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About this mod
Magic in Vanilla Oblivion is... debatable. LAME's goals are to fix it's flaws and enhance the playing experience, for both mages and non-mages. Requires Oblivion 1.2.0416, but does not require OBSE or Shivering Isles.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
Last update: 12/20/21
Minor bugfixes in bgMagicEV.esp and bgMagicBonus.esp; most important changes: made Wabba Summon stronger (should be now on par with the other expert summons), removed the changes to the Skeleton Key (some other mods didn't like the changes).
Less Annoying Magic Experience (short: LAME) changes many aspects of Oblivion's magic, with four goals:
- making magic less annoying. Examples: Extends many spell durations, so that you don't have to recast some buffs every couple of seconds. Removing (some) spell book cluttering. Making spells easier to identify (thanks to riklund's "Diverse Effect Icons"). Increase the power of formerly useless spells. Although LAME has many more features, this is it's core - a magic that just "feels" right, and not like you're a rat in a cage tapping constantly a button.
- making magic more interesting, giving the player spells to look forward to. In Oblivion you get, when you master the next skill level, mostly the same spells with just a higher magnitude. Not anymore! An experienced Mysticism mage can sense nearby danger or use various teleport spells; an expert in Alteration can disrupt enemy movement or simply sending them outside of time for a couple of seconds; a master in Conjuration can create a fully functional Oblivion Gate or summon a magical steed; a Restoration master can extract his own spirit to gain a powerful ally, an expert in Destruction can create magical fire, especially useful to block doors and tunnels with it.
- enhancing some magic schools, which weren't that interesting in Oblivion (like Mysticism). There are more than hundred new spells added. Mysticism now has a wide array of knowledge, teleport and telekinetic spells, Conjuration has many more summons and much better summon behavior, Alteration can transmute various items into other items or uses (e.g. fletching and enchanting arrows from ingredients).
- very few formerly highly problematic spell effects like chameleon have been rebalanced to not be possible gamebreakers anymore. LAME aims to provide a complete, fun and interesting gameplay experience, without under- or overpowered spells.
And that's only a short summary. There's so much more. A "nature summon" path for conjuration, which uses magic effects and are therefore available at the spell making altar, including new icons and a new summoning visual effect. A rebalance of various magic effects - while the duration of many buffs has been increased, some other magic effects like Drain Health or Charm aren't exploitable anymore. "Level spells" like Frenzy scale now up to level 50. "Light" isn't nuclear green anymore. Some special summons, which used to create only normal ghosts, are now truly unique; e.g. Dunmer are protected by a fiery spirit. Different skeleton summons don't look like one egg to another anymore. Self made permanent enchantments can now be nearly as powerful as those done with equivalent Sigil Stones (and not five times weaker). Summoned creatures don't attack their summoner as easily as before. A new take on sustained spells, which gives an old idea a new twist by requiring fatigue. Edgar sells really debatable "discount" spells now. And even more...
It's not LAME's intention to make magic per se stronger, but more diverse and less annoying. In a way LAME makes magic more powerful - but only defensive magic, and that for all casters in game. Ever cast a bound weapon spell, ran to an enemy and that weapon has already disappeared due to it's 15 seconds duration? That won't happen anymore. But it won't happen to your enemies, too. Usually "more powerful" only affects the spells' duration - they last longer, but their effect is not raised.
Also LAME comes with seven additional modules, to enhance your magic experience even more - or taking care of some other magic related matters. They are not required, but recommended.
- Shader: This adds very many new weapon enchantment and hit effect shaders. You know about the mods that make fire enchanted weapons actually burn? This is one of them. But it goes far beyond that - nearly all effects than can be found on weapons have their own shader effect. Some even carried over to hit effects (like small sparks bursting from someone hit with a shock spell, or green fog when poisoned).
- SpellTomes: This plugin actually adds "notes" about various spells to the game. And when you read them, you get a spell. These notes appear in various random locations, even some merchants. This was included for two reasons. On the one hand to include some dungeon diving rewards for mages, so that they don't have to buy all their spells. On the other hand to include a new way to get the new spells - usually they're only sold by a new spell merchant in Skingrad. Important: This module has, except it's name, nothing to do with the official DLC. Also when using it you have to rebuild your bashed patch.
- Paperchase: Instead of simply buying all new "master" spells like Meteor Shower you have to find them! This module adds special "notes" (like the above ones, but hand placed) into the world. But not only that - there are a lot of clues given, in many different forms, so it's much more a real paperchase than the "find XYZ" quests in Oblivion which don't give any clues. This little quests has many. Hard ones, though. This module can be customized (depending if you want to have the spells buyable or not) with startquest paperchase . Oh and the riddles could make your brain hurt.
- StartingSpells: Usually you get predefined spells when you select a magic school. Let's say you select Conjuration, because you want to create a druid. Now you get a "Summon Scamp" spell. Not with this module anymore, now you can actually choose which spells you want to have. To complete that example for Conjuration you can either pick nature, daedra or undead summons.
- ItemSigil: This balances out every single sigil stone and premade enchantment. Main reason for this is to remove exploits (or making them much harder to get, like chameleon 100), and to make some underpowered gear (mostly quest rewards) actually useful, and to balance things a bit more out.
- Bonus: This replaces nearly all of the various greater powers and fortify skill abilities you get as quest rewards with something that is, in my humble opinion, more useful - small permanent bonuses (like resist fire 5 and the like). Please use this only with MagicItemSigil, because that other module makes some important enchantments weaker, and without that this module may be a bit too much.
