v0.2.0 is released! This is just a compilation of minor balance adjustments, mostly making some of the harsher stones a bit more flexible in that you can work around more of the curses as opposed to just losing certain options entirely.
Please post below any thoughts, questions or concerns. I try to maintain an active (and friendly) presence in the comments :-)
Thanks for your downloads, comments and endorsements.
Is there any way to add a perk point cost requirement to standing stones. For example, if I wanted to unlock the power of the mage stone I would have to spend 1 perk point, or 1 perk point would be negated upon getting the power. My idea is to make use of perk points outside of the skill menu. I tried modifying some setting in sseedit but with no luck. Thought you might know something.
Unfortunately I don't think the game has any method of removing perk points from the player other than by selecting perks in the perk trees. Thus, the only way to do what you want is to add new perks to the trees that gate the standing stones, but this is pretty janky.
Honestly I'm very tempted to try this mod, but the effect of some stones are so far from how they act in lore that it just seems like weird design choices.
For example, the Tower, while i completely understand that you decided to associate a tower with a strong, hardy structure. The lore is more like:
...It is one of the Thief's charges. Those born under the sign of the Tower are thought to have a knack for finding gold and opening locks.
So here is my idea on how to change this into a blessing/curse type of gameplay the mod tries to do;
Blessing: You find 25% more gold in chest and locks are 25% easier to open. Curse: Merchant distrust you, unsure where you acquired your goods. Unless you are friend with a merchant, your items are sold for 50% of their normal value
I see your point. Originally I wanted to focus on combat-relevant effects, so loot related stuff was out, but I agree the current implementation is kinda lacking. I'll rethink it at some point.
I don't know how to write synthesis patchers I'm afraid. That said, giving the blessings to NPCs is not worth it in my opinion, so just install without patching and you're good to go.
Really interesting changes. I've used Enai's Andromeda for a long time. Some feedback from what I've tested: * Atronach has a very interesting playstyle. Tanking to regen magicka is dangerous yet rewarding. * Mage, Thief and Warrior are simple and effective, just as they should be. * The Lord could be a bit less forgiving. Personally, I've raised the Health/Stamina percentages to 40% (but it could be too much). Still doesn't change the fact that sneaky types benefit far more than straight-up fightery ones. * Steed is awesome. Period. * The Tower Stone's downside "stagger while moving" happens even if an attack doesn't connect. It's awkward. Is there a way to safely remove that via xEdit? I think the penalty of bonus damage from behind is enough but I'd be willing to remove another benefit (like the power attack one) to compensate.
Thanks for the kind words and for you analysis of the different stones. Your point about the Lord is a good one, I'll probably raise the thresholds at the next update, and yeah, if you can one-shot targets with a sneak power attack its super good. Do you think its too good? I could have the damage boost not apply to sneak attacks.
Good point about the tower. I had never noticed that, but the entry point it uses is triggered by enemies swinging at you, not necessarily connecting, so I think you're right. To remove it, look at the perk and find the effect that uses the "apply combat hit spell" entry point. Removing that should do the trick. To be honest I might rework the tower. Thematically its support to be about chests and locked doors as opposed to fortresses. I don't think I'd make it about lockpicking, but something based on armor weak points ("unlocking" a targets armor) might be more fun.
Oh, that's a nice idea for Lord. So, just like Serpent emphasizes melee play, the Lord should be about battling foes head-on.
Vanilla Tower is geared towards locks, yes, and various standing stone overhauls stick to that. Perhaps better loot chance when opening locked containers at the cost of not being able to sell anything that well (or at all)? Pretty good for hoarders, so 99% of the playerbase. I don't know, something along those lines.
> So, just like Serpent emphasizes melee play, the Lord should be about battling foes head-on. Yeah, that's exactly it. to be honest I hadn't thought about the Lord stone for sneaks until you mentioned it, and yeah, its crazy good when stacking with the sneak damage multiplier too.
For the tower I want to get away from loot (which is kinda dull IMO), but instead I'm thinking about defense, and "unlocking" enemy armor. Lore suggests that the tower does actually have links to shields, strength, protection and refuge, but it's also related to the thief, so maybe something like:
Blessing: Blocking halves incoming frontal damage. Daggers and arrows reduce enemy armor by 50 points per hit.Curse: Armor is 25% less effective. Deal half damage to enemies with more than 100 armor.
