Introduction

Adds a number of stones scattered around Tamriel, which grant the player unusual effects.

This is my first(?) Oblivion mod, made on a whim a couple of years ago, which I never released. You might be able to tell that it was originally part of a greater perks-style mod - I cut out some of the interesting ideas to use here instead ;P I'm just uploading it now in case someone might enjoy it, and so it's not sitting and rotting on my hard drive. There are still some problems with it, and it might benefit from a balance pass. I don't have any intention of offering any support, or updating it further.

Requirements & Considerations
This mod requires the following:

• xOBSE
• The Mehrunes Razor DLC
  

This mod makes changes to the following GMSTs, and will mess with mods that do the same:

• FWortAlchMult
• FWortStrMult
  

Boons
The boon stones are scattered across the world, generally in places relevant to their effects. Activating one removes any other boons you have, before granting its own (you can configure the mod to allow multiple boons at a time - see later).

Blood (not working)
Effect
Those blessed by Blood regenerate their Greater Powers faster with everything they kill.

Every killing blow you deal reduces the cooldown on all of your Greater Powers by 1 hour.

Design Notes
Greater Powers tend to be pretty useful, but with the hassle of managing cooldowns I find myself falling into two camps. Either I forget that they exist, or overuse them by stopping to wait for them to recharge after every use. By putting more focus on them with this boon, this'll help with both groups: reminding the players of their Greater Powers and encouraging them to use them, while also providing a more interesting and less cheese-y path to keep them available to cast.

Configuration

• set BoonStoneBloodKillTime to # (default: 1.0). Sets the amount of time (in in-game hours) that each kill reduces the cooldown of Greater Powers by.
  

Might
Effect
The power attacks of those blessed by Might deal massive damage to whatever is used to block them.

Your power attacks that strike somebody who's blocking damages their shield's health by an amount equal to 6 times your skill in the weapon you're using. If they're blocking with a weapon, rather than a shield, the damage to the equipment is halved.

Design Notes
There aren't many ways to deprive an enemy of their shield, and sometimes fights can feel like they drag on without much of note changing. This boon tries to help with that, but also just exists because it feels good to smash stuff.

The multiplier chosen was to keep the number of hits to fully break a shield roughly in line across skills versus their level-appropriate material shields, with some bias towards helping them get smashed. At least, I think - it's been years since I decided on the value and left no notes...

Damage to blocking weapons is halved because weapons in general have half the durability of their shield counterparts, and there are already martial ways of depriving someone of their weapon (like disarming), but not their shields.

Configuration

• set BoonStoneCrushSkillModifier to # (default: 6.0). This times attacker's weapon skill is the amount of health damage dealt to the blocking equipment.
• set BoonStoneCrushWeaponBlockModifier to # (default: 0.5). If the item being used to block is a weapon rather than a shield, the damage dealt to it is multiplied by this. By default it's used to half the damage that weapons take.
  

Energy
Effect
Those blessed by Energy gain resistance to the elements based on the elements contained within the last spell they cast.

The boon grants you a passive 50% elemental resistance to either Fire, Frost, or Shock. The elemental resistance changes whenever you cast a spell featuring Fire, Frost, or Shock damage, to reflect the element used (cast a fire damage spell and it changes to fire resistance, for example). If the spell features multiple damage types then it chooses what element based on priority (earliest in the list governs the resistance): Fire > Frost > Shock.

Design Notes
I always enjoy mechanics that encourage active participation and good planning. This is one of the easiest ways I could think of to implement a counterspelling-style system, while also offering a bit more.

Does this potentially discourage the use of resistance spells? Maybe. But I imagine it'll still be nice to have dedicated spells for the job so you can be safe in the knowledge the protection won't switch on you if you're not paying attention. Plus, relying on this boon means you can't use any of the others - opportunity cost!

Configuration
As the resistances are granted via spell abilities, the magnitude of their effects are hardcoded. To change them will require a custom mod. The Editor ID for the resistance spells are: BoonStoneEnergyResistFire, BoonStoneEnergyResistFrost, and BoonStoneEnergyResistShock.

Gloom
Effect
Those blessed by Gloom become shrouded in shadow after spending some time in the dark. The shroud is eaten away by spending too much time in light.

After spending an uninterrupted span of 10 seconds in darkness, you gain 30 points of Chameleon. This effect lasts until you've spent 6 uninterrupted seconds outside of darkness.

Design Notes
Obligatory stealth effect. The effect encourages the player to consider and be aware of their current environment a lot more, looking at things through a different light (okay, so they were still paying attention to lighting for the purposes of stealth, but shush). Carefully finding moments to charge up the effect while enemies patrol, feeling like there's some preparation going in to a stealthy plan, and then having some fun trying to avoid light in order to maintain the effect. 6 seconds to break the effect might sound generous, but in practice you'll really appreciate that extra wiggle room.

Now that I think about it, I could've given some extra effects/boni for being shrouded in shadow, like moving faster, poisoning people, or some regenerative effects (Daggerfall had some cool spells / abilities that reacted to darkness, for example).

Configuration
The Chameleon effect is hardcoded as a spell effect, and will require a custom mod to change it. The Editor ID for the spell is: BoonStoneGloomCloak

• set BoonStoneGloomLightLevel to # (default: 55.0). At and below this level counts as darkness for the boon's effects, while levels above count as light. This value was tuned to make sure that night time should count as darkness. If wanting to configure things yourself, make use of player.GetActorLightAmount to find the light acting on the player currently. Note that lighting levels work fairly weirdly in Oblivion, and some things might not be fully intuitive.
• set BoonStoneGloomChargeTime to # (default: 10.0). How long must be spent in darkness before the effect starts.
• set BoonStoneGloomEffectTime to # (default: 6.0). How long can be spent outside of darkness before the effect ends.
  

