Hey, it's yet another magic overhaul! Aren't you excited?


MINIMALIST MAGIC OVERHAUL (MMO)

OVERVIEW

Minimalist Magic Overhaul attempts to rebalance and "fix" the Skyrim magic experience in the most unintrusive way possible. Rather than making sweeping changes to the way magic works in the game, specific problems have been targeted and addressed (hopefully) in a way that works unobtrusively and seamlessly with the vanilla magic system. Several of the changes in MMO take the form of bugfixes; many others are what I would consider to be annoyance fixes. The remainder of the changes are attempts to put the various magic-user playstyles viable on roughly equal footing.

HOW IS MMO DIFFERENT FROM OTHER MAGIC OVERHAULS?

MMO is different from the other overhauls I'm aware of in a couple of ways. First, MMO is not an attempt to remake Oblivion's magic system or Morrowind's magic system, or create some new mechanic for casting and scaling magic. I felt that Skyrim's magic system was basically fun, but with a few key flaws. Perk trees are altered as minimally as possible, and there are relatively few new spells added (currently only feather spells). Second, MMO does not drastically increase the power of spellcasting in Skyrim. Every other magic overhaul I have seen increases spellpower across the board by at least 100% at the top end; while it is arguable that Destruction needed this boost, other magic schools certainly did not, and a huge power boost actually makes some schools (Illusion, for instance) arguably overpowered. Rather than increasing spellpower across the board and amplifying the power of some game systems that were already fine to improve the ones that were weak, instead, targeted adjustments have been made to improve specific areas of spellcasting that are weak or tedious in the vanilla system, most notably: Necromancy, protective spell durations, pure (unarmored) mage viability, Illusion magic play in dungeons (i.e., around undead/automatons), master-level spell casting times, and Destruction finishing perks.

DETAILS

MMO is broken up into five ESPs: they are all optional, although they are intended to be used together. In addition, tejon's Simple Skyrim Spell Scaling Solution is strongly recommended. I have balanced MMO to work with it, and tSSSSS goes a long way to further improve the utility of (particularly) Destruction spells. I do plan to eventually release a sixth ESP that overhauls Enchanting and Items as tSSSSS does, but for the time being, tSSSSS does an excellent job and works well with MMO. Below are the nitty-gritty details for the five MMO modules.

MMOAlterationChanges.esp

MMOConjurationChanges.esp

MMODestructionChanges.esp

MMOIllusionChanges.esp

MMORestorationChanges.esp

INSTALLATION

Use your favorite mod manager (recommended!) or copy the ESPs to your Skyrim/Data folder. A new game is recommended, but not required. Be aware that if you install MMO on an old game, if your character already had the Recovery Perk, you will need to remove the perk then re-add it using the console to get the benefits of the new pure mage version.

COMPATIBILITY

This mod alters most of the spell school trees and many of the spells and effects. Any other mods that alter these are likely to cause conflicts. Mods that alter dual-casting values will be compatible (so long as that's all they change), and mods that add spells (but do not touch perk trees or existing spells) are likely to work as well. I suspect that Mighty Magick's smooth spell power scaling module will work fine with MMO too, although I have not tested it (and please don't bug me about it if it doesn't work). Finally, you do not need (and should not use) Conjuration & Summoning Fixes with MMO -- MMO already contains these changes.

UPDATES

I am pretty busy in real life, and I am also fairly new to modding, so be aware that some time may elapse between updates; also, there are some things I just won't know how to do or will be unwilling to change for design philosophy reasons. Sorry about that! But I have tested MMO while developing it, and I believe it to be stable and reasonably bug-free as is.