So, the player is frail when exposed, but strong behind a shield. Meanwhile, armored enemies pose a threat, but can be unlocked by penetrating (thief-style) attacks.
That's a good one! It rewards ranged combat and having a balanced approach in melee (defending while well-positioned, attacking when there's an opening).
It'd be cool if it had a duration (10 secs, let's say) while also allowing stacking. That way you're pushed to look for openings to keep the debuff on. Don't know if it's technically possible, though.
Stacking and a duration is easy, just values you input on the magic effect. 10s is probably too short, as an archer can only fire off a shot every few seconds, 30s probably about right, though fast dagger strikes can definitely take advantage of this. I'll make these changes at the next update. Thanks for your input!
Just discovered you have overhauled other areas of the game, that's awesome! In the base game, you just exponentially get stronger without any drawbacks, at least your mods force players to make conscious decisions.
I want to play an illusion character and ritual sounds good for a 25% boost, but I'm having trouble justifying it when you get a 15% boost with mage and alteration is also boosted instead of half as good.
In your perk mod, master of one, both light armor and heavy armor make your spells weaker when you invest in their novice perk to drain less stamina, up to 20% weaker.
So it seems like you either use alteration which is much weaker, use armor which almost negates the 25% boost that ritual gives you, not have any physical protection at all.
One option is the heavy armor battle mage perk where you can put two points in it to get 20% stronger spells to offset the 20% weaknesses you get from the novice perk, but you couldn't have a helmet. Then I'd be tempted to invest in smithing to make the armor even stronger, but that makes spells weaker again. More decisions and tradeoffs!
The temptation is to use a mod like honed metal to get the benefit of smithing without the magic penalty, but I feel like that would be cheating.
Alternatively, someone using the mage sign could just take all 5 ranks of battlemage and also use full strength alteration because the mage armor perk doesn't require you to not wear armor, it just makes armor less effective. Even if you took all 5 ranks of heavy armor conditioning, you're still coming out ahead in spell effectiveness.
So unless you're not going to use any armor or really need your weapon at full strength, it sounds like you'd make the stronger illusion mage with the mage sign than ritual.
What are your thoughts about using the ritual sign?
The ritual is definitely a trickier stone than the mage, and your choice depends on what other skills you plan on using. Basically if you want to use alteration or destruction, so you're more of an all-round mage, then go for the mage stone. If you are an illusion specialist, or a battle-mage that uses melee weapons too, then go for the ritual.
Key thing with the ritual is that it supports indirect magical damage (frenzy, summons) but greatly reduces direct magical damage (destruction), so unless you are going for a purely indirect build (which can be fun) you'll need some other damage dealing skills in there, probably either melee weapons, bows or poisons. Bows and poison can let you keep your distance, but melee weapons put you in the thick of combat, and because the ritual nerfs mage armor spells you'll probably want to wear armor too.
Personally, I think the ritual really suits a battlemage, and you have a few options:
Invest in the heavy armor perk battlemage. You can't wear much armor, but your spells are very strong. Note it doesn't have to be a heavy cuirass, so you can go for an agile light armor battlemage too. By wearing only a little armor the stamina penalties are not that bad, so you don't need to invest too much in the conditioning perks that will reduce spell power. You'll be kinda frail, so either invest into alteration to use mage armor spells, accepting the ritual has made them weaker, or turn to the regenerative effects of restoration and potions. Using illusion (and summons from conjuration) distracts enemies a lot, so you should have plenty of time to heal.
Ignore the battlemage perk, aim for tankiness with a full set of heavy armor. You'll need the conditioning perks, so your spells will be weaker, but with the ritual blessing this isn't too bad and you'll be tanky enough to outlast enemies anyway.
Which ever you choose, I'd then spec illusion into one or two enemy types (say leader for humans and beastmaster for animals as these are common), then use conjuration's bound weapons for another (oblivion binding to target undead and daedra), then summons and melee weapons for other tricky enemies (like dwarven machines). If you don't want to invest in conjuration (so no bound weapons or summons) then I'd invest in melee weapons and probably go for the tanky build.
I want to avoid destruction because I feel like once you have really strong nukes, you just kill everything without a lot of thought, illusion is more interesting. Losing alteration is a downside, but not needing to recast the temporary armor spells is a nice bonus.
My original plan is to get 4 ranks in beast master, grave keeper, and leader. They'd each get a 60% boost in power. Animals, undead, and humans are the most common enemies and you don't see a ton of daedra and machines. Oblivion binding is tempting, I might use that. I don't love the idea of summons as it just feels like passive gameplay watching your minions fight, but it might be the answer for certain enemy types like dwarven machines.
