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About this mod
Adds variants of the Atromancy/Summoning conjuration spells with a soulgem requirement based on their tier and a soft summon limit.
(Petty = Novice, Lesser = Apprentice, Common = Adept, ect)
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
Conjuration spell variants that need a corresponding filled soulgem to cast instead of mana. The soulgem is returned on the summon dispelling, with an empty variant or soulgem fragments being returned if the summon is killed. With an attempted soft-cap on the max amount of summons you'd want to have out at once.
My hope is that by turning summons into more of a resource and less something that can be thrown out and killed without any care, players will be more hesitant to throw out their strongest card and neglect every other summon in their spell list.
Or it could just be a poorly conceived frustrating experience all round as you're left unable to use the magic school you into speced into and are unable to enchant stuff properly ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Exceeding this soft-cap does not directly prevent you from using more summon spells, instead it applies two mechanics to the soulgem cost system. Being retention and escape.
Normally when a summon added by this mod is killed, an empty variant of the soulgem used to summon them is added to the player's inventory. However, the further below your current soft-cap you are and the lower tier the summon, an exponentially increasing chance to retain the soul on the summon dying is added. Meaning an Adept conjurer could field around 4 petty summons, each of which would have a chance to not lose a soul on death, with the odds increasing as each of them die and your "active score" decreases. Pushing you further below the soft-cap. This should encourage the use of larger amounts of lower tier summons as cannon fodder essentially.
When the soft-cap is exceeded, the opposite occurs. Where there's an exponential chance of the soul spent to summon the creature escaping and not being returned to the player on dispel, in addition to an increasing risk of soulgems shattering on death. Meaning you can deploy more summons than your soft-cap should allow you to, but it becomes increasingly risky and costly.
So if you have enough soulgems, you can effectively spam summons. Though doing so can be wasteful in terms of both the souls inside the gems, and the soulgems themselves.
As a general rule, you'll still need to be at the vanilla required conjuration level to reliably use the spells without exceeding your soft-cap. For example, you could summon a Greater Soul Dremora Lord (Expert/conjuration lvl 75) with a 50 in conjuration, but this will exceed your soft-cap. Making soul escape a likely possibility on it dispelling, or having a substantial risk of shattering the greater soulgem on it dying.
Unbound Summons
Trying to use a Soul Summon spell without the required soulgem will spawn a hostile unbound summon, rather than doing nothing at all.
So even if you do not have the soulgem needed for a summon, the spell will still work. Though your summon will be trying to attack you and everyone around it now (cheers SangheliWarlord). There is a limit of one unbound summon being active at all times.
Level scaling
Each of the summons have had a form of level scaling implemented. Upping their stats and damage done by their attacks. Mainly carrying over some of Raxyx7's changes from enhanced atronachs, with some differences to accommodate this mod. I haven't properly tested these stats other than a quick eyeball, so feedback is appreciated.
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Only the player can get the modified conjuration spells. Though this also means that they are separate from the vanilla atronachs, and any mod that modifies them will not change the ones added in this mod.
(kinda. While changes to the individual atronachs won't be picked up by this mod, some changes done to the NPC Template that this mod's summons use will affect the soulgem summons)
Recommended mods
Credits to Raxyx7's enhanced atronachs (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/18913), who's changes I've folded into my summons. Thanks to Revenant0713, Arctal and the Enai/Simonrim discord for giving me advice on how to get this basic mod to work.
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I've got a couple reasons behind doing this:
- Despite all the diverse summons you can get through mods, there isn't much reason to vary up what you're using unless an enemy has a resistance to the damage type of the elemental summon. Leading to conjuration players just picking whatever the strongest, most reliable summon is, and throwing it at the enemy in infinite numbers. The classic strategy of spamming dual Dremora Lords comes to mind, which is how I played my first run of Skyrim. In attempting to fix this, the strongest summons need a filled soulgem, with each summon potentially risking the loss of the soul stored within, and possibly shattering the soulgem at worst, leaving nothing but fragments.
- It should encourage a more proactive/supportive playstyle. Most spell pack mods include ways of enhancing/healing your summons, my main gripe with these is that they're not worth it due to the innate disposability of the summon, where they can be instantly recast, costing nothing but mana, which is ultimately a resource you should have plenty of outside of earlier levels. Now when a summon is killed, an empty variant of the soulgem used to summon them is returned, or soulgem fragments. Effectively limiting how many summons you can send to their deaths, which should ideally incentivize the use of support magic on them.
