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Update: This mod is outdated. Please use Strategy Master's updated version of this mod found here:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12466
When I first played Oblivion as a mage I found that magic was way too underpowered and it was very difficult to survive as a pure mage. I then turned to a popular mod, Mighty Magick. That just flipped it around and made magic much too powerful. This is my attempt to find the middle ground between MM and vanilla.
This mod overhauls the magic system of Oblivion to create a more balanced, diverse, and fun system. It adds new effects, new spells, and more in order to enhance the game for mages and anyone else who thinks magic is too weak.
The main focus of this mod is to make spellcasting stronger but not overpowered. To that effect, I have decreased the cost of most magic effects and increased the power of their spell counterparts to reflect that change. To maintain balance, I have not touched the spell mastery limits.
* General Changes:
Changes some game settings: armor now penalizes your magical abilities more if you wear more equipment but penalizes less if you only wear a few small objects. Your magicka regeneration rate is slower at the beginning but increases a lot faster at higher willpowers. Magic projectiles are faster and goes further but are still not at the speed of light. Ranged and area spells cost slightly less than before. NPCs also have higher magicka to compensate for their stupidity. Most of these settings are configurable in the customization file.
Have you ever had trouble looking for the right spell just because you couldn't remember what it was called? The spell sorter feature sorts your spells so that they are displayed by school and mastery level and are not just thrown everywhere haphazardly. All spells have a letter and number in parenthesis in front of their names such as "(D3) Fireball". The "D" stands for Destruction and "3" means that it's a journeyman spell.
Now there are many "circle" spells which deals damage to all enemies around you in an area. Surrounded? No problem! Cast Burning Spiral and blast all your problems away.
Skill and attribute based spells (Absorb, Fortify, Drain, Damage) are now grouped together so that they can be used in more situations. Some are particularly designed to be used against warriors, archers, or mages. Many of these spells are particularly useful for battlemages.
I've also added magic sneak attack bonuses. Now it's actually worth it for an assassin to practice magic other than illusion. The bonus damage scales with your sneak mastery level: Novice 0%, Apprentice 25%, Journeyman 50%, Expert 75%, Master 100%.
Most positive buff spells have longer duration so that you don't have to constantly recast shield spells and the like during battle.
Included in the mod is the option to have your skill level increase rate scale with the magicka cost of the spells you cast so that higher costing spells will raise your skill level more than lower costing ones. This is to prevent you from needing to spam low cost spells to level your magic skills at higher levels. There are also many other options you can select from the configuration file included with the mod. These options include the ability to give all target spells a small AOE to improve aiming in third person as well as the ability to change the durations of all summon spells to a set, constant amount.
* Enchanting, Spellmaking, and Alchemy:
Enchanting has been changed so that you can make more powerful enchantments. Soul gems have higher enchantment values than before and weapon enchantment limits have been raised.
Constant effect enchantments are no longer ridiculously underpowered. Certain effects (such as reflect damage) can now be enchanted upon items at the enchantment altar. But they haved been balanced so as not to be overpowering.
A few effects can no longer be made at spellmaking and enchanting so as to retain balance. Charm spells, for example, can no longer be made into new spells so as to prevent the player from making 100pts for 3 seconds spells and to retain some use in persuasion. Chameleon has been removed as well so that you can't enchant all your armor pieces and achieve 100% chameleon. These spells can still be bought in the game but can no longer be exploited so much.
Alchemy now govern how many potions you can drink as well. At novice level you can only drink 3 potions while master level has the additional perk of being able to drink 5 potions at once.
Most of these changes described here can be edited in the configuration file or via plugins included in the download.
* Conjuration:
Conjuration has been changed so that the number of creatures you can summon depends on your mastery of Conjuration so that you can summon only one creature at novice level and five creatures at master level. I have added some spells that summon multiple creatures at once to reflect this. You can set this setting in the configuration file.
Bound item spells have also been improved. Since you're binding Daedra into the form of armor, you should be able to tell it what form the armor should take. Now, you can! Bound Armor will now become light or heavy armor depending on which skill is higher and they shall have appropriate stats to match. Bound bow also summons an infinite supply of arrows for you although each arrow you fire burns a small amount of your magicka. All bound armor and weapons have useful enchantments as well that increase in potency as your conjuration level rises.
Now you can recast the same summoning spell to summon the same creature multiple times. This works for all standard and custom summoning spells including those made at the spellmaking altar and Shivering Isles ones.