The idea is that I use frenzy/calm to avoid direct fighting as much as possible, and use something consumable to fight what's left over, which I think poison is the best option. The poison could be applied to a bound dagger against enemies I can calm or sneak up on, or a bound bow for enemies I need to stay away from. I'd probably use seeping venom, so maybe I could go invisible while the poison works.
Which brings us back to armor. I didn't realize that you could use light armor with battlemage, though I guess you'd still need to level up heavy armor to get access to the perk.
I don't think armor spells would be worth using with the ritual sign. Not because they' re weaker, but because they last half as long, and recasting armor spells just seems tedious.
I'm planning on playing a vampire and for RP purposes I like to imagine that restoration spells and potions don't work on them. I could have bottled blood, but I don't imagine I'd have a ton to just spam in tough fights.
Maybe distractions with illusion and conjuration and staying ranged would be enough to not need armor, but it seems risky.
Full heavy armor sounds like the safer option and I could still get 1 or 2 levels of battlemage. Plus, I could concentrate enchanting in just armor and jewelry instead of armor, clothes, and jewelry. I'm just hesitant to need perks that weaken spells because illusion is such an all or nothing skill. Either the enemy is fully affected or the spell does nothing at all.
On a purely cosmetic note, I like my characters to show more skin, and heavy armors generally cover most of it up. I'll have to do some looking around at the armor mods to see what I like.
So I'm leaning toward heavy armor, but the great thing is that you made it easy to respec the perks if I'm not liking how it plays.
> My original plan is to get 4 ranks in beast master, grave keeper, and leader. They'd each get a 60% boost in power. I was going to say this isn't true, but once you factor in the ritual stone, you are correct (2*0.8*0.8*1.25=1.6). That said, if you want to go for three targets, take them just to level 3 (77% boost) or even level 2 (69% boost for 3 fewer perks). If you invest in only two perks, things can get even stronger (100% boost at rank 4 because the ritual cancels out the debuff from the other perk).
Are you using Know Your Enemy 2? It gives certain enemies illusion weaknesses (domestic animals, undead, machines, fully armored humans) which your character could exploit. That said, some enemies get illusion resistances too (mostly the unique clever creatures and humans wearing robes).
> The idea is that I use frenzy/calm to avoid direct fighting as much as possible, and use something consumable to fight what's left over, which I think poison is the best option. This sounds like a fun build. If you are going to use poisons, I'd take machinist instead of beast master as poisons are good against beasts but ineffective against automata.
> I don't think armor spells would be worth using with the ritual sign. Not because they' re weaker, but because they last half as long, True, though you could use stability and the first rank of beast of burden to increase their duration x5, which is still x2.5 with the ritual.
Ah, I was doing the math wrong illusion. I was thinking 100 - 20 - 20 = 60.
I'm planning on using KYE2. I hadn't thought about the illusion weaknesses and resistances from that mod, but I'm sure that'll come into play. My thought is to start with illusion and if it doesn't work, fall back on oblivion binding/poison/summons until I figure out what works.
On the KYE2 page it says that unintelligent enemies are neutral to illusion, alert resists it, and intelligent enemies strongly resist it. So it sounds like nothing is weak to it and some enemies resist it. On the KYE2 armor page it does say that fully armored enemies are weak to it, so that's a plus.
You're right that poison is good against animals so it'd make sense to have stronger illusion spells against machines, I'm still thinking that animals are more common and I'm more likely to be surprised by them. I can be walking around outside and be surprised by a sabre cat and I can quickly calm it. I know that I'll only find machines in dwarven ruins, so I use move slower and am more alert in those areas. But you do make a good point, I might make the switch.
That's a fair point about stability. I'll just have to try it out and see if the duration feels good or not.
I'll think about it, but I don't think it would result in great gameplay as many of the blessings are too complex for NPC AI to handle. There's also the issue of "sameyness". From the mod page:
Please bear in mind that because the game uses record templating, all generated NPCs of a given type (e.g. "novice pyromancer" or "bandit thug") share the same perks. Because blessings are applied as perks this means all enemies of the same type will also have the same blessing and so the variety of blessings you encounter might not be as high as you would otherwise expect.
If you want something like this mod that affects NPCs too, I suggest my race mod Legacy. This was designed with both the player and NPCs in mind and affects all NPCs.
