You should make a straight-up replacer, because otherwise, what's the point? I really like the concept, but if it doesn't force me to use souls, I won't.
I think so too, just take vanilla summoning spells (+ CC AE Spells), add the conditions for absorbing the soul stone to them, make normal messages at the top of the screen ("you don't have a suitable soul stone", "your soul stone was absorbed") and that's it. No "crutches". If necessary, fans of this mod will make compatibility patches for other spell mods themselves.
I initially had it so my mod changed the vanilla conjuration tomes to teach my spells, which while fast and half-assed also got over the issue of making it so every NPC using the default spells now used mine. Which also has the issue of there being a few spells not taught via tome. Conjure familiar is a starting spell for Bretons, Flame thrall is given at the end of the Conjuration Ritual quest, Summon Anriel's shade is given at the end of the Anriel's Endeavor. I guess to fix that you'd have a script that checks if player has the vanilla spell, removes it and adds the SoulSummon version of it, which is another looong if statement, and boy am I tired of if statements and assigning properties. I think I'd need to ask around for advice on how to make a replacer version that doesn't mess up any of the vanilla spells NPCs use.
For me it's easier to either not learn the vanilla spells or just not use them.
Hi, thanks for your work! Mysticism list patch has SoulSummon-Mysticism merchant patch.esl , which in fact should not be .esl because it is loaded before the master files. Because of this, my "LOOT" is going crazy. At least that's my guess.
If I had a nickel for everytime I've managed to cause this issue for people, I'd have about 5, which is shameful. Thanks for telling me, changed them now.
I played a little with this mod. I did not understand at all what its benefits are. In fact (before installing the mod) I have studied the wolf summoning spell, and it has not changed, as before I can summon a wolf at any time without soul stones.
This isn't a replacer. I get how iffy this mod's premise is, so they're just an extra set of supplemental spell tomes that you can use along side the vanilla ones. They should be separate spells, with different tomes and different names for the summons. They take a soulgem on spawning, and return a variant on it on effect end (Full, Empty, soulgem pieces depending on if the summon died and your softcap at casting the spell).
Are you using the vanilla spells?
Anyways still though, familiars are pretty useless and I'm wondering about what can be done with them. Maybe give them magic resist? An Elemental cloak spell? Because right now the only melee options otherwise are the frost atronachs/monarchs, dremora and wrathmen. While those kick ass, they're also pretty expensive soul wise.
Okay, now I understand the meaning of this (I just initially thought that any summoning would cost a soul stone, for example, a wolf is a Petty Soul Gem). I use all of Simon's mods (adamant, mysticism...), Cosmic, Triumvirate. Probably your mod is not suitable for my assembly, as I understand, i.e. it is more focused on vanilla.
If you're suddenly interested in my humble opinion, summoning any creatures in Skyrim is cheating. And it would be wonderful to limit it in this way. The AI in the game is dumb at any complexity, even the weakest wolf gives a huge advantage, because the AI switches to it and allows you to strike a bunch of blows.
For some reason, I fantasized to myself that this mod does exactly that, lol. For example, summoning all creatures (Novice - Petty Soul Gem, Apprentice - Lesser Soul Gem, etc.). It has always confused me that Flame Atronach (a very strong creature) this is just an Apprentice skill level. And you can summon him an infinite number of times!
Is it intended for the summons to have completely different health values? I am running this mod and my firebolt twoshots my soul familiar, but it takes like 10 firebolts for the normal one
Right, balancing and patches... This mod should just use the default/vanilla health values for summons, being duplicates of them. So familiars should have 32hp, two firebolts killing one sounds about right. You probably have another mod buffing the vanilla familiars, while my one isn't being buffed This is a "me issue" that I planed on fixing when I first made the mod, having summon levels scale with you so each tier stays relevant for longer. I uh.... never got around to that and didn't know if it was a matter of simply ticking the "PC lvl mult" box in Creation Kit or not. Then I had no idea how to actually make a summon's attack power scale alongside level, which would just up their stats, leaving most summons being tanky as all hell, but not being able to do much damage later on. Which is solvable, the person who does it just has to pass the very low bar of being smarter than me when it comes to CK.
Actually, would I just be able to look up a specific summon/NPC's stats with a script and then just set my summon's stats to be the same as it spawns in? That way balance changes to vanilla stuff would affect this mod. I think that works with spells, hp,mp and skills, ect, but I'm not sure if the Lvl mult/scale with player level stuff would still work.
Despite my curiosity on if that would work, I hate using CK and despite how simple and easy the work is, it makes me wanna die. So I probably won't find the effort to do it unless I ever feel the urge to play skyrim again.
