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About this mod
This mod allows PCs to bring combat to a non-violent resolution in two ways: a diplomatic PC can negotiate a Truce with his opponents, while a merciful PC can demand that his opponents Surrender.
- Permissions and credits
=== Diplomacy and Mercy ===
NOTE: This is the last non-OBSE version! Versions 1.2 and later are located here:
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20381
version 1.1 BETASeptember 12, 2008
by Picador
----
= Overview =
This mod allows PCs to bring combat to a non-violent resolution in two ways:
* Diplomacy: a diplomatic PC can negotiate a truce with his opponents. Through Speechcraft, bribery, Charm spells, or other avenues of raising disposition (provided by mods like Companion Share and Recruit), a diplomatic PC can convince his opponents to cease combat.
* Mercy: a merciful PC can demand yield from his opponents. Those whose health is low will surrender and become non-aggressive.
= Mechanics =
* Two Lesser Powers are added to the PC: "Demand Surrender" and "Truce".
* Both are vulnerable to Silence (you have to be able to talk to call for truce or surrender), but immune to spell resistances.
* Demand Surrender is a Touch spell that affects everyone in a radius of 100 feet (no target needs to be in Touch spell range).
* Truce is a ranged spell that opens a 5-second window in which the affected NPC will become nonaggressive and initiate conversation. During this window, the PC will be Silenced, preventing re-casting Truce or any other spell. When the target begins conversation, it is up to the PC to raise the NPC's disposition above his or her Aggression (which is 100 in the case of most "enemies": bandits, marauders etc). Since Charm spells can't be used while in conversation, it's a good idea to cast them BEFORE calling a Truce. The NPC will display "Truce" as a topic of conversation: the response to this topic will indicate whether the PC has raised disposition high enough to end the NPC's attacks.
* Demand Surrender opens a 60-second window in which the NPC will be open to surrender. If the NPC's health drops below a certain threshold (equal to the PC's highest offensive skill -- Blade, Blunt, Hand to Hand, Marksman or Destruction -- plus 1/3 of the NPC's Disposition toward the PC), he or she will stop fighting and adopt a submissive posture (cowering or begging on their knees for mercy). The PC will be able to speak to the NPC, who will indicate surrender and beg for mercy. After this, the NPC's Aggression will be lowered to 5 and Disposition toward the player will be 20 points higher (of course, it usually starts pretty low if the PC has been beating them up.) Note that if the NPC's starting health is lower than the PC's combat skill, he or she will surrender if affected by this spell even without being injured: weak NPCs know better than to try to tangle with highly-skilled warriors, and will yield if given the option.
* Neither of these spells works on anyone with Personality less than 15 (creatures, perhaps some particularly barbaric NPCs) or aggression over 100 (some Dremora or other particularly nasty and evil NPCs).
* To call a Truce, you need to have your weapon sheathed. In addition, you only get one chance at a Truce per NPC: if you cast the spell on someone and then attack them or run out of conversational range, you won't be able to try again.
* Demand Surrender will alert hostile NPCs and creatures to your presence! If you are hiding, they will become alert, draw their weapons, and seek you out until they find you.
= Installation / Uninstallation =
Install by placing the file "Diplomacy and Mercy.esp" in your Oblivion/Data folder and activating it under Data Files in the Oblivion launcher menu. On loading a game, you will see two message boxes in succession telling you that you now have the abilities to demand surrender and to call truces.
Uninstall by removing the .esp file. Don't save during the 1-second window of the Truce spell: uninstalling this mod and then loading such a save could interfere with later reinstallations of the mod based on that save. Otherwise, the only changes to the game that will persist will be from residual modifications to Aggression on NPCs who have surrendered, but this should actually make sense: they will continue to be nonaggressive (but their parent objects will behave normally).
= Compatibility =
This mod should have no incompatibilities. It adds the spells to the PC through a Quest, and no base objects or resources are modified.
There might be bugs in the code that produce strange consequences when modifying the Aggression of surrendered or truce-negotiating NPCs, but these should only affect the instance, not the base object (i.e. I use modav Aggression, not setav Aggression). I'll keep my eyes peeled for these during further testing.
= NPC Behaviors =
I've only done preliminary testing on this release. It is still in Beta. So far, I've only observed the following non-intuitive behaviors, which aren't so much bugs as non-obvious AI responses: I'll break them down by the type of NPC or situation they apply to.
* Cowards: NPCs with Confidence less than 100% may flee, at which point they don't seem to respond to Truce or Surrender, but just keep running. I might try to change this behavior in later releases, or I might leave it in place, as it makes sense for some NPCs to prefer flight to surrender.
* Betrayal: An NPC who is attacked (by the PC or a third party) while begging for mercy after surrendering will become combative again, just like anyone with Aggression 5 who is attacked. If this attack was a mistake, casting Demand Surrender again (or Truce) should settle things down again. Ordinary Yielding should work as well. This might be a particular problem for PCs accompanied by aggressive allies (see Group Combat below).
