W mod, very good an it made the ai on combat much more intelligent! It's even compatible with 0.46! But can I suggest an nerf to the claymores or two handed swords? Yes they offer much more damage but at the cost of using an shield but they are a bit op in my opinion.
Would it be possible to make the "bound weapon deals less damage" feature a optional feature as I like what this mod does: https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/47766?tab=description?
Well kinda its more of a preference thing i guess. SO in the mod i linked there is this feature as stated: "The issue of Dremora and Golden Saints dropping Daedric equipment has been resolved by giving these creatures constant effect Bound Item abilities, so they can still use this high-powered stuff against you, but you'll no longer be up to your eyeballs in it by killing them." So for me using this mod along with it would make my daedras a lot weaker.
Just a little bit weaker 25% to be precise, which is not that much IMO. Regular Daedra minions shouldn't be able to deal as much damage as super-rare Daedric weapons anyways, so I would argue that this change even complements the mod you've mentioned. That being said, I could consider some more modularity in the next update of this mod.
If you don't mind a little DIY, I'd recommnend modifying the mod you're using which replaces Daedra's weapons with bound ones so that they have higher Strength to compensate for the diminished damage. Like, I dunno, 150-200 Strength so they hit like a truck even with weaker weapons. Can't remember what their vanilla Strength is but, note, each point of Strength above 50 is +1% physical damage, so you could work some math and buff Dremora and Golden Saints' Strength to be enough to compensate for the Bound Weapons nerf of THIS mod.
Something I feel like needed saying, The mod is good and I've had it installed for months. But. A lot of people seem to not be aware of how OP spears are in the vanilla game, and with this mod it buffs everything about the spear that made it OP in the first place.
Even longer reach. Ridiculous damage on thrust now. (Hircine's Spear for example which was already the best spear in the game, now does an insane 90 damage on thrust. Up from 60.) Even Faster Thrust Speed. Ease of use.
Essentially in vanilla you can kite enemies and stun lock them using the thrust attack with ease all while dealing high end damage, even if you're not intending to cheese like that, the effectiveness of the spear can't be avoided. This mod makes this whole strategy twice as effective and easier which make spears way too strong when you start hitting consistently which is usually around 50+ spear in skill.
I know that IRL spears are the superior weapon so maybe that was your intention, but in case you you weren't aware of how the design of spears mesh with the combat mechanic I guess it's just something to think about.
Thanks for the feedback, any constructive criticism is always welcome :) You see, I felt that in vanilla spears were too weak to be a viable option to choose, hence my changes. Their only advantage was reach, which in this mod is lowered and more similar to other weapon types, so I wanted to give spears a unique advantage. Of course, that might be skewed by my personal playing style (I never use auto best attack, for example).
My approach was to make each weapon type better than all the others in at least one aspect. That's why I made axes the best in terms of chopping, staves the best in terms of enchanting and spears the best in terms of thrusting - the most logical choice. In vanilla their highest attack damage was worse than the one of claymores or battle axes, so I decided the increased thrusting damage would be a perfect compensation. I recognize that the x1.5 increase might be too much in some cases (Hircine's spear), but overall it made spears more balanced compared to other weapons (from my point of view, at least).
For illustration's sake let's take a look at Daedric Spear and Daedric Claymore (other weapons follow a similar pattern).
Vanilla
Chop: spear 2-9 / claymore 1-60
Slash: spear 2-9 / claymore 1-52
Thrust: spear 6-40 / claymore 1-36
Reach: spear 1.8 / claymore 1.0
Speed: spear 1.0 / claymore 1.25
WoRR
Chop: spear 2-9 / claymore 1-60
Slash: spear 2-9 / claymore 1-52
Thrust: spear 9-60 / claymore 1-36
Reach: spear 1.6 / claymore 1.54
Speed: spear 1.4 / claymore 1.25
This comparison clearly shows that, when facing a choice between two 2H weapons - a spear and a claymore - there was almost no reason to choose the former in vanilla, whereas now both excel at different aspects, so either choice will be a good one, depending on what you prefer.
Sure, it could be argued that the reach of claymores is too high or maybe the speed of spears is increased too much (I would like to tweak those in future updates). But in general I think the direction of these changes is justified.
As the original poster says, I've found Spears to be a little OP. In vanilla, they had a huge advantage thanks to reach (and NPCs being slow to attack without a GMST edit). With this mod, Spears are definitely on the high end but I wouldn't say they're too strong because claymores and dai-katanas are only slight shorter and slower but hit harder (at least, they should) to compensate. Not to mention higher enchant value. Functionally, a Daedric Claymore and a Daedric Spear are nearly identical in human hands (just use "best attack") so the variable damage for the other animations is just for NPCs (so, in NPC hands, they'll be much more dangerous with the Daedric Claymore than the Daedric Spear due to RNG).