- AddEnVar: This is a small beginning of what will (hopefully) be a big mod in the future. It adds many new spells to enemy casters (around 50 this time), so they don't only use the same few spells over and over. I'm planning to expand it greatly in the future. Requires Wrye Bash.
Minor bugfixes in bgMagicEV.esp and bgMagicBonus.esp; most important changes: made Wabba Summon stronger (should be now on par with the other expert summons), removed the changes to the Skeleton Key (some other mods didn't like the changes).
Less Annoying Magic Experience (short: LAME) changes many aspects of Oblivion's magic, with four goals:
- making magic less annoying. Examples: Extends many spell durations, so that you don't have to recast some buffs every couple of seconds. Removing (some) spell book cluttering. Making spells easier to identify (thanks to riklund's "Diverse Effect Icons"). Increase the power of formerly useless spells. Although LAME has many more features, this is it's core - a magic that just "feels" right, and not like you're a rat in a cage tapping constantly a button.
- making magic more interesting, giving the player spells to look forward to. In Oblivion you get, when you master the next skill level, mostly the same spells with just a higher magnitude. Not anymore! An experienced Mysticism mage can sense nearby danger or use various teleport spells; an expert in Alteration can disrupt enemy movement or simply sending them outside of time for a couple of seconds; a master in Conjuration can create a fully functional Oblivion Gate or summon a magical steed; a Restoration master can extract his own spirit to gain a powerful ally, an expert in Destruction can create magical fire, especially useful to block doors and tunnels with it.
- enhancing some magic schools, which weren't that interesting in Oblivion (like Mysticism). There are more than hundred new spells added. Mysticism now has a wide array of knowledge, teleport and telekinetic spells, Conjuration has many more summons and much better summon behavior, Alteration can transmute various items into other items or uses (e.g. fletching and enchanting arrows from ingredients).
- very few formerly highly problematic spell effects like chameleon have been rebalanced to not be possible gamebreakers anymore. LAME aims to provide a complete, fun and interesting gameplay experience, without under- or overpowered spells.
And that's only a short summary. There's so much more. A "nature summon" path for conjuration, which uses magic effects and are therefore available at the spell making altar, including new icons and a new summoning visual effect. A rebalance of various magic effects - while the duration of many buffs has been increased, some other magic effects like Drain Health or Charm aren't exploitable anymore. "Level spells" like Frenzy scale now up to level 50. "Light" isn't nuclear green anymore. Some special summons, which used to create only normal ghosts, are now truly unique; e.g. Dunmer are protected by a fiery spirit. Different skeleton summons don't look like one egg to another anymore. Self made permanent enchantments can now be nearly as powerful as those done with equivalent Sigil Stones (and not five times weaker). Summoned creatures don't attack their summoner as easily as before. A new take on sustained spells, which gives an old idea a new twist by requiring fatigue. Edgar sells really debatable "discount" spells now. And even more...
It's not LAME's intention to make magic per se stronger, but more diverse and less annoying. In a way LAME makes magic more powerful - but only defensive magic, and that for all casters in game. Ever cast a bound weapon spell, ran to an enemy and that weapon has already disappeared due to it's 15 seconds duration? That won't happen anymore. But it won't happen to your enemies, too. Usually "more powerful" only affects the spells' duration - they last longer, but their effect is not raised.
Also LAME comes with seven additional modules, to enhance your magic experience even more - or taking care of some other magic related matters. They are not required, but recommended.
- Shader: This adds very many new weapon enchantment and hit effect shaders. You know about the mods that make fire enchanted weapons actually burn? This is one of them. But it goes far beyond that - nearly all effects than can be found on weapons have their own shader effect. Some even carried over to hit effects (like small sparks bursting from someone hit with a shock spell, or green fog when poisoned).
- SpellTomes: This plugin actually adds "notes" about various spells to the game. And when you read them, you get a spell. These notes appear in various random locations, even some merchants. This was included for two reasons. On the one hand to include some dungeon diving rewards for mages, so that they don't have to buy all their spells. On the other hand to include a new way to get the new spells - usually they're only sold by a new spell merchant in Skingrad. Important: This module has, except it's name, nothing to do with the official DLC. Also when using it you have to rebuild your bashed patch.
- Paperchase: Instead of simply buying all new "master" spells like Meteor Shower you have to find them! This module adds special "notes" (like the above ones, but hand placed) into the world. But not only that - there are a lot of clues given, in many different forms, so it's much more a real paperchase than the "find XYZ" quests in Oblivion which don't give any clues. This little quests has many. Hard ones, though. This module can be customized (depending if you want to have the spells buyable or not) with startquest paperchase . Oh and the riddles could make your brain hurt.
- StartingSpells: Usually you get predefined spells when you select a magic school. Let's say you select Conjuration, because you want to create a druid. Now you get a "Summon Scamp" spell. Not with this module anymore, now you can actually choose which spells you want to have. To complete that example for Conjuration you can either pick nature, daedra or undead summons.
- ItemSigil: This balances out every single sigil stone and premade enchantment. Main reason for this is to remove exploits (or making them much harder to get, like chameleon 100), and to make some underpowered gear (mostly quest rewards) actually useful, and to balance things a bit more out.
- Bonus: This replaces nearly all of the various greater powers and fortify skill abilities you get as quest rewards with something that is, in my humble opinion, more useful - small permanent bonuses (like resist fire 5 and the like). Please use this only with MagicItemSigil, because that other module makes some important enchantments weaker, and without that this module may be a bit too much.
- AddEnVar: This is a small beginning of what will (hopefully) be a big mod in the future. It adds many new spells to enemy casters (around 50 this time), so they don't only use the same few spells over and over. I'm planning to expand it greatly in the future. Requires Wrye Bash.