A magic ward overhaul. Customize magnitude, cost, charge rate and absorption rate. Block melee weapons with your ward. Break your enemy's ward with your weapons. Protect yourself from arrows. Make shouts pass through wards. Play with new expert and master level wards.
Bethesda Softworks for making TES:Skyrim and the Creation Kit. All members of the xEdit team. All members of the SKSE team. All members of the SkyUI team. Tyler Hill for uploading my video to youtube.
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Foreword: how wards work in vanilla and what's wrong with them:
Magic wards are defensive Restoration spells that protect the caster against other spells. They are concentration spells, which means that the caster has to keep casting them to work and have a constant magicka cost. Wards in Skyrim have two effects:
1: they add armor point to the caster equal the the magnitude of the ward. 2: the caster accumulates "wardpower" points to a maximum equal to the magnitude of the ward, at a rate dictated by the "fMagicWardPowerMaxBase" game setting. When a spell hits a ward, the magnitude of the spell is subtracted from the wardpower value. If it falls to 0, the ward is broken. If not, the ward recharges itself.
So, what's wrong with them? First, they are extremely expensive. The novice level "lesser ward" costs more than twice a novice level Destruction spell like flames. The "Ward Absorb" perk which is supposed to mitigate this by absorbing magicka when a ward is hit by a spell does next to nothing because it absorb only 25% of the spell cost.
Secondly, wards are underpowered, for two reasons. Their magnitude is too low: a novice ward can only absorb about 5 second of a flames/frostbite/sparks spell. An adept ward ("greater ward") can only absorb two or three fireballs. Also, expert and master level wards are missing, meaning that wards are useless against higher level spells.
Thirdly, wards only interact with magic. They provide no meaningful way for mages to protect themselves from ranged and melee weapons (the ward armor points bonus does next to nothing). They are also pretty annoying to melee users (at least visually), as enemy mages tend to cast their ward in your face and you have no way to break them.
Lastly, shouts are treated as any other spell by wards, archiving a very anticlimactic effect for what is supposed to be an ancient a powerful magic. Very often, a novice mage will block a powerful shout with a tiny ward and laugh at the face of the Dragonborn.
Features:
Customize wards magnitude, cost, recharge rate and absorption rate. This mod comes with a mod configuration menu (MCM) allowing you to customize just about every value regarding wards. You can chose independent multiplier for magnitude, Magicka cost, charge/recharge rate, and the absorption rate for the "Ward Absorb" perk. The mod default values are what I recommend to improve wards based on the previous paragraph.
Wards can block and interact with melee weapons. This option is togglable in the MCM. This works for the player and NPCs. You can choose if casting a ward count as blocking. When blocking with a ward, damage is calculated with the same formula than blocking with a weapon:
Blocked Damage % = (30 + 0.2 x EnemyWeaponBaseDamage x (1 + BlockSkill x 1.5 / 100)) x (1 + Shield Wall perk) x (1 + Enchantment1 + Enchantment2 + Enchantment3) x (1 + Potion)
Blocking damage reduction will depend on your Block skill and perks but not your armor. (Normal armor damage reduction still apply on the remaining damage, as always.) Blocking with ward will cost you Stamina (as well as the usual ward Magicka cost) and earn you both Restoration an Block experience. More info about Block here. The ward deflection sound will play when a ward is hit by a melee weapon. Melee weapon can inflict damage to wardpower. You can set a multiplier for this in the MCM. This means that melee weapons can break wards. Restoration experience earned while blocking will depend on wardpower damage.
Wards can interact and protect you from arrows and bolts. This option is togglable in the MCM. Due to CK/engine limitations this works for the the player only. When blocking with a ward, you can set a multiplier for damage taken by arrows/bolts passing though your ward. You can set the damage multiplier from 0 to 1.0 and but I recommend putting higher than 0 as your character will still make a hurt sound when hit (and bleed). The ward deflection sound will play when your ward is hit by an arrow/bolt. Arrows/bolts can inflict damage to wardpower. You can set a multiplier for this in the MCM. This means that arrows/bolts can break wards. Restoration experience earned will depend on wardpower damage.