~~ Edit from the distant future: I've changed my mind about Spears being balanced--see below--since they're faster and longer than claymores but just as strong. ~~
Do note that Claymores/Dai-Katanas and similar weapons have been buffed considerably now that they have a huge range advantage of one-handers and shorter weapons, so Spears getting a little buffed makes sense since they're only a little longer than Claymores now.
I don't think it's unreasonable for artifacts like the Spear of Bitter Mercy to be a little OP--they're Daedric Artifacts (or otherwise divine relics) after all and they can't be enchanted so, if the enchant on them isn't that great (or is more defensive in nature, etc.), the raw physical damage has to compensate for the lost potential.
Halberds, however, have a bad position by default due to their heaviness. My personal adjustment was to diminish their weight but also their speed, making them deadlier than Spears in exchange for diminished animation speed, with Slash favored over Chop due to the awkwardness of the animation in third person (A.I. look like they're smacking enemies with the flat side of the axe head rather than the sharp side, for some reason).
Overall, the balance of this mod is decently tight. Some weapons, namely Clubs, are still crap but most weapons have a good balance of range/attack speed/damage per hit with the two-handers being appreciably more powerful (or longer) to compensate for their lack of Block potential. If you can dodge-tank, and hit consistently, shorter weapons are great for stagger-locking and quick infliction of enchantments. My main focus would be on adjusting Halberds since they don't compare well with normal Spears or Claymores due to excessive weight and lack of relative punch or speed to compensate.
Yes, I've done some mulling it over and realize Spears are OP with this mod. Best example is the one above; a Daedric Spear equaling a Daedric Claymore but having superior DPS and range with no relative downsides. Lighter, too.
I'd recommend nerfing Spears to have power similar a Longsword while maintaining their speed and having Halberds remain comparable in power to Claymores but slower to compensate for being longer. I think that could be a fine balance since Spears, already being long, are very powerful when fast even without rivaling Claymores in damage so having the best of everything just makes other weapons underpowered by comparison.
Having played the mod and game for even longer, the best balance I can think of is reduce all spear damage across the board and make all attacks even out more in damage and not just have thrust be the one ridiculously high attack damage. Make them just long range and fast because as they are right now is ridiculous. You could honestly leave them as they were in vanilla game and they would still be a top tier weapon, they're just THAT broken with how the game works.
I also think two handed swords need to be toned down a bit in damage and range but not by much. (Mostly in range because getting one shot at the very tip of a ridiculous hitbox feels a bit off.) But these weapons should be heavy hitting scary weapons so that part of the design is perfect. Halberds and other rarer or obscure weapons need adjusting as well since they are basically useless. Other than the 2 big issues with Spears and Claymores everything else about the mod is just about right. and very well done, a significant improvement to weapon balance I think.
If you play the game enough with the mod you will see exactly what I mean with claymores and spears being completely over tuned. A good example to see what I mean about spears is to go to Arkngthand at an early level and fight that one Imperial with the steel spear, then tell me it's not way too strong. Do a full playthrough with spear on vanilla and see how much easier the game is in general.
I've been messing around with different weapons over a long while with a personal version of this mod and I have more or less the same conclusions--two handed swords and spears are very strong with the latter being outright OP since, aside from slash versus chop/stab, there's little functional difference between the attacks anyway (so why not just use the best?). My current balance is for Spears to be as powerful as Longswords and roughly as fast (1.4 for spears; 1.25 for Broadswords, which hit nearly as hard as claymores; 1.35 for Longswords; 1.45 for Sabers and 1.5 for Katanas, which the latter two being the weakest in exchange for speed), with the trade-off being the inability to block with shields. I think that's a good balance since, having tried sword + shield for the first time, it's surprisingly effective to dodge-tank while remaining still even very early on. However, I did raise the max block chance to 75% (from 50%) as a buff to shields, so I effectively buffed the usability of shields to make using them more worthwhile.
As for Halberds, I have them as being about the same power (or slightly weaker/stronger) than claymores but much slower (1.0 versus 1.25/1.35 claymore/dai-katana) and... I'll have to see how balanced that is since I haven't actually used them yet. Certainly felt them lol. I lowered their weight as well, can't remember to what around but heavier than Spears at least. Idea is that they're to spears what axes are to swords--slower but deadlier. As somebody on the receiving end of them, I'd say they're about as scary as being hit by a claymore (it's hard to really tell the difference beyond claymore-wielding NPCs being a little faster with their swings).