Conjurers can light up those dark dungeons just as well as illusionists. There's a new bound torch spell for apprentices and a will-o-the-wisp summoning spell for journeymen which calls forth a will-o-the-wisp that follows you around, lighting up your surroundings. The will-o-the-wisp does not fight at all and doesn't count towards your summoning limit.
* Mysticism:
Absorb spells have been moved to Mysticism like they were in Morrowind so that Mysticism is no longer a useless skill. A plugin is included to return it back to Restoration if you so choose.
Telekinesis spells have been completely overhauled! Now they are very useful utility spells that can open chests, open doors, pickpocket, and pick up items. You can also use them during combat to push enemies back or pull them close by pressing the left or right mouse key right after casting.
Now you can destroy summoned creatures by casting dispel spells onto them. These spells deal massive damage to all summoned creatures so you can vanquish them in a few hits.
Mystics now have the ability to defeat other mages easily with the Spellfire spells. These spells when cast on an enemy mage will damage the mage's health whenever he loses magicka. They are most harmful when used on pure mages who cast a lot of spells or when used in combination with Damage or Drain Magicka.
Mystics also gain the ability to teleport to different places. New, long distance teleportation spells include Circumvention, Mark/Recall, Divine Intervention, and Daedric Intervention. Extrication allows you to teleport to your last exterior location so you can easily return to the entrance of a dungeon after clearing it. Mark/Recall allows you to place a marker at your current location and teleport to that mark any time you wish. There are separate markers for Tamriel and the Shivering Isles. Divine Intervention teleports you to the nearest chapel and Daedric Intervention takes you to the nearest Daedric Shrine at the cost of some health points. The Nine will not help criminals on the run from the law; the Daedra do not care whom they help as long as you pay the price in blood. Besides the long range teleportation spells, there are also a few short ranged ones. Assassin's Rush will quickly move you behind an enemy's back. Blink teleports you a short distance in the direction you're looking. Swap allows you to switch places with a target NPC or creature, alive or dead.
Those highly skilled in Mysticism can now access the Spellmaking and Enchanting Altars of the Arcane University no matter where they are through special spells crafted for just this purpose. The Mages Guild encourage this practice in hopes of greater profits but intentionally made these spells hard to cast in order to reserve its services only for those deserving of them. These spells are sold by Raminus Polus at the Arcane University.
I've also added some spells that allow you to use part of your soul to recharge your weapon. These recharge spells will expend 25% of your maximum health each cast. One cast is enough to recharge your weapon to the highest charge that spell can achieve. The novice spell can only recharge up to 30%, apprentice up to 40%, journeyman up to 50%, expert up to 60%, and master up to 75%. None of these spells are able to recharge a weapon fully so soul gems will still retain their usefulness.
* Destruction:
Elemental spells now have unique effects on enemies. Fire spells have a chance of staggering enemies or pushing them away. Frost spells can freeze them solid for a duration or slow them down. Shock spells have a chance of bouncing to another enemy at half power. These effects work for any fire/frost/shock spells even if they are from other mods or made at the spellmaking altar. These effects also work on the player so beware when you're fighting against enemy mages. You can adjust the chances of these effects occuring though the configuration file.
Damage Health effects also have an added ability. Now, Damage Health spells will nullify any restored health on a target for up to 8 times its magnitude. For example, if an enemy casts a Restore Health 20 pts spell while affected with a Damage Health 5 pts for 10 seconds, all restored points will be nullified. But if the spell heals 50 pts instead, only 40 restored points will be nullified and he'll still restore 10 pts of health. This effect is especially deadly when used with Drain Health spells. Vampires are not affected by the effect. Since Damage Health spells removes life force and undead are the opposite of life, they will regain health from such spells instead.
This mod features a brand new spell effect, Poison Damage! These spells takes several seconds to go into full effect. The damage starts out low at first but increases quickly. These spells cost more than elemental spells but enemies are generally less resistant to it (notable exceptions are Redguards and Argonians). They also have the potential to damage enemies' attributes. This effect can be used at the spellmaking altar to create custom spells.
Drain spells are actually useful now! Drain Fatigue completely knocks an enemy out for a short period if their fatigue is low enough. Drain Health can be used to instantly kill an enemy whose health is below a certain limit. Drain Health has been removed from spellmaking and enchanting to prevent explotation of this effect with Drain Health 300pts on Touch custom spells.
There are also a few new Rapidfire spells so you can spew out a constant stream of weaker fireballs rather than just fire a few powerful ones.
* Alteration:
Burden spells can now do what they're supposed to do: hold an enemy in place for a duration. They can now root an enemy to the ground for a short amount of time if the enemy is weak enough.
All feather spells now prevent those affected from taking fall damage if their encumbrance is at least 100 points below the limit. Burden spells can be used to nullify that effect.
New repair spells with four levels allow mages skilled in Alteration to restore the durability of their weapons. Less skilled mages can only repair mundane weapons and only to a certain point while the experts in the field can fully repair any weapon and masters can even improve its condition above full repair.
Levitation comes to Oblivion! A group of mages from Morrowind brought it with them to Cyrodiil and have taught their secret to a few select members of the mages guild. These amazing spells allow you to take the battle to the skies and fire at enemies down below. Comes with full collision and can be used during spellmaking. There is an optional levitation penalty adjustable in the configuration file that stunts your magicka and/or silences you while levitating.
Levitation's not the only things those mages brought with them. Now the new Jump effect allows you to leap higher than you've ever gone before!
* Restoration
Now roleplaying a cleric or paladin is as easy as selecting Restoration as a major skill. Since Restore Health restores life energy and undead are the opposite of life, they will take damage from these spells instead. As such, all Restore Health spells (including custom and modded) can now damage the undead.
* Illusion:
Level-based spells (Calm, Frenzy, etc) are now twice as potent and go up to level 50 rather than 25 so illusion's actually useful at higher levels. You can adjust this value in the configuration file to make illusion spells stronger or weaker according to your personal tastes.
Vampire hunters rejoyce! Now concentrated light spells (cast on touch or target) can be used to deal damage to vampires proportionate to the concentration of light.
New spells can be found at spell merchants in the cities and Mages Guilds. The Arcane University holds most of the more powerful new spells. A list of all of the added spells and their locations and the configuration text file can both be found in the folder "Supreme Magicka Files" (or in your Data folder if it's in OMOD format). Also includes many optional plugins such as support for Shivering Isles and a standalone plugin allowing you to make custom enchanted staffs.
REQUIRES OBSE v9e or higher and Oblivion patch v1.2 or higher.
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12466
When I first played Oblivion as a mage I found that magic was way too underpowered and it was very difficult to survive as a pure mage. I then turned to a popular mod, Mighty Magick. That just flipped it around and made magic much too powerful. This is my attempt to find the middle ground between MM and vanilla.
This mod overhauls the magic system of Oblivion to create a more balanced, diverse, and fun system. It adds new effects, new spells, and more in order to enhance the game for mages and anyone else who thinks magic is too weak.
The main focus of this mod is to make spellcasting stronger but not overpowered. To that effect, I have decreased the cost of most magic effects and increased the power of their spell counterparts to reflect that change. To maintain balance, I have not touched the spell mastery limits.
* General Changes:
Changes some game settings: armor now penalizes your magical abilities more if you wear more equipment but penalizes less if you only wear a few small objects. Your magicka regeneration rate is slower at the beginning but increases a lot faster at higher willpowers. Magic projectiles are faster and goes further but are still not at the speed of light. Ranged and area spells cost slightly less than before. NPCs also have higher magicka to compensate for their stupidity. Most of these settings are configurable in the customization file.
Have you ever had trouble looking for the right spell just because you couldn't remember what it was called? The spell sorter feature sorts your spells so that they are displayed by school and mastery level and are not just thrown everywhere haphazardly. All spells have a letter and number in parenthesis in front of their names such as "(D3) Fireball". The "D" stands for Destruction and "3" means that it's a journeyman spell.
Now there are many "circle" spells which deals damage to all enemies around you in an area. Surrounded? No problem! Cast Burning Spiral and blast all your problems away.
Skill and attribute based spells (Absorb, Fortify, Drain, Damage) are now grouped together so that they can be used in more situations. Some are particularly designed to be used against warriors, archers, or mages. Many of these spells are particularly useful for battlemages.
I've also added magic sneak attack bonuses. Now it's actually worth it for an assassin to practice magic other than illusion. The bonus damage scales with your sneak mastery level: Novice 0%, Apprentice 25%, Journeyman 50%, Expert 75%, Master 100%.
Most positive buff spells have longer duration so that you don't have to constantly recast shield spells and the like during battle.