Adds missing expert and master level wards. "Eminent Ward" is a new expert level ward spell, that is the same in every way than other wards, with a higher magnitude and higher cost. The equivalent magic spell book is added to the correct leveled lists, so you will find it naturally like other spell books. "Reflective Master Ward" is a Master level ward spell. It is casted like other wards but is more expensive and more powerfull. Spells that hit this ward are reflected and send back to the caster or aimed with the crosshair, (MCM option), shouts can also be reflected (MCM option). "Surrounding Master Ward" is a a Master level ward spell. Contrary to its predecessors, it's a "fire and forget" spell which means you don't have to maintain your focus to keep the ward up. "Master Ward" casts a protecting barrier all around you, granting you immunity to spells and protection from weapons as long as your ward is not broken, for a maximum of 90 seconds. If you toggle weapons-ward interactions off, it will only protect you from spells. As with most master level spells, it takes a long time to cast and costs a lot of Magicka. The corresponding spell book can be purchased from Colette Marence (after the Restoration ritual spell quest has been completed, like for other master level spells).
Shouts can break and pass through wards. This option is togglable in the MCM. You can set the amount of damage a shout does to wards in MCM. If the shouts breaks the ward, the ward caster will be affected by the shout like it passed through it. This works for the player and NPCs. An alternative method to make shouts pass through wards is toggable in the MCM. If checked, modifications to vanilla shouts made by other mods and mod added shouts will be supported. The drawback is that this method may create some minor undesired audio and visual effects when a shouts breaks the ward.
An optional addon that makes arrows and bolts bounce off of wards is available. But has several limitations:
1:This has no effect on arrow damage so arrow damage multiplier should be set to 0 for this addon to make sense. 2:This addon will affect both player and NPCs wards while arrow damage reduction only affect the player. 3: Hurt sound and blood visual might still play, even with the damage set to 0.
Requirements & (Un)Installation:
You need Skyrim Special Edition V1.5.39 or above. You need the Skyrim Script Extender SE build V2.0.7 or above installed (SKSE64). You need SkyUI Version 5.2SE+ for the configuration menu to work. Installation as usual. Install with your favorite mod manager or manually in the data folder. Before uninstalling, I recommend changing the settings to vanilla values through the configuration menu then saving your game. Uninstall by removing the mod files either manually or with your favorite mod manager.
Compatibility & Load Order:
This mod is not compatible with any mod that changes the wards such as "Better Wards" and "More Wards".
A patch for "Holy Wards - a retexture" is available in the download page. It makes the Surrounding Master Ward consistent with Holy Wards retexture.
A patch for "Strange Runes - Spellcasting Enhanced" is available in the download page. It makes the Eminent Ward and the Master Wards consistent with Strange Runes visual effects.
A patch for "Cutting Room Floor" is available in the download page. It fixes conflicts on leveled lists for the master wards.
A patch for "Better Vampires" is available in the download page. It applies my modifications to blood wards, so you can block melee, change magnitude/cost, etc like for the other wards.
If you have a mod that modifies the Restoration perk tree, load it after my mod.
The "Ward Absorb" perk MCM slider will be deactivated if a mod that changes this perk is loaded after my mod (like Ordinator or Vokrii).
If you have mod that add new shouts (like Thunderchild), toggle on the "Alternative method" option on in the MCM if you want those new shouts to pass through wards. If not, they will still do damage and potentially break the ward but will only stagger the ward caster instead of passing through. If you have mod that changes vanilla shouts, also toggle on the "Alternative method" option on in the MCM if you want those modifications to apply when a shouts pass through a ward.
Combat overhauls (Wildcat, Smilodon, Deadly Combat) are compatible. Timed blocking with a ward may or may not work depending on the mod (it's not for Wildcat) and tends to be difficult to pull off due to the casting animation being slower.
Spellbreaker is not affected in any way. Blocking perks should work with wards if they work with weapons. Shield only perks will not work with wards.
Credits:
Bethesda Softworks for making TESV:Skyrim and the Creation Kit. All members of the xEdit team. All members of the SKSE team. All members of the SkyUI team. Tyler Hill for uploading my video to youtube.