I did change a GMST which affects the range of ALL attacks. Can't remember what it's called but I set it to roughly half the default value, so, when combined with the range template of this mod, the end result is that the hitbox of most weapons is pretty close to the physical models of the weapons themselves. This means longer weapons are noticeably shorter and that shorter weapons no longer have obvious "phantom range." Hard to conclusively say how this has affected balance beyond tighter spaces being slightly less dangerous, maybe.
Ultimately, my ideal balance is for two-handed weapons to excel in exchange for forgoing the dodge-tank potential that comes from using a shield, with the longer weapons either trading damage (spears) or speed (halberds) compared to claymores while shorter weapons trade range and/or speed for greater lethality (nothing quite as scary as an enemy with a battle axe or two-handed hammer as a result). One-handers, in turn, have a similar balance but generally less effective since the idea is that you can better dodge-tank (with a shield) while using them.
No, because it's a bit of a mess and doesn't entirely follow this mod's formula. The GMST changes are part of a mod I have specifically for GMSTs as well, although I can say that's the fastest and simplest part of it. I'm also rather "camera-shy" about uploading mods. I can tell you what standards I used to adjust the weapons to suit my desires, but I can't/won't simply upload it.
...assuming I notice I was replied to since there's no notification system for comment threads, lol. At least, it's inconsistent since only one person calling my username actually got my attention via the bell and I have no idea how Nexus's "calling a user's attention" system works lol.
EDIT: I can comment on what I last said since I did mess around with a halberd-focused character recently.
Basically, when I kept halberds slow (1.0 speed) but made damage similar to claymores, it was a risky weapon early on because missing meant running into trouble (at least on my custom setup--probably not so scary on normal difficulty against vanilla enemies/balance) whereas a spear is safer since hitting half the time isn't so bad when you're thrusting decently often. However, once my Spear skill went past 50, especially around 70, halberds became very powerful but never to a point where I felt reluctant to keep using a Spear. At this point, my main issue was the lack of special halberds in Morrowind (so I modded some in to be obtained) whereas Spears have a couple good ones to obtain in vanilla and even more in the mod scene. Compared to Claymores, it's basically a bit riskier with a slightly better reward so I'd say a rule of thumb (in my own modding of weapons) is that I effectively made Spears good for everybody and Halberds great for high-skill spear users.
I could buy a Nibenese Dai-Katana from the black guy in the Fighter's Guild and when I was checking the weapon it had a reach of value 6. Other two-handed swords have a reach of about +9. something.
I am using mod organizer and OpenMW v0.47 and I following the Expanded Vanilla mod list. I installed the base mod at the end of my load order with the combat plugin and the TR patch (I am using Tamriel Rebuilt)
I am sure I installed your mod correctly. I created a data folder and I put every ESP in this folder then I made a zip file for installing it in Mod Organizer. Then I updated my openmw.cfg file with these 3 plugins.
I installed it during an existing playthrough but I do not think it caused this issue because the reach of other weapons changed, so the mod works.
I also have the Marksman Overhaul (ESP with the tweaks for marskman weapons) mod in my load order (I cleaned it with tes3cmd) and it is far above in my load order.
I am using the newest version of Tamriel Rebuilt --> (https://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/downloads/main-release) I could not tested yet if other 2H weapons had this problem but I will update my comment if I did.
Ok, so the problem is that the TR add-on is compatible with the previous release of Tamriel Rebuilt (as stated in the description), but not with the latest one. Hence, all weapons added in the newest version will not have their stats changed.
The way I implemented the mod requires a lot of manual editing, so I decided not to update it in its current state. It'd way too tedious. I would like to come up with a more efficient implementation in the future, though.
To fellow end-users; I recommend doing it yourself with the CS and adjusting the reach and attack speeds to match the template shown on the mod page and the readme. Although the balance won't be quite the same as what this mod is going for, it's close enough, especially if you don't want to do more DIY work to homebrew your own balance mod.
Note, when updating TR (or any other mod you're making a mod to edit the weapons of), this and whatever mod you made for the purpose of balancing won't be undone when replacing so the work is mostly front-loaded.
I know you were not asking me, but you may find useful my comment at the very bottom of this page I described a relatively simple method to self-patch other mods to work with this one, although it will take some time.
Hey Rosynant, thank you! I'll go through and try that.
When saving the plug in, would you suggest giving the saving the plugin/mod with a different name? (I am assuming I can do this, and then have it lower down the load order in MO2).
