• Supports AE & SE
• Reworked Poise Formulas
• Poise scaling with level and perks
• All player builds have a way to interact with Poise.
  

Preface
Loki’s Base mod:
-poise max calculation is actor equipped weight + 20% of heavy armor skill.
-poise damage is weapon weight
-blocking reduces poise damage by 50%.
-poise regen every 3.5 second.
-beast creatures have hardcoded poise values.

The Problem: generic calculations are not adequate in Skyrim because the game systems don't really account for weight. In actual game balance it can be somewhat arbitrary: high level enemies might have low poise because of their armor value, and lowlevel players might already have high poise because they don heavy armor. In Dark Souls, weight is an actual mechanic; poise is affected by player stat and enemies have hardcoded poise values. So we need to make further calculations to influence poise with respect to the game systems.

The limitations: the vanilla game systems are somewhat incoherent, making it hard to calculate Poise universally. This is inherent to the open nature of Skyrim.  Suppose that we have an enemy mob type of say, a "Bandit Stabman”. In another game, every bandit stabman mob can be treated the same.. In Skyrim however, each “Bandit Stabman” instance is expected to be unique. The openness of Skyrim's makes its rpg systems very messy and not pliable for poise scaling - we cannot scale NPCs by their SkillAVs because vanilla doesnt have any coherent rule for NPC skill AVs. 
I decided to scale Poise withActor Level - in my opinion it is the best enemy scaling factor because it is universal: across modded games, enemy stats and leveled lists can diverge widely, but an enemy's level will always reflect how strong they should be in relation to the player.


Poisebreaker is a rebalance and partial rework of Loki’s Poise mod to better integrate into the rest of Skyrim. This mod is intended for players using modern ARPG combat frameworks such as MCO: in conjunction with such mods, the Poise system serves as a punishment for missing attacks. Poisebreaker respects Skyrim's RPG systems and creates meaningful character decisions:

Heavy Armor increases Max Poise and enables players to tank heavy hits.
Light Armor grants significantly less Poise, but compensates with Hyperarmor. LightArmor players can play aggressively, utilizing Hyperarmor to attack without staggering.
Magic users are disadvantaged in the Poise system but they can level the playing field with flesh spells and wards that reduce stagger, as well as utilizing spell poise to engage at distance.
Perks in various trees can be unlocked to improve the player's Poise or to unlock additional sources of stagger damage.
Actors gain a brief poise immunity after being fully poisebroken.

The default ini in Poisebreaker is provisional, and intended and balanced for use with a dodge mod and a stamina mod adding stamina cost to light attacks. In the absence of such mods, you might want to reduce poise damage by changing the global poise multipliers in the INI in order to prevent excessive staggerlocking.

Poise DLL Formula Changes
-NPC and player poise/hyperarmor math have been separated across the board as the core tenet of balance. Poise mechanics scale with certain player systems. Poise’s Keyword system has been given additive keywords alongside the multiplicative ones.

In Poisebreaker, Poise passively scales with actor level, since it is a stat comparable to hp/sp/mp. Half of the player’s poise comes from build choice (weight of armor and skill) while the other half comes from natural progression. Direct level scaling means that the Poise system fully respects the vanilla game’s leveling system: high level enemies will have higher Poise values than the player, leading to harder encounters. Level scaling stops at level 100 and level 60 for NPCs and the player respectively. Actor Level is in my opinion the best enemy scaling factor because it is universal: across modded games enemy stats and leveled lists can vary widely, but an enemy's level will always reflect how strong they should be in relation to the player.

NPC Poise scales with AR logarithmically to reflect better poise values in well-equipped NPCs. 
Player Poise also scales with armor rating but at a much lower rate: the player is rewarded for accumulating as much AR as they can, but it is not the primary factor for changing Poise breakpoints. Wearing heavy armor, taking up Poise Perks, or simply leveling up has the most significant increase on the player's Max Poise. The AR scaling is logarithmic - this means diminishing returns. Higher values of AR gives less and less Poise Health.



In Poisebreaker, a portion of health damage taken (default 10%) is absorbed as poise damage. Power attacks will stagger more, since they do vastly more HP dmg than light attacks.

As Poise Damage scales with DPS, the player can expect to improve their Poise damage by simply upgrading their DPS normally. They can also pick up perk points that grant additional sources of Poise damage. But heed caution: stronger NPCs will also do more Poise damage!

Default leveling curve for Max Poise where x=ArmorRating: this is the graph for how Poise scales with ArmorRating when base poise is constant. 
Base poise = EquipWeight + 1/2 Actor Level + 0.2kHeavyArmor. 
Black is for NPCs, Red is for players. Because of the logarithmic curve, improving base poise (by wearing heavier armor or having a higher level) has a higher overall influence on max poise than just improving armor rating. 

New Poise Formulas

• Player Max Poise  = (Equip Weight + 20%HeavyArmorAV + 50%ActorLevel)  * (1 + log10(kDamageResist/200+1) )
• NPC Max Poise   = (Equip Weight + 20%HeavyArmorAV + 50%ActorLevel)  * (1 + log10(kDamageResist/100+1) )
• Player Poise dmg  =  Weapon weight + 10% of physical damage (configurable in ini).
• NPC Poise dmg  =  Weapon weight + 10% of physical damage (configurable in ini). 
• The value above should be agreeable to most people, but I recommend a setting of 15-20% for both NPC and player for challenging combat when used in a combat stack with MCO + Dodge mod + stamina mod that adds cost to light attacks.
• Bound weapons scale with conjuration poise damage math. Base Poise Dmg = (8 + ConjAv * 0.12f)
• Player unarmed Poise dmg calculation rework: now  ½ of UnarmedDamageAV.  Clamped to maximum 25damage. NPC unarmed poise damage is ½ of their equip weight, clamped to a max of 50. Player unarmed P dmg should be very low unless they spec into a pure unarmed build.
  

New Poise Mechanics

• New bash logic: bashing does minimal poise damage (0.10x), but bashing an attacking actor counts as a “bash parry” and does 1.5x of Poise dmg.
• Player Poise block reduction multiplier scales logarithmically with Block AV. (0.7x mitigation -> 0.25x mitigation). NPCs’ reduction is static.
• Player melee Hyperarmor scales with light armor skill. NPCs’ hyperarmor is static.
• Enemy mages get poise Hyperarmor while casting, taking 2x less damage when casting.
• Conversely, players take 1.5x more poise damage when casting.
• Spell Poise implementation. (WIP)
• Armor spells raise an actor’s Poise by 10% of their magnitude.  i.e if i have a 80magnitude flesh spell i get +8 to Max Poise stat.
• Active wards deduct flat poise damage according to the WardPower AV. 100 WardPower reduces Poise Dmg by 12. (Configurable).
  

Poise damage taken = (attacker’s base Poise damage * weaponmultiplier + 10% physical damage + poise damage buffs) * power attack multiplier * block multiplier * hyperarmor multiplier.  

Other Notable Changes

• TOML race overrides from Poise still work as expected, but note that the values in TOMLs are not multiplier, they override and set poise to the values specified in the TOMLs. By default a multiplier of 2x is put on the TOML race health to balance for the new formulas.
• Global Poise and Poise Damage multipliers added to inis. Adjust npc multiplier and player multipliers to taste. 
• Poise plugin has been ESLified - changes have been made in dll so that the plugin can be esl..
• Flat keyword multipliers added to esp, "zzzMaxPoiseHealthFlat" & "zzzPoiseDamageFlat". Magic effects with these keywords will add a flat buff to actor poise/poisedmg values. Use these for custom perk patches.
• Doodlez's fix for equipweight included so that "ModArmorWeight" perks, such as the ones that make armor weigh nothing, do not affect poise. 
• Fixed shouts. Fusrodah and Disarm will stagger appropriately.
  

Block
NPCs take half Poise damage when blocking. The player's block multiplier starts at 0.7 (30% less damage) initially.. Above block level 20, the player's block multiplier scales according to the formula below - at block level 50 the player takes 50% poise dmg, at block level 100 the player takes only 25% poise dmg! 
Block scaling starts block skill level 20. 

Block formula: 0.7-log10((x-20) ÷ 50+1) where x  = kBlock > 20.0

Hyperarmor 
Hyperarmor is a multiplier that reduces/increases poise damage received when actors are executing certain actions. NPCs have a 0.5 Hyperarmor multiplier, taking 50% reduced poise damage when attacking or casting. Initially, the player starts with a 0.8x multiplier (20% poisedmg reduction) when attacking with melee weapons, but a 1.5x multiplier (50% extra dmg) when casting spells.  The player's hyperarmor mult improves with their light armor skill

Hyperarmor Scaling:
Player hyperarmor scales with their light armor skill. Leveling light armor improves dexterity and balance, allowing the player to attack and cast spells without being staggered. Hyperarmor starts scaling when LightArmor level is above 20; scaling is logarithmic (diminishing returns) . 
At level 50, the melee and magic hyperarmor multipliers are 0.5x & 1.0x; at level 75, they are 0.30x and 0.65x; at max level they are 0.16x and 0.4x.

Melee and Spell hyperarmor scaling algorithms respectively, when kLightArmor > 20.0:
 0.8-0.4log2((x-20)/40+1)
 1.5-0.8log2((x-20)/50+1) where  = player light armor skill

 >Scaling graph below, starting at level 20.




