This creates a more linear spell cost progression. In medium levels you'll have considerable more Magicka than in Vanilla, while a maxed out character can "buy" about the same number of spells as a maxed out character in Vanilla. While I found Vanilla's magicka pool in medium levels much too small, I think it's kind of more balanced at higher levels.
- Willpower plays a much greater role now. It's impact was so small in Vanilla that even a point of intelligence granted a higher regeneration than a willpower point. Not anymore! Characters with a willpower below ~55 have a slower regeneration, to the point that characters starting with 25 need several minutes to regenerate their Magicka. Characters with a willpower of 100 regenerate their entire pool about ten seconds faster than in Vanilla with 100 (which is not to be underestimated, because Magicka regeneration is also kind of quick in Vanilla with this value).
So in the end Mages in RBP will have a slight boon over their buddies from Vanilla - but not because of their Magicka pool, but because of their better regeneration.
- going unarmored now has benefits! Armor penalizes magic users more. Spell cost progression is adjusted to that, so if you take off your armors, you'll have a bonus. Another small edge above Vanilla mages. Combined with the changes to Willpower playing the famous "warriorthiefmage" now becomes more difficulty. It's quite possible, of course, but now it finally makes sense to not take this route.
- Fatigue affects now spell effectiveness. Only in a very small way, but nevertheless a mage constantly running around swinging weapons will cast slightly weaker spells.
So in the end, what is RBP regarding Magicka about? It gives medium character levels a boost, without overpowering mages at high levels. Furthermore it enhances roleplaying opportunities: Willpower and intelligence are much more important now, and the decision to go armored or unarmored has a greater impact. Even in battle mages taking a step back instead of swinging their weapons will have a minor advantage. You can still play whatever character you like, and RBP helps to sharpen out your ideas. A barbarian knowing nothing of magic? He will be even worser than in Vanilla when it comes to spells. A sorcerer with a strong mind on the other hand on the other hand...
________________________________________
3. Beautification
Today you can combine all cosmetic mods using Wrye Bash. A very powerful option, which makes big cosmetic plugins kind of unnecessary. Therefore there is a "bash ready" version available for download ("Light"), which doesn't have any beauty additions included. Aside from that Race Balancing Project is a relict of times past. It's one of the biggest beautification mods out there. Including popular mods like Capucine's Character Expansion, Corean Hair, Saram Hair, Throttlekitty's Hair Pack, Ren's Beauty Pack, and a couple of more.
Which means there are dozens of new hairs and eyes to choose from. They're also selectable for custom races. If you want to play a Xivilai with a corean hair style, you can do it.
But it doesn't stop here. Race Balancing Project is not a relict of times past, because there's something that a cosmetic combination with Wrye Bash can't do: Enhancing NPCs! As you surely have noticed, all Khajiit in Oblivion have the same eye color. The same is true for Orcs, Argonian, and Dark Elves. All six other races share only three eye colors. That's a bit repetive, isn't it? And let's not start on hair styles...
What RBP includes is an optional module to distribute it's new eyes and hairs to NPCs. More than thousand NPCs are changed, gaining new eye colors and / or hair styles. I've given each race (more correctly NPCs of that race) a set of eye colors, like Nords got the more bright colors, Wood Elves odd colors (like lilac, and of course some have their black eyes from Morrowind), Mages have glowy versions of their eyes, and Khajiit, Dunmer, Orcs and Argonian have also much more variety.
If you want to have TNR's new faces with NPCDiversity's new eyes and hairs, there's a merged version available in RBP's download!
________________________________________
Compatibility
1. General rule of thumb: Everything that doesn't touch races is fine. If it does touch races, it should be loaded before this plugin, and it's components which are changing something concerning the races won't work anymore.
Specifics:
2. This PI is compatible with character levelling mods like nGCD. If you want to be absolutely safe, open your console and type StartQuest bgbHealthToggle -> then deactivate retroactive Endurance. That's the only part which could theoretically cause problems.
3. It is fully compatible with all overhaul mods like OOO, Fran's, FCOM, Warcry and everything else. Some of them make changes to races or birthsigns, so load them before the core file!
When something does changes races, and you want to keep it's changes, you have to use Wrye Bash. Two examples:
4. Robert's Male body replacer: It's not a pure replacer, therefore you have to use Wrye Bash. Tag it with Body-M and load it before the Core file. Then it has to be included as part of the bashed patch. It still needs to be activated, but loaded before the core file.
- any new hair pack: Tag it as hair mod, load it before the core file and use it as part of the bashed patch.