I like this idea, although I think it would be more interesting if the soul gem was needed to keep the summon loyal to you like heartstones in the dragonborn DLC, Ive been looking for a mod that makes conjuration more interesting and dangerous, this mod almost is that but not quite. That being said it still seems like a cool concept in of itself
That would be quite fun, rather than how mundane the current version can feel. Could make using a powerful summon a really fun gambit in combat, and make the mod feel less restrictive. I imagine perks that up casting range would be very useful with that. Though I imagine it could feel frustrating if you're not keeping track of whether you've got a spare soulgem or not.
Guess It'd be added in the same way potent atronachs are, where the spell has two effects. One for the loyal summon, another for the unbound summon
13/4/22
In opening the mod again, "Error reloading script". I don't understand why this happens, but it does. I'm guessing it has something to do with me not including the script's source or something similar? I don't even know what a "source" is.
good idea but are the NPCs aware of this ? i mean do warlocks that are supposed to able to summon atronachs still capable of doing that with this mod installed. given how dumb the AI is might need to retain a 'classic' version of the summoning spells for them.
Nope. NPCs still use the vanilla summons. The versions in this mod are separate spells to the regular conjuration spells, which also summon separate atronachs, that only the player has access to It's just that I've edited every conjuration spell tome to give this mod's conjuration spells instead of the vanilla ones
The only exception to this is Mysticism, where I was too lazy to duplicate every summon to make a player exclusive variant. But unless you have another mod which gives NPCs Mysticism conjuration spells, It shouldn't be an issue as there's no way for NPCs to use them regularly
this might sound like a weird request, could you make a mod or additional patch to this one that disables conjuration spells from being used by all npc's. I know that it might break some quests but I don't mind that. main reason I want to disable conjuration spells is because they clutter battlefield and I dont like the atronaches and companion creatures.
That's certainly an odd request. Probably several ways of doing that, though I'm having issues reinstalling my Skyrim set up to check just how to do it on CK. Just removing the spells from levelled list NPCs and named ones alike should be one way. I imagine you can just check the users of the spell and remove them. Though that would take hours.
You could just remove the spell itself, which should be much easier. Just search up "Atronach" "Familiar" and the other summon names under spells and delete them. No clue if deleting these will cause any long term issues, but it should work.
I really love this idea and kudos to you for making it. Since I'm about to start a new playthrough I'm going to check this out.
Warning, mod plug ahead...
You mentioned in your description that you recommend getting a mod that allows you to combine or convert soul gems into other soul gems. You said that you found some. I'd like to share my favorite one, Soul Salts - A Soulgem Mod by GallumX. But you also said you didn't really care for the conversion rates for the mods you did find. I was in the same boat, even with Soul Salts. So, with GallumX's permission I published a mod that tweaked the recipes to be more consistent and, in my eyes, not cheaty. It is Soul Salts - Tweaks?. Hopefully this is something you and others may like.
Nice tweak mod. I guess I should also change the amount of fragments dying summons give to better match this balance, rather than my seemingly random values.
I haven't yet tested it but I think this should work with YASTM - Yet Another Soul Trap Manager, as an alternative to GIST - Genuinely Intelligent Soul Trap SE.
It should work. iirc, the issue with vanilla Skyrim's soultrap is that Soulgems filled by the player are technically different than filled Soulgems you'd get from anywhere else (merchant, loot, ect) and have a different item ID, so you can't really do anything with them mod wise. It seems like YASTM also fixes that issue in its own way, but I haven't tested it.
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I really like the concept, but if it doesn't force me to use souls, I won't.
If necessary, fans of this mod will make compatibility patches for other spell mods themselves.
I initially had it so my mod changed the vanilla conjuration tomes to teach my spells, which while fast and half-assed also got over the issue of making it so every NPC using the default spells now used mine.
Which also has the issue of there being a few spells not taught via tome. Conjure familiar is a starting spell for Bretons, Flame thrall is given at the end of the Conjuration Ritual quest, Summon Anriel's shade is given at the end of the Anriel's Endeavor.
I guess to fix that you'd have a script that checks if player has the vanilla spell, removes it and adds the SoulSummon version of it, which is another looong if statement, and boy am I tired of if statements and assigning properties.
I think I'd need to ask around for advice on how to make a replacer version that doesn't mess up any of the vanilla spells NPCs use.
For me it's easier to either not learn the vanilla spells or just not use them.
Are you using the vanilla spells?
Anyways still though, familiars are pretty useless and I'm wondering about what can be done with them. Maybe give them magic resist? An Elemental cloak spell? Because right now the only melee options otherwise are the frost atronachs/monarchs, dremora and wrathmen. While those kick ass, they're also pretty expensive soul wise.
If you're suddenly interested in my humble opinion, summoning any creatures in Skyrim is cheating. And it would be wonderful to limit it in this way. The AI in the game is dumb at any complexity, even the weakest wolf gives a huge advantage, because the AI switches to it and allows you to strike a bunch of blows.
For some reason, I fantasized to myself that this mod does exactly that, lol. For example, summoning all creatures (Novice - Petty Soul Gem, Apprentice - Lesser Soul Gem, etc.). It has always confