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They say necessity is the mother of invention. This mod is the product of my frustration at the lack of what I consider to be an ideal armor system. KYTA renders Armor Rating irrelevant, takes every piece of armor into account, and works for both the player and NPCs. If Know Your Enemy 2 - Armors and True Armor had a baby, this would be it.
KYTA implements a script-free, perk-based system of layered protection, incorporating randomness to create dangerous and unpredictable combat. Damage mitigation is determined on a piece by piece basis. There is no laundry list of confusing options. No MCM. No feature creep.
Every feature of this mod is fully implemented for both the player and NPCs, including followers.
How Does It Work?
Using custom keywords powered by Keyword Item Distributor, heavy and light armors have each been divided into five ranks or "Tiers", with Tier 1 being the strongest within its category and Tier 5 providing the least protection. There are pros and cons for light and heavy armors, allowing the player to choose what to prioritize. Light armor is no longer simply a less effective option. Go all-in with high tier heavy armor, and you will laugh as most attacks fail to make a dent in your health bar. But you'll struggle to use magic and have limited or no access to spell based protection. If light armor is your preference, it won't protect you as well, but you'll find yourself unhindered while casting and less limited in your choice of flesh spells. Refer to the posted images and the readme file to gain a better understanding. You'l find user-friendly charts which can be printed for reference until you're familiar with the mod.
But what about Armor Rating? (Optional file makes this issue irrelevant)
Armor Rating has mostly been kicked to the curb. You can raise it as much as you want (within normal limits), but the highest level of protection you can get from it is 10% (with the invisible 3% from each piece still intact). In my testing, it made little difference, but your mileage may vary.
Depending on what mods you use, Armor Rating may become a meaningless stat. But that's only if you choose not to use mods that give it some other purpose. For example, the chance of receiving an injury when using Wounds is based, in part, on Armor Rating. If you use a degradation mod, you'll go a lot longer between visits to the workbench or grindstone with a high Armor Rating. You get the idea. When it comes to KYTA, think of your Armor Rating as a supplemental feature that, if you choose, can be used to expand upon your immersion or ignored altogether without your armor losing any of its defensive capabilities.
IMPORTANT:
The game setting FMaxArmorRating, which determines the maximum percentage of damage armor can absorb, has been changed from the default of 80 to 10. Any mod that alters this setting and is given priority over KYTA will likely result in too much damage reduction once a high AR is achieved.
Patches are available to reverse this change and/or get rid of the casting penalty.
Regarding Perks that Modify Armor RatingStay tuned for an update that is designed to address this concern. An optional file now exists. Other methods of dealing with Armor Rating will be introduced at some point.
Increased Spellcasting Cost for Heavy Armor (Optional)
As an old-school pen-and-paper RPG player, I believe that inexperienced wizards should struggle to cast spells while wearing heavy armor. In keeping with that philosophy, heavy armor cuirasses apply a casting cost penalty to all spells (unrelated to the Flesh spells restriction system). It's mild when wearing a Tier 1 Heavy Cuirass and harsh at Tier 5. As you gain levels, your magicka pool will deepen, and you will get access to perks and enchantments that reduce this handicap significantly. Ordinator’s vancian magic perk might be just what the doctor ordered. Regardless, in the early stages, you will probably not have enough magicka to wear upper tier heavy armor cuirasses and cast many spells.
Note: I knew that not everyone would like this idea. An optional file to disable this feature is available.
The Tier System
Using True Armor as a guidepost, I divided heavy and light armors into five tiers each. You can check armor tiers using the console. Highlight the item and click on "Keywords". You should see a list, and one of the entries should have a custom keyword from KYTA assigned to it. It will look something like the example I provided in the images. If there is no KYTA keyword attached to the item, please contact me so I can remedy the issue.
The only thing you need to understand about the tier system is how it interacts with flesh spells. See the "magic" section below and refer to the images and charts in the readme if necessary. It's fairly intuitive.
When choosing what armors went into which tiers, I used True Armor's system as a starting point. Hopefully there's nothing that's too out of place. Leave a post in the comments if you think I need to change anything.
Randomness
All armor pieces incorporate an element of randomness. A full suit of armor dampens the effect to a degree, but combat will still be unpredictable. There's always a chance that an attack will completely bypass your armor. Depending on how you have your game set up, a hit like this can do massive damage. Higher tier armors, and in particular higher tier heavy armors, reduce the likelihood of attacks getting through your armor. Even when your defenses intercept attacks, however, they will prevent damage within a range rather than at a set number, so you can never be sure how much you'll be hurt. Flesh spells operate on a similar system. Read the section on magic and refer to the provided chart for details.
Note: For even MORE randomness, try Spontaneous Output Spread and mix in a mod like Archery Locational Damage.
Combat Balance
The default protection levels in KYTA are designed to offer a smooth transition from a low level character whose armor is sufficient to survive encounters with starving wolves and inept bandits to a high level character who can can rely on his armor to keep him alive when raiding giant camps and slaying dragons. I would avoid the vanilla difficulty settings in favor of a mod that allows you to customize how much damage you take and deal. Simply Balanced is wonderful for this. Regardless, please understand that if you acquire high level armor at an early stage in the game, you will almost certainly feel overpowered. If that bothers you, consider using a mod that makes high-end loot rare. All of us have to find ways to balance our Skyrim combat experience. Select the right mods, and fine tune your settings, and KYTA will offer you combat that is never dull.
