allright, now i've spent a bit of time playing multiple builds with this mod. here're a couple things that i believe can be an issue:
1) to start with the only big issue, shout cooldown has become broken with the new material bonus of dragon armors in requiem. minmaxing everything together, i managed to get up to 116% cooldown reduction compared to the 150% base cooldown of requiem. and that is without stacking the shout known/mastered/used bonus from requiem, which can still give more than enough to reduce shout cooldown under 0%. given that shout cooldown reduction scale exponentially in terms of gameplay impact (10% cdr is not the same when your cooldowns are at 150% or when they are at 40%), i suggest doing something like 10%/15%/20% for the ranks, that way the first rank taken early still feel useful, and the later ones are further away from breaking the game. you could also do the same thing you did with the meta magic feats, and change it from a 3 ranks perk to a stronger 1 rank perk.
2) balanced wielding and armed spellcasting are overlapping too much. i realized it might be an issue when playing a spellsword build. eventually, it was in my best interest to take both perks and just use a shortcut to unequip my off hand spell as soon as i casted it. otherwise, the one handed weapons dealt too little damage to be worth using at all. i think you should either fuse them into a single perk, or separate them more so they have no overlap and can be both active at the same time. having the balanced wielding fully apply with spells as well as empty left hand, while the armed spellcasting gives bonuses that are only relevant to casting, spell cost reduction plus something else. for example to could trigger a small mana regen when you hit someone with a melee attack, just like the blocking perk that gives stamina regen when blocking an attack.
aside from that it's lovely, really. a few feats that are stronger than average, but overall nothing else game breaking. no bug either so far. i have to admit i have not tried all of the feats in a build yet. thanks again for the mod!
1) The main issue I had with Shout builds is that it takes too much time and effort to lower shout cooldown enough to use it as a main skill. Shout cooldown can also eventually go lower than 0% anyways, just a matter of time. So I thought I'd just give high stacking cooldown bonus to Shout Mastery perk so players can play shout builds a little faster. Metamagic recently got changed so that it doesn't affect self-buff spells, so it is less OP than it was. It's now only good for specific use, so I think 1 rank is just enough investment for it.
2) Armed Spellcasting having attack speed bonus was because Spellsword builds can so easily fall into becoming a mage instead due to how 1H+Spell equip is so bad in this game. So I decided that I give bonuses for both magic and weapon to balance it out and encourage keeping 1H+Spell equip set. You can easily swap to Balanced Wielding to get higher 1H damage, but I'd just allow that since it's 1 extra perk point spent for it.
i see, that make sense. since then i have recounted my shout cooldown buffs because i was a bit suspicious and i believe i had more than what i should, it might have been a bug or leftover buffs from a mod update, so i was definitely wrong about that. your shout cooldown buff is allright. best would be if instead of stacking additively, shout cooldown was multiplicative, it would allow giving strong buffs for early shout usage without them being game breaking, but that's a tall order and beyond the intended scope of your mod.
i probably was unclear about my thoughts on armed spellcasting, basically i meant that the weapon still feels weak and superfluous. i completely agree with you, 1 h+ spell is bad. that's why i suggested a mechanic that would lower the investment necessary in magic through the use of the weapon. in my head, it comes down to what you are gaining compared to what you sacrifice. a spellsword compared to a balanced wielder lose the ability to block and bash, as well as a bit of armor pen, and gain access to spells which he has to invest magicka to use. now compared to a mage, the spellsword loses dual casting in exchange for a bit of melee physical damage and slightly cheaper spell casting. in both cases those are trades for the worse and does not really incentivize the playstyle. that's why i believe it's best to think of a spellsword as a full fledged warrior build that sacrifices blocking capabilities (because even end game wards don't come close to real blocking and don't allow bashing) for the versatility of magic in combat.
another way for spellswords to shine could be taking it the other way entirely and making the equipping of a spell in the off hand buff the sword too, by adding some effects to sword strike based on the player's magicka, or the spell equiped, but that would probably require some dubious tinkering with applying dynamically enchantments to the sword or such... just writing that actually reminded me of an item from league of legends. it's called the muramana and it's an item that gives lot of mana as well as bonus base damage based on your max mana and, uppon hitting enemies, you also expend a percentage of your current mana to deal bonus damage. from that idea it would be possible to think of a spellsword as a "mage who strike with his sword like he would cast spells", or a warrior who fuel his fighting with his magic instead of just his body strength. maybe it could be interesting to give a strong buff to the weapon damage based on the rank of the spell equipped, and make attacks cost mana as well as stamina.
the more i think about it the more i feel like the true way to make spellswords work in skyrim would be to add spells tailored for spellswords, elemental weapon buffs like in dark souls, a bash spell (knock is super expensive and slow to cast), magical swordslash flying through the airs and so on.
Between this add-on and Hunterborn, now I can properly be an intoxicated, uncivilized barbarian without inexplicably being an apprentice mage in 3-4 skills. You know, mages: that thing I'm supposed to shun violently for being unnatural, evil, and deceptive! I can cut out the boring ritual of buying 25 alteration in kynesgrove ASAP from Dravynea just because there was no reason not to. Heck, I'm half-tempted to cut her in half now!
Hey, thanks for the amazing mod! I have an issue, do you know why the ''Immovable'' perk from Heavy Armor isn't working? When I stand still in full heavy armor the resistances don't appear on Requiem Skill Menu. Again, thank you for the mod!
It doesn't work without a patch, and won't be so balanced either even if you manage to make one. Afaik 3bftweaks has a lot of stuff on its own already.
I just had an idea, thought it may be cool for SF. What about some special perks for mounted (horse) combat? Maybe a perk or two to boost damage or swing speed while riding. Something like that. Though niche, it could be sort of novel.