5. Important notice regarding Beautiful People: BP is using the Elaborate Eye mesh (former bash tag Eye-E), but has changed it's filepath to the default Eye mesh (former bash tag Eye-D). This causes numerous problems. One of them is that using it as eye mod for the bashed patch can result in very strange oddities. Workaround: Load it always before the core file, RBP's installation file will fix BP's messed up files, but by doing this will break parts of BP. With this filepath change there's nothing I can do except mentioning this workaround.
6. Hair and eye mods that are included in the full version do not need to be patched in.
7. These five bonus races are included from other mods, but were heavily modified. You can use their originals additionally: Slof's playable Xivilai, Luchaire's Tabaxi, Ren's Mystic Elves, Chingari's and Ismelda's Demon race, Capucine's Aquamer. Also playable adaptions of Golden Saints and Dark Seducers are included.
8. Be wary of hidden race changes: Some mods modify races without notice. Mostly just to give custom NPCs new hair styles. Load them before the core file. Example given: Blood and Mud.
9. Other race- and birthsign balancing mods are obviously incompatible. I don't want to think what could happen if both are taking effect.
10. Again: Everything that doesn't touch races and birthsigns is fine. Even if it does, just load it before the Core file!
________________________________________
Installation:
1. Two separate downloads are required. One is the main download. These are the plugin files. If you don't want any bonus races, new hair styles and eye colours, then use the "Light" one. I have decided to use separate downloads, so you don't need to download everything again by every update. Meshes and textures don't have a habit of being changed once a month.
2. Make sure that you use the correct language. EV = English version, DV = German version. Other languages are not yet supported (see FAQ). If you install the wrong language, NPCs will become mute.
3. If you do want all bonus races and new hair styles and eye colours, you need to download the installation files (linked above) and use the Full version. Unzip all folders into your Oblivion directory.
4. This project is supposed to be modular. Therefore there are a lot of options to customize it to your liking. Make sure that you understand what each is doing, before activating them or requesting anything.
Core files (they are the main plugin. Use only one of them):
- the default one uses Capucines Eyes and is compatible with any Eye mod (via Wrye Bash) that is using the default eye mesh (former Bash tag Eye-D). It is required for both NPCDiversity modules.
- the Light version does not include any new races, hairs or eyes. In a way it's "bash ready". You do not need the installation files for this. If you want to build up your own combination of cosmetic mods, this may be a good start.
5. Users without Shivering Isles have to use additionally bgBalancingNoSI_Core_still_required.esp, otherwise bad things will happen. As mentioned in the name, you will still need one Core file!
[for modules see RBP's readme].
You have discovered that after a few hours an Imperial feels identical to a Khajiit?
You are disappointed that after a few levels a Breton with Atronach birthsign is a better pure fighter than a Redguard with Warrior birthsign?
You don't like that some races and birthsigns grant permanent bonuses, while other get virtually nothing?
You find it odd that the skill bonuses and starting attributes of many races look like one egg to another?
You are wondering that one point of Intelligence grants a higher Magicka regeneration than a point of Willpower?
You are searching a different game experience, where the race of your opponents, like bandits and necromancers, really matters? Where a Nord is a better fighter than a High Elf? And where every race and birthsigns feel different through the whole game, not just in the early levels?
You don't want to raise Endurance as soon as possible and would like to see it working retroactive?
You do like Morrowind's Magicka bonuses more, which are intelligence dependent and not giving out the full bonus at level 1?
________________________________________
That is what this project aims to achieve. An overhaul of all races, birthsigns and the whole Magicka system (Magicka pool, regeneration, armor penalty, spell cost progression). This project has two goals: Make everything equal but different, and keeping things as lore correct as possible.
Additionally, because this project was started a long time ago, before we had the option of Wrye Bash's race patch feature, very many cosmetic mods are already included. Beside the whole race balancing thing, this is additionally a really big cosmetic mod, too! More than that even - I come to that later!
RBP's readme with a complete list of changes and features is more than twenty pages long, so please forgive me for only summarizing it's main aspects here. This description already is too long. The complete ReadMe is available online, linked under the "mirrors" option.
________________________________________
1. Races and Birthsigns:
The questions at the beginning already tells what I'm thinking about races and birthsigns in Vanilla. So I'm jumping straight ahead to what I'm doing about it:
- I made the Atronach and Bretons weaker, and improved all other races and birthsigns to their new power level. In many different ways! No race or birthsign will look like another.
- Each race and birthsign has unique abilities. Starting skills and attributes don't matter much on the long run (and not at all for NPCs), but abilities do.
- Races and birthsigns are organized in three groups: Some are better wizards (like High Elves), other better warriors (like Nords), others are more Jack of all trades (like Imperials) and have advantages according to them. They are not limited to that role - a High Elf can become a good pure fighter, although he'll never be as good as a Nord. A Nord can become a mighty wizard, but he'll have a much harder time at doing so, and never be quite as great as an Altmer. But he will have other benefits the High Elf doesn't have. The roles help the races as enemies and player characters to feel different from each other. In Vanilla Oblivion there weren't many differences between a Wood Elf and a Khajiit. Now there will be some.