- I also think it fits thematically. Conjurers deal with Oblivion, the undead and the trapping and binding of souls to their will through Soul Trap. Only problem is that souls & filled soulgems are never used outside of one system separate to Conjuration, this being Enchanting. This links soul trap and soulgems back into Conjuration instead of an entirely different system, and gives more use to weaker souls outside of grinding gold and enchanting XP.
My hope is that by turning summons into more of a resource and less something that can be thrown out and killed without any care, players will be more hesitant to throw out their strongest card and neglect every other summon in their spell list.
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Additional mechanics & changes
Soft-cap system
While a summon from this mod is active, your summon limit is increased by +10. This is to accommodate the soft-cap mechanic. With a soft-cap equal to your conjuration level being calculated against a score based on the combined total of your currently active summons (higher tier = greater individual score), and tier of the summon being killed/dispelled.Additional mechanics & changes
Soft-cap system
Exceeding this soft-cap does not directly prevent you from using more summon spells, instead it applies two mechanics to the soulgem cost system. Being retention and escape.
Normally when a summon added by this mod is killed, an empty variant of the soulgem used to summon them is added to the player's inventory. However, the further below your current soft-cap you are and the lower tier the summon, an exponentially increasing chance to retain the soul on the summon dying is added. Meaning an Adept conjurer could field around 4 petty summons, each of which would have a chance to not lose a soul on death, with the odds increasing as each of them die and your "active score" decreases. Pushing you further below the soft-cap. This should encourage the use of larger amounts of lower tier summons as cannon fodder essentially.
When the soft-cap is exceeded, the opposite occurs. Where there's an exponential chance of the soul spent to summon the creature escaping and not being returned to the player on dispel, in addition to an increasing risk of soulgems shattering on death. Meaning you can deploy more summons than your soft-cap should allow you to, but it becomes increasingly risky and costly.
So if you have enough soulgems, you can effectively spam summons. Though doing so can be wasteful in terms of both the souls inside the gems, and the soulgems themselves.
As a general rule, you'll still need to be at the vanilla required conjuration level to reliably use the spells without exceeding your soft-cap. For example, you could summon a Greater Soul Dremora Lord (Expert/conjuration lvl 75) with a 50 in conjuration, but this will exceed your soft-cap. Making soul escape a likely possibility on it dispelling, or having a substantial risk of shattering the greater soulgem on it dying.
Unbound Summons
Trying to use a Soul Summon spell without the required soulgem will spawn a hostile unbound summon, rather than doing nothing at all.
So even if you do not have the soulgem needed for a summon, the spell will still work. Though your summon will be trying to attack you and everyone around it now (cheers SangheliWarlord). There is a limit of one unbound summon being active at all times.
Level scaling
Each of the summons have had a form of level scaling implemented. Upping their stats and damage done by their attacks. Mainly carrying over some of Raxyx7's changes from enhanced atronachs, with some differences to accommodate this mod. I haven't properly tested these stats other than a quick eyeball, so feedback is appreciated.
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Compatibility, ect
Should be compatible with pretty much everything. Tomes up to Adept are added to the AllConjuration00 list via injection script, Expert and Master to the AllConjuration50 list.Only the player can get the modified conjuration spells. Though this also means that they are separate from the vanilla atronachs, and any mod that modifies them will not change the ones added in this mod.
(kinda. While changes to the individual atronachs won't be picked up by this mod, some changes done to the NPC Template that this mod's summons use will affect the soulgem summons)
Recommended mods
Spoiler:
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TODO- Creating yet another soulgem fragment crafting mod for my exact tastes.
- Properly balancing this thing. Between the soft-cap mechanic and level scaling. It's going to be a pain.
- This includes making Mistmen not the absolute worst.
- Borrow unique models for the Grand Soul Monarchs from other mod authors.
Improve soft-cap calculation/how it is presented to player.Add a warning system so the player knows if they're about to spawn an unbound summon.- Reduce debug notification spam and improve script
- Use Keyword Item Distributor to make vanilla summons banish soulgem summons on use.
Change things in soft-cap script to global variables so I can easily adjust them via console, and maybe MCM.
Credits to Raxyx7's enhanced atronachs (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/18913), who's changes I've folded into my summons. Thanks to Revenant0713, Arctal and the Enai/Simonrim discord for giving me advice on how to get this basic mod to work.