The Great Mage Mod Hunt

[Shadriss]

OK, so as Tech and myself briefly discussed in another thread, Magery suck vanilla. I know STEP's mandate is as close to vanilla as possible (with some caveats), but the simple truth is that magic, especially combat (Destruction) spells simply don't cut it. Simple example:

 

Helgen Underground. I walk into a room with five foes, three melee and two archers. My options are:

 

A) Break out Sword/Axe/Bludgeoning Instrument and do that voodoo that you do so well. Foes are dead. Game progresses.

 

B) Break out Flames. Magika runs out. All foes are still alive. Resort to A.

 

C) Same as B, but refuse to resort to A. Die. Reload. Resort to A.

 

No self-respecting mage would break out a weapon on the order of a sword, etc. Spellswords are kind of an exception to this, but even there, they are primary mages with a backup plan. The spellcasting is thier primary focus, not a sword slinger with a few useful casting buffs.

 

I'd LOVE to be able to be the BA Mage that the College of Winterhold deserves AND needs... but I can't with vanilla - not without resorting to methods that just aren't... right for the mage. So, to the end, I'm looking for something to address this issue without straying TOO far from vanilla. I've not done an exhaustive search, but I have found a few potentials. If you have used them and can speak to their effectiveness, please do so. If you see one that's missing, speak up as well.

 

1 - Balanced Magic. This one changes a lot of things, but seems to be on the track of what I'm talking about above.I've never been able to get to higher levels of casting (my Restoration skill, for example, just passed 20 for the first time in the six years I've been playing this game. Yes, you read that right, that's how underwhelmed I've been by the magic), so I can't really evaluate a lot of the changes it makes, so any insight here would be helpful.

 

2 - Mighty Magick Skyrim. This is kind of my 'outer limits' mod, as it makes many huge changes and additions to the system. What I can't get a feel for is how will it performs in actual combat, and again, I can't really evaluate the statements since I've never been able to get my skills up that high.

 

3 - Better Magic.  Seems to be a watered down version of Balanced Magic, but again, my ability to make evaluations here is somewhat lacking.

 

I also ran across Conjuration and Summoning Fixes, and I am curious if anyone knows if these issues were corrected by the USLEEP or not. If not, it may be something to throw over for bugfix mod consideration in the main guide as well, but that's another thing for later.

 

Thoughts, comments, or recommendations? Bring'em on.

[Shadriss]

... or not. Time to put this train back on track.

 

So, other observations I've had during my abruptly cut off play-through as a mage.

 

I think that the lineup Kel recommended at the bottom of his linked page is a good one. The only thing I could wish for was a replacement for the old "Unknown Enchants" mod (now long since gone) that worked a bit better and could scan for mod-added enchants as well. The one problem with enchanting is knowing what enchants you know, and what the variant names are (based on power) so that you don't see one, think you need it, spend a few thousand on it, then find out you already have it. This is easy for a few, as it's easy to recall if you have Soul Trap for example, but with all the various effects out there, it gets real hard to remember everything real quick.

 

We find that, and I think we have a good stable Mage build that addresses as much of the vanilla problems as is likely to be able to be.

[Hawk]

Firstly, I am a very unexperienced Skyrim player. However, reading through this thread (I have to admit I skipped a few posts) something was born in my mind. Theoretically (due tu my noobness rly), playing a pure mage, in the meaning of using only spells and NO armour, during leveling - also related to the comment here:

 

Consider also - every time you swing your sword or shoot your bow as a 'mage' you are actively making yourself less effective.  You gain levels from all skills, and the enemies in the world adjust to that level.  Every skill point gained in One-Handed is one NOT gained in Destruction, Conjuration, Alteration, etc.  The world gets more dangerous and you haven't advanced the skills you need to deal with that as a mage.

Additionally to mentioning 1-H, what about Heavy & Light Armour (maybe Block also)? You also gain skill points passively and enemies level with you, am I right? So basically wearing armour means you get less effective spell-damage-wise.

 

I see a mage more active in every way: You should cast alteration defensive spells on yourself against physical dmg, use wards against mages & dragons, and use restoration healing to keep yourself alive. In the offense, you are also more active opposed to a warrior, who kind of charges head-first and mashes the mouse buttons, sometimes blocking and sometimes does silly dance moves (physically dodging, but mages also have to dodge swords when you let your opponent have you smell his body). Mages, on the other hand, should use various spells (and magic schools) in synergy, which they have to change in his hands (warrior never unequips his weapon). And there are many spells which can be utilised according to the situation, against melee users potentially with more HP you can use frost, not to allow them to get to you and so on. A warrior charges against another warrior in the same way as a mage.

Also they could get use of alchemy, when you run out of magicka during a fight. Also lore-wise, warrior-types maybe like to go drinking in the inn or just fus-ro-dah-ing Nazeem, but mages are more apt to picking flowers and preparing in advance. :D

 

All in all, I love the concept of a pure mage only devoted to the arcane arts.

 

So what do you think about my remarks? Is it complete ********? :D

[Shadriss]

Not complete crap. :) We all have images in our head of what we expect - the trick is making it reality (or something close) in Skyrim. And you aren't wrong about the armor skills - that's a perfectly valid point that wasn't said specifically, but was probably assumed by most of us who are more experienced in the game.

 

On another note, a run through of Nexus hasn't shown me anything that will replace Unknown Enchants, unfortunately. I did, however, run across a mod (search for Sigil Stones) that does something I do like, though the mod itself is not usable because of the other crap it does.

 

It has long bothered me that the only way, supposedly, to learn an enchantment is to destroy an object that has it. If that's the case, how did those objects get enchanted in the first place? There HAS to be another method of learning enchantments... we've just never seen them. This mod actually created Enchantment Books (of a sort) that addresses this, though it didn't add them to vendors or loot level lists. This shows that it's possible to do this, just that it hasn't been done in a mod other than this one. I'd LOVE to see a version of that mod that had that one feature expanded and filled out to address this one huge logical loophole in enchanting.

[Nebulous112]

Regarding enchantments...that has always bothered me as well, but I roleplay that this knowledge is unknown to the mages of Skyrim. Whether because of Skyrim's relative isolation and the populace's distrust of magic leading to the great mages of the world avoiding Skyrim, or another reason.

 

Maybe it is the same reason why we can't craft unique spells. ;-)

 

 

If you are looking for a decent enchantment mod, I would suggest looking to EnaiSaion's mods. I'm a big fan of almost everything he makes, and Wintermyst or the newer Summermyst are great options to add some variety. Pick one - don't use both.

 

For shouts, Enai's Thunderchild is great. And of course, you already know about Apocalypse for spells.

[Shadriss]

Enchantments, as they stand with the mods I'm using, are fine. I was looking more for a utility that did the same job as others do for, say, books and tomes where they were marked if you had already read them... just an enchanter's version, so to speak.

 

As to your rationale, that would work if it hadn't been this way in every other TES game. It does work for the spell builder (ARGH!!!!), but not for enchantment. I can kind of buy it being a lost art, but even so, I would like the ability to change that somehow.

[baronaatista]

Agreed, the process of learning enchants in Skyrim is less than ideal.  Really, I think just about everything related to enchanting is kind of tedious and poorly executed.

 

For me it's soul gems.  How many times I've missed harvesting a soul because I didn't have the right gem available.

I'd love to see souls just disperse amongst available gems personally; ie. a grand soul will fill say 5/7 (whatever amount of 'points' it contains/gems are able to hold) lesser soul gems, or a couple medium gems.  Additionally one grand gem could be filled by multiple smaller souls.

There may be lore reasons why it's like this?  I'm no loremaster.  It's damn inconvenient though and doesn't lend itself to any gameplay system/mechanic that I can think of.

 

I'm also just gonna say it one more time.  I would push even harder except I haven't had THAT much experience with it to get really excited, but the somewhat limited time I've played with it (equivalent to a short playthrough or two - 2 char's to level 20/30ish) I have loved everything I've seen.

 

Ordinator.

 

I mean, apocalypse is the definitive spell mod.  This is a perk overhaul made by the same guy and there are lots of synergies between them.

I was always wary of perk overhauls as I felt stuff like PerMa, Requiem, SkyRe departed too far from vanilla, and seemed to make some big changes that I wasn't really onboard with.

Ordinator leaves most (all?) of the vanilla perks/functionality intact, while adding tons of new possibilities and re-working the vanilla stuff to eliminate the redundancies & broken mechanics.  It still feels like Skyrim, just a Skyrim with so much more depth and nuance to the character builds. 

 

a tiny example of some of the cool, interesting perks available (This is in Enchanting)

90 - You Shall Not Pass - Simultaneously (within 1 second) using an enchanted staff in your left hand and striking with an enchanted weapon in your right hand releases a flash of light that staggers enemies and deals damage based on your Enchanting skill level.

 

Destruction:

50 - Shatter - Frost spells that hit a frost resistant target fragment and explode in a 15 foot area, reducing frost resistance by 25% for 15 seconds. This effect stacks.

 

I think he does away with the stagger perk, and just turns it into a pure damage boost...

[Shadriss]

As I indicated, I'd more more inclined to look at it if it had a more modular approach so I can pick and choose which trees I take and which I leave. As it's an all-or-nothing proposition from what I can tell, it's a non started for me.