Note: Optional file added that relies mostly on Armor Rating.
Heavy Armor
Pros: Superior protection against physical attacks. All heavy cuirasses provide a chance to take no damage, with the best armors turning you into a walking fortress.
Cons: Heavy cuirasses incur an increased casting cost. Use of flesh spells is extremely limited, though lower tiers do have some access.
Set Bonus: When wearing a heavy helmet, heavy gauntlets, and heavy boots of the same tier, there's a chance to take no damage from incoming spells.
Light Armor
Pros: No additional casting cost. Greater access to flesh spells.
Cons: Less damage mitigation, though this can be offset to a degree by the light armor set bonus and the use of flesh spells.
Set Bonus: When wearing a light helmet, light gauntlets, and light boots of the same tier, there's a chance to take no physical damage from attacks.
The Cuirass
Drawing inspiration from KYE2A, I focused on the cuirass as the primary source of damage mitigation. In-line with True Armor, all cuirasses have two defensive layers and a "gap". If layer one is bypassed, layer two has a chance to intercept the attack. If both layers are bypassed, then the attack slips through the "gap" and does full damage unless the target is protected by a flesh spell (more on that later).
Helmets, Gauntlets, and Boots
Helmets, gauntlets, and boots each have a single layer of protection which provides a relatively small chance to block a relatively small amount of damage. Steel gauntlets, for example, mitigate 35% of damage 35% of the time. No single piece of armor will keep you alive for long. But stack them, and the result is satisfying.
Set Bonuses
To give players the option of increasing their magical or physical defense, a matching set bonus applies whenever a helmet, gauntlets, and boots of the same category and tier are worn. The cuirass is not taken into account when determining a set bonus, since it does other things. This allows for more customization.
You can mix and match different armors as long as they share the same tier. For example, a character wearing steel plate gauntlets, an orcish helmet, and dwarven boots would get the Tier 3 Heavy Armor set bonus and receive a 9% chance to negate incoming spell damage. Refer to the images and the chart in the readme file for full details.
Note: Watch for an update that will introduce new/different set bonuses that provide an incentive to wear specific types of armors rather than relying on tiers.
With Armor Rating rendered essentially meaningless, I needed to find a way to keep flesh spells relevant. The tricky part was striking a balance between making them strong enough for an armorless playthrough while ensuring that they couldn't be stacked on top of the already extremely durable higher tiers of heavy armor. The way it worked out is fairly straightforward: the better the armor, the less compatible it will be with flesh spells. As usual, the handy-dandy charts posted in the images and available in the readme lay it all out.
Magical protection spells function identically to and stack with armor protection, assuming that the spell isn't incompatible with the armor the caster is wearing. It's almost like adding an additional piece of armor, creating another layer of defense to dampen incoming physical damage. Like individual armor pieces, each flesh spell has an associated percent based chance to block a set amount of damage. If that defensive layer fails and you aren't wearing any armor, you're gonna have a bad day. One interesting side effect of KYTA's armor-based flesh spell restrictions is that lower level flesh spells are no longer automatically rendered obsolete just because you learn a better one. It all comes down to what gear you wear.
Spell Restrictions, Expanded
With the cuirass already taking center-stage in terms of armor-based damage mitigation, I didn't want flesh spell compatibility to revolve exclusively around what chestpiece you're wearing. As such, if you wear even one piece of armor from a tier that's incompatible with the flesh spell you're casting, then you will not be protected. The spell isn't "blocked", per se. It will be cast as usual, and the icon will show up on your screen, but if there's an armor conflict, then KYTA's extra layer of spell protection simply won't take effect. Remove the offending armor piece(s), and the spell will function normally for the remainder of its duration.
And no, you can't cheat by casting the spell and then putting on armor! It won't work.
If you forget what you're doing in the heat of a battle and cast a flesh spell that's incompatible with your armor, you had better hope that you can survive until it expires, since you can't overwrite active flesh spells with other ones. Cast carefully.
Flesh Spells and Armor Rating
The Armor Rating boosts associated with flesh spells are still applied when you cast them. They will take effect even if you cast a spell that's not compatible with your armor. This won't do you much good with regards to damage mitigation.
Important Note: Any flesh spell that is cast, whether it's compatible with your armor or not, CAN NOT be replaced by a different one until the initial spell runs its course. This was necessary to prevent a situation where the protective layers of spells stacked. So be sure of the spell you want to cast! (You can always refresh your active spell).
Spells
Note: Watch for an update that will add more diversity to how flesh spells protect you including strengths and weaknesses against different damage types.
Flesh Spells
Flesh spell descriptions have been changed so that you don't have to guess what they do or what armor restrictions are associated with them. Once you're familiar with the armor tiers, it's easy peasy. Refer to the readme for full details.
