[size=10]Empowered Throw Voice[/size]

A Sneaky Shout That Isn't Boring As Hell
(Also Included: Undetectable Throw Voice and Aura Whisper)

(SSE Version: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2899/)

Skyrim stealth gameplay is whack. With how some of the levels, spawns, and patrols are designed, thief and assassin characters are heavily incentivised to either one-shot stealth archer everything, use Muffle + Invisibility effects, or skill into Illusion and hit anything that moves with Calm.

That's cheesy. That's boring. That isn't challenging, fun, engaging stealth gameplay. And much of the fault lies with thieves having far too few tools to interact with their obstacles.

This mod is a small step towards fixing that.

Oh, and for whatever reason I made Throw Voice (first two words) and Aura Whisper properly undetectable, even without Quiet Casting. Because I felt like it, I guess?

Check out the video below for a quick explanation and showcase of the effects.



The Throw Voice shout in vanilla is the exact same spell three times, and the effect isn't much more useful than an arrow shot at a wall, so I've added new spells to the second and third words so it's a little less boring.

The first word (ZUL) is exactly the same as vanilla with a 5 second cooldown, so let's move on to


ZUL MEY - The Second Word

The two-word Throw Voice now targets a single actor, and inflicts 100% blindness and a 100 point Sneak skill penalty for 40 seconds.
When the player goes to sleep, they will wake up with 4x Shard Of Silence, a new item added by this mod that serves as ammo for the two-word Throw Voice.

This is very similar to Calm, but with a vital difference. The ability to remove an actor's sight line and detection from the equation is actually an interesting tool for sneaky business, but the Calm spell has no brakes - if you can use it, you just use it on everything. This new spell is limited in usage, so you actually have to think about which actor you want to disable, or whether you can get by without using it at all to save it for later.

It also differs from a Calm effect in that the two-word Throw Voice just affects the actor's detection abilities. They still react to detection events, so if their friends get suspicious they will be brought to the alert state as well, and will fight you if you get fully detected.

Also, the Sneak penalty doesn't bring the skill below 0 (and doing so doesn't seem to do anything for detection anyway), so running around should still cause them to detect you. Depending on your stealth settings and character's skills, of course.


ZUL MEY GUT - The Third Word

The three-word Throw Voice now applies the two-word effect in a 10 metre (30 feet) radius around targeted point. The effect will alert all affected enemies when used, lasts 20 seconds, and additionally applies a 40% movement speed slow for the duration.
The three-word spell does NOT use Shards of Silence. Instead, it can only be used once before becoming unavailable until the player sleeps.

Sometimes the game serves up a group of enemies that are impossible to stealth kill without chugging an Invisibility Potion each time you take one out. Thieves don't have any thematically cool, or at least not-cheesy, methods to deal with these kinds of challenges - hell, in my last playthrough I gave up entirely and took up Vampire Lord specifically for these cases.

The three-word spell is, obviously, designed for these situations. The key, like with the two-word spell, is that there's a limit to the spell's usage so that it doesn't become your solution for absolutely everything. I'm also trying to reward smart usage of the spell - unlike the previous words it is not completely silent, and the affected actors becoming alert means enemies out of range of the shout's effect can become alarmed as well, so you can't use the three-word Throw Voice carelessly.


Compatibility

This mod makes minor changes to the Throw Voice and Aura Whisper magic effects, and adds new spells to the Throw Voice shout. The changes to vanilla records are for the 'Undetectable Whispers' part of the mod, so even if another mod changes those records any problems that pop up would be very minor.

Thunderchild makes changes to vanilla shout magic effects and conflicts with this mod. The conflicts look harmless, but there's a compatibility version just to be safe. Download the main file, deactivate or delete miEmpoweredThrowVoice.esp, then load miEmpTV-ThunderchildComp.esp after Thunderchild.


And That's It!

If you run into any bugs or problems do leave a comment. The mod works fine for me, but there could be things I've missed.

Oh, and check out my other mod while you're at it:
SWOOSH- A Simple Dash Power For Sneaky Bastards