- I have tried to keep the changes as lore correct as possible. Nevertheless some drastic changes were necessary, to create actual differences between all races and birthsigns. Gameplay came first, lore second.
- Races and birthsigns now offer many choices: There are some with small benefits and no drawbacks, other have considerable strengths with a few weaknesses, other have strong bonuses, but severe disadvantages to make up for them.
- There are also some unique powers: Wood Elves can craft bone arrows, those born under the Ritual can spot evil, Warrior born can provoke enemies to draw their attention from allies onto himself, and some more.
- A few bonus races are included: Xivilai (Slof's "Playable Xivilai"), Ohmes-raht (Luchaire's "Tabaxi"), Hidden Elves (Ren's "Mystic Elves"), Daedra Seducer (Chingari's and Ismelda's "Demon"), Sea Elves (Capucine's Aquamer), Ohmes (homebrewn), and of course Aureal (Golden Saints) and Mazken (Dark Seducer).
- Endurance works retroactively now, and also does take race into account. An Orc will always have more health than a Wood Elf with the same level and Endurance.
________________________________________
2. Magicka
RBP includes a new "Magicka" system. While LAME is about spells (magic), this is about Magicka (mana pools in other games). There's a lot of boring math behind it, see for example the FAQ part of RBP's readme. I'd like to spare you with the number crunching, so I'd just like to tell you what RBP does. This part
of RBP is kind of optional, there are files included to switch nearly everything back to how it is in Vanilla, nevertheless I don't recommend using them.
Magicka is a currency for spells. You buy spells for Magicka, so to speak. This is important to keep in mind, because without spell costs numbers don't say much. RBP changes provide a more natural grow of Magicka. That is it's main intention. How does it do this?
- Magicka bonuses from races and birthsigns are now intelligence dependent, kind of like they were in Morrowind. This prevents huge bonuses at the beginning of the game, which then never increased anymore. And more combat heavy characters can't simply pick a Magicka birthsign and never invest points in intelligence anymore.
- How spell costs are calculated is changed (not the spells itself - RBP is fully compatible with Supreme Magicka, LAME and all other magic mods). This creates a more linear spell cost progression. In medium levels you'll have considerable more Magicka than in Vanilla, while a maxed out character can "buy" about the same number of spells as a maxed out character in Vanilla. While I found Vanilla's magicka pool in medium levels much too small, I think it's kind of more balanced at higher levels.
- Willpower plays a much greater role now. It's impact was so small in Vanilla that even a point of intelligence granted a higher regeneration than a willpower point. Not anymore! Characters with a willpower below ~55 have a slower regeneration, to the point that characters starting with 25 need several minutes to regenerate their Magicka. Characters with a willpower of 100 regenerate their entire pool about ten seconds faster than in Vanilla with 100 (which is not to be underestimated, because Magicka regeneration is also kind of quick in Vanilla with this value).
So in the end Mages in RBP will have a slight boon over their buddies from Vanilla - but not because of their Magicka pool, but because of their better regeneration.
- going unarmored now has benefits! Armor penalizes magic users more. Spell cost progression is adjusted to that, so if you take off your armors, you'll have a bonus. Another small edge above Vanilla mages. Combined with the changes to Willpower playing the famous "warriorthiefmage" now becomes more difficulty. It's quite possible, of course, but now it finally makes sense to not take this route.
- Fatigue affects now spell effectiveness. Only in a very small way, but nevertheless a mage constantly running around swinging weapons will cast slightly weaker spells.
So in the end, what is RBP regarding Magicka about? It gives medium character levels a boost, without overpowering mages at high levels. Furthermore it enhances roleplaying opportunities: Willpower and intelligence are much more important now, and the decision to go armored or unarmored has a greater impact. Even in battle mages taking a step back instead of swinging their weapons will have a minor advantage. You can still play whatever character you like, and RBP helps to sharpen out your ideas. A barbarian knowing nothing of magic? He will be even worser than in Vanilla when it comes to spells. A sorcerer with a strong mind on the other hand on the other hand...
________________________________________
3. Beautification
Today you can combine all cosmetic mods using Wrye Bash. A very powerful option, which makes big cosmetic plugins kind of unnecessary. Therefore there is a "bash ready" version available for download ("Light"), which doesn't have any beauty additions included. Aside from that Race Balancing Project is a relict of times past. It's one of the biggest beautification mods out there. Including popular mods like Capucine's Character Expansion, Corean Hair, Saram Hair, Throttlekitty's Hair Pack, Ren's Beauty Pack, and a couple of more.
