Have you ever wondered what a combat mod would be like if it focused entirely on immersion and roleplay value? Perhaps Bloodlust might entice you... very lightweight and very compatible.
As some of you know, I'm dealing with some pretty serious health issues. I need whatever cash I can scrape together for meds and similar things. As such, I can no longer make modder's resources since I really need the donation points. That said: I'm cool with people using my stuff as long as my mod's a requirement since that way everybody wins.
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PALEGORE is a mod series for Skyrim aimed at making the game feel more like a dark fantasy RPG. With an emphasis on the gritty, the grimdark, the morbid and the unpleasant...
Time to be a bastard. Fight unfair and gang up on weaker targets, the person who strikes the first blow is now usually the person who strikes the final blow. This is proper feudal combat intended to reward creative problem solving and strategic thinking. Stats and spreadsheets still play a role, but tenacity will also be a determining factor.
Bloodlust is a lightweight and high-compatibility combat plugin intended to make fighting feel more immersive and interesting by adding a lot more situational awareness to the game's combat formula. For example:
Fire spells are useless against swimming targets.
Shooting an arrow at someone's shield won't randomly kill them.
People who sit in chairs and pay zero attention to their attacker won't just shrug off the axe you buried in their face.
Wear a goddamn helmet!
This mod is also inspired by my own love for history books and war memoirs. Truth is that melee combat is a very messy and awkward affair. One good example of this is from Prof. Michael Parenti's The Assassination Of Julius Caesar. Unlike Shakespeare's dramatised take on the story, the real account of Caesar's death was quite different. You had a bunch of sheltered politicians who hadn't even butchered a chicken in their lives going up against Rome's most notorious military figure who was a seasoned veteran of multiple military campaigns. The senators flailed their daggers and took a painfully long time to kill Caesar. Accounts from the senatorial staff say that the attackers themselves suffered several injuries too from cutting eachother in the flurry of blades.
There's a reason why, even today, thousands of years later, we still channel the memory of Brutus when we say brutality. Brutality is not a word that describes killing as something easy. On the contrary, it describes it as a weird and unnatural thing that is highly counterintuitive to our instincts. That's why we need to make so many inventions to hurt one another, and why we still only need our bare hands for things like affection and kindness. This is why real wisdom, the kind of primordial truths about life that cut to the very bone, is a trait only found among the very young and the very old.
Brutality is about being bad at killing people, and that's why it becomes such a challenge.
The rules have changed, now combat is determined by:
I. Awareness Assassins rejoice! Awareness accounts for a great deal in combat. Damage is far greater when the target is caught unaware. Things such as using furniture, having one's back turned, having one's weapon sheathed and being asleep are all accounted for with compounding effects.
II. Environment Environment also plays a role. Weather will affect the effectiveness of certain weapons and spells. For instance, shock damage is detrimental when it's raining, but fire damage is quite weak (comparatively that is, it's still fire after all. In fact my ex wife lit me on fire once, it's not awesome...). Leather becomes a lot more tough and slippery when wet, meaning that there's a chance that melee attacks will simply glance off and deal less damage. Similarly, bows are now less effective when it rains. This is because wet arrows combined with wet surfaces means less friction and therefore more glancing.
Likewise, fighting in the dark can be a very awkward affair, which also increases the likelihood of glances. III. Armour Armour is a lot more significant now. Damage will be negated based not just on what kind of armour you have, but also on how well it covers your body and even the material it's made out of. Clothed opponents will be a lot squishier than fully armoured warriors. But dpn't worry mages: Most ordinary metals are now highly conductive, meaning that most heavily armoured warriors can be easily cooked alive using shock damage.
IV. Actions What you're actually doing in a fight will determine its outcome too. Running, for instance, makes you more prone to being staggered by attacks. In turn, being staggered means you take more damage. Walking and running are now strategic trade-offs depending on the opponent(s) you're facing. And speaking of facing: Now you can actually flank (and be flanked by!) your enemies, meaning that paying attention to what your companions or nearby allies are doing and assisting them in doing so will result in immense payoffs.
VI. Glancing Glancing is a new damage mechanic that's intended to add an element of unpredictability, much like in real combat. Instead of just being yet another boring plus or minus to damage soaking, it's actually an all-or-nothing percentage based outcome. In other words: Sometimes when you hit the target, then your weapon might miss all the vital parts and do very little damage. This probability system kicks in based on a number of factors. As such, it's kind of like combining skill and luck into one. But most importantly: It adds more moving parts to the combat system, and in doing so, makes it more fun.