It depends on whether you plan to use it just as a patch alongside the original mod (then give it a different name) or as a replacement (then keep the same name). Btw, I highly recommend checking out these helpful resources:
Note, when updating TR (or any other mod you're making a mod to edit the weapons of), this and whatever mod you made for the purpose of balancing won't be undone when replacing so the work is mostly front-loaded.
Hey YoshiSaito, are you able to provide a bit more detail for someone is a complete beginner at modding in Morrowind?
Do you need to go through and edit every mod in your list that adds weapons?
Yes. You have to use the Construction Set to open the mod and edit the values of each weapon under the "Objects" tab so that, in this mod's case, the ranges and speeds are consistent with Weaponry of Resdayn (or otherwise however you want them to be). If you want to keep a backup of the original version of the mod as you edit it, I recommend duplicating it first.
Note, when updating TR (or any other mod you're making a mod to edit the weapons of), this and whatever mod you made for the purpose of balancing won't be undone when replacing so the work is mostly front-loaded.
I mean, for example, let's say you modified via a new mod all the weapons added by Tamriel Data for the current version of it. When a new update comes out, you don't have to re-implement all those Object datas from scratch; you can just open your mod (which uses Tamriel Data as a parent) and edit the weapons newly added in its future updates.
Note that, in order to keep it as easy as I describe, you ought to avoid taking the original mod (in this case, Tamriel Data) and editing then saving it directly because future updating will require overriding its original .ESP file and doing tricks such as using both (the updated version and your modded version) will often duplicate stuff placed into the world (not to mention unnecessarily balloon loading up the game). Therefore, to make a "compatibility patch," simply create a new mod with the mod you want to modify as a "parent" and then get to work modifying the mod. This way, you future-proof your work so that it's a short and simple matter to update it rather than an hours-long chore.
What I just said is applicable to modifying any mod, though, so if you wanted to, for example, add new creatures to Tamriel Rebuilt's leveled lists, the way to do it most efficiently is to create a new mod with TR as the parent rather than directly edit the TR file and save your modified version over the original (or, much worse, try to load both at once and basically duplicate everything TR adds into the world space as a consequence). If you wanted to implement into TR creatures added by another mod (say, that AnCr mod which adds Medusas, for example) you'd make a mod with both Tamriel Rebuilt AND the creature-adding mod as a parent and then get to work adding the new creature(s) to the list. Note that, when it comes to leveled lists, it's a real chore to add yet more new creatures because you have to have every creature-adding mod as dependences ("parents") for a "super mod" that attempts to add all of them into the lists (because, if you don't, the last mod you load that affects creature lists up when opening the game will override all the previous ones). I know there's a leveled list merging tool but, if, like me, you're not using Windows , it's not an option so you have to know how to do it yourself.
I hope my explanation helps because this sort of thing used to give me migraines back when I first got into modding a year or so ago, but now it's practically second-nature and intuitive after figuring it out the hard way. It was hard to find modding tutorials that actually answered what I needed to know or even ones that made sense to somebody completely new to modding and gaming on computers in general lol.
Very nice mod. I've never liked the way how weapon's range was handled in Morrowind (or any TES, for that matter). Making range closer to an actual model feels just right. I will say few things, thought: spears are pretty op, halberds are worse spears. Spears have always been better than other weapons, since the range advantage allows to attack without trading hits. And halberds weight too much now, which makes them worse spears.
Thanks for the feedback! My take on halberds was to make them "long-range axes" (which they are, actually), but keep both axes and spears a viable choice. That's why they are slightly worse than axes in chop/slash and worse than spears in thrust, however, they surpass axes in range and spears in 2 out of 3 attacks. Halberds' weight is also an advantage, since it increases stagger chance. That being said, there is definitely room for improvement and that's not the final solution
Well, halberds do have axe heads, but they're rather small, compared to Morrowind axes. I think that there is too much weigh to them in your mod. As for different attacks, I've never felt that they're important, since choosing the way you attack is rather simple. Plus, retreating with a spear is the optimal way of fighting, so only one attack out three being viable is not really a disadvantage. As for the mod, guess that there are plans for further updates?
I'll consider you suggestions if uploading an updated version I would like to do it, but as I mentioned a few comments below, I don't know when that would happen.
I edited this mod's Halberds to be to Spears what Claymores are to Longswords; slower but stronger. I set their speed to 1.0 (I believe Spears are 1.45 in this mod?) and made their slashing power a bit more than dai-katanas (which is a good deal more than Spear's thrusts) and lowered weights to be closer to Spears so that I'd have a reason to actually use them.