Included in the mod is the option to have your skill level increase rate scale with the magicka cost of the spells you cast so that higher costing spells will raise your skill level more than lower costing ones. This is to prevent you from needing to spam low cost spells to level your magic skills at higher levels. There are also many other options you can select from the configuration file included with the mod. These options include the ability to give all target spells a small AOE to improve aiming in third person as well as the ability to change the durations of all summon spells to a set, constant amount.
* Enchanting, Spellmaking, and Alchemy:
Enchanting has been changed so that you can make more powerful enchantments. Soul gems have higher enchantment values than before and weapon enchantment limits have been raised.
Constant effect enchantments are no longer ridiculously underpowered. Certain effects (such as reflect damage) can now be enchanted upon items at the enchantment altar. But they haved been balanced so as not to be overpowering.
A few effects can no longer be made at spellmaking and enchanting so as to retain balance. Charm spells, for example, can no longer be made into new spells so as to prevent the player from making 100pts for 3 seconds spells and to retain some use in persuasion. Chameleon has been removed as well so that you can't enchant all your armor pieces and achieve 100% chameleon. These spells can still be bought in the game but can no longer be exploited so much.
Alchemy now govern how many potions you can drink as well. At novice level you can only drink 3 potions while master level has the additional perk of being able to drink 5 potions at once.
Most of these changes described here can be edited in the configuration file or via plugins included in the download.
* Conjuration:
Conjuration has been changed so that the number of creatures you can summon depends on your mastery of Conjuration so that you can summon only one creature at novice level and five creatures at master level. I have added some spells that summon multiple creatures at once to reflect this. You can set this setting in the configuration file.
Bound item spells have also been improved. Since you're binding Daedra into the form of armor, you should be able to tell it what form the armor should take. Now, you can! Bound Armor will now become light or heavy armor depending on which skill is higher and they shall have appropriate stats to match. Bound bow also summons an infinite supply of arrows for you although each arrow you fire burns a small amount of your magicka. All bound armor and weapons have useful enchantments as well that increase in potency as your conjuration level rises.
Now you can recast the same summoning spell to summon the same creature multiple times. This works for all standard and custom summoning spells including those made at the spellmaking altar and Shivering Isles ones.
Conjurers can light up those dark dungeons just as well as illusionists. There's a new bound torch spell for apprentices and a will-o-the-wisp summoning spell for journeymen which calls forth a will-o-the-wisp that follows you around, lighting up your surroundings. The will-o-the-wisp does not fight at all and doesn't count towards your summoning limit.
* Mysticism:
Absorb spells have been moved to Mysticism like they were in Morrowind so that Mysticism is no longer a useless skill. A plugin is included to return it back to Restoration if you so choose.
Telekinesis spells have been completely overhauled! Now they are very useful utility spells that can open chests, open doors, pickpocket, and pick up items. You can also use them during combat to push enemies back or pull them close by pressing the left or right mouse key right after casting.
Now you can destroy summoned creatures by casting dispel spells onto them. These spells deal massive damage to all summoned creatures so you can vanquish them in a few hits.
Mystics now have the ability to defeat other mages easily with the Spellfire spells. These spells when cast on an enemy mage will damage the mage's health whenever he loses magicka. They are most harmful when used on pure mages who cast a lot of spells or when used in combination with Damage or Drain Magicka.
Mystics also gain the ability to teleport to different places. New, long distance teleportation spells include Circumvention, Mark/Recall, Divine Intervention, and Daedric Intervention. Extrication allows you to teleport to your last exterior location so you can easily return to the entrance of a dungeon after clearing it. Mark/Recall allows you to place a marker at your current location and teleport to that mark any time you wish. There are separate markers for Tamriel and the Shivering Isles. Divine Intervention teleports you to the nearest chapel and Daedric Intervention takes you to the nearest Daedric Shrine at the cost of some health points. The Nine will not help criminals on the run from the law; the Daedra do not care whom they help as long as you pay the price in blood. Besides the long range teleportation spells, there are also a few short ranged ones. Assassin's Rush will quickly move you behind an enemy's back. Blink teleports you a short distance in the direction you're looking. Swap allows you to switch places with a target NPC or creature, alive or dead.
Those highly skilled in Mysticism can now access the Spellmaking and Enchanting Altars of the Arcane University no matter where they are through special spells crafted for just this purpose. The Mages Guild encourage this practice in hopes of greater profits but intentionally made these spells hard to cast in order to reserve its services only for those deserving of them. These spells are sold by Raminus Polus at the Arcane University.
I've also added some spells that allow you to use part of your soul to recharge your weapon. These recharge spells will expend 25% of your maximum health each cast. One cast is enough to recharge your weapon to the highest charge that spell can achieve. The novice spell can only recharge up to 30%, apprentice up to 40%, journeyman up to 50%, expert up to 60%, and master up to 75%. None of these spells are able to recharge a weapon fully so soul gems will still retain their usefulness.
* Destruction:
Elemental spells now have unique effects on enemies. Fire spells have a chance of staggering enemies or pushing them away. Frost spells can freeze them solid for a duration or slow them down. Shock spells have a chance of bouncing to another enemy at half power. These effects work for any fire/frost/shock spells even if they are from other mods or made at the spellmaking altar. These effects also work on the player so beware when you're fighting against enemy mages. You can adjust the chances of these effects occuring though the configuration file.
Damage Health effects also have an added ability. Now, Damage Health spells will nullify any restored health on a target for up to 8 times its magnitude. For example, if an enemy casts a Restore Health 20 pts spell while affected with a Damage Health 5 pts for 10 seconds, all restored points will be nullified. But if the spell heals 50 pts instead, only 40 restored points will be nullified and he'll still restore 10 pts of health. This effect is especially deadly when used with Drain Health spells. Vampires are not affected by the effect. Since Damage Health spells removes life force and undead are the opposite of life, they will regain health from such spells instead.
This mod features a brand new spell effect, Poison Damage! These spells takes several seconds to go into full effect. The damage starts out low at first but increases quickly. These spells cost more than elemental spells but enemies are generally less resistant to it (notable exceptions are Redguards and Argonians). They also have the potential to damage enemies' attributes. This effect can be used at the spellmaking altar to create custom spells.
Drain spells are actually useful now! Drain Fatigue completely knocks an enemy out for a short period if their fatigue is low enough. Drain Health can be used to instantly kill an enemy whose health is below a certain limit. Drain Health has been removed from spellmaking and enchanting to prevent explotation of this effect with Drain Health 300pts on Touch custom spells.
There are also a few new Rapidfire spells so you can spew out a constant stream of weaker fireballs rather than just fire a few powerful ones.
* Alteration:
Burden spells can now do what they're supposed to do: hold an enemy in place for a duration. They can now root an enemy to the ground for a short amount of time if the enemy is weak enough.
All feather spells now prevent those affected from taking fall damage if their encumbrance is at least 100 points below the limit. Burden spells can be used to nullify that effect.
New repair spells with four levels allow mages skilled in Alteration to restore the durability of their weapons. Less skilled mages can only repair mundane weapons and only to a certain point while the experts in the field can fully repair any weapon and masters can even improve its condition above full repair.
Levitation comes to Oblivion! A group of mages from Morrowind brought it with them to Cyrodiil and have taught their secret to a few select members of the mages guild. These amazing spells allow you to take the battle to the skies and fire at enemies down below. Comes with full collision and can be used during spellmaking. There is an optional levitation penalty adjustable in the configuration file that stunts your magicka and/or silences you while levitating.
Levitation's not the only things those mages brought with them. Now the new Jump effect allows you to leap higher than you've ever gone before!
* Restoration
Now roleplaying a cleric or paladin is as easy as selecting Restoration as a major skill. Since Restore Health restores life energy and undead are the opposite of life, they will take damage from these spells instead. As such, all Restore Health spells (including custom and modded) can now damage the undead.
* Illusion:
Level-based spells (Calm, Frenzy, etc) are now twice as potent and go up to level 50 rather than 25 so illusion's actually useful at higher levels. You can adjust this value in the configuration file to make illusion spells stronger or weaker according to your personal tastes.
Vampire hunters rejoyce! Now concentrated light spells (cast on touch or target) can be used to deal damage to vampires proportionate to the concentration of light.
New spells can be found at spell merchants in the cities and Mages Guilds. The Arcane University holds most of the more powerful new spells. A list of all of the added spells and their locations and the configuration text file can both be found in the folder "Supreme Magicka Files" (or in your Data folder if it's in OMOD format). Also includes many optional plugins such as support for Shivering Isles and a standalone plugin allowing you to make custom enchanted staffs.
REQUIRES OBSE v9e or higher and Oblivion patch v1.2 or higher.