Note: Because they are dumb and don't have access to dragonhide, NPCs receive slightly more protection from flesh spells (assuming that they aren't wearing any armor which negates the spell's protections). NPCs can not determine whether or not the spell they are casting is incompatible. That doesn't really matter, since you don't want heavily armored opponents benefitting from high level flesh spells.
Dragonhide
Dragonhide has been altered significantly. It only works if you aren't wearing any armor. It stacks with flesh spells and provides a 75% chance to negate 75% of both physical and magical damage. It now lasts for 300 seconds instead of 30.
Pure Mage
When completely unarmored, a 25% decrease to spellcasting costs is conferred, providing some incentive to avoid armor altogether in favor of a strictly magic based build. This works for NPCs as well. The changes I've made do make it harder to be an mage early on. Lower level flesh spells aren't super protective. Eventually, with access to dragonhide along with ebonyflesh, a seasoned mage is anything but a soft target.
Mods that change dragonhide, flesh spells, or FMaxArmorRating will need to be overwritten by this mod or patched. Otherwise, there shouldn't be any issues with compatibility. Mod added armors are compatible provided that they have the appropriate keywords assigned, which they should.
Download and install through your mod manager of choice. You can install on an existing save, but best modding practice is to never uninstall mods from a
save.
In addition to countless mod authors whose work inspired and educated me, I would like to thank the following people for going out of their way to help me understand how to make this mod:
tjhm4, author of Know Your Enemy 2 - Armors, as well as a host of other excellent mods, for answering all of my questions and encouraging me to expand my knowledge. I would be lost without you.
dtrail, author of True Armor, without which I would never have dreamed of making KYTA.
Anubis22, for your work on True Armor and your willingness to pay attention to my whining.
Q: Why can't I customize the mod?
A: For starters, I'm not knowledgeable enough to create a complex mod with scripting. But perhaps more importantly, this mod was balanced for a challenging playthrough where mistakes are costly. I do plan on making a few optional files to give people some choices if there's enough demand. Soon, you will be able to customize just about every aspect of it.
Q: I found a piece of armor that doesn't seem to be protecting me using KYTA's system. What should I do?
A: Burn it in the aetherium forge. In all seriousness, it's almost certainly lacking a vanilla keyword such as ArmorLight or AmorMaterialSteel. You can easily add these using Xedit. If you need an explanation on how to do this, just ask.
Q: I found armor that is protecting me too much. What should I do?
A: Examine it using the console to see if it has multiple armor tier keywords assigned to it from KYTA. That only happens if an armor has two armor material keywords, such as armormaterialleather and armormaterialiron. If that you will need to use Xedit to manually remove the unwanted armor material keyword.
Complaint: Armor is too strong/weak.
Reply: Modify your game so that enemies do more or less damage. There are plenty of mods that accomplish this. I prefer Simply Balanced.
Complaint: The spell casting cost penalty for heavy armor cuirasses is too extreme. Why do you hate me?
Reply: I love you. At lower levels, you should not expect to be able to use a high-end cuirass and cast spells. As you progress, a higher magicka pool and items/perks that reduce casting costs will soften the impact of this handicap. Consider using a mod called Spell Rituals, which requires that you collect alchemical ingredients and use them to prepare your spells which allows for a player determined reduction in spell costs. (Optional file to disable casting cost is now available).
Complaint: It's not random enough
Reply: While I did incorporate some randomness, I couldn't go overboard, or you'd risk dying with every third swing of a giant's club. If you want even more randomness in your combat, consider using Spontaneous Output Spread and Archery Locational Damage. There's nothing like seeing a dozen arrows bounce harmlessly off of your uninjured, fully armored Dragonborn only to have the next shot send you to your grave.
Complaint: Enemies wearing heavy armor are too hard to kill.
Reply: That's a vanilla problem. I modify my game so that high-end armors are very difficult to obtain/craft, which means there aren't a lot of super well-armored enemies running around. There are plenty of mods that accomplish this. Morrowloot is one of the most popular, but lots of options exist. Find what works for you. Also, even if you're a heavy armor user and struggle to cast spells, don't forget about scrolls, staves, poisons, enchantments, shouts, and so on. Find other ways to defeat enemies who shrug off your normal attacks.
Q: Why is nightingale armor included in Tier 1?
A: For starters, I wanted more than one option for Tier 1 Light Armors. I am also rather fond of the nightingale armor. It seemed only right that the thieves, assassins, and nightshades among us aren't stuck with dragonscale if they want the best protection light armor can offer.
I did my best to account for all of the existing armor related keywords. You can use the console to check if a given piece of armor has been assigned a keyword from this mod. If I missed something, please let me know so I can fix it. I'd hardly be shocked.
There shouldn't be any vanilla armors with multiple keywords, but anything is possible. If you have mods that add armors, you should watch out for this issue, as the effects from multiple tiers will stack. You can manually remove excess keywords using Xedit.
KYTA - The Birth of a Mutant
Armor
Magic
Compatibility
Installation and Uninstalling
Acknowledgements
Questions, Comments, and Concerns
Final Considerations
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