[Ben sutton]

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=2275

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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Balanced Magic v2.00 (Beta)
by mysty
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Purpose
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This mod is intended to provide greater flexibility when playing as a mage. Instead of relying on a few overpowered gimmicks, mages should be able to experiment with different techniques in different situations, and still have a reasonable chance of overcoming their opponent. I have attempted to make each school of magic uniquely powerful while staying pure to Elder Scrolls lore; these were the consideratons I made when addressing each school of magic:
Alteration is the school of magic which deals with altering the physical world. Alteration mages can bend the laws of nature, changing the world around them. Many alteration spells are utilitarian - they allow the caster to access hard to reach areas, to lighten a burden, to breathe water as though it were air, etc., but alteration also has a place in combat. Alteration mages can change the composition of their own bodies, making them less susceptible to certain types of damage, or exhaust an opponent by making their own weapons and armor much heavier to carry.
Conjuration mages are able to telepathically commune with Daedra and the undead, and bend them to their will – for a time, at least. As the conjuror becomes more skilled, he may control more powerful servants for a greater length of time. Conjuration mages may also call forth mighty weapons from Oblivion, or bind the souls of the slain.
Destruction mages wield the destructive force of the elements to wreak havok in battle. Their magic can ignore armor or take out an entire room full of enemies. With a full arsenal of spells at their command, there are few who can stand against a powerful destruction mage.
With the power to manipulate the mind, mages who study the school of Illusion can change what one perceives – for good or ill. While not able to deal much damage directly, a single Illusionist can turn the tide of a battle, causing enemies to fight amongst themselves or giving allies the confidence to surge forward. A skilled Illusionist is subtle, veiled in silence and cloaked in invisibility, often undetected by those she manipulates.
Those who practice restoration are not only excellent healers, they can also channel the powers of magicka to protect, strengthen, and enhance. Many restoration mages choose to serve as priests and healers, and are welcomed even by those who are generally suspicious of magic users. Their powerful bond to life causes undead to recoil in fear.
Enchanters, while not exactly spellcasters, are nevertheless intrigued by the magical arts, and are able to imbue physical objects with magical properties. Masters of enchantment can turn quality equipment into powerful artifacts, nearly as great as those of legend.

What It Does
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Magicka Management
- Magicka regenerates faster in combat (60% instead of 33%)
- Dual Casting costs less (2.4x instead of 2.8x) and is more effective (2.6x instead of 2.2x)
- Spell costs are reduced with skill (see spreadsheet for details)
- Wearing armor affects casting cost for all schools of magic. Each piece of light armor worn increases cost by 6%, and each piece of heavy armor increases cost by 9%.
Alteration
- Paralyze has been reduced to 6 seconds (was 10)
- Mass Paralysis has been reduced to 10 seconds (was 15)
- Protection "Flesh" spells have been replaced with Shield spells from previous TES games (with scaling, higher level protection spells were redundant. The basic "Shield" spell has the same effect. Elemental Shield spells also provide some elemental resistances.)
- Casting a shield spell will dispel the armor from a previous shield spell
- Dragonhide stacks with the Shield spells
- Changed Mage Armor Perks: Rank 1 - Shield spells become more effective the fewer pieces of armor you wear. Rank 2 - Shield spells become permanent, but decrease your available magicka while active. Rank 3 - Reduce the magicka penalty for maintaining Shield spells.
- The second Mage Armor perk also adds the spell "Dispel Shield" which allows you to remove any shield spell to restore your magicka pool.
- Permanent Shield spells provide experience (based on alteration skill) each time the player is hit with physical damage
- The Novice and Apprentice Perks allow the Shield spells to scale up
Destruction
- The Novice, Apprentice, Adept, Expert, and Master Destruction perks allow the corresponding spells to scale in damage based on skill
- Each perk reduces the magicka cost by 50% (as in vanilla) but the cost scales up gradually to adjust for increased power
- The Impact perk causes stagger to occur only 50% of the time (was 100%)
- Master Destruction spell charge time reduced to 1.5 seconds (was 3 seconds)
Illusion
- The Aspect of Terror Perk no longer increases the damage of Destruction Fire spells
Restoration
- Wards charge more quickly and provide experience each time they successfully protect the caster. They are free to maintain but drain magicka when hit.
- The Novice, Apprentice, Adept, and Expert Restoration perks allow the corresponding spells to scale in magnitude based on skill
- Each perk reduces the magicka cost by 50% (as in vanilla) but the cost scales up gradually to adjust for increased power
- Since wards, turn undead, healing (both self and other), and repel undead now scale, duplicate spells were replaced with: Cure Disease, Cure Poison, Spell Absorption, Fortify Stamina, Fortify Health, and Fortify Magicka
- Replaced Regeneration Perk with "Holy Fire" - Casting healing spells on the undead causes them to take fire damage. Affected spells are: Healing Hands, Heal Other, and Grand Healing