Whilst I am not looking to use this for my upcoming run, I am interested. I rate my Standing Stone/Birthsign mods based on how cool the Serpent is, as it is my favorite stone from a lore perspective. This Serpent is rough but I vibe. Bet it goes incredibly crazy with a alchemy overhaul.
The Lady rewards those who are kind and tolerant, boosting your regenerative abilities and supporting your allies, but at a personal cost.
Blessing: You regenerate Magicka and Stamina 100% faster when your hands are lowed. In combat, stand still with your hands lowered to radiate an aura that restores your allies magicka and stamina (5/sec) while damaging enemies' health (3/sec), magic resistance (-100%) and armor rating (-250).
Curse: You regenerate Magicka and Stamina 50% slower when your hands are raised. The aura drains your own Health, Magicka and Stamina (5/sec).
this is too much for my brain. Do all these effects apply only while in combat? Would you consider simplifying how this effect works?
I have had difficulty explaining this clearly, but I've also played with a lady build and had a good time, so I think the issue is more with the explanation that the effect itself. Maybe it helps to split it in two:
Blessing 1: You regenerate Magicka and Stamina 100% faster when your hands are lowed (this is true whether you are in combat or not). Curse 1: You regenerate Magicka and Stamina 50% slower when your hands are raised.
The Aura: Standing still with hands lowered in combat radiates an aura Blessing 2: The aura restores your allies magicka and stamina (5/sec) while damaging enemies' health (3/sec), magic resistance (-100%) and armor rating (-250). Curse 2: The aura drains your own Health, Magicka and Stamina (5/sec).
Does this help? Basically, you want to periodically lower your hands to boost regeneration (it is a big boost). The aura is powerful, but also optional, and mostly useful if you are playing with followers, but it can work for a solo character if you are tanky enough too.
174 comments
Please post below any thoughts, questions or concerns. I try to maintain an active (and friendly) presence in the comments :-)
Thanks for your downloads, comments and endorsements.
For example, the Tower, while i completely understand that you decided to associate a tower with a strong, hardy structure. The lore is more like:
So here is my idea on how to change this into a blessing/curse type of gameplay the mod tries to do;
Blessing: You find 25% more gold in chest and locks are 25% easier to open.
Curse: Merchant distrust you, unsure where you acquired your goods. Unless you are friend with a merchant, your items are sold for 50% of their normal value
* Atronach has a very interesting playstyle. Tanking to regen magicka is dangerous yet rewarding.
* Mage, Thief and Warrior are simple and effective, just as they should be.
* The Lord could be a bit less forgiving. Personally, I've raised the Health/Stamina percentages to 40% (but it could be too much). Still doesn't change the fact that sneaky types benefit far more than straight-up fightery ones.
* Steed is awesome. Period.
* The Tower Stone's downside "stagger while moving" happens even if an attack doesn't connect. It's awkward. Is there a way to safely remove that via xEdit? I think the penalty of bonus damage from behind is enough but I'd be willing to remove another benefit (like the power attack one) to compensate.
Good point about the tower. I had never noticed that, but the entry point it uses is triggered by enemies swinging at you, not necessarily connecting, so I think you're right. To remove it, look at the perk and find the effect that uses the "apply combat hit spell" entry point. Removing that should do the trick. To be honest I might rework the tower. Thematically its support to be about chests and locked doors as opposed to fortresses. I don't think I'd make it about lockpicking, but something based on armor weak points ("unlocking" a targets armor) might be more fun.
Vanilla Tower is geared towards locks, yes, and various standing stone overhauls stick to that. Perhaps better loot chance when opening locked containers at the cost of not being able to sell anything that well (or at all)? Pretty good for hoarders, so 99% of the playerbase. I don't know, something along those lines.
Yeah, that's exactly it. to be honest I hadn't thought about the Lord stone for sneaks until you mentioned it, and yeah, its crazy good when stacking with the sneak damage multiplier too.
For the tower I want to get away from loot (which is kinda dull IMO), but instead I'm thinking about defense, and "unlocking" enemy armor. Lore suggests that the tower does actually have links to shields, strength, protection and refuge, but it's also related to the thief, so maybe something like:
Blessing: Blocking halves incoming frontal damage. Daggers and arrows reduce enemy armor by 50 points per hit.Curse: Armor is 25% less effective. Deal half damage to enemies with more than 100 armor.