VI.V. ADDENDUM (This covers both current and upcoming changes, pay mind to the version numbers.)
As of 1.1, the following has been added:
I. Physiology
I've added some new physiological factors intended to make combat pacing a bit better and also to allow even weaker opponents to have the odd ace up their sleeve.
Winded. Damage is now influenced by the amount of stamina you have. Being winded means being more vulnerable.
Fresh. Having a high health percentage will similarly affect damage. This means that combat will be a bit more prolonged during standoffs, giving both you and your opponent a chance to fight back.
Cornered. Sun Tsu wrote about how the most dangerous fighter is one that believes that death is certain, nothing makes a person more dangerous than good old fashioned spite. As a result, people now gain a significant damage bonus when their health is critically low, meaning that there's no such thing as a certain victory.
Glancing has also been slightly nerfed since fighting at night felt a bit too Morrowindy. (and not in a good way)
As of 1.2, the following has been added:
I. Physiology
Braining. I once met an old partisan who got brained as a child by the Nazis, and let me tell you something: It's not an amazing experience (unless you're the Nazi I suppose, they're all a bunch of godless animals, but I digress). Now when you're not wearing a helmet, there is a very small (albeit statistically significant) chance that an attack will deal devastating damage to you, because that's what you deserve for sauntering around without a helmet like some kind of arrogant shark (they famously don't wear a lot of helmets).
II. Environment
Frost spells do more damage when it's snowing. Should've been in 1.0 really, small oversight.
III. Weaponry
Maces and warhammers will now ignore a portion of a target's damage resistance. (That's why we invented them)
Axes will have a chance to stagger people. (Not why we invented them, but it gives them a sense of distinction/purpose)
Swords offer a combined (albeit respectively weaker) bonus of both armour penetration and staggering.
Two-handed weapons now have a chance to break someone's parry even without a power attack. (Also parry in this context means blocking without a shield)
Puncturing wounds: Daggers have a small chance to completely ignore damage resistance.
VI. Armour
So here's the thing about frost projectiles: It's kind of a dumb idea. The laws of physics dictate that when you spaff out your worthless little girly-ass crystals (no disrespect to women mind you, I assure you my casual misogyny is purely rhetorical. If you saw the kind of hair products I use then you'd know I'm the opposite of a sexist. In fact I'd go so far as to say I'm the best thing to happen to women since Southern Comfort. But I digress...) then so long as you hit an object more dense than your water-based glass, they will proceed to shatter. Which is why, if someone wears a full set of heavy armour then frost has literally no effect. Basically the opposite of how shock magic works.
Leather armour is now insulating to shock damage. As long as it's not raining, then shock damage will be highly ineffective against targets in a full set of leather armour. This is in contrast to metallic armour where any piece of metal will result in high shock damage since you really don't need much metal on you to form a closed circuit and thereby become a walking microwave oven.
Wearing an amulet of Stendarr or Arkay will reduce damage taken from undead enemies.
Wearing a wedding dress increases your chances of finding beer when looting dead horses.
VII. QOL
Made a config file and a mountain of settings for it. It's a batch file for now, but I'll make an MCM file in the future. Might not be very elegant, but it gets the job done.
As of 1.3, the following has been added:
I. Armour
Immersive shields: Shields always block 100% damage, weigh more when equipped (since it's easier to carry heavy objects in a bag than it is to have them attached to your hand/arm), and does extra bash damage against targets without a helmet.
Flammability: Random chance fire damage will have longer duration/magnitude on clothed opponents. However if the clothing is soaked in rainwater then any overtime damage will be greatly reduced.
II. Physiology
Healing immersion: The effectiveness of healing is determined by a variety of factors, including stamina, equipment, weather and your personal situation. For ideal conditions you should be indoors in a warm environment wearing comfortable clothes and being seated.
Trembling hands: Locks are more difficult to pick with your bare hands when it's snowing. Wear something to keep your hands warm. (And yes, I know lockpicking works very much the opposite way IRL. But, counterpoint: Having to remove your gloves from your inventory screen each time you wanna pick a lock isn't actually very fun gameplay.)