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Thank you for checking out my mod! Feel free to leave comments, suggestions, or endorse this mod at http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=2275

[James Smart]

I uploaded a new beta version for testing (at the bottom of the file list under "Miscellaneous"). Version 2.0b2 is as complete as 1.3, but I went a different direction with Alteration based on your feedback. Details are listed in the first post of this topic. Please let me know what you think!

[Leah]

I can't access the comments on Nexus right now (too much traffic!) so I'll post this here for now.

Regarding the dispel shield spell - It is added to your spellbook when you take the Mage Armor 2 perk, but I'm not sure if it gets added correctly if you load a save in which you've already taken the perk. If you do NOT have the dispel shield spell, open the console and type: player.addspell 0100489D

From http://www.creationkit.com/AddSpell, "It is also worth noting the second digit of the Form ID may be different from that shown in the editor if multiple esp files are loaded try incrementing it if the console can't find the spell."

[LuBiE LoU]

The new destruction magic looks very cool! It should help a lot in toning down the power of destruction magic early on. I'm not a fan of armor penalties though, so for now I think I'll stick with 1.3.

What's the Shield spell's duration like?

EDIT: it'd probably be easier to just type
~help "dispel shield" 4

than to increment the ID. Particularly if you have over a hundred mod like I do.

[Phoenix Draven]

@Eldiran - thanks for the tip about the help command.

About the armor penalties:
Increased armor penalty but also decreased spell cost; cost will be about the same or less for armored mages as in the previous version. Cloth wearers
should have spell costs a bit closer to NPC costs

They go hand in hand with the decreased spell cost so if you're finding it much harder to cast spells while wearing armor with the beta, I may need to tweak some.

[SUck MYdIck]

Ah, okay. I just see a ~20% spell cost penalty for light armor and automatically cringe, but if it's inherently lower then I think I'll give v2 a try.

I notice Dragonhide is back to it's normal form. I thought it was a really unbalancing spell in vanilla?

[Lyndsey Bird]

The problem with Dragonhide in vanilla was that it basically made the Mage Armor perks worthless (why bother wasting 3 perks when you're ultimately going to rely on a master spell that doesn't use them?) I altered it so that it now stacks with the shield spells - much as it stacked with physical armor in vanilla, so the Mage Armor perks are still useful for the cloth-wearing mage. If 80% damage mitigation seems too high, I might lower it a little bit.

[Robert Bindley]

Oh, I completely missed the question about Shield duration; initially, it is 60 seconds. Dual casting will increase that to 156 seconds with the perk. The stability perk would increase it another 50%. However, if you take the Mage Armor perks, the second perk makes the Shield spells permanent (but decreases your available magicka) and the third perk reduces that penalty significantly. The exact amount of the penalty depends on both your skill level (strength of the spell) and which shield spell you cast, but it is somewhere between 30 - 50 with only the second perk, and 18 - 25 with the third perk.

[kelly thomson]

Thanks, that's good stuff to know. Unfortunately having an indefinite shield has the side effect of stunting Alteration growth, but the whole system is bogus anyway so it's not that big a deal.

[Eibe Novy]

Hi Mysty,

I didn't try the new version of your mod yet because I don't have Skyrim installed in this computer but let me tell you that the changes on alteration look VERY good! (loving the fact that we can have a permanent shield on!)

On another note, I was wondering what you had in store for restoration in general and ward spells in particular (shameless request: wards that are fully effective as soon as they are casted would be a godsend).

[herrade]

Thanks, that's good stuff to know. Unfortunately having an indefinite shield has the side effect of stunting Alteration growth, but the whole system is bogus anyway so it's not that big a deal.

This could be balanced by leveling your alteration skill whenever you get hit with the shield in place. Similar to how the armors work. Nothing to drastic though. As for why your skill would go up in case people are curious? Maintaining the spell takes concentration and when under extreme duress(getting hit) you learn new ways to use it so your alteration skill goes up.

[Theodore Walling]

lol, funny you shold ask, because wards is what I'm working on right now...

