This is a MWSE mod and it won't work with OpenMW.

Magicka of the Third Era is a magic overhaul, focused on allowing player to be creative without being restrictive, while at the same time balancing Vanilla's flaws in a way that was impossible in pre-lua era. As opposed to magic mods for the later games, which focus on adding flashy effects and complex pre-made spells, Magicka of the Third Era is focused on Morrowind magic's greatest strength - varied spell effects and making the best use of them in the spell maker. Hence the name.

Not to say flashy features will never happen, but they're not the focus now. The goal, at least for now, is to have a highly compatible magic overhaul that you can install for any playthrough, even if you are not going to use magic yourself. Something that's intuitive to just pick up and start a new game. I am not a fan of "staying close to Vanilla vision" when it comes to mechanics, because let's be real, Vanilla mechanics are broken. Instead, I want the game to feel natural, so to speak.

You can install this mod and play it the same way you play Vanilla game (the only thing you 'really' need to know is how spell chances work) - or delve deep into spellmaking, experiment with the best combinations, collect unique spells and break every rule possible. The choice is yours and nothing is enforced on you. Morrowind is not a 'hard' game, and you can roleplay as whoever you want without getting punished for it.

Features

Spell chances. By default (adjustable), all spells are either guaranteed to succeed, or to fail, based on spell difficulty and your stats. This is probably the most radical of the things you'll immediately notice. Anything with chance greater than 60 will succeed, everything below will fail. Mod is balanced around this. Among other things, it means that if you know nothing about magic, you will be able to cast absolutely nothing. I think it makes perfect sense. If you don't like it, you can either limit it or disable it. I recommend trying it out, though. It makes for better sense of progression while making the gameplay less frustrating.

Spell costs. Spells in general are cheaper, but harder to cast. Fatigue and Sound affect spells costs, instead of chances. It's a much more meaningful penalty that's always relevant, instead of being drastic for novice mages or irrelevant for master mages. Wearing armor also increases spell costs if you are not skilled in it. So while spells are cheap by default, it can vary wildly between unprepared and prepared caster. Armor and Fatigue impact is adjustable.

Magicka Overflow. By default (adjustable), if your current Magicka is over 100, spells will gradually get more expensive (not affecting chances). For every 100 magicka over the initial 100, spells will get 50% more expensive. The goal is to have diminishing returns on magicka stacking, without punishing players for getting such magicka pools. This feature can be disabled or tweaked.

Illusion effects overhaul. Calm/Frenzy/Rally/Demoralize are now level-based, like in later games. They are guaranteed to have effect on a target of level lower or equal to magnitude, and will be resisted by a target of higher level. In addition, Frenzy makes target hostile to everyone. Currenty, casting Frenzy is not a crime, but I might change this.

Effect cost formulas overhaul. Vanilla had, essentially, one formula for all effects, with exactly one variable to differ the power level between them. Magicka of the Third Era adds individual formulas for each spell effect: all Vanilla and some modded, taking in account every variable and potential abusable cases, with different scaling potential. This allows for more creativity while eliminating cheap abuses.

Advanced multi-effect spell calculations. Great effort has been put to make multi-effect spells more interesting and useful. They will use advanced cost formula to account for varied scaling potential of the effects. Spells that have effects from different schools rely on all of these schools (and not just the lowest one, like it was in Vanilla), based on how expensive the effects are.

Effect synergies. Magicka of the Third Era adds conditional synergies, fulfilling which can make your spells better. You can find these synergies by experimentation, reading in-game, or reading the spoiler file. There's a total of 40 synergies at the moment. You can even stack as many of them as you want in one spell.

Spell rebalance. Premade spells have been heavily tweaked so that there's no useless spells. This part is based on BTB's Spell Module, so if you're familiar with it, you'll notice many similarities. I've changed them a fair bit to fit them better into the new environment. And, of course, most of the spellmaking restrictions are now gone.

Unique spells. I've also added many unique spells to spell merchants. These spells either cost cheaper than they should or simply behave differently. The goal is to cover cases that are too niche to be balanced by formulas and to make spell merchants more interesting. Many of them have 1 or even more unique spell for sale. Since some of them have their services gated, it serves as an another layer of progression. There's a total of 60 unique spells at the moment. Probably not all of them will be equally useful. But who knows.