Cracked fingers: Hitting someone's one handed weapon when they're parrying and not wearing gauntlets has a slight chance of disarming them.
Night-Eye: Blocking attacks from Khajiits using a torch will cause them to glance their blow.
III. Magic
The Witching Hour: At midnight, all spells, enchantments and alchemy potions are twice as powerful, magic costs half as much to cast, and magic also lasts twice as long... but beware: Witching hour also means the undead are completely immune to damage.
Real Undead: Taking inspiration from medieval folktales, undead creatures can only ever be killed by either silver weapons or fire. (keep in mind that all features are optional) Update: This was actually kind of annoying and not very fun. So instead they can only be killed with normal power attacks. Adds a more fun and unique challenge when you need to put your elbow into it and deal with stamina management/prolonged combat pacing.
Beowulf Mode: So here's the thing about dragons... they're an allegory for the devil. In the olden days, writing stuff about the devil was considered a bad idea. You don't want to tempt fate by mentioning the devil. So bards and authors would use dragons as an allegory. That's why they live in mountains surrounded by treasure troves and kill people with legendary fire. Treasure represents greed and also the consequences of greed, and fire is... well, fire. The idea of the devil being a goat comes from cultural osmosis and how people mistook early drawings of the devil (horns, triangular face, etc.) as that of a goatman. Point is: Dragons are meant to represent the very embodiment of violence and evil. They are supposed to be SCARY. Beowulf mode activates a flat bonus to dragons that gives them twice the endurance and twice the damage, making them four times stronger. Wanna kill a dragon? You better max out a few skill trees and come prepared.
IV. Weapons
Duelling: One handed swords will always parry 100% of other one handed swords.
Openings: You can do more damage to enemies if you strike them while they're mid-attack.
Backswing: Hitting an open opponent with a mace, two-hander or axe will also have a chance to stagger them.
Don't be an idiot: Parrying an attack from a two handed weapon using a dagger will cause you to lose that dagger
V. Technical
Work in progress, but, I am making an ingame config menu. Won't be MCM since I'm getting errors when I try to load the SkyUI SDK scripts, but instead I will make a cool immersive altar of war that you can interact with to change the settings.
Fixed the entry point priorities which is a fancy way of saying the formula works more reliably now.
VII. Technical This mod adds the new damage formula using perks. Meaning it's very performance friendly and highly compatible with just about anything. The effects of the perk are universal for players and NPCs alike, so balancing really isn't much of an issue. There is of course a learning curve, but the mod is made to feel intuitive and fun whilst still having an element of challenge to it.
All features can be enabled/disabled, and there is now a config file included in the download. As such, this mod is compatible with literally everything. Including Assassin's Creed, IBM 4690, and wasp nests.
And please don't ask me "Is this compatible with X?" I don't know. I don't keep a detailed manifest of what literally every mod ever made does or how it does so. I gave you the technical info, compare it to the info that the other mod offers and see if you can't piece things together.
Spell conditions uses vanilla keywords, meaning that mod-added spells will work fine with it out of the box (assuming they've been configured correctly). Same goes for weapons and armours. Everything has been set up with other mods in mind.
IIX. Current Issues I actually have no idea what the anniversary edition is. But I'm 99% sure I have it. Also because of how the awareness system works there is a high chance that you might instantly die from getting bitten in the ass by a wolf, resulting in great shame and sadness. Also the mod needs further testing to make sure everything works fine. Since combat tends to be a bit chaotic it's sometimes hard to keep track of everything. That being said, worst case is that something won't fire off correctly, defaulting to vanilla behaviour. So the stakes are pretty low bug wise. Especially since I've been able to test and determine that the majority of features work as intended.
EDIT: Okay so 99% sure you don't need AE. The steam page for AE is super vague, but after reading the patch notes I see that the AE has a bunch of content that is in fact not in my game. I thought the creation club content in question was that fishing mod and survival mod that's not in Oldrim. So apologies for the mixup, but in my defence: It's a shady-ass DLC with an equally shady-ass store page.
Oh and the formula is actually quite complex and I'm fairly certain I forgot to cover one or two things in the documentation, so I hope for your sake that you like surprises. I am after all the guy who made this combat mod for Fallout 4, so like, expect a lot of high effort bullshit.
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