I'd like to make the protection available faster and make them free to maintain but drain magicka when they are hit (ie. more expensive when they're doing their job, but not draining you dry while waiting for someone to maybe attack)

[Lisha Boo]

lol, funny you shold ask, because wards is what I'm working on right now...

I'd like to make the protection available faster and make them free to maintain but drain magicka when they are hit (ie. more expensive when they're doing their job, but not draining you dry while waiting for someone to maybe attack)

Excellent news!
It's been a while since I wanted to start a paladin character and the lack of a more responsive ward was the only thing stopping me.
I'll keep eye on the thread

[Milad Hajipour]

Do wards not work against atronachs? Keep trying to test, and the stupid things don't seem to work at ALL. (Even the wards I haven't changed yet!)

[jess hughes]

request: Add perk for Wards so they have a slight chance to reflect spells <3

p.s. Love your mod btw.

[Christine Pane]

I'm using version 1.30 and have just realised that the 'mage armor' perks are not existent on the alteration perk tree. Where they usually are in vanilla, it is replaced with the 'less is more' perk. Is this right? Or should I not be seeing a mage armor perk somewhere on the alteration tree? All I can see is -

Novice Alteration
Alteration dual casting
Apprentice Alteration
Less is More
Magic Resistance
Adept Alteration
Stability
Expert Alteration
Atronach
Master Alteration


Also, am I ok to replace this old version with the new one without endangering my save game?

[Mr.Broom30]

lol, funny you shold ask, because wards is what I'm working on right now...

I'd like to make the protection available faster and make them free to maintain but drain magicka when they are hit (ie. more expensive when they're doing their job, but not draining you dry while waiting for someone to maybe attack)

Glad to see you back, mysty. I've been using the betas, but haven't had anything to say, yet. So far they seem fine, but my current character only uses magic as backup, so the betas haven't gotten the heavy use previous versions did.

Anyway, feedback on wards: I like the idea of making them come up faster. How about they come up fast, but take a few seconds to reach full strength? I also like the idea that they stay up, but I'd suggest cheap rather than free.

My last suggestion is more long-term, but how about an ini file for a few configuration parameters--for example, the armor usage penalty. I personally like it, but it sounds like a fair number of people don't. Having a configurable variable would solve most issues about the contentious changes.

[Charlie Sarson]

A little idea on wards. Maybe make them act like permanent limited shields. You cast them on yourself and they're there to stay. Each time you recieve X dmg, the shield absorbs that dmg and drains magicka. When the shield sustained enough dmg, it shatters and must recharge itself over a period of time. Higher tier wards could absorb more dmg at a lower mana cost and potentially lower charge up time after shattering. You could also add perks that, for example, create a blast centered around yourself that knocks enemies away when the ward shatters.

Emelental wards could work the same way, absorbing the respective element only.

This way, it would make wards actually useful while not taking up a whole hand needed to cast them.

[rae.x]

@albinodunmer: I'd love to see a mod that does that.

lol, funny you shold ask, because wards is what I'm working on right now...

I'd like to make the protection available faster and make them free to maintain but drain magicka when they are hit (ie. more expensive when they're doing their job, but not draining you dry while waiting for someone to maybe attack)

Definitely looking forward to this. If they raised instantly and only broke when you ran out of Magicka, they could actually be useful. There have been a few ward mods that worked like this (but without any changes to speed) but I've been hesitant to use them for balance reasons (and because they were not tested with Ward Absorb).

[Melung Chan]

Anyway, feedback on wards: I like the idea of making them come up faster. How about they come up fast, but take a few seconds to reach full strength? I also like the idea that they stay up, but I'd suggest cheap rather than free.

Don't wards work like this now? They are activated as soon as you cast them but they take a second or perhaps slightly more to be effective. Do you mean something like: they are, say, 60% effective inmediately but for the reamining 40% you need to wait a second?

I have another idea on wards if Mysty is interested: now wards have fixed upper limits (they negate up to 40, 60 and 80 points of magicka damage). What if the only thing limiting a ward was your magicka pool? Considering the change Mysty wants to implement (wards only consume magicka when they block a spell) it would make sense if you could keep using a ward as long as didn't run out of magicka. To be clear: if a character has 100 magicka, his ward will negate up to 100 points of magicka damage. If a character has 300 magicka, his ward will negate up to 300 points of magicka damage, and so on.

Edit: @Eldiran: haha! it seems we had the same idea Glad to see some support on this.