Reworked experience gain. Experience gain is based on spell cost and also accounts for multi-school spells. This makes the infamous 1-cost spell spam pointless. Speaking of multi-school spells, they make use of all the involved skills. This feature is tweakable. You can change the experience gains both globally, and separately for each of the schools.

Tweakable economy. Economy-related variables are tweakable. Other than cost multipliers for purchasing and creating spells, you can also tweak how much Disposition affects the costs.

New Spell Services UI. New fancy UI for spell services menu (see the screenshots), based on UI Expansion's, with options for varied sorting. If you are using UI Expansion, disable the Spell Services Menu in it's MCM (and restart the game afterwards).

Magicka Expanded integration. If you are using Magicka Expanded, mod will seamlessly distribute it's spells to spell merchants, so you can get them through spell purchases, not only books. It will also affect spell merchants from Tamriel Rebuilt, if you have it installed. This feature can be disabled.

Spell Chances and Costs

With the default settings, spell chances are gone. You are either guaranteed to succeed, or to fail, based on spell difficulty and your stats. Any spell with chance > 60 is going to succeed, whereas any spell with lower chance is going to fail. This is what I call the "Full Determinism" mode. It is optional, as some people like cast chances. However, the mod is balanced around this option, with chance of 60 being the balancing measure. This is the intended way to play the mod.

If you like spell chances, I suggest trying the Semi-Deterministic mode, which removes the chances from spells where it is abusable (like Open, Teleportation, Invisibility, etc), but keeps them for others, like combat spells, levitation and such. This might actually make the game much harder, but it will still be balanced.

There's also an option to disable it entirely, so that the spell chances behave like in Vanilla (but all the calculations regarding them will still be new). The mod is not designed for it, but you can try it out as well.

For these modes, there's an option to increase spell chances by a fixed amount. Since mod is balanced around 60 being the norm, switching to a non-determinist mode might make the game too hard. You can give your non-determinist spells a flat chance boost so that it will even out.

Why am I against spell chances? In fact, the first thing I've really wanted to tweak in Morrowind's magic is to remove spell chances and made a mod solely for that.

• They encourage save scumming.
• They create frustrating scenarios when you fail your expensive, 95% chance spell twice and are left out of mana. Of course, if you die in this scenario, you are just going to reload and try again.
• For some spells, success chance is not overly important. You can spam "Open 100" with 15% chance of success and it will work, eventually. Characters not knowing anything about Mysticism can use the same logic for Interventions.
  

Removing spell chances makes for more impactful progression, where you can easily see your journey and evaluate your capabilities. Spells once unreachable become manageable, investing in magic skills becomes important if you want to use their effects; at the same time, scrolls and potions become much more relevant, since you are no longer a jack-of-all-trades. While it restricts the non-mages from casting spells (why every commoner can occasionally cast a fireball?), it also makes the game less frustrating to those who specialize in the school. Overall, deterministic mode frees you from your worries and focuses on making the game more enjoyable. Give it a try.

Another two things I've changed is how Fatigue and Sound affect mages. They no longer affect spell chance. Why?

Fatigue. Simply put, it is a bad way to penalize the player. If you are highly skilled in magic, you won't notice the difference whatsoever. And if you are on the edge of being able to cast the spell, you'll have to constantly check your chances in menu.

Sound. This one is actually more about AI. Morrowind's NPCs are not intended to fail their spells, as they can't react to their failures in a proper way. So, high magnitude Sound is essentially a better Silence, as NPCs will keep trying to cast their spells, and fail again and again.

Instead, both of these affect spell costs. Spell costs affected in this way do not affect cast chances. They do, however, make you run out of magicka much faster, which is something to be noticed by every mage, no matter how skilled. By default, Fatigue increases spell costs by up to 50%. You can set this to any value between 0 and 100. Each point of Sound increases spell costs by 5%, so Sound 20 doubles the spell costs.

Armor also affects spell costs. This feature is configurable.