You need to edit the spell conditions to not check for Mage Armor. You don't really need to though? Only the bonus armor rating of Unarmored gets disabled when Mage Armor is active, and you'll get plenty of armor rating from just Mage Armor already. Other bonuses like speed & damage will still work with Mage Armor.
Oops, missed the comments... Armed Spellcasting works with 1H weapons only, not staves. For staves + Magic you need Staff Channeling. Commander works on summons, yes.
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Special Feats 1.0 is compatible with Requiem 5.2.x and higher.
Mod details for Special Feats 0.4.1 is at ARTICLES page.
1) to start with the only big issue, shout cooldown has become broken with the new material bonus of dragon armors in requiem. minmaxing everything together, i managed to get up to 116% cooldown reduction compared to the 150% base cooldown of requiem. and that is without stacking the shout known/mastered/used bonus from requiem, which can still give more than enough to reduce shout cooldown under 0%.
given that shout cooldown reduction scale exponentially in terms of gameplay impact (10% cdr is not the same when your cooldowns are at 150% or when they are at 40%), i suggest doing something like 10%/15%/20% for the ranks, that way the first rank taken early still feel useful, and the later ones are further away from breaking the game.
you could also do the same thing you did with the meta magic feats, and change it from a 3 ranks perk to a stronger 1 rank perk.
2) balanced wielding and armed spellcasting are overlapping too much. i realized it might be an issue when playing a spellsword build. eventually, it was in my best interest to take both perks and just use a shortcut to unequip my off hand spell as soon as i casted it. otherwise, the one handed weapons dealt too little damage to be worth using at all.
i think you should either fuse them into a single perk, or separate them more so they have no overlap and can be both active at the same time. having the balanced wielding fully apply with spells as well as empty left hand, while the armed spellcasting gives bonuses that are only relevant to casting, spell cost reduction plus something else. for example to could trigger a small mana regen when you hit someone with a melee attack, just like the blocking perk that gives stamina regen when blocking an attack.
aside from that it's lovely, really. a few feats that are stronger than average, but overall nothing else game breaking. no bug either so far. i have to admit i have not tried all of the feats in a build yet.
thanks again for the mod!
Metamagic recently got changed so that it doesn't affect self-buff spells, so it is less OP than it was. It's now only good for specific use, so I think 1 rank is just enough investment for it.
2) Armed Spellcasting having attack speed bonus was because Spellsword builds can so easily fall into becoming a mage instead due to how 1H+Spell equip is so bad in this game. So I decided that I give bonuses for both magic and weapon to balance it out and encourage keeping 1H+Spell equip set. You can easily swap to Balanced Wielding to get higher 1H damage, but I'd just allow that since it's 1 extra perk point spent for it.
best would be if instead of stacking additively, shout cooldown was multiplicative, it would allow giving strong buffs for early shout usage without them being game breaking, but that's a tall order and beyond the intended scope of your mod.
i probably was unclear about my thoughts on armed spellcasting, basically i meant that the weapon still feels weak and superfluous. i completely agree with you, 1 h+ spell is bad. that's why i suggested a mechanic that would lower the investment necessary in magic through the use of the weapon.
in my head, it comes down to what you are gaining compared to what you sacrifice. a spellsword compared to a balanced wielder lose the ability to block and bash, as well as a bit of armor pen, and gain access to spells which he has to invest magicka to use. now compared to a mage, the spellsword loses dual casting in exchange for a bit of melee physical damage and slightly cheaper spell casting. in both cases those are trades for the worse and does not really incentivize the playstyle. that's why i believe it's best to think of a spellsword as a full fledged warrior build that sacrifices blocking capabilities (because even end game wards don't come close to real blocking and don't allow bashing) for the versatility of magic in combat.
another way for spellswords to shine could be taking it the other way entirely and making the equipping of a spell in the off hand buff the sword too, by adding some effects to sword strike based on the player's magicka, or the spell equiped, but that would probably require some dubious tinkering with applying dynamically enchantments to the sword or such...
just writing that actually reminded me of an item from league of legends. it's called the muramana and it's an item that gives lot of mana as well as bonus base damage based on your max mana and, uppon hitting enemies, you also expend a percentage of your current mana to deal bonus damage.
from that idea it would be possible to think of a spellsword as a "mage who strike with his sword like he would cast spells", or a warrior who fuel his fighting with his magic instead of just his body strength.
maybe it could be interesting to give a strong buff to the weapon damage based on the rank of the spell equipped, and make attacks cost mana as well as stamina.
the more i think about it the more i feel like the true way to make spellswords work in skyrim would be to add spells tailored for spellswords, elemental weapon buffs like in dark souls, a bash spell (knock is super expensive and slow to cast), magical swordslash flying through the airs and so on.
I can cut out the boring ritual of buying 25 alteration in kynesgrove ASAP from Dravynea just because there was no reason not to. Heck, I'm half-tempted to cut her in half now!
I have an issue, do you know why the ''Immovable'' perk from Heavy Armor isn't working? When I stand still in full heavy armor the resistances don't appear on Requiem Skill Menu.
Again, thank you for the mod!
Afaik 3bftweaks has a lot of stuff on its own already.
You don't really need to though? Only the bonus armor rating of Unarmored gets disabled when Mage Armor is active, and you'll get plenty of armor rating from just Mage Armor already. Other bonuses like speed & damage will still work with Mage Armor.
edit: another question, does Commander feat's bonuses apply for summoned creatures also?
Armed Spellcasting works with 1H weapons only, not staves. For staves + Magic you need Staff Channeling.
Commander works on summons, yes.