Overhauls the Grab key's interaction with the Crime, Disposition, Social, Stealth and Thieving mechanisms. All of that to let you grab without a conscience ...
Requirements
This mod does not have any known dependencies other than the base game.
Put it in its Place : Enhanced Grabbing Grab without a Conscience ! version 0.5
Requires Oblivion Script Extender
Description
One of the many oversights made by Bethesda was the irregular way the Havok physics engine and the crime system worked together. The Grab key, apparently, is under used due to the fact that grabbing an object, which belonged to an NPC, caused the crime system to add a bounty to the player, assuming that the player was "stealing" the object.
This mod changes that aspect of the game and adds a completely new substratum of mechanics which work in tandem, seamlessly blending into the original game. In short, PiiiP : Enhanced Grabbing gives you every reason ( and then some ) to use that underrated Grab key.
Short Feature List : -
Vanilla Grabbing Crime Evasion : Using the Grab key on NPC-owned objects no longer counts as a crime. Now you could place that stray apple in Ongar's House back on the table, or in a bowl, without bracing for a fight with that burly Bruma guard!
Elevation Perks : Throwing things around will no longer go unnoticed – If you grab and throw something around, you'll probably lower your standing with any NPCs nearby, who had witnessed your antics. On the other hand, lending a hand will most definitely get you places. If you thought placing that stray book in its shelf was a thankless job, think again.
Crime Handling : Gone are the days when touching a worthless clay pitcher would get you a bounty on your head ! No longer will you hear the cry of "Thief! You won't get away with this!" when you pick up a bow to have a good look at it. Committing a crime using the Grab key is more of an intellectual chore now. NPCs will reason and think before they blatantly accuse of crimes that you'd never committed. For instance, you grab an expensive dagger and the NPC start's to watch you closely. You move around grabbing it, while staying in sight, he won't mind. Now you make a move by starting to sneak and trying to get out of sight. A few seconds later, you manage to get undetected and after making sure you are not seen, you pocket the silver dagger, chuckling to yourself all along (mumbling about the stupidity of the game characters). You've hardly closed your inventory, when the dagger's owner gets the willies and runs around looking for you, eventually arriving at the place you were last seen by him. You sit barely a foot away; almost sure that he won't find you. Then all of a sudden, he figures out that you are there and lets fly a cheesy remark – "This better be good ...". He looks around for the dagger, while you desperately hope that you'd get lucky. Unfortunately, your luck doesn't hold and he discovers that you'd stolen his precious merchandise. "Thief! You won't get away with this" (or something similar) is his 1st response to the outrage he just figured out, which is swiftly followed by a cry for help. A minute later, you're answering to a guard. That's just one of the many (slight exaggeration) outcomes of such an event. The reaction of the owner is determined by the various factors where logic is the key element of the formula used and chance plays only a very little role.
Neatnik NPCs : NPCs, shop owners especially, like to keep their premises neat. You grab some mead ( grab, get it ! ) , you drain it and throw the bottle around – The barkeep mumbles curses, stops his work, picks up the bottle and puts it back in its place. In the same pattern, any NPC, whose article's been thrown around by the player, will retrieve and replace his possession.
Player Push Over : While it may be a well accepted fact that watching NPCs doing menial chores such as the above is an amusing sight, one needs to be careful as to not push the poor fellow into a corner. Repeated throwing of objects and the subsequent retrieval by the owner will end up aggravating the NPC, who will try to send the player out of the premises. Humiliation's guaranteed if the player refuses to comply.
Noise Maker : Objects can be grabbed and flinged to cause a noise. Any creatures or NPCs nearby will investigate the sound, creating new opportunities to get about with your business. You can thereby lure enemies into traps and ambushes, or just distract them so that you can sneak past them. For instance; you are cleaning out a dungeon, looking for a particular treasure chest. When you finally venture upon it, you find to your dismay, that it's being guarded by a huge and rather menacing bandit. He hasn't seen you yet – but he will – should you consider a direct approach. A sneak attack is out of the question as he stands on an elevated platform, which can only be reached by jumping. You evaluate your options - You've got a heavy set of Dwemer boots and the "Deadly Reflexes 5"mod. A conclusion is reached - You remove the boots from your inventory and throw it within hearing distance of the bandit. The huge oaf hears the noise and gets down investigating, while you wait patiently for the right moment to pass by. The bandit reaches the noise's point of origin and looks around for the source. Not yet, you say to yourself. After a few futile seconds of searching, the "victim" abandons his attempt to locate the perpetrator of the noise and focuses his attention on the shiny set of boots at his feet. Greedily, he reaches down to pick them up; thinking about his luck …when the moment arrives! You leap into action and trigger the DR 5 sneak attack, the dazzled NPC just looking up to see your sword coming down on his neck. A second later, his body goes limp. Five minutes after that, you happily prance out into the sun with your loot bag filled to the brim. Comes bundled with the Item-Dropper™, which scans your inventory and drops the heaviest object for quick use.