In effect, halberds differ from spears in hitting harder but less often, but not as much as two-handed axes or hammers since the reach advantage of polearms and claymores/dai-katanas makes them very desirable compared to shorter two-handed weapons so the shorter ones ought to hit the hardest to compensate.
That was pretty much the outcome I was looking for when it comes to halberds. I made them slower than spears (1.0 vs. 1.4) and much heavier (2x) to increase their staggering effect, which I think mimicks well the real-life weapon characteristics. Anyways, happy to hear that you made your own adjustments! Btw, the detailed breakdown of all stat modifications I made are in the mod's readme file
Weight actually increases the rate of staggers? I thought Agility had something to do with that. I'll need to reassess how I've been doing things since I didn't realize Weight had an upside--I thought it was just a penalty to compensate for power.
Your Readme and guidelines (especially for ranges) have been super helpful for me when modding weapons from other mods to follow your numbers, so I want to thank you again for doing that.
I think I read somewhere about weight being related to staggering, but now that I'm looking for the source, I can't find it. So not to spread misinformation - I'm not 100% sure, it might as well not be true. In this case, weight would be only a penalty for higher damage, since it affects how quickly your fatigue drains when using a weapon.
Anyways, I'm really happy you've found my readme useful. Nice to hear someone looks at those notes
Certainly. Browsing through it again and I remember nerfing Bound Weapons a bit more, essentially making them Steel in quality since I think their increased accuracy compared to standard weapons (and lack of weight) justify this as using them for early to mid game prior to having a proper endgame weapon suitable to someone who generally doesn't have or need weapons or does need them but with minimal weight.
I also restored some of the Goblin and Rieklings' power, since I liked how both were implicitly elite creature races even if later games would place them much lower than Morrowind's DLCs on the totem pole. In particular, I'm fond of how mounted Rieklings are essentially "magic knights" with Spell Reflect and a powerful lance; not very often goofy-looking little guys mounted on not-horses are actually about as dangerous as an actual lancer IRL might be lol. Likewise with Goblins; I can headcanon a justification for them being strong in Mournhold due to them having handlers and being trained for potential use against Her Hands, the absolute super soldiers of the game world, so they must be a good to handle them. Still, I do think them casually one-shotting you at full health unless you have lots of Armor Rating and/or a ~300+ Health was a bit much lol.
In my own balancing (factoring in other mods, especially after I messed with them or Frankenstein'd them together to fill out Creature Lists), I believe I might have overdone it because Short Blades (first time playing with them) feel very weak unless Enchanted since it's hard to justify using them over Long Blades or any other hard-hitting weapons due to me giving mid and high level enemies 2-400 health with a few going into the thousands (dragons) at levels 30+. It'll probably take a while, but I am interested in further play testing my own overall modding of the game since I want to make even daggers useful. I suspect the key is Enchanting since their biggest advantage is hitting very quickly when button spamming. I have noticed spamming attack even with a light Wakizashi leads to frequent staggers, so I think a long term strength of Short Blades is stunlocking individual enemies. I know I buffed clubs by making them "mini-staves" in having very high Enchant capacity as their main redeeming quality, but Short Blades at the high end aren't THAT weak...
EDIT: Do you mind sharing some insights on how you planned on doing an Armor Rebalance? On my end, I thought to increase the base Armor Rating for lower quality armors but I'm concerned (e.g., raising Iron to 10; Steel to 20; Orcish to 40; everything above that is mostly the same) might have made humanoids too tanky for Short Blades and other low-damage weapons...
Tamriel Rebuilt dropped a patch around november, so the TR's compatability/coverage patch no longer works.
Spits out this when I run the WoRR_TR.esp:
Unable to find script 'TR_m2_q_22_Taldeus_Script' on object 'TR_m2_q_22_SwordofTaldeus'. Unable to find script 'TR_m2_q_22_Taldeuss_Script' on object 'TR_m2_q_22_SwordofTaldeuss'. Unable to find script 'TR_m2_q_22_ShrineDisplay_Script' on object 'TR_m2_q_22_TaldeusDisplay'. Unable to locate Enchanting 'TR_w_VadensFang'. Unable to locate Enchanting 'TR_m1_Gwai-lo'. Unable to locate Enchanting 'TR_m3_EastWind_en'.
I think it had to do with how they reshuffled the data structure? I'm not sure.
Yes, that's true. The TR add-on is compatible with Tamriel Rebuilt v. 21.01, as stated in the description, but not with the latest release. I briefly considered updating WoRR to cover the new version of TR, however, it would be quite tedious and there still remains the problem of compatibility with plenty of other weapon mods. That's why I would like to implement the features of WoRR (weapon reaches above all) via scripting. I'll do my best to do it as soon as possible, but can't promise anything specific due to some real-life obligations.
80 comments
Even longer reach.
Ridiculous damage on thrust now. (Hircine's Spear for example which was already the best spear in the game, now does an insane 90 damage on thrust. Up from 60.)
Even Faster Thrust Speed.
Ease of use.
Essentially in vanilla you can kite enemies and stun lock them using the thrust attack with ease all while dealing high end damage, even if you're not intending to cheese like that, the effectiveness of the spear can't be avoided. This mod makes this whole strategy twice as effective and easier which make spears way too strong when you start hitting consistently which is usually around 50+ spear in skill.
I know that IRL spears are the superior weapon so maybe that was your intention, but in case you you weren't aware of how the design of spears mesh with the combat mechanic I guess it's just something to think about.
My approach was to make each weapon type better than all the others in at least one aspect. That's why I made axes the best in terms of chopping, staves the best in terms of enchanting and spears the best in terms of thrusting - the most logical choice. In vanilla their highest attack damage was worse than the one of claymores or battle axes, so I decided the increased thrusting damage would be a perfect compensation. I recognize that the x1.5 increase might be too much in some cases (Hircine's spear), but overall it made spears more balanced compared to other weapons (from my point of view, at least).
For illustration's sake let's take a look at Daedric Spear and Daedric Claymore (other weapons follow a similar pattern).
Vanilla
WoRR
This comparison clearly shows that, when facing a choice between two 2H weapons - a spear and a claymore - there was almost no reason to choose the former in vanilla, whereas now both excel at different aspects, so either choice will be a good one, depending on what you prefer.
~~
Edit from the distant future: I've changed my mind about Spears being balanced--see below--since they're faster and longer than claymores but just as strong.
~~
Do note that Claymores/Dai-Katanas and similar weapons have been buffed considerably now that they have a huge range advantage of one-handers and shorter weapons, so Spears getting a little buffed makes sense since they're only a little longer than Claymores now.
I don't think it's unreasonable for artifacts like the Spear of Bitter Mercy to be a little OP--they're Daedric Artifacts (or otherwise divine relics) after all and they can't be enchanted so, if the enchant on them isn't that great (or is more defensive in nature, etc.), the raw physical damage has to compensate for the lost potential.
Halberds, however, have a bad position by default due to their heaviness. My personal adjustment was to diminish their weight but also their speed, making them deadlier than Spears in exchange for diminished animation speed, with Slash favored over Chop due to the awkwardness of the animation in third person (A.I. look like they're smacking enemies with the flat side of the axe head rather than the sharp side, for some reason).
Overall, the balance of this mod is decently tight. Some weapons, namely Clubs, are still crap but most weapons have a good balance of range/attack speed/damage per hit with the two-handers being appreciably more powerful (or longer) to compensate for their lack of Block potential. If you can dodge-tank, and hit consistently, shorter weapons are great for stagger-locking and quick infliction of enchantments. My main focus would be on adjusting Halberds since they don't compare well with normal Spears or Claymores due to excessive weight and lack of relative punch or speed to compensate.
I'd recommend nerfing Spears to have power similar a Longsword while maintaining their speed and having Halberds remain comparable in power to Claymores but slower to compensate for being longer. I think that could be a fine balance since Spears, already being long, are very powerful when fast even without rivaling Claymores in damage so having the best of everything just makes other weapons underpowered by comparison.
I also think two handed swords need to be toned down a bit in damage and range but not by much. (Mostly in range because getting one shot at the very tip of a ridiculous hitbox feels a bit off.) But these weapons should be heavy hitting scary weapons so that part of the design is perfect. Halberds and other rarer or obscure weapons need adjusting as well since they are basically useless. Other than the 2 big issues with Spears and Claymores everything else about the mod is just about right. and very well done, a significant improvement to weapon balance I think.
If you play the game enough with the mod you will see exactly what I mean with claymores and spears being completely over tuned. A good example to see what I mean about spears is to go to Arkngthand at an early level and fight that one Imperial with the steel spear, then tell me it's not way too strong. Do a full playthrough with spear on vanilla and see how much easier the game is in general.
Good mod btw no hate.
- All spears: Speed 1.4 -> 1.0
- All two-handed-swords: Reach 1.54 -> 1.25
?...
As for Halberds, I have them as being about the same power (or slightly weaker/stronger) than claymores but much slower (1.0 versus 1.25/1.35 claymore/dai-katana) and... I'll have to see how balanced that is since I haven't actually used them yet. Certainly felt them lol. I lowered their weight as well, can't remember to what around but heavier than Spears at least. Idea is that they're to spears what axes are to swords--slower but deadlier. As somebody on the receiving end of them, I'd say they're about as scary as being hit by a claymore (it's hard to really tell the difference beyond claymore-wielding NPCs being a little faster with their swings).
I did change a GMST which affects the range of ALL attacks. Can't remember what it's called but I set it to roughly half the default value, so, when combined with the range template of this mod, the end result is that the hitbox of most weapons is pretty close to the physical models of the weapons themselves. This means longer weapons are noticeably shorter and that shorter weapons no longer have obvious "phantom range." Hard to conclusively say how this has affected balance beyond tighter spaces being slightly less dangerous, maybe.
Ultimately, my ideal balance is for two-handed weapons to excel in exchange for forgoing the dodge-tank potential that comes from using a shield, with the longer weapons either trading damage (spears) or speed (halberds) compared to claymores while shorter weapons trade range and/or speed for greater lethality (nothing quite as scary as an enemy with a battle axe or two-handed hammer as a result). One-handers, in turn, have a similar balance but generally less effective since the idea is that you can better dodge-tank (with a shield) while using them.
...assuming I notice I was replied to since there's no notification system for comment threads, lol. At least, it's inconsistent since only one person calling my username actually got my attention via the bell and I have no idea how Nexus's "calling a user's attention" system works lol.
EDIT: I can comment on what I last said since I did mess around with a halberd-focused character recently.
Basically, when I kept halberds slow (1.0 speed) but made damage similar to claymores, it was a risky weapon early on because missing meant running into trouble (at least on my custom setup--probably not so scary on normal difficulty against vanilla enemies/balance) whereas a spear is safer since hitting half the time isn't so bad when you're thrusting decently often. However, once my Spear skill went past 50, especially around 70, halberds became very powerful but never to a point where I felt reluctant to keep using a Spear. At this point, my main issue was the lack of special halberds in Morrowind (so I modded some in to be obtained) whereas Spears have a couple good ones to obtain in vanilla and even more in the mod scene. Compared to Claymores, it's basically a bit riskier with a slightly better reward so I'd say a rule of thumb (in my own modding of weapons) is that I effectively made Spears good for everybody and Halberds great for high-skill spear users.
I noticed a deviation in my playthrough.
I could buy a Nibenese Dai-Katana from the black guy in the Fighter's Guild and when I was checking the weapon it had a reach of value 6.
Other two-handed swords have a reach of about +9. something.
I am using mod organizer and OpenMW v0.47 and I following the Expanded Vanilla mod list.
I installed the base mod at the end of my load order with the combat plugin and the TR patch (I am using Tamriel Rebuilt)
I am sure I installed your mod correctly.
I created a data folder and I put every ESP in this folder then I made a zip file for installing it in Mod Organizer.
Then I updated my openmw.cfg file with these 3 plugins.
I installed it during an existing playthrough but I do not think it caused this issue because the reach of other weapons changed, so the mod works.
I also have the Marksman Overhaul (ESP with the tweaks for marskman weapons) mod in my load order (I cleaned it with tes3cmd) and it is far above in my load order.
How can I fix this problem?
I could not tested yet if other 2H weapons had this problem but I will update my comment if I did.
The way I implemented the mod requires a lot of manual editing, so I decided not to update it in its current state. It'd way too tedious. I would like to come up with a more efficient implementation in the future, though.
Note, when updating TR (or any other mod you're making a mod to edit the weapons of), this and whatever mod you made for the purpose of balancing won't be undone when replacing so the work is mostly front-loaded.
Do you need to go through and edit every mod in your list that adds weapons?
Thanks
When saving the plug in, would you suggest giving the saving the plugin/mod with a different name? (I am assuming I can do this, and then have it lower down the load order in MO2).
Also thank you for this mod as well.
1) For making patches: https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind_Mod:Creating_a_Compatibility_Patch
2) For general info on modding Morrowind (even if you don't intend to make your own mods): http://lovkullen.net/Emma/edvardmd.htm
3) For modernizing Construction Set: https://mwse.github.io/MWSE/references/general/csse/
4) For editing plug-ins outisde the Construction Set: https://web.archive.org/web/20211106215829/http://mw.modhistory.com/download-37-1662
Although some of those might seem quite old, they're still valid and I use them on a daily basis when dealing with mods
In this instance, I could probably just get away with replacing the existing mod (i.e. giving it the same name).
YoshiSaito, what did you mean by the below?
Note that, in order to keep it as easy as I describe, you ought to avoid taking the original mod (in this case, Tamriel Data) and editing then saving it directly because future updating will require overriding its original .ESP file and doing tricks such as using both (the updated version and your modded version) will often duplicate stuff placed into the world (not to mention unnecessarily balloon loading up the game). Therefore, to make a "compatibility patch," simply create a new mod with the mod you want to modify as a "parent" and then get to work modifying the mod. This way, you future-proof your work so that it's a short and simple matter to update it rather than an hours-long chore.
What I just said is applicable to modifying any mod, though, so if you wanted to, for example, add new creatures to Tamriel Rebuilt's leveled lists, the way to do it most efficiently is to create a new mod with TR as the parent rather than directly edit the TR file and save your modified version over the original (or, much worse, try to load both at once and basically duplicate everything TR adds into the world space as a consequence). If you wanted to implement into TR creatures added by another mod (say, that AnCr mod which adds Medusas, for example) you'd make a mod with both Tamriel Rebuilt AND the creature-adding mod as a parent and then get to work adding the new creature(s) to the list. Note that, when it comes to leveled lists, it's a real chore to add yet more new creatures because you have to have every creature-adding mod as dependences ("parents") for a "super mod" that attempts to add all of them into the lists (because, if you don't, the last mod you load that affects creature lists up when opening the game will override all the previous ones). I know there's a leveled list merging tool but, if, like me, you're not using Windows , it's not an option so you have to know how to do it yourself.
I hope my explanation helps because this sort of thing used to give me migraines back when I first got into modding a year or so ago, but now it's practically second-nature and intuitive after figuring it out the hard way. It was hard to find modding tutorials that actually answered what I needed to know or even ones that made sense to somebody completely new to modding and gaming on computers in general lol.
I will say few things, thought: spears are pretty op, halberds are worse spears. Spears have always been better than other weapons, since the range advantage allows to attack without trading hits. And halberds weight too much now, which makes them worse spears.
As for the mod, guess that there are plans for further updates?
In effect, halberds differ from spears in hitting harder but less often, but not as much as two-handed axes or hammers since the reach advantage of polearms and claymores/dai-katanas makes them very desirable compared to shorter two-handed weapons so the shorter ones ought to hit the hardest to compensate.
Your Readme and guidelines (especially for ranges) have been super helpful for me when modding weapons from other mods to follow your numbers, so I want to thank you again for doing that.
Anyways, I'm really happy you've found my readme useful. Nice to hear someone looks at those notes
I also restored some of the Goblin and Rieklings' power, since I liked how both were implicitly elite creature races even if later games would place them much lower than Morrowind's DLCs on the totem pole. In particular, I'm fond of how mounted Rieklings are essentially "magic knights" with Spell Reflect and a powerful lance; not very often goofy-looking little guys mounted on not-horses are actually about as dangerous as an actual lancer IRL might be lol. Likewise with Goblins; I can headcanon a justification for them being strong in Mournhold due to them having handlers and being trained for potential use against Her Hands, the absolute super soldiers of the game world, so they must be a good to handle them. Still, I do think them casually one-shotting you at full health unless you have lots of Armor Rating and/or a ~300+ Health was a bit much lol.
In my own balancing (factoring in other mods, especially after I messed with them or Frankenstein'd them together to fill out Creature Lists), I believe I might have overdone it because Short Blades (first time playing with them) feel very weak unless Enchanted since it's hard to justify using them over Long Blades or any other hard-hitting weapons due to me giving mid and high level enemies 2-400 health with a few going into the thousands (dragons) at levels 30+. It'll probably take a while, but I am interested in further play testing my own overall modding of the game since I want to make even daggers useful. I suspect the key is Enchanting since their biggest advantage is hitting very quickly when button spamming. I have noticed spamming attack even with a light Wakizashi leads to frequent staggers, so I think a long term strength of Short Blades is stunlocking individual enemies. I know I buffed clubs by making them "mini-staves" in having very high Enchant capacity as their main redeeming quality, but Short Blades at the high end aren't THAT weak...
EDIT: Do you mind sharing some insights on how you planned on doing an Armor Rebalance? On my end, I thought to increase the base Armor Rating for lower quality armors but I'm concerned (e.g., raising Iron to 10; Steel to 20; Orcish to 40; everything above that is mostly the same) might have made humanoids too tanky for Short Blades and other low-damage weapons...
Spits out this when I run the WoRR_TR.esp:
I think it had to do with how they reshuffled the data structure? I'm not sure.