FAQs/SOME DESIGN RATIONALE

Q: Why didn't you alter the Dual Casting cost/power?
A: There's no easy way that I'm aware of to have such a change affect only Destruction spells. While I agree that Dual-Casting is not a great deal, mana-wise or DPS-wise, for Destruction, it is a very powerful tool elsewhere, especially for Illusion spells. Other overhauls that change dual casting power to (for instance) 3.0x make low-level Illusion spells extremely powerful; for instance a simple fury spell would be able to frenzy level 18 targets when dual cast, and with the skill-level 40 perk Kindred Mage, an illusion caster would be able to frenzy level 48 (!!!) NPCs with a spell that can be purchased in Riverwood. When combined with the changes made to Illusion here, such a change in dual casting power would make most encounters trivial.

Q: Why didn't you add smooth scaling based on skill level?
A: It's something I'm still considering adding in an optional ESP. But for now, the idea was to keep as close to the vanilla experience as possible while closing some holes and fixing some problems. Smooth scaling would change magic pretty significantly from vanilla.

Q: Why add Feather spells? Why not add Unlock or Fortify X or Mark/Recall?
A: Feather was easy to do and seemed like an uncontroversial addition (and I kept the power of the spell at what seemed to be a reasonable level). Unlock has the power to negate an entire skill and perk tree with a single spell. Fortify spells have lots of potential problems and seem out of place in the Skyrim system. There's already a good Mark/Recall mod out there if you need one of those. I might conceivably add a couple of other spells that seem uncontroversial (Fade Other, Shield Other, that sort of thing), but for now, let's see how this works.

Q: Where do I get the Feather spells?
A: They have been added to vendor/container leveled lists and should show up in treasure chests and on vendors like any other spell. A vendor refresh will likely be required before they do show up on existing games, however.

KNOWN ISSUES

-Alchemy and Enchantment strength are affected by the Pure Mage perk.
-Runes currently do not have the ability to trigger Deep Freeze/Intense Flames/Shocked Silence.

CHANGELOG

v1.1a
-----
-Reverted Pure Mage fix. It caused more problems than it solved. Pure mage *will* affect potion/enchantment strength until I can come up with a better solution.
-Fixed runes being set off as soon as they were cast. Unfortunately, to do this, I had to make it so runes cannot trigger Deep Freeze/Intense Flames/Shocked Silence.

V1.1
----
-Fixed Pure Mage so that it would not affect Enchantment/Alchemy strength.

DOWNLOAD

Skyrim Nexus at: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=15324

I really like what you did with necromancy. Now there is a reason to use corpses besides roleplaying factor!

Other fixes seem a bit minimal: which is shocking considering the mods name it appears i feel skyrim's magic system more 'broken' than you do.

However, i do agree that universal dual casting changes break as much as they fix. Hopefully some middle ground can be found or someone can make a mod that only affects destruction dual casting.

Your title is very loaded. Some people are going think about multiplayer rather magic.

Thanks! It's less that I think the skyrim system is fine as-is than that there are already some good overhauls out there that really change things fundamentally and make mages substantially more powerful (haven't used it yet myself, but Mighty Magick looks great if you're looking for something that turns magic into a powerhouse). I did do my most recent playthrough as a pure mage (no armor or anything) on Expert difficulty, and found it to actually be a very satisfying difficulty level -- not easy, but not very hard either. By comparison, my first playthrough was with a stealth archer on Master, and I found that to be depressingly easy (broken). So I just wanted to fix a few shortcomings that I felt like the magic system has, and maybe for a next project, I'll nerf the crap out of physical damage and stealth.

Also, I do have an idea about how to change dual casting power/efficiency for just destruction spells -- it just requires a bunch of work and a couple workarounds. So maybe I'll do that for version 2, although if I do, it'll be a subtle tweak rather than a significant boost.


Yeah that was a little joke on my part. Sorry if I misled you.

Ahhh, that's always the problem I saw in the game. Not that magic was weak - but the others, ranged and melee, were too strong. >.< Master difficulty is significantly more challenging and actually 'is' a master difficulty when you consider magic. It seems much better balanced in the game.

Mod looks good - I can't comment too much, though, as I don't play outside of testing nowadays.