[Claire Jackson]

Don't wards work like this now? They are activated as soon as you cast them but they take a second or perhaps slightly more to be effective. Do you mean something like: they are, say, 60% effective inmediately but for the reamining 40% you need to wait a second?

I have another idea on wards if Mysty is interested: now wards have fixed upper limits (they negate up to 40, 60 and 80 points of magicka damage). What if the only thing limiting a ward was your magicka pool? Considering the change Mysty wants to implement (wards only consume magicka when they block a spell) it would make sense if you could keep using a ward as long as didn't run out of magicka. To be clear: if a character has 100 magicka, his ward will negate up to 100 points of magicka damage. If a character has 300 magicka, his ward will negate up to 300 points of magicka damage, and so on.

Edit: @Eldiran: haha! it seems we had the same idea Glad to see some support on this.

You're right, I forgot that, I think they do. I was just want to make sure there's some strategy involved in using them rather than just cast and forget.

I really like the idea of wards being able to dynamically take damage, but then the other versions become redundant. IMO, the spells should be replaced if this is implemented (no point in having stronger versions, IMO it's better to scale according to skill, magicka, and perks). I also still think there should be a mild constant drain just for having one on. Maybe a one-time moderate casting cost, then a low drain except when you get struck?

[Frank Firefly]

sorry to interrupt, but could any of you chaps inform me as to whether the 'mage armor' perk is present in the mod?

[helliehexx]

You're right, I forgot that, I think they do. I was just want to make sure there's some strategy involved in using them rather than just cast and forget.

I really like the idea of wards being able to dynamically take damage, but then the other versions become redundant. IMO, the spells should be replaced if this is implemented (no point in having stronger versions, IMO it's better to scale according to skill, magicka, and perks). I also still think there should be a mild constant drain just for having one on. Maybe a one-time moderate casting cost, then a low drain except when you get struck?

I agree that there must be some tactics when using wards. In my opinion it would be neat if there was some kind of "timed blocking". Imagine this: you see a spell coming your way.

Case1:
If you cast a ward JUST when the spell is about to hit you, then your magicka pool decreases by a certain amount (proportional to the spell damage) and that's it.
Cast 2:
If you cast a ward too soon, the ward consumes magicka at some fixed while you are waiting to receive the spell and, when you finally block it, then your magicka pool also decreases to account for that (again proportionally to the spell damage).

So, basically, this system rewards timed blocking because it allows you the avoid wards' constant magicka drain.
To implement it, it would be necessary to script wards so that they only drain magicka constantly IF, in the next 0.5 seconds of being cast, the ward doesn't block any spell.

This is an ambitious request though and wards need much less to be useful. If they can be fully effective inmediately and only drain magicka when blocking spells, well, that would be more than enough to make them enjoyable (and useful).

[Patrick Gordon]

@tiny lampe: agreed!

@Tiris: Mage Armor is replaced in v1.3. I believe it returns in 2.0, but with different effects.

I really like the idea of wards being able to dynamically take damage, but then the other versions become redundant.

Perhaps how much damage is absorbed could be determined by the strength of the Ward.

Ex:
Lesser Ward -- converts 50% Health damage to Magicka damage
Steadfast Ward -- converts 75% Health damage to Magicka damage
Lesser Ward -- converts 90% Health damage to Magicka damage


And dual casting (or double casting) could reduce the Magicka cost.

Ex: when hit by 100 damage:
Lesser Ward -- block 50 health damage, costs 50 Magicka
2 Lesser Wards -- block 50 health damage, costs 25 Magicka
Dual-cast Lesser Ward -- block 50 health damage, costs 19 Magicka (accounting for Balanced Magic's increased dual cast effectiveness)

Steadfast Ward -- block 75 health damage, costs 75 Magicka
2 Steadfast Wards -- block 75 health damage, costs 37 Magicka
Dual-cast Steadfast Ward -- block 75 health damage, costs 29 Magicka

etc.

[benjamin corsini]

Bug report!

Upgrading from 1.3 to 2.0, Magicka costs have skyrocketed. Shield costs 295 Magicka, for example. Magelight costs 240. Ice Spike costs 132. Similar inflation occurs with all the spells, my skills vary from 20 - 50 with a few perks here and there. Tested with and without armor.

EDIT: Okay... this is weird and interesting... apparently this is something that happens with both Balanced Magic 1.3 and 2.0. However, it is caused by being after some other mod in the load order, and can be solved by putting Balanced Magic early in the load order.

I'd try to narrow down which mod caused it, but I have a ton.