Spell Poise:
-Magic projectiles inflict damage to Poise according to the magic effect magnitude. Both the player and NPCs are affected by spell poise. Spell poise damage is 25% of base magic effect magnitude by default, while poise damage from concentration spells is 6.25% of base magnitude. Concentration spells have unique stagger logic: they only stagger once when meter is depleted and not at the other thresholds, which means one stagger per poise meter. This is to prevent comical staggerlock. Concentrations spells of low magnitude wont do any poise damage (happens because of integer truncation but it is intentional for balance).

Spell poise works with deflect mechanics. "Tennis" in Skyrim circa 4E 201.

Stagger Whitelist:
Poisebreaker has a stagger whitelist for magic effects that should instantly cause a stagger. The whitelist allows for most stagger sources to be patched over to poise. To add an effect to whitelist, create a new ini (any name) in the Poisebreaker_EffectWhitelist folder and add your magic effect under [StaggerWhitelist] with the following template: Effect = Modname.esp:0xFormID

Configurability:
All formulas can be changed in the ini,  but tamper at your own risk. Note that the logarithm formulas are very sensitive, you can end up with ridiculous values like 100% hyperarmor at LightArmor skilllevel 40.

Poisebreaker also has global Poise damage and Poise Health modifiers. These can be used as difficulty modifiers for Poise. Too much or too little poise damage? Then change the global multipliers for them.


ESP & Patch Changes
-ESLified main plugin.
-Poise overwrites vanilla stagger system, so perks affecting stagger have to be patched.
-Game perks that affect stagger have been swapped over to the Poise framework.

Poisebreaker - Perks for Adamant
1 version for Adamant, 1 version for Adamant + H2H + H2HArmor.

Altered Adamant Perks
Stability (40): Your maximum Poise is improved by 50 points while under the effects of an armor spell. (+50 Flat Poise HP)
Immovable (40):  Your maximum Poise is improved by 50 points  while wearing heavy armor. (+50 Flat Poise HP)

Adamant Stagger Perks have been switched to use the Poise system, doing chunks of P dmg instead of instantly staggering.

Power Shot (40): Bows deal significant Poise damage to the target. (+50 P dmg on bows 50% of the time)
Impact (40): Destruction spells deal significant Poise damage to enemies when dual cast. (+50 P dmg on spells 50% of the time)
Determination (70): Blocking with a shield deals significant Poise damage to your attacker. (+50 P dmg to attacker when blocking 50% of the time)
 
Perks above have a cooldown of 5seconds (same mechanic as in adamant).  

Poisebreaker - Perks for Vokrii
-Coming Soon.

Poisebreaker - Perks for Vanilla
-Coming Soon-er.

SPID Plugin for Granular Enemy Poise Edits
-Coming soonerest.

Installation

• Install Loki's Poise and all its requirements. Loki Poise is for SSE 1.5.97 but our main file makes it compatible with AE 1.6++
• Install Poisebreaker main file for your game version (1.5.97 or 1.6+).
• Install whatever corresponding perk mod patch
• Run nemesis with loki's poise patch checked
• Configure inis if you want.
  

Compatibility
-Valhalla combat is compatible. Both Poise and Valhalla's stun mechanic tries to use the TrueHUD special bar, so disable TrueHUD special bar in one mod. Also recommended to disable "Poise" patch because the Poise knockdowns are OP on timed block, just use the Valhalla Combat stagger animation. If using valhalla combat and/or Elden Parry, it is recommended to set fPhysicalDmgWeight=0.2 (npc poise dmg setting) in Poise inis to balance for timed blocks.
-Parry mods and any mod that intercepts/removes bash will stop the BashParry and/or Bash calculation. This isnt really an issue, its all the same idea anyways.
-Effects using vanilla stagger or altering vanilla stagger resist wont work unless patched to Poise framework. 
-Deleveling mods can make higher leveled enemies incredibly oppressive to earlygame player, but this is what you signed up for.


Known Issues
-default inis are provisional and not actually fully playtested or balanced.
-telekinesis workaround can be quite janky.

To-Do Grocery List
-shout hyperarmor (feature was pulled from release because my method didnt work properly)
-SPID plugin (poise buff for vanilla game bosses)


Credits
-Loki ofc, for poise and NFAC and everything else <3. 
-Shadowshade's fork of Loki poise was used as a codebase, for AE support and to switch to PO3 CLIB.
-Doodlez, help with code and fixes.
-Tossaponk for NFAC fork hooks.
-wyongcan2019 for code.

















































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https://github.com/ConnerRia/POISE-Stagger-Overhaul-SKSE