* Friendly NPCs: Normally, "friendly" NPCs (Disposition toward PC >= Aggression) who are in combat with the PC (e.g., because the PC attacked them) will Yield and stop combat if hit with a Truce spell, and will Yield if asked to Surrender and their Health is low enough. Neither will initiate conversation with the PC. Thus, the spells essentially accomplish the same thing as Yielding to these NPCs.
* Group combat: If two "friendly" NPCs (both have Disposition toward each other >= Aggression) are fighting each other, hitting either with a Truce should stop their combat bilaterally. Similarly, any NPC who meets the conditions for Surrendering to the PC should stop combat with whomever he is fighting, which may (or may not!) cause his opponent to stop combat as well. This behavior may be more complex with summons or followers of the PC; it has yet to be thoroughly tested. I may try to modify it in later versions to dictate how allies and summons respond to surrendering enemies: summoned Daedra may be inherently aggressive toward captives, while humanoid allies might be more merciful. For now, though, simple disposition and aggression will dictate the result.
* Guards: As an exception to the above rules, Guards aren't affected by Truce, and they probably won't Surrender either. This is a consequence of their unique AI when attacking a "friendly" PC who has a bounty. You'll have to Yield the regular way in this situation if you want to end combat and give yourself up.
= Changelog =
v 1.1
* Truce is now ranged, lasts for 5 seconds, and adds a Silence effect to the PC for this same period of time.
v 1.0
* Truce now requires the PC to have his weapon sheathed, and it only works once per target
v 0.4
* removed the debugging messages accidentally left in v0.3 (oops)
* added new idle animations: surrendering NPCs now beg on their knees or cower in fear. looks much better, and makes it very clear that they've surrendered.
v 0.3
* added a "Find Player" package to hostile actors affected by Demand Surrender
v 0.2
* replaced forceav with modav in all scripts (props to TheTalkieToaster), averting potentially nasty mod interactions
* fixed bug in Surrender script that caused it to ignore Blunt as a PC combat skill (props to Xaerth)
* modified NPC Health threshold for surrendering to include Disposition (and therefore implicitly Fame, Infamy, Responsibility, Personality, Race, etc).
* removed unused global variables
* increased Demand Surrender spell radius from 50 to 100
= Attribution and License Information =
Contact Picador through the Bethesda Forums or by emailing [lucaspicador at gmail dot com].
Feel free to use this mod and all its contents in any way you like. Some attribution to Picador in your README would be appreciated if you think it's due.
If you want to start your own variant mod using this as a baseline, please name it something different so as to avoid confusion.
Many thanks to all the Oblivion mod community members who talked to me about this mod: your wisdom and inspiration were at least as important as my work in making this mod into something that makes people's games more interesting. Thanks also to riklund for inspiring my work with his "Friendly Oblivion" mod.
NOTE: This is the last non-OBSE version! Versions 1.2 and later are located here:
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20381
version 1.1 BETASeptember 12, 2008
by Picador
----
= Overview =
This mod allows PCs to bring combat to a non-violent resolution in two ways:
* Diplomacy: a diplomatic PC can negotiate a truce with his opponents. Through Speechcraft, bribery, Charm spells, or other avenues of raising disposition (provided by mods like Companion Share and Recruit), a diplomatic PC can convince his opponents to cease combat.
* Mercy: a merciful PC can demand yield from his opponents. Those whose health is low will surrender and become non-aggressive.
= Mechanics =
* Two Lesser Powers are added to the PC: "Demand Surrender" and "Truce".
* Both are vulnerable to Silence (you have to be able to talk to call for truce or surrender), but immune to spell resistances.
* Demand Surrender is a Touch spell that affects everyone in a radius of 100 feet (no target needs to be in Touch spell range).
* Truce is a ranged spell that opens a 5-second window in which the affected NPC will become nonaggressive and initiate conversation. During this window, the PC will be Silenced, preventing re-casting Truce or any other spell. When the target begins conversation, it is up to the PC to raise the NPC's disposition above his or her Aggression (which is 100 in the case of most "enemies": bandits, marauders etc). Since Charm spells can't be used while in conversation, it's a good idea to cast them BEFORE calling a Truce. The NPC will display "Truce" as a topic of conversation: the response to this topic will indicate whether the PC has raised disposition high enough to end the NPC's attacks.
* Demand Surrender opens a 60-second window in which the NPC will be open to surrender. If the NPC's health drops below a certain threshold (equal to the PC's highest offensive skill -- Blade, Blunt, Hand to Hand, Marksman or Destruction -- plus 1/3 of the NPC's Disposition toward the PC), he or she will stop fighting and adopt a submissive posture (cowering or begging on their knees for mercy). The PC will be able to speak to the NPC, who will indicate surrender and beg for mercy. After this, the NPC's Aggression will be lowered to 5 and Disposition toward the player will be 20 points higher (of course, it usually starts pretty low if the PC has been beating them up.) Note that if the NPC's starting health is lower than the PC's combat skill, he or she will surrender if affected by this spell even without being injured: weak NPCs know better than to try to tangle with highly-skilled warriors, and will yield if given the option.