@jeffreybar:is your mod retroactive ? If I have already taken the Recovery and Stability perks, will it be modified so that I get the different versions your mod gives ?

Haven't tested Stability for that, but I know Recovery will not be retroactive. But either/both problems can be fixed by using the console to remove and then re-add those perks after the mod has been installed.

To refresh Recovery Rank 2, hit ` to get to the console, then type:
player.removeperk 000581f5
player.addperk 000581f5

To refresh Recovery Rank 1, type this into the console:
player.removeperk 000581f4
player.addperk 000581f4

To refresh Stability, type this into the console:
player.removeperk 000581fc
player.addperk 000581fc

(obviously, only perform these steps if you actually have the perk in question)

That should re-load your character with the updated perk. Let me know if there are any problems.

Edit: one change to the above instructions -- if you have both Recovery Ranks, you should remove them both before adding them back. So remove Rank 2, then remove Rank 1, then add Rank 1, then add Rank 2.

Hey jeffreybar, just noticed you were online, so a quick question: Would you recommend I load your mods before or after tSSSSS? Your mod is not on the BOSS masterlist yet (I reported it in the BOSS thread already), so thought I would ask.

MMO should be loaded after tSSSSS -- there isn't a lot of overlap, but both mods do mess with the Destruction finishers, specifically, so to get the new ones, MMO needs to load after tSSSSS.

New version is up on the Nexus -- fixed a bug where the power of enchantments/alchemy effects were being increased by the new Pure Mage perk.

Only thing I See wrong with this is the fact that Dark Influence wouldn't be available to level 81s who have already used up their Perks...

Maybe time for a http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=3665 and maybe http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=1943 if you want to diversify.

I am quite liking the combination of tSSSSS and MMODestructionChanges, I am avoiding the other esps for the moment as I have had minimal interaction with the other magic schools, save restoration, and destruction has been the school where I have put most of my focus up until now.

If I find the other schools lackluster on my mage playthrough I'll add more of your esps. I used to use Balanced Magicka Beta 5, but switched over to your mod and tSSSSS after reading your design rationale. I was unaware of the effect improved dual casting had on low level spells (not what I wanted from a magic overhaul). I don't feel that magic needs to be made more powerful necessarily, but that its overall "usefulness" needed improvement.

Glad you're liking it. And on that topic, I have a survey question for MMO users and likely MMO users: if a high level perk (say, 90 skill with a prereq of Impact) could be added to the Destruction tree that increased dual casting damage for Destruction spells only, is that something you would want? I like to think of MMO as the "hard mode" magic overhaul, and I don't want to ramp up mage power too much, but since the inefficiency of dual-cast destruction spells is a common complaint, I am considering adding this change for the next big release.

I like this idea personally. Improving efficiency of spells is ok, but not to the point where, as you have put it, it makes encounters "trivial".

Thanks for the tips about how to reset perks like stability for your mod.

Your mod seems really good and I enjoy it so far, however I need your help about some bugs I found:

1) I am not seeing the +15 fire/frost/shock in my active effect list, even though I do have 580 armor from a 3 mage armor perk ebonyflesh (I guess that means the armor boost part of the bonus works ?). I didn’t have any mage armor perk before your mod, but you tempted me: I invested 3 perks in mage armor after I installed your mod. Is there a way to confirm if my +15 fire/frost/shock is being applied?

2) I am not seeing the +20% increased damage from 2 ranks of “pure mage” in the damage of my listed spells (even though I have wearing no armor: tested this before and after the perk while my character was naked). Any way to confirm it has been applied ?

3) Small text bug: Dragon hide now says it has a “100/sec” cost, while it shouldn’t have the /sec part

A question (not a bug):

4) Does your mage armor bonus also apply to dragonhide ?

1) The bonuses are there. I decided not to include them in the active effects list because they would have taken up a lot of space as coded (each +5 is done individually for each resist...so up to 9 effects clogging up the active effects list). I might change how it's coded later so that it can all be combined, but it's a pretty low priority item. If you want to confirm that the effects are actually active, strip your character naked, cast a "flesh" spell, go into the console (`), and type:

player.getav fireresist
player.getav frostresist
player.getav electricresist

If you have level 1 mage armor, you should see values of 5.0 for each, 10.0 each for level 2 mage armor, and 15.0 each for level 3 mage armor.

2) That is more puzzling. It should show up on the damage values, and does on my test character just fine.

3) Thanks. I'll fix that for the next update.

4) Yes.

Edit: Could you post or send me your load order so I can try to figure out why the pure mage perk isn't working for you?

1) you're right that the resistances are being applied when a "flesh" spell is casted, however the value I am getting is 18.15 instead of 15 (difference = +21%). When no "flesh" spell is active and my character is naked, I get 0.00. Also, I have boots that give 56 fire resistance (which they still show) but the active screen says they are giving 67 fire res (+19,6%: the same seems to apply with other enchants I have on my equipment). That's kinda strange, but I guess it's not a big problem (or maybe it's supposed to work that way). I wonder if it is related to problem #2, since both +21% and +19,6% are very close to the +20% from "pure mage"

2) Update on problem #2 ("pure mage" perk not showing increased damage on spells numbers): here's my load order:

I took a screenshot of mods and plugins in Nexus Mod Manager:

[img]http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/2583/loadorder.png[/img]

From where I am it's kinda late, but be sure I'll read your answer tomorrow !

edit: just thought about something: do I need to have your destruction esp loaded in order to the the bonus from "pure mage" to apply to my destruction spells ? Additionnal detail: actual damage from some destruction spells while naked with the load order prestented here and maxed destruction skills is (with and without "pure mage"): blizzard: 30 pts, 10 sec, incinerate: 105 pts, lighning: 112.

Yeah, that 21% is from Pure Mage -- there's going to be some rounding error (as there are if multiple power effects are applied in vanilla). Pure mage also seems to be affecting Mage Armor (I get 132 Armor naked from Oakflesh with level 1 pure mage) -- I'm going to call that intentional for now, although I may change it. So the short answer appears to be that the Pure Mage effects are actually being applied, but for some reason are not showing up in the spell descriptions. I'm not sure how that happened; I definitely had them showing up in the item descriptions when I was doing my testing. Might have messed them up when I fixed the issue with Pure Mage affecting enchantment/alchemy strength.

Anyway, I'll see if I can fix it for next release. It definitely should be showing up in spell descriptions and it's not.

Edit: Yeah, the problem was introduced in patch 1.1. If you use MMOAlterationChanges from the version 1 release, the power change will show up in the description (but of course the bug with Pure Mage affecting enchantments/alchemy will be there). I'll need to figure out a better way to detect whether the player is enchanting/performing alchemy than the check I used -- it could be a while, though. I spent all day yesterday on precisely that problem and haven't figured it out yet.

Alright, seems like a good secondary effect from Pure Mage: another reason not to go armored, since in vanilla there were no reason (other than RP) not to go fully armored.

I am not a modder so what I'm about to say might be impossible, but maybe it would be possible to apply +20% spell power to each magic school individually instead of apply to all ? Then you wwouldn't have to check if enchantement/alchemy is being used ?

Another option for Pure Mage would be to change the description to something like "Boost all the mage's abilities by 20%": then, it would be normal to boost enchantment since it is a mage ability, and alchemy because it's the closest thing ever to a mage ability (it was in oblivion and alchemy is at the frontier between stealth and magic skills)

In any case, I look forward to play on version 1.2 and see the Pure mage's effects in my displayed numbers.

Unfortunately, enchantments have schools as well as spells. So applying them individually to schools would still affect enchantments.

If you're fine with Pure Mage affecting enchanting/alchemy, by all means use version 1; aside from that change, the two versions are identical.

The change to dragonhide seems like a massive nerf.

