Improved Destruction Magic

Get it here: http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=611

This mod includes several improvements to Destruction magic to make Destruction damage scale as well as other kinds of damage, and also adds some stronger specialization possibilities. It includes several ESPs, each modifying one particular aspect of magic. They are:

Improved Runes.esp:

• Increased rune base damage to 75.
  
• Increased maximum rune count to 3.

Improved Master Spells.esp:

• Increased Lightning Storm's base damage per second to 135.
  
• Increased Blizzard's base damage per second to 30.
  
• Changed Fire Storm to be instant cast. Left its damage alone.

Improved Master Spells Except Fire Storm.esp:

• By popular request, this contains all changes in Improved Master Spells.exp, except any changes to Fire Storm.

Improved Expert Spells.esp:

Increases the base damage of the following expert spells so they scale nicer at mid-to-high tier compared to other damage builds.

• Increased Incinerate's base damage to 70.
  
• Increased Thunderbolt's base damage to 70.
  
• Increased Icy Spear's base damage to 70.

Improved Cloaks.esp:

• Increases the base damage of cloak spells so they're worth casting more often than not. In particular, increased base damage of all cloak spells from 8 to 12.

Improved Casting.esp:

Small changes to dual casting to make it feel a bit more powerful than it does in vanilla Skyrim.

• Increased dual casting effectiveness boost to 2.5 from 2.2.
  
• Increased dual casting time multiplier to 1.25 from 1.

Improved Destruction Perks.esp:

• Augmented Shock/Flame/Frost perks now have 3 ranks and increase damage by 20% each rank.
  
• Expert Destruction now also increases Destruction spell damage by 10%.
  
• Master Destruction now also increases Destruction spell damage by 15%.

Known Issues

• The change I found to make Fire Storm instant cast also changes its mana cost to read "per second." This seems to only be a display issue, it consumes the proper amount of mana when you use it. I've been trying to mess with the SPEL flags to fix that but so far no luck.

Changelog

1.3:

• Fixed an issue with Expert Destruction perk not being selectable on level up for some people.
  
• Added another .esp that edits Master spells without editing Fire Storm, for those who don't want an instant cast Fire Storm.1.2:
  
• Fixed an issue with Improved Destruction Perks that could cause save files to not keep the third rank of the Augmented perks.
  1.1:
  
• Changed Improved Destruction Perks. Augmented perks have 3 ranks instead of the 5 they had in 1.0, and added spell damage to Expert and Master Destruction perks (the end result is still the same, about 100% Destruction damage after all perks). This was after some concern here about the number of perks needed.
  
• Fixed name corruption on Fire Storm.

I am still in the midst of playtesting these changes, so I'm not entirely sure I have the balance right on expert level spells. I'm still really limited in what I'm able to do until the Creation Kit comes out, so there are some changes I'd like to do that I'm unable to at the moment. Working with the ESP files with just a hex editor and TESSnip is a bit awkward, and there are still a handful of things I haven't figured out. I really want to see about changing the Impact perk around a bit to make stun locking less cheesy, but I haven't had much luck changing it the way I want. Still, gives me something to work on while I wait for the CK.

Feedback is appreciated!

Hehe just found it on skyrim nexus and was gonna make thread about it, nice job

edit: one thing I really do not like about Lighting storm is it's unecessary long casting time, I suggest that you reduce it.

There is also an issue of 25% mana reduction enchants making adept/expert/master perks useless, you should try and remake either the perks or enchants in the future

I suggest simply hard caping mana reduction at 75% (from enchants), so that having more then 3 of these enchants is useless, and making enchants that reduce mana cost & give slight mana regen increase damage a bit instead of mana regen, and reduce damage scaling from perks a bit to compesate when you get the numbers right.

Awesome.
Just one thing... can you make the damage values skill dependent? That would make it easier and MUCH cooler.
Something like:

DAMAGE = ((BASE_MAX*(DESTRUCTIONSKILL))/100)*(PERKMODIFIER/100)MAGICKACOST = ((BASE_COST*(100-(DESTRUCTIONSKILL/4)))/100)*((100-PERKMODIFIER)/100)

That way the speels effectiveness would be dynamic. I hope to do this once CK is out, but if you can make it before it will make my playing until then much better)

Thank you for this, and an especially big thank you for making it so modular. Thumbs up

The destruction perk one is too perk-intensive so I'll have to skip it, but overall it seems very promising. Personally, I'd have gone for 3 perks, at 30/60/90% more damage. Since they're single-element perks, it makes sense to give them more oomph than the damage perks that affect an entire skill, like Overdraw, etc.

Good point, 3 perks would be ok and add that additional damage on perks that reduce mana cost, so anyone who uses destruction as main damage source would have to take them.

thanks man, great shot at it.

I agree on making the destruction damage bonus perks a three tier perk rather than 5 tier. Is it also possible for +spell damage enchants to be edited in?

The cool thing about 5 ranks though is that it opens up more specialized builds allowing you to focus more perks into destruction if you wanted. Ideally there would be a point sink somewhere in the tree that wouldn't block off entire parts of the tree so that other people that like jack of all trades could still do that and have a variety of cool destruction abilities but they just wouldn't be as powerful as a specialist. That sounds like stuff for when the toolset is released though.

Question:

Can you put just 2 points into the damage perks and move on up the tree or do you need all 5?

Well if it has to be 5 points it still needs to be more than 20 or 25% per point if it remains element specific.

And 5 ranks of 30% might end up being a little strong, but I guess it would need play testing. Ultimately, we need to mod in +Destruction damage enchants. As long as those are alchemy-only then Destruction will never scale as well as melee or bows end-game.