In Vanilla, you could wear armor as "stat sticks" that can provide strong enchants, without any penalties other than encumbrance. In Magicka of the Third Era, if you are not skilled in wearing your armor, you'll have more expensive spells (again, not affecting the spell chances). Magic demands concentration, and it's harder to concentrate if you are uncomfortable. By default, the penalty is up to 100% more expensive spells if you're wearing a full set of armor you have 0 skill in (so it's actually a bit lower than that). You can set this to any value between 0 (effectively disabling this feature) and 300. At high armor skill, you'll suffer no penalty whatsoever, so a high level battlemage won't be hindered. By default, you'll need 50 skill for light armor, 60 skill for medium armor, and 70 skill for heavy armor. So, for example, wearing a full light armor while having 30 skill results in 40% more expensive spells. Skill requirements are also tweakable.

All of these cost debuffs are additive. So while by default spells are quite cheap, costs can ramp up if you're in a bad condition. But none of these cost debuffs affect cast chances.

Magicka Overflow.

By default (tweakable), spells will increase their costs if your current Magicka is above 100. For each 100 points of Magicka over the initial 100, spells will cost 50% more. E.G. while you have 300 Magicka, spells are 100% more expensive. Spells will cost their normal amount once your Magicka drops below 100. This is a multiplier applied to the previous cost calculations, so the other cost debuffs are also more impactful. You can set this to any number between 0 (effectively disabling this feature) and 200.

The goal of this feature is to nerf huge magicka pools introduced by mods without penalizing player for having such a high Magicka, and without touching "normal" magicka pools whatsoever. Essentially, you get diminishing returns from increasing Magicka.

Here's an example with 100% Magicka Overflow (default is 50%, which is milder). I am personally playing with 100%, and it combines very well with reasonable Magicka regen. Small Magicka pools, but it's also easy to replenish them.

A spell costs 20.

• With 100 Magicka, you can cast it 5 times.
• With 200 Magicka, you can cast it 3 times before dropping to ~100 (200 -> 160 -> 128 -> ~100), and then you can cast it 5 more times. 8 total.
• With 300 Magicka, you can cast it 2 times before dropping to ~200 (300 -> 240 -> ~200), and then 8 more times, so 10 total.
  

So, in this case, 200 Magicka behaves like 160 (20 cost spell x 8 times) and 300 Magicka behaves like 200 (10 times). If you are playing with <= 100 Magicka, this won't affect you whatsoever.

This is still an experimental feature and I might change it. The goal is to have Magicka as a disposable resource, instead of being endless. Mod is designed to be played with a Magicka regeneration mod, so that you can cast long-duration utility spells without worrying much.


New in 1.2. Currently, only Calm, Frenzy, Demoralize and Rally spells are reworked. Now they are level-based, like in later games. They are guaranteed to work on target of level lower or equal to magnitude, and will be resisted if target has a higher level. Additionally, Frenzy now makes target hostile to everyone, making it even more powerful. But frenzying strong targets is also very difficult.

Currently, casting Frenzy on non-hostile is not considered to be a criminal act. Right now, it's probably too strong, so I might change it later.

I might rework more effects later (looking closely at bound gear).

Spell Formulas

The most significant change is that spells are cheaper, but also harder to cast. Instead of being capped by your magicka pool, you are going to be capped by your ability to cast spells. With this mod, a new player majoring in a school can be expected to cast spells costing up to 10-15, with spells getting progressively harder to cast, with master-level spells costing 35-40. This makes magic less reliant on high magicka pools, absurdly strong and expensive spells, at the same time reducing the need to constantly chug potions in combat. I recommend Controlled Consumption to nerf the potion part.

Your ability to cast spells is determined by non-linear formula, which takes your Willpower, Luck and skill into account. It's similar to Vanilla, but different in a subtle way. Basically, under the recommended "Full Determinism" mode you will need to be at least somewhat competent to cast even basic spells. A character who knows nothing about magic will be able to cast nothing. You'll need either 40+ Willpower and 15+ in a relevant spell school, or 20+ in a relevant spell school to be able to cast the basics. Anything lower and you might struggle.

