Testing Waters on a Character Overhaul Mod

[Abnaxis]

Hello all,

 

I am a software engineer, highly experienced coder, who is a complete newbie at writing TES mods (though I have used them extensively).

 

I am thinking of writing a mod to make characters feel more distinct from one another in Skyrim.  I want my characters to be good at some things and bad at others, as opposed to any character able to do anything with equal ability as in Vanilla.

 

Balance and feel-wise, I'm shooting for a system that plays a lot like nGCD from Oblivion, where skill levels and perks apply buffs (or debuffs) to Actors--for example, One Handed or Two Handed skill points/perks add to melee damage, Destruction adds to magic effeciency, etc.  If the idea percolating in my head works the way I intend, I will go so far as to implement the attributes themselves within the script, such that each skill has an attribute/attributes associated with it and each attribute in turn has a buff/debuff associated with it.

 

Looking through the Creation Kit Wiki and Papyrus, I already have a preliminary idea of how I want to do this.  I'm thinking of inheriting an Active Effect (which I'm thinking of calling Synergy, which is my preliminary name for the mod, assuming it isn't taken) that updates any time an Event fires that modifies an Actor's skills, race, or level, crunching to determine Synergy and applying the relevant boni.  While eventually I want everyone to be affected, I'll start by instantiating the mod for the PC, without worrying about race.  Then I'll add racial sutff.  Then I'll worry about applying it to the NPCs.  And then of course there's balance, compatiblity, and UI to consider...

 

Before I go through all this effort, however, I want to know a few things. 

 

First, am I reinventing the wheel?  There are already mods to add classes and race differences to the vailla game, like the Character Creation Overhaul.  And I've seen the RPG-Style Levelling Scripts that add attributes and XP to the system and might give me a launchpad to start from (though it frankly seems a bit rough from a cursory glance).  However, I haven't seen any mods out there that give the results I am going for. 

 

Second, am I going to need script extenders or any other tool beyond what's normally needed for mods?  Part of the reason my first instinct is to creat an Active Effect is that it seems like a simple way to extend the game without digging into the base bits and that it will be very easy to make compatible with other stuff, but I don't know for sure.  Indiscriminately applying Synergy to NPCs seems like a challenge without extra tools.

 

Third, what does everyone actually think of the concept?  I'm probably going to start plugging at it anyway, but it would be nice if I could inflict it on some playtesters create something to enhance the fun of others.

[donnato]

Hello Abnaxis, I`m going to weigh in here just to say that it feels like an interesting idea and it seems as though you have the chops to pull it off . Maybe after some studying into the scripting involved. I`m totally ignorant at this point of skyrim scripting so I can`t add on that point. What I CAN say...as a player is...show us a demo. Work up something tangible we can critique and give constructive input to.

[vaultguy]

Are you going to do this stuff without touching the perk trees? That might be a good idea for the sake of compatibility. Some of them already have some of the first ideas you've pointed out like making damage and magic efficiency scale with your skill.

[Abnaxis]

Are you going to do this stuff without touching the perk trees? That might be a good idea for the sake of compatibility. Some of them already have some of the first ideas you've pointed out like making damage and magic efficiency scale with your skill.

 

I wasn't planning on modding the perk trees initially, though I'd probably mess with them as an optional add-on since the benefits might make some of the perk benefits less interesting.

 

The more I think about it, more I'm in favor of doing something to inject attributes, based on skills and perks (not modding the perks, just reading them and giving buffs based on them).  It seems like I could add a lot of depth that way...