When I was working out how many perks to give the Destruction tree, I was actually comparing it to Archery. Archery needs 16 perks to get everything that can benefit a single spec, so I was shooting for a bit less than that for a single spec Destruction mage. With my change currently, it takes 14 perks to max out a single spec of Destruction (fire/frost/lightning), so that's about where I wanted it.

Now that you all mention it though, I compared it to 1h and 2h. Those both require 12 perks to max out a single spec (mace/axe/sword, etc), which is exactly what it would take if I dropped it to a 3-rank perk instead of a 5-rank perk. I'd lose 10% total damage unless I just make the 3rd rank worth more, but I could also see about tacking an extra 10% onto the special effect perks (Intense Flames/Deep Freeze/Disintegrate) if I can figure out how.

For additional comparison, 2h and 1h require 18 perks total to max out all three of their available specs (mace/axe/sword), whereas my current Destruction spec would require 26. Dropping it to a 3-rank perk would change that total to 20, which is a lot more in line.


So my question then is ... 30/60/100 to make it the same as it is now but for less perks, or should I go with 30/60/90 and see about adding another 10% to the special effect perks? The first one is probably easiest and quickest.


Edit to answer some of the other questions here:
You can just put a single point in the perk before moving on to the next one, so if you wanted Deep Freeze it only requires one point in Augmented Frost.

I don't think it's possible to put a cap on mana cost reduction enchantments without scripting, and I'm pretty sure it'll be impossible to compile scripts until the Creation Kit comes out, sadly.

I agree with adding the Fortify Destruction potion effect as an enchantable effect, but that's something I haven't really looked into yet. It's definitely something I want to do. I suspect it's possible, but I'm not entirely sure how. If it is, then there's another problem: does it replace the current Fortify Destruction that reduces cost, or is it a new one? If it's a new one, finding a way to give it to the player via disenchanting might be tricky. I'm not sure, I'll have to mess around with it.

I say 30/60/100. That will make magic very strong early on though.

Edit: Is there anyway to add damage to the Expert and Master Destruction abilities? I would have those skills increase all magic damage by 25% each. Then just keep the elemental perks at 25% (2 levels). Or something like that whatever the math works out to be and how many perks to max the tree you think there should be.

How about:

Augments = 20/40/60
Expert Destruction = 15
Master Destruction = 25

Total 100% damage

Are these changes universal? Do they affect Enemies/Companions as well as the PC?

Make Apprentice/Adept/Expert/Master perks give 10% damage boost to all schools, and make specialization perks give 20/40/60% boost. This will slow damage scaling and require anyone to spend points in those perks instead of just using enchants for free casting and doing huge damage

Impact: 30% chance to stagger
Intense Flames: 33% larger aoe of spells when dual casting (and for master level one)
Deep Freeze: 20% additional chance to stagger with frost spells when dual casting
Disintegrate: ?????

It should be trivial with the CK, I dont think its worth graying hairs over in the meantime.

Taking an alchemy-only effect and turning it into a spell or enchantment should be a piece of cake if the CK is remotely close to what we had in Oblivion. No scripting needed, obviously.

As for the meantime, I'm not even sure HOW you're pulling off this stuff without the CK so I really cant say

If you can change the perk to add Critical Chance then that'd be welcome. I don't even know if Spells can crit, though.

Just gave it a shot and it looks like I can add damage to the Expert and Master Destruction perks. The down side is that they're multiplicative, not additive, to the Augment perks, so they might not look as intuitive. Still, if I went with 20/40/60 for augments, 10% for expert and 15% for master, that puts the end result really close to 100% (102.4%), netting the same end but encouraging the use of Expert and Master Destruction.

Yea, that sounds perfect. Also makes the damage scale much more smoothly.

Alright, 3-rank change is up with damage added to Expert/Master Destruction as well!

How the heck did you do this without the CK?

Seems like Skyrim Nexus is down atm. Any other mirrors?

EDIT: NVM

Sure I got it when it was working, lemme dropbox that for you.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5859263/Misc/Improved_Destruction_Magic-611-1-1.zip

Edit: seems to work now, but Ill keep that on dropbox just in case

I like the way you did Destruction overhaul but I prefer the magicka changes from http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=382.

Base cost of spells reduced by 50% combined with..

Changes combat regen rate to 33% normal (66% effective of default skyrim due to half spell costs)

I feel this give it a much more Oblivion/Morrowind-like feel, in Skyrim they seemed to go in the direction that regeneration is more important than total magicka, thus the high costs, assuming you would get magicka reduction perks and enchanted gear with high regen bonuses. But even with all these perks and gear it feels far more restrictive and severely hurts your "front-loaded damage potential".

Therefore I would much rather prefer slower regen in combat but a reduction of all base spell costs.

I use Empowered Magic (minus the Augmented perk change) with all your modules except Improved Casting.esp since EmpoweredMagic.esp covers it's dual casting changes to a similar effect.

And the result is finally a balanced (and more familiar) Destruction magic experience that is playable on Master and enjoyable from start to finish. Thanks for this, Skyrim is now playable as a mage!

You have single-handedly brought back my "pure" Mage. To truly make things right we really need enchantments, however this is an amazing start considering the CK isn't even out.


I couldn't disagree more. Empowered Magicka addresses the part of Destruction that is not broken and in fact makes it grossly overpowered for the first few dozen levels. It does not address the issue of damage scaling which is what completely kills high level Destruction.

Read the rest of the post, I said I prefer Improved Destruction for everything else including damage scaling (which includes not using the Novice spell changes or the Augmented perks from EM). I guess difficulty is a matter of perspective but I did not find it overpowered at all on Master which is the only difficulty level I base my balancing choices on.

I'm currently looking at some basic modifications. I'm looking at extending the durations of the conjuration spells, armor spells, and others to make them more suitable for combat - because when they run out halfway through, you can be screwed. Trying to finish all this up tonight, ran into a few errors though.