Multi effect spells are taking in account all the spell effects to determine your skill level. Your skill level for multi-school spell is a weighed average of your relevant skills, weighed by the costs of individual effects. They'll also level all of the relevant skills, but more on that in the respective section.

Just as difficulty scales non-linearly, the spell power also scales non-linearly. Fireball costing 20 is not going to be 2 times as strong as a fireball costing 10 - it would be 3 times as strong. While progression is slower, it is also more impactful. Stronger mages will be able to utilize not only more impactful, but also more efficient spells. There are some exceptions to this. For example, Chameleon scales in a different way, making higher values practically unobtainable.

How exactly spell cost is calculated is dependent on the effect. In Vanilla, every single effect had the same formula for calculations, with the only difference being a multiplier coeficient. In Magicka of the Third Era every Vanilla effect, and some modded ones, have their own formulas. This allows for fixing all the possible exploits without taking the toys away from the player.

For example, Fortify Attribute skills could be easily abused with cheap 1 second spells. The only way to deal with it in the pre-lua era was to forbid these effects from spellmaker. In Magicka of the Third Era, the minimal duration for these effects in the formula is 20 seconds. You can still make the 1 second spells if you wish, but they'll cost the same as 20 second spells. And you can finally make long-duration buffs for your companions, because of the very lenient duration scaling, especially for the targeted spells.

This individual approach has been applied to every effect.

One more example. Morrowind has 5 effects that directly cause damage: Fire, Frost, Shock, Poison, and Damage Health. The only real differences were resistances. Hence the cost differences. However, in Magicka of the Third Era, they all have their niches aside from that. Fire is cheap, and great for AOE effects. Frost is quite expensive for targeted spells, but good for touch spells. Shock is Fire's older cousin: overall more expensive, but also good for AOE. Poison is the best when it comes to damage over time effects. Finally, Damage Health still fills the niche of the least resistant damage type, but it is also better than Shock for damage over time effects, while being the most expensive otherwise. And there's more to them than just formula differences - they'll also have different synergies, but more on that later.

The formula gets way more complex once we have a spell with multiple effects. Multi-effect spells are handled by complex formula to make them more appealing to create. If you want to know the details:

Synergies

Another advanced feature of Magicka of the Third Era is effect synergies. Combining certain effects in a certain way makes the spell more efficient by reducing spell's cost. While this might not sound particularly exciting, effectively, it allows you to have stronger spells, because this cost does affect the chances. Therefore, it allows you to increase that spell's power and still have it castable.

For example, combining ranged Fire Damage with Radius of at least 5 and duration of 1 with another ranged Fire Damage with Radius of at least 5 and duration of at least 5 will result in "Fireball" synergy.

Note that you can have as many synergies per spell as you want - and they do stack. However, each synergy's bonus is weighed by it's weakest component - so it works best when all the components are relevant to synergy and cost the same amount. If you have a large shockball and decide to add "Fireball" components to it for a synergy, it can only be as impactful as your fire effects are. So, adding synergies to unrelated spells will never make these spells cheaper than they've used to be. However, if you somehow manage to fit multiple synergies in one spell with overlapping components...

These synergies are intended to be discovered through playing the game. As for now, there are 40 of them, although some are variations of each other. Their worthiness varies, but you can give them a try. You can find them by:

• Experimentation. Whenever the synergy is fulfilled in the spellmaker UI, you'll see it by having a discount percentage next to the spell's cost. Some of the synergies are intuitive and can be reasonably discovered this way.
• Reading books. There is a book that describes all synergies in a "fluffy" way (hey, I've tried). You can find it at some book merchants or as a random loot.
• Reading scrolls. Some of the synergies somewhat mimic the scroll effects. You can try replicating them by making spells similar to such scrolls. Only some multi effect scrolls are worth experimenting with.
  
  

If you prefer having all the information available, I've also added them in a spoiler file in the docs folder. Or you can even look them up in the source code: they're quite readable (provided you look up the effect IDs) and you can even add your own synergies easily if you want. I've even thought about generating some synergies randomly for every new game, but making these random synergies viable would be tough.

You don't have to worry about synergies - Morrowind by itself is not that hard of a game, and no mods can change that (unless we kill all the fun). If you, however, pursue the most efficient spells possible, synergies are your best friends! I hope experimenting with them will be fun.