So, the player is frail when exposed, but strong behind a shield. Meanwhile, armored enemies pose a threat, but can be unlocked by penetrating (thief-style) attacks.
What do you think?
It'd be cool if it had a duration (10 secs, let's say) while also allowing stacking. That way you're pushed to look for openings to keep the debuff on. Don't know if it's technically possible, though.
In the base game, you just exponentially get stronger without any drawbacks, at least your mods force players to make conscious decisions.
In your perk mod, master of one, both light armor and heavy armor make your spells weaker when you invest in their novice perk to drain less stamina, up to 20% weaker.
So it seems like you either use alteration which is much weaker, use armor which almost negates the 25% boost that ritual gives you, not have any physical protection at all.
One option is the heavy armor battle mage perk where you can put two points in it to get 20% stronger spells to offset the 20% weaknesses you get from the novice perk, but you couldn't have a helmet. Then I'd be tempted to invest in smithing to make the armor even stronger, but that makes spells weaker again. More decisions and tradeoffs!
The temptation is to use a mod like honed metal to get the benefit of smithing without the magic penalty, but I feel like that would be cheating.
Alternatively, someone using the mage sign could just take all 5 ranks of battlemage and also use full strength alteration because the mage armor perk doesn't require you to not wear armor, it just makes armor less effective. Even if you took all 5 ranks of heavy armor conditioning, you're still coming out ahead in spell effectiveness.
So unless you're not going to use any armor or really need your weapon at full strength, it sounds like you'd make the stronger illusion mage with the mage sign than ritual.
What are your thoughts about using the ritual sign?
The ritual is definitely a trickier stone than the mage, and your choice depends on what other skills you plan on using. Basically if you want to use alteration or destruction, so you're more of an all-round mage, then go for the mage stone. If you are an illusion specialist, or a battle-mage that uses melee weapons too, then go for the ritual.
Key thing with the ritual is that it supports indirect magical damage (frenzy, summons) but greatly reduces direct magical damage (destruction), so unless you are going for a purely indirect build (which can be fun) you'll need some other damage dealing skills in there, probably either melee weapons, bows or poisons. Bows and poison can let you keep your distance, but melee weapons put you in the thick of combat, and because the ritual nerfs mage armor spells you'll probably want to wear armor too.
Personally, I think the ritual really suits a battlemage, and you have a few options:
- Invest in the heavy armor perk battlemage. You can't wear much armor, but your spells are very strong. Note it doesn't have to be a heavy cuirass, so you can go for an agile light armor battlemage too. By wearing only a little armor the stamina penalties are not that bad, so you don't need to invest too much in the conditioning perks that will reduce spell power. You'll be kinda frail, so either invest into alteration to use mage armor spells, accepting the ritual has made them weaker, or turn to the regenerative effects of restoration and potions. Using illusion (and summons from conjuration) distracts enemies a lot, so you should have plenty of time to heal.
- Ignore the battlemage perk, aim for tankiness with a full set of heavy armor. You'll need the conditioning perks, so your spells will be weaker, but with the ritual blessing this isn't too bad and you'll be tanky enough to outlast enemies anyway.
Which ever you choose, I'd then spec illusion into one or two enemy types (say leader for humans and beastmaster for animals as these are common), then use conjuration's bound weapons for another (oblivion binding to target undead and daedra), then summons and melee weapons for other tricky enemies (like dwarven machines). If you don't want to invest in conjuration (so no bound weapons or summons) then I'd invest in melee weapons and probably go for the tanky build.What do you think?
I want to avoid destruction because I feel like once you have really strong nukes, you just kill everything without a lot of thought, illusion is more interesting. Losing alteration is a downside, but not needing to recast the temporary armor spells is a nice bonus.
My original plan is to get 4 ranks in beast master, grave keeper, and leader. They'd each get a 60% boost in power. Animals, undead, and humans are the most common enemies and you don't see a ton of daedra and machines. Oblivion binding is tempting, I might use that. I don't love the idea of summons as it just feels like passive gameplay watching your minions fight, but it might be the answer for certain enemy types like dwarven machines.
The idea is that I use frenzy/calm to avoid direct fighting as much as possible, and use something consumable to fight what's left over, which I think poison is the best option. The poison could be applied to a bound dagger against enemies I can calm or sneak up on, or a bound bow for enemies I need to stay away from. I'd probably use seeping venom, so maybe I could go invisible while the poison works.
Which brings us back to armor. I didn't realize that you could use light armor with battlemage, though I guess you'd still need to level up heavy armor to get access to the perk.
I don't think armor spells would be worth using with the ritual sign. Not because they' re weaker, but because they last half as long, and recasting armor spells just seems tedious.
I'm planning on playing a vampire and for RP purposes I like to imagine that restoration spells and potions don't work on them. I could have bottled blood, but I don't imagine I'd have a ton to just spam in tough fights.
Maybe distractions with illusion and conjuration and staying ranged would be enough to not need armor, but it seems risky.
Full heavy armor sounds like the safer option and I could still get 1 or 2 levels of battlemage. Plus, I could concentrate enchanting in just armor and jewelry instead of armor, clothes, and jewelry. I'm just hesitant to need perks that weaken spells because illusion is such an all or nothing skill. Either the enemy is fully affected or the spell does nothing at all.
On a purely cosmetic note, I like my characters to show more skin, and heavy armors generally cover most of it up. I'll have to do some looking around at the armor mods to see what I like.
So I'm leaning toward heavy armor, but the great thing is that you made it easy to respec the perks if I'm not liking how it plays.
I was going to say this isn't true, but once you factor in the ritual stone, you are correct (2*0.8*0.8*1.25=1.6). That said, if you want to go for three targets, take them just to level 3 (77% boost) or even level 2 (69% boost for 3 fewer perks). If you invest in only two perks, things can get even stronger (100% boost at rank 4 because the ritual cancels out the debuff from the other perk).
Are you using Know Your Enemy 2? It gives certain enemies illusion weaknesses (domestic animals, undead, machines, fully armored humans) which your character could exploit. That said, some enemies get illusion resistances too (mostly the unique clever creatures and humans wearing robes).
> The idea is that I use frenzy/calm to avoid direct fighting as much as possible, and use something consumable to fight what's left over, which I think poison is the best option.
This sounds like a fun build. If you are going to use poisons, I'd take machinist instead of beast master as poisons are good against beasts but ineffective against automata.
> I don't think armor spells would be worth using with the ritual sign. Not because they' re weaker, but because they last half as long,
True, though you could use stability and the first rank of beast of burden to increase their duration x5, which is still x2.5 with the ritual.
Thanks again!
I'm planning on using KYE2. I hadn't thought about the illusion weaknesses and resistances from that mod, but I'm sure that'll come into play. My thought is to start with illusion and if it doesn't work, fall back on oblivion binding/poison/summons until I figure out what works.
On the KYE2 page it says that unintelligent enemies are neutral to illusion, alert resists it, and intelligent enemies strongly resist it. So it sounds like nothing is weak to it and some enemies resist it. On the KYE2 armor page it does say that fully armored enemies are weak to it, so that's a plus.
You're right that poison is good against animals so it'd make sense to have stronger illusion spells against machines, I'm still thinking that animals are more common and I'm more likely to be surprised by them. I can be walking around outside and be surprised by a sabre cat and I can quickly calm it. I know that I'll only find machines in dwarven ruins, so I use move slower and am more alert in those areas. But you do make a good point, I might make the switch.
That's a fair point about stability. I'll just have to try it out and see if the duration feels good or not.
Please bear in mind that because the game uses record templating, all generated NPCs of a given type (e.g. "novice pyromancer" or "bandit thug") share the same perks. Because blessings are applied as perks this means all enemies of the same type will also have the same blessing and so the variety of blessings you encounter might not be as high as you would otherwise expect.
If you want something like this mod that affects NPCs too, I suggest my race mod Legacy. This was designed with both the player and NPCs in mind and affects all NPCs.
Would you consider simplifying how this effect works?
Blessing 1: You regenerate Magicka and Stamina 100% faster when your hands are lowed (this is true whether you are in combat or not).
Curse 1: You regenerate Magicka and Stamina 50% slower when your hands are raised.
The Aura: Standing still with hands lowered in combat radiates an aura
Blessing 2: The aura restores your allies magicka and stamina (5/sec) while damaging enemies' health (3/sec), magic resistance (-100%) and armor rating (-250).
Curse 2: The aura drains your own Health, Magicka and Stamina (5/sec).
Does this help? Basically, you want to periodically lower your hands to boost regeneration (it is a big boost). The aura is powerful, but also optional, and mostly useful if you are playing with followers, but it can work for a solo character if you are tanky enough too.
Though I dont like having things on my mind, so I will try to Xedit out the "no moving" condition, if I can.