* Neither of these spells works on anyone with Personality less than 15 (creatures, perhaps some particularly barbaric NPCs) or aggression over 100 (some Dremora or other particularly nasty and evil NPCs).
* To call a Truce, you need to have your weapon sheathed. In addition, you only get one chance at a Truce per NPC: if you cast the spell on someone and then attack them or run out of conversational range, you won't be able to try again.
* Demand Surrender will alert hostile NPCs and creatures to your presence! If you are hiding, they will become alert, draw their weapons, and seek you out until they find you.
= Installation / Uninstallation =
Install by placing the file "Diplomacy and Mercy.esp" in your Oblivion/Data folder and activating it under Data Files in the Oblivion launcher menu. On loading a game, you will see two message boxes in succession telling you that you now have the abilities to demand surrender and to call truces.
Uninstall by removing the .esp file. Don't save during the 1-second window of the Truce spell: uninstalling this mod and then loading such a save could interfere with later reinstallations of the mod based on that save. Otherwise, the only changes to the game that will persist will be from residual modifications to Aggression on NPCs who have surrendered, but this should actually make sense: they will continue to be nonaggressive (but their parent objects will behave normally).
= Compatibility =
This mod should have no incompatibilities. It adds the spells to the PC through a Quest, and no base objects or resources are modified.
There might be bugs in the code that produce strange consequences when modifying the Aggression of surrendered or truce-negotiating NPCs, but these should only affect the instance, not the base object (i.e. I use modav Aggression, not setav Aggression). I'll keep my eyes peeled for these during further testing.
= NPC Behaviors =
I've only done preliminary testing on this release. It is still in Beta. So far, I've only observed the following non-intuitive behaviors, which aren't so much bugs as non-obvious AI responses: I'll break them down by the type of NPC or situation they apply to.
* Cowards: NPCs with Confidence less than 100% may flee, at which point they don't seem to respond to Truce or Surrender, but just keep running. I might try to change this behavior in later releases, or I might leave it in place, as it makes sense for some NPCs to prefer flight to surrender.
* Betrayal: An NPC who is attacked (by the PC or a third party) while begging for mercy after surrendering will become combative again, just like anyone with Aggression 5 who is attacked. If this attack was a mistake, casting Demand Surrender again (or Truce) should settle things down again. Ordinary Yielding should work as well. This might be a particular problem for PCs accompanied by aggressive allies (see Group Combat below).
* Friendly NPCs: Normally, "friendly" NPCs (Disposition toward PC >= Aggression) who are in combat with the PC (e.g., because the PC attacked them) will Yield and stop combat if hit with a Truce spell, and will Yield if asked to Surrender and their Health is low enough. Neither will initiate conversation with the PC. Thus, the spells essentially accomplish the same thing as Yielding to these NPCs.
* Group combat: If two "friendly" NPCs (both have Disposition toward each other >= Aggression) are fighting each other, hitting either with a Truce should stop their combat bilaterally. Similarly, any NPC who meets the conditions for Surrendering to the PC should stop combat with whomever he is fighting, which may (or may not!) cause his opponent to stop combat as well. This behavior may be more complex with summons or followers of the PC; it has yet to be thoroughly tested. I may try to modify it in later versions to dictate how allies and summons respond to surrendering enemies: summoned Daedra may be inherently aggressive toward captives, while humanoid allies might be more merciful. For now, though, simple disposition and aggression will dictate the result.
* Guards: As an exception to the above rules, Guards aren't affected by Truce, and they probably won't Surrender either. This is a consequence of their unique AI when attacking a "friendly" PC who has a bounty. You'll have to Yield the regular way in this situation if you want to end combat and give yourself up.
= Changelog =
v 1.1
* Truce is now ranged, lasts for 5 seconds, and adds a Silence effect to the PC for this same period of time.
v 1.0
* Truce now requires the PC to have his weapon sheathed, and it only works once per target
v 0.4
* removed the debugging messages accidentally left in v0.3 (oops)
* added new idle animations: surrendering NPCs now beg on their knees or cower in fear. looks much better, and makes it very clear that they've surrendered.
v 0.3
* added a "Find Player" package to hostile actors affected by Demand Surrender
v 0.2
* replaced forceav with modav in all scripts (props to TheTalkieToaster), averting potentially nasty mod interactions
* fixed bug in Surrender script that caused it to ignore Blunt as a PC combat skill (props to Xaerth)
* modified NPC Health threshold for surrendering to include Disposition (and therefore implicitly Fame, Infamy, Responsibility, Personality, Race, etc).
* removed unused global variables
* increased Demand Surrender spell radius from 50 to 100
= Attribution and License Information =
Contact Picador through the Bethesda Forums or by emailing [lucaspicador at gmail dot com].
Feel free to use this mod and all its contents in any way you like. Some attribution to Picador in your README would be appreciated if you think it's due.
If you want to start your own variant mod using this as a baseline, please name it something different so as to avoid confusion.
Many thanks to all the Oblivion mod community members who talked to me about this mod: your wisdom and inspiration were at least as important as my work in making this mod into something that makes people's games more interesting. Thanks also to riklund for inspiring my work with his "Friendly Oblivion" mod.