Rebalance

The rebalance part is based on BTB's Spell Module, which is a considerable improvement over Vanilla. Overall I think BTB has done a pretty good job with these, although I might disagree with instagib-ness of high level magic. And of course, most of the restrictions on spellmaking are lifted.

A quick description of these changes, both BTB's and mine:

• Many spells that were too weak/pointless got much better. For example, Damage Fatigue spells were laughably bad. BTB did a great job fixing these, and I've only applied some tweaks to make them fit better into the system. Some harmful spells are now "done over time", because now it's quite practical to have them work this way. Damage over time spells are also better for counterplay, encouraging more thoughtful gameplay, and make Reflect less of a cursed effect.
• Starting spells are more useful. While in Vanilla you could get expensive starter spells to the point you can't cast them, now you'll actually get two cheap useful spells.
• NPCs get good spells exclusively for them. Compared to BTB, I've toned them down, because they were a bit overtuned in my opinion.
• Unique spells. Many merchants have a unique spell (or even more than one!) you can buy. Such spells can feature unique combinations of effects, are cheaper than spellmade alternatives, or can simply be 'special'. Since most of the mod is directed towards spellmaking improvements, it's only fair to have something that will make spell shopping more attractive than just getting every effect for the spellmaker and then ignoring all the merchants. At the moment, there are 60 unique spells. You can find where exactly they're sold in the "spell_merchants" file in docs folder of the mod, if you want.
  

You can read the details on rebalance in the corresponding article.

Experience Gain

The amount of experience gained is now based on spell's base cost (before any modifiers like fatigue apply). This essentially makes the 1-cost spell spam pointless. Another feature this mod adds is proper treatment of multi-school spells. Now for casting such spells you gain experience in multiple schools, normalized by effect cost, so the total experience gain is the same as with single school spells of it's cost.

You can tweak leveling speed both globally and separately for every school. By default, it differs a bit depending on how spammy spells are. Conjuration is the quickest to level, and Restoration is the slowest.

This feature can be disabled if you have another mod that affects skill gains by casting. But keep in mind that such mods will likely not take into account the new spell cost. This feature should work properly with mods that globally alter leveling speed.

Economy heavily depends on your mod list, and therefore is tweakable. You can change costs for spell merchants and spellmakers, and also set how much Disposition affects the prices. In Vanilla, Disposition did not affect spellmaking and it's not necessarily a mistake - you only need 1 NPC with a Disposition of 100 to make it irrelevant. Here, however, you can tweak these settings if you want to. By default, there is a small difference.

Magicka Expanded Integration

If you are using Magicka Expanded, it will automatically distribute it's spells to spell merchants. This allows you to buy them as spells, whereas in original mod they were only available through random tomes. Unlike tomes, spells placed are not random and will always go to the same NPCs. Touches both Vanilla and TR NPCs (if you have TR). Distributes only packs you have installed, but does not distribute Cortex, as it isn't supported yet.

You can check the docs (spell_merchants) to see where are these spells.

This feature can be disabled.

Installation and Compatibility

Installation

This is a lua mod, so it requires the latest version of MWSE. Run the MWSE-update just in case.
Install with your favorite mod manager. Use TES3Merge to merge records.

Load order:

• --any mods that edit Vanilla spells (like BTB)--
• Magicka of the Third Era.esp
• Merged Objects.esp
• Effect Data - Load after Merged Objects.esp
  

Effect Data needs to go after Merged Objects because it needs to forward the changes to spells. Mods like BTB's merged esp will edit some vanilla spells, and TES3Merge can't handle them properly, merging both mine and other edits, which will result in a spell with both effects. So Effect Data needs to override this. You don't really need this esp if you don't have any mods that edit spells. But unless you know for sure, keep it enabled and under Merged Objects. Mlox will sort it automatically.

Compatibility

UI Expansion's Spell Services component needs to be disabled. Restart the game afterwards. Magicka of the Third Era features it's own UI for this menu, which is largely based off UI Expansion's, but has some extra features, like different kinds of sorting.

Due to it's lua nature, this mod is fairly compatible with most. It should work fairly well with content mods like Tamriel Rebuilt, automatically recalculating the cost for all spells, modded or not. Scripted spells that use Vanilla effects might have 'broken' costs, but that's it. At some point, I might add a blacklist for that. Or just let me know the spell ids and I'll overwrite their costs via lua.

Extra support for Ahead of the Classes: unique (class-specific) spells will be cheaper, to emphasize on the class fantasy aspect.

Compatible with Magicka Expanded's new effects, except for the Cortex pack. Other spell packs are compatible - but keep in mind that new summons can be wacky power-wise. Tribunal/Bloodmoon summons are intended to be used with mort's rebalance mods, and TR summon pack contains some absurdly strong creatures and creatures you likely should not be able to summon, like Silt Striders. Most of the OP creatures will be practically impossible to summon, unless you are maxed out. Magicka of the Third Era automatically distributes Magicka Expanded's spells!

Also works with such lua/new effect mods:

3E 427 A Space Odyssey
Atronach Expansion
Bound Ammo
Chrysopoeia
Customizable MWSE Multi Mark and Harder Recall (probably won't work with "Harder Recall" feature)
Enhanced Detection
Enhanced Invisibility
Enhanced Light
Enhanced Telekinesis
Extradimensional Pockets
Leech Effects
OAAB Dark Temptations (adds Summon Dark Seducer)
OAAB Grazelands (adds Flawed Summon Daedroth)
Necrocraft (very beta, need feedback from people using this mod - you've been warned)
Tamriel Rebuilt, which recently added a bunch of summon effects.

Other mods that add new effects are unsupported for now, but can be supported later provided I have some idea balance-wise how to price their effects. Summons, for example, can be added fairly easily by comparing them to others.

That does not mean that unsupported effects will break the game: if Magicka of the Third Era finds an unsupported effect, it simply leaves the calculations to Vanilla game. Determinism settings will still apply, so these spells will follow the same rules as the others. It will behave weird if you mix supported and unsupported effects in one spell, so definitely don't do that.

Compatible with the SpellMaker mod (configurable version). I don't use it myself, but tested and it seems to work. Unlikely to work with non-configurable version.

Mods that edit how effects other than Calm/Frenzy/Rally/Demoralize work should be fine.

The esp part of the mod mostly touches spells, and therefore it should work with most other mods, including those that edit spells, although it's hard to guarantee. If paired with BTB's merged esp, it will work well as long as you put the main esp below BTB's, and Effect Data below Merged Objects. Mlox should do it automatically.

Mod is highly unlikely to work with mods that:

• Mess with spell chances (like my old mod, Dice-Free Magic).
• Mess with spell costs (like Staff Casting).
• Heavily edit the spellmaker UI. Compatible with the SpellMaker mod (configurable version).
• Edit the spell services UI at all. Like UI Expansion - disable the Spell Service part in MCM (you will need to restart the game afterwards). UI Expansion works otherwise, but disable this part of it.
• Edit how Calm/Frenzy/Rally/Demoralize work.
  

Recommended Mods & MCP Settings

Magic related:

Magicka Expanded: spell packs other than Cortex are supported and recommended. Enhanced Detection, Enhanced Invisibility, Enhanced Light, Enhanced Telekinesis are also supported and recommended.

Magicka Regeneration Suite (updated version) for Magicka regen, which is intended by this mod. I recommend 'Morrowind' formula, with following settings:

• scale = 16 (results in 1.6 multiplier) 
• No or small combat penalty (70% regeneration during combat). I find combat severely hindering your magicka regeneration unimmersive.
  

This is higher than default settings, but makes the game much better. Utility spells become sustainable and mages can actually cast spells after they run out of Magicka, if they stall the combat for some time.

You can play around with this to see what best fits you. In my opinion, having relatively quick magicka regeneration + low magicka pools is way better than otherwise. So I personally play with 100% Magicka Overflow and relatively fast regeneration. This makes for more exciting combat encounters and offers more QoL outside of combat. If you are not using Magicka Overflow, you might want to set this a bit lower.

Wings of Will - Willpower based levitation speed (MWSE Lua)

Spells Reforged - Elemental Shields - makes Elemental Shields more useful (and prettier). Elemental Shields are balanced around this (they deal damage between 1 and magnitude to attackers).

Fortify MAX

Not directly magic related:

Beware the Sixth House, Tribunal Rebalance, Bloodmoon Rebalance - additional summons (added by Magicka Expanded) are balanced around these. Without these mods, they will be unbalanced (Sixth House - too weak, TR/BM - too strong).

Controlled Consumption - limits your potion drinking capabilities, making magic more relevant and game less reliant on potion spam. This is very good for balance. If you want to replenish your magicka pool, you can't drink other tasty stuff, so you'll have to choose. Since Magicka of the Third Era makes huge magicka pools less important, this is a great balancing measure. Huge magicka pool -> don't need to drink magicka potions -> can drink something else. You get the idea.

BTB - Alchemy (not on nexus, might upload later) - fits well with changes made by my mod, making most potions relevant and ingredients less nonsensical. Also pairs well with mod above, since there will be actually plenty of good potions you'd want to drink. At this point, the only BTB module I personally use.

Stealth Improved - overhauls the broken Vanilla stealth, at the same time touching invisibility and chameleon.

MULE or CCCP for leveling. I personally use MULE, so I don't know how balanced will it be with CCCP, which has it's own magicka regen feature.

MWSE State-Based Health - Endurance manipulations are balanced around mod like this. I think CCCP has something like this built in.

Putting Power In Willpower 2

Balanced Passive Races and Birthsigns - currently my preferred mod for races and birthsigns. You don't need a max magicka bonus in my mod to be a viable mage, so actually stacking huge multipliers might make the game easier than intended (if you don't use Magicka Overflow feature). I might actually make a race mod myself later.

Realistic Archery - makes archers significantly more dangerous against mages, which makes perfect sense in my opinion.

Armor Training - for a squishy mage, taking hits is dangerous. This allows for a different way to raise your armor skill a bit.

Recommended MCP Tweaks:

Gameplay mechanics:

Slowfall overhaul - disabled. Mod is balanced around Vanilla Slowfall, where 1 pt is enough. This is because plenty of other mods rely on "slowfall 1" effects. I might take another look at it later and have it switchable.
Spellmaking max magnitude increase - enabled, very important.
Spellmaking max duration reduced - enabled, unless you want some 24 minute Feather spells, which should be possible.
Spellmaking/enchant multiple effects - enabled, very important.
Spellmaking matches editor - disabled, 0 duration spells are not intended (they will behave as 1 second, but just disable it).

I think all of these are defaults.

Known issues

If you don't disable Spell Service UI in UI Expansion, you will have issues with UI! This is not a drill! For those who ctrl+F: buy spells, no spells, missing spells, empty menu. I want to eventually do something about it.

Some of the unique spells might not show the correct skill(s) related to them. Skill display is Vanilla, no matter how the game calculates it.

Spell menu updates on equipping armor, but does not update on unequipping armor. Not a big deal in my book, but values might be inaccurate if you swap around armor to see how expensive your spells will get. Reopening the menu always updates the costs. Might do something later with it.

Enchanting is still Vanilla. Values are tweaked and similar to BTB's, but it isn't balanced. Enchanting is much more broken than spellmaking, and fixing it is a whole different story. Can only advise you to use it reasonably.

Afterword

This is my first large lua mod, and I hope it will be relatively bug-free. I've playtested it to the best of a person who'd rather mod than play, but it's a large mod and I could have missed some stuff. I've actually wanted to keep adding features, but decided to stop and have some stable version first. There might be lots of cursed code because I have almost no lua experience. But at the very least, I wasn't able to notice anything abnormal.

Balance in TES, is... well, not really a thing. It's impossible to account for everything, especially considering that everyone uses different mod combinations. So instead of everything being balanced, I've aimed at everything being viable. There are likely some new ways to break the balance, and that's fine. All balance input is welcome!

Thanks to SpellMaker, Nimble Armor and UI Expansion mods, which had some useful code I've used to make my mod work. And thanks to everyone on the Morrowind Modding Discord server who kept answering my silly questions!