Slapper : Traversing the social ladder was never this unbecoming and fun! Slap pesky aristocratic women in the face and challenge them to duels! Teach that annoying fan a proper lesson for a change. Humiliate arrogant guards! And if you've got the stones, give those fighters guild porters a good left 'n right and attempt to get away with it!
Kleptomaniac : Gives the player enough reason to create a "Chainsnatcher" class. Discover an alternative means of pickpocketing! Snatch expensive jewelry and armaments from unwary actors and make a run for it! Imagine grabbing a guard's weapon when he wasn't looking and running all over the Colovian Highlands with him on your tail – An enticing thought indeed.
Toggle-able Grab : The Grab key doesn't need to be held for the whole duration of grabbing anymore. Tapping the Grab key once will initiate grabbing and tapping it again, while grabbing, will release the grab control. And with it's Auto-Flinger™, the grabbed object gets flinged automatically when it gathers enough momentum ( mostly hype, but it works ).
Mortician : Dispose the corpses of Cyrodill's preposterously endowed men and women with nothing more than a key press - Cleanly and efficiently.
Lock it in its Place : Pandering those with obsessively neat minds, LiiiP allows the freezing of objects to help with decoration and other nasty impulses.
QuickEquip : Activating a grabbed item automatically equips/uses it. And for some arcane reason, that makes sense even in the real world!
Functional Physics : All of PiiiP's (appropriate) subsystems work with telekinesis.
Voice Acted NPC reactions : Now, how about that ! Well worth the download – you'll see … NPCs don't sit and stare at you when bring down their house around them. You'll aptly receive a sharp comment when there's need of one.
Usage
The INI file contains all the configurable options of the mod. Users of the silent voices version need to set the appropriate flag in the Misc. section of the INI before first run.
When properly installed and activated, the mod will begin to work on loading a save game. This mod doesn't require a new game to work – It will work with existing games as well.
Compatibility
This mod is, and should be, compatible with all mods.
Special note on Reneer’s Guard Overhaul – PiiiP's Grab engine is compatible with RGO v1.92 and above. Problems such as auto-resetting bounties and irresponsive guards may be mitigated by setting RGO's compatibility settings to allow changes to the player's bounty. Note that such issues are usually caused by using any mod that modifies the player's crime gold, with RGO, as its crime gold system works differently than the vanilla crime system. RGO v1.93 fixes most of these problems.
Credits
Special thanks to :
Ian Patterson, Stephen Abel and Paul Connelly (The OBSE Team) – For keeping up the Oblivion Modding spirit and providing the modding community with TES4 Oblivion's Elixir of Immortality.
LHammonds – For his readme generator.
TheTalkieToaster & Haama – For their scripting advise
Kyoma – Who, in more than one occasion, became a Just-in-Time debugger, and for scripting advise.
XMarksTheSpot – For his help with the collision detection system
kuertee – For his brilliant NPCs are suspicious mod. Even more so for letting me incorporate that idea into PiiiP. Thanks mate!
QQuix – For his help with my disemboweling of Oblivion's coordinate system
2Cold Scorpio-RGc1 - For introducing me to and helping with my FF Cinematic Mod installation, without which I would have surely spent more time on 0.4
artfact - For his idea of strength checks in PPO
Tejon – For testing, comic relief, formulas and harassment
SkyCaptain – For all his help with the animations
UK47 – Thank this great fellow for all the slick animations
TamaraVico – For introducing the slapping theme
Qazaaq – For his brilliant finger-snap animations
Khettienna, InsanitySorrow, jaggedbubbles and Maxwell the Fool – The brilliant quartet that helped PiiiP evolve and work as advertised. 0.5 would have never gone gold without them and the TESA BTA Guild.
The Entire Community around the TES Construction Set Wiki – For making such an exhaustive resource catering to ES Modding. The Folks at the Construction Set Forums – For all their help, rum and fish. The Rest of the Modding Community – For the inspiration I needed to start modding and all the wonderful mods which I use. Bethesda – For providing a great game, with enough flaws to keep us busy.
Change Log
Spoiler:
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0.5 -
Slapper - Slap people around and challenge them to duels
Kleptomaniac - Grab every (reasonably accessible) object in the world
Mortician - Corpse disposal at the press of a button
LiiiP - Lock items in their place.
QuickEquip - Pick up and quickly equip items without having to rummage around in your inventory
Refactored debugging code base
Modified most scripts to use user functions and proper loops
Got rid of a redundant token
Moved globals to a dedicated quest script container
Cleaned up the INI file
Noise Attenuation added to Noise Maker. Noise radius formula overhauled.
Faction owned items are now picked up by members of the parent faction.
Faction leaders can dismiss the player
Support for telekinetically picked-up objects
Responsibility checks add to PiiiP'ing. Only responsible NPCs pick up flinged objects.
Removed the in-game options token
Increased disposition modifier for Elevation Perks by taking into account the current disposition
Item value is taken into consideration by while PiiiP'ing.
Irresponsible magicka majors use magic for PiiiP'ing
Added a grabbing animation that plays when grabbing an object
Removed silent voice files in favor of Elys USV
Removed UV Noise Maker patch plugin temporarily
Fixed an instance when the item tracker failed to detect a reset on grabbing an object in motion
Looking up doesn't trigger the auto flinger anymore
Sleeping NPCs are correctly excluded from appropriate checks
Corrected a flag that disallowed a particular response
Item owners need not detect the PC at item collision as long as they see the player fling the item.
OBSE version in OMOD script fixed
Made compatible with arrow denocking mods
Toggle grab now works with actors
0.4 -
Updated and streamlined core scripts sporting modular code
Customization now simplified with an INI file
Optional Silent Voices version added
Player Push-Over : Repeated use of the feature will trigger a more interactive and an uncannily immersive response - The player being sent out of the premises.
Noise Maker : Throwing objects around to create a ruckus. With Item Dropper, which drops the heaviest item in the inventory. Patch for UV added.
Toggle-able Grab : The grab key doesn't need to be held down all the time - Tapping it once will hold the grab control and tapping it while grabbing will release the key.
Crime Handling : Replacing a whisked object with another one of the same type creates a small window of opportunity to get away with the crime.
Neatnik NPCs : Owners replace all objects that were throw regardless of when, as long as they witness the throw (detect the player)
Elevation perks script is no longer reset during a savegame load
Included disposition modification when owner ref. wasn't found and conditionalized code for greater chance of modification
NPCs with 50 responsibility are now valid targets for disposition modding
Grab functions no longer work on items being reset
Inactive NPCs no longer perpetually involved in trying to restore a flinged object
Owner NPCs no longer try to replace items outside of their parent cell
Owner NPCs remember to recover the item nicked by the player
The phenomenally in-frequent CTD has been eliminated
The Stolen Goods misc. stat is no longer incremented occasionally when grabbing an object
Evil NPCs are exempted from disposition mods
Possible fix for the bountiful bosom bug
Using a mouse button for the grab control no longer triggers vanilla crime handling (a keyboard key is still needed for toggle-able grab)
Tokens are removed when their life span expires
Options Token is no longer re-added when dropped/removed from the inventory
0.3 - Major Revision, Older versions are obsolete. 0.2 - Fixed 'Ownership mix-up when grabbing 2 items' problem - you should no longer have a item with it's owner as the PC, chance of an Easter egg occurring reduced drastically, players will no longer be plagued by my witless humour, player detection flaw fixed, New configuration menu with options to enable/disable mod. Debug ESP removed, now debug text can be toggled using the config. menu. 0.1a - A few bug fixes, a clean up and an Easter egg ! 0.1 - Initial, working Build. ( Unreleased )