Which means there are dozens of new hairs and eyes to choose from. They're also selectable for custom races. If you want to play a Xivilai with a corean hair style, you can do it.
But it doesn't stop here. Race Balancing Project is not a relict of times past, because there's something that a cosmetic combination with Wrye Bash can't do: Enhancing NPCs! As you surely have noticed, all Khajiit in Oblivion have the same eye color. The same is true for Orcs, Argonian, and Dark Elves. All six other races share only three eye colors. That's a bit repetive, isn't it? And let's not start on hair styles...
What RBP includes is an optional module to distribute it's new eyes and hairs to NPCs. More than thousand NPCs are changed, gaining new eye colors and / or hair styles. I've given each race (more correctly NPCs of that race) a set of eye colors, like Nords got the more bright colors, Wood Elves odd colors (like lilac, and of course some have their black eyes from Morrowind), Mages have glowy versions of their eyes, and Khajiit, Dunmer, Orcs and Argonian have also much more variety.
If you want to have TNR's new faces with NPCDiversity's new eyes and hairs, there's a merged version available in RBP's download!
________________________________________
Compatibility
1. General rule of thumb: Everything that doesn't touch races is fine. If it does touch races, it should be loaded before this plugin, and it's components which are changing something concerning the races won't work anymore.
Specifics:
2. This PI is compatible with character levelling mods like nGCD. If you want to be absolutely safe, open your console and type StartQuest bgbHealthToggle -> then deactivate retroactive Endurance. That's the only part which could theoretically cause problems.
3. It is fully compatible with all overhaul mods like OOO, Fran's, FCOM, Warcry and everything else. Some of them make changes to races or birthsigns, so load them before the core file!
When something does changes races, and you want to keep it's changes, you have to use Wrye Bash. Two examples:
4. Robert's Male body replacer: It's not a pure replacer, therefore you have to use Wrye Bash. Tag it with Body-M and load it before the Core file. Then it has to be included as part of the bashed patch. It still needs to be activated, but loaded before the core file.
- any new hair pack: Tag it as hair mod, load it before the core file and use it as part of the bashed patch.
5. Important notice regarding Beautiful People: BP is using the Elaborate Eye mesh (former bash tag Eye-E), but has changed it's filepath to the default Eye mesh (former bash tag Eye-D). This causes numerous problems. One of them is that using it as eye mod for the bashed patch can result in very strange oddities. Workaround: Load it always before the core file, RBP's installation file will fix BP's messed up files, but by doing this will break parts of BP. With this filepath change there's nothing I can do except mentioning this workaround.
6. Hair and eye mods that are included in the full version do not need to be patched in.
7. These five bonus races are included from other mods, but were heavily modified. You can use their originals additionally: Slof's playable Xivilai, Luchaire's Tabaxi, Ren's Mystic Elves, Chingari's and Ismelda's Demon race, Capucine's Aquamer. Also playable adaptions of Golden Saints and Dark Seducers are included.
8. Be wary of hidden race changes: Some mods modify races without notice. Mostly just to give custom NPCs new hair styles. Load them before the core file. Example given: Blood and Mud.
9. Other race- and birthsign balancing mods are obviously incompatible. I don't want to think what could happen if both are taking effect.
10. Again: Everything that doesn't touch races and birthsigns is fine. Even if it does, just load it before the Core file!
________________________________________
Installation:
1. Two separate downloads are required. One is the main download. These are the plugin files. If you don't want any bonus races, new hair styles and eye colours, then use the "Light" one. I have decided to use separate downloads, so you don't need to download everything again by every update. Meshes and textures don't have a habit of being changed once a month.
2. Make sure that you use the correct language. EV = English version, DV = German version. Other languages are not yet supported (see FAQ). If you install the wrong language, NPCs will become mute.
3. If you do want all bonus races and new hair styles and eye colours, you need to download the installation files (linked above) and use the Full version. Unzip all folders into your Oblivion directory.
4. This project is supposed to be modular. Therefore there are a lot of options to customize it to your liking. Make sure that you understand what each is doing, before activating them or requesting anything.
Core files (they are the main plugin. Use only one of them):
- the default one uses Capucines Eyes and is compatible with any Eye mod (via Wrye Bash) that is using the default eye mesh (former Bash tag Eye-D). It is required for both NPCDiversity modules.
- the Light version does not include any new races, hairs or eyes. In a way it's "bash ready". You do not need the installation files for this. If you want to build up your own combination of cosmetic mods, this may be a good start.
5. Users without Shivering Isles have to use additionally bgBalancingNoSI_Core_still_required.esp, otherwise bad things will happen. As mentioned in the name, you will still need one Core file!
[for modules see RBP's readme].