Iron
Effect
Once per day, when close to death those blessed by Iron will gain a second wind, regaining some health, fatigue, and magicka. They also take reduced damage from all sources when blocking just before getting hit.

This boon has 2 effects:

• After falling below 25% health (and surviving), your Health, Magicka, and Stamina are restored by 50 points. This effect can only be used once every 24 hours.
• Your first second of blocking grants 50 points of Resist Magic and Shield - time your blocks well to dramatically reduce incoming damage. After triggering this effect (whether you blocked something or not), you can't benefit from this effect again for another second. This effect only applies during the start of a block - you can't just keep your block held.
  

Design Notes
Timed blocks are fun. Nuff said. The timings may need adjusting to better suit one's tastes and abilities.

The second wind effect was included to also help reinforce the tanky, hard to kill feeling. It's a nice small bonus, but not substantive enough to be its own boon. Perhaps I might consider replacing the flat amounts restored with percentages instead, so it scales better for higher levels.

Configuration
The Resist and Shield effects are hardcoded as a spell effect, and will require a custom mod to change it. The Editor ID for the spell is: BoonStoneGritBlockBoost

• set BoonStoneGritSurgeHealthTrigger to # (default: 0.25). The second wind effect will trigger when your health is at or below this percentage (0.25 means 25%).
• set BoonStoneGritSurgeHealthRestore to # (default: 50). The amount of health restored when the second wind effect triggers.
• set BoonStoneGritSurgeMagickaRestore to # (default: 50). The amount of magicka restored when the second wind effect triggers.
• set BoonStoneGritSurgeFatigueRestoreto # (default: 50). The amount of fatigue restored when the second wind effect triggers.
• set BoonStoneGritBlockTime to # (default: 1.0). How long the special protection window lasts (in seconds) upon initiating block. Set this lower if you want more of a challenge to your reflexes.
• set BoonStoneGritBlockCooldown to # (default: 1.0). How long after the special protection effect expires before timed blocks will trigger again.
  

Hunger
Effect
Those blessed by Hunger gain much more potent effects from eating raw ingredients. They can also use fellow civilized beings as sources of ingredients.

This boon has two effects:

• The effects of eating ingredients become as potent as if they were a potion made by somebody with 20 levels in Alchemy, for better or worse. This only applies to ingredients, not food items.
• The corpses of men or mer who die while you have this boon can be harvested for special ingredients.
  

Design Notes
TThis is definitely one of the weirder effects, but I expect people will enjoy it (when they don't forget about it and accidentally eat enough harmful ingredients to kill themselves). Unfortunately a lot of ingredients don't have their good effects as their first effect (the ones you'll gain when eating them raw), and most that have good standard effects are food, which aren't affected. The cannibalism is just a nice extra bonus to help with netting a few extra ingredients to use/sell... What, too weird?

Other effects that I'd considered were:

• Always successfully harvesting plants.
• Animals always dropping their special ingredients / having a much better chance to. That would involve all the potential compatibility issues with creature / levelled item list edits, as well as not being able to account for modded-in creatures, so I chose to avoid that.
  

Configuration
The extra ingredients for killing sapients are hardcoded in the BoonStoneCannibalLoot leveled item list, and will require a custom mod to change it.

• BoonStoneHungerWortcraftStrength (default: 20). When eating ingredients, this is the equivalent level of alchemy skill used to determine the potency of the effect.
  

Rage
Effect
Those blessed by Rage have an infuriating presence, driving anyone in their presence under the effects of Frenzy into a berserk rage, causing them to deal and take much more damage from all sources. Once per day, the blessed can also enrage all nearby them.

This boon causes anybody who's in combat and affected by a frenzy spell to gain the following effects:

• Fortify Skill Blade + Blunt + Hand to Hand + Destruction: 50 points
• Drain Skill Heavy + Light Armor: 50 points
• Weakness to Magic: 100 points
  

It also grants you a Greater Power that causes 100 points of Frenzy for 30 seconds in a 25 range area around you.

Design Notes
Hopefully this double-edged sword of an effect should lead to interesting scenarios (or at the very least, shenanigans). Maybe the Greater Power could end up being too disruptive, but again, shenanigans.

Coding-wise the script could do with a bit of refinement. Currently there's no check to ensure that the Frenzy effect is the reason they're fighting (they could be fighting while just happening to be under a weak Frenzy effect), and responsiveness might be a bit too lax as the checks to see if they should be berserk only happen once every second.

Configuration
The enraged effects are hardcoded as a spell effect, and will require a custom mod to change it. The Editor ID for the spell is: BoonStoneRageEffect

Miscellaneous
Debug, Cheats, and Configuration

• You can allow yourself to have all the boons simultaneously by using set BoonStoneUnlimited to 1. With great power comes great responsibility.
• If you're boring and don't want to explore the world to find the boon stones, you can use StartQuest BoonStoneRevealQuest.
• Some of the boons have been designed to be actor-agnostic, meaning they could in theory be granted to NPCs if you want. Adding spells via console is a bit difficult in Oblivion, so I'll just list the names of relevant blessings and leave you to find the IDs:
  • Blood - BoonStoneBloodBlessing. I'm not sure if NPCs even have/use Greater Powers?
  • Might - BoonStoneCrushBlessing.
  • Energy - BoonStoneEnergyBlessing. Don't expect the AI to use this ability intelligently.
  • Gloom - BoonStoneGloomBlessing. The AI won't go out of its way to trigger this, or avoid the light from ending it.
  • Iron - BoonStoneGritBlessing. Again, the AI won't use this intelligently, though as the benefits are generally passive it shouldn't matter too much.