Originally, it provided protection equivalent to 567 armor in a fashion which is used independently of other armor (instead of adding, it reduces incoming damage and then other armor applies against this reduced damage)

I can see removing the ability to stack with other armor, but note also that mages have low health to start out with so 567 independent armor was not unbalanced in any case that I am familiar with.

Was reducing the protection effect from 567 armor to 150 armor as well as removing the independence from other armor intentional? (To me this does not seem like a "minimalist" change...)

Dragonhide is a tough spell to deal with. If you look at it simply by looking at unperked numbers, yeah, it's a nerf -- 150 armor instead of (effectively) 567 armor is a huge difference. But remember that dragonhide only lasted for 30 seconds and had a 3 second casting time. This made it effectively unusable in most situations. And furthermore, to have dragonhide, you need 100 alteration, and if you've got 100 alteration, you've probably got the Mage Armor perks, so instead of being 567 armor for 30 seconds with a 3 second cast time, the MMO version of Dragonhide effectively becomes 600 armor for 180 seconds with a .5 second cast time.

This is actually the second version of Dragonhide I made. The first version was closer to the original -- I dropped the duration to 20 seconds, but raised the mitigation from 80% to 95%, and reduced the casting time from 3 seconds to .5 seconds. The idea behind this was to have an improved dragonhide in a minimalist way rather than a completely changed dragonhide. But I playtested it for a bit and found it to really just not be that useful -- switching out spells for a few seconds of near-invulnerability, then switching healing or whatnot back in made it tedious, and avoiding tedium was a major design goal. And in order to make it balanced, that dragonhide needed a high magicka cost, which I found myself almost never having when I needed it.

So yeah, the dragonhide change is not minimalist, strictly speaking, but I don't think it's fair to call it a nerf either -- unless you're playing a spellsword in armor, in which case, yeah, it's a nerf. But making unarmored mages viable was another design goal, so I can live with that.

bah, double post. netbook keyboards = fail.

Thanks for the tip, I went back to version 1.0 and I'm pretty happy (I prefer to see the effects of what's happening on screen and I also think that the bonus on alchemy and enchanting is cool).

I really like your mod + TSSSSS, since it gave me a reason to invest in apprentice/adept/expert/master destruction perks: without your mod, it was pointless to invest in those (you would simple enchant your way to 0 cost). I also love the fact that mage armor is now a viable perk and I love your new Pure Mage perk.

I agree with your argument on dragonhide: much more useful now.

However, I think I might have found what might be bug: A ring that I had enchanted before I installed your mod and TSSSSS now has +89 magicka, but when I enchant a new one, it arrives in my inventory with +75 magicka. The same numbers apply to health: can't go any higher than 75. I thought it was the corpus enchanter perk (that boosts magicka and health when enchanting) that was disabled somehow, so I used to the console to remove and re-add it: no change.

However, the rest of the enchanting effects seem to be behaving normally: I have received a small boost on the Fortify Skill enchantments (like +37% stronger destruction instead of +35%) which is nice.

Is this the lower magicka/health effect intended nerf or a bug ?

Is it possible that it's another mod doing this? None of the MMO modules currently released touch any enchanting effects, enchanting perks, or items. Unfortunately, I'm not at my desktop to replicate this right now, but that would definitely count as a weird side-effect, given that MMO shouldn't be getting anywhere near your enchants. tSSSSS, on the other hand, does touch enchants, but that's not my mod, so I don't have any power over its development. Try disabling just tSSSSS and see if that fixes the problem, and if not, try disabling just MMO and re-enabling tSSSSS and trying again, and let me know if the problem still persists with just MMO running. If the problem seems to be in tSSSSS, I'm pretty sure tejon has a thread for his mod in this forum.

I agree on v1 vs. v1.1. I had hoped to get a fix for the problem out soon, but it's turning out to be tougher to fix than I had hoped, so I'm probably just going to revert the current version to v1 -- the v1.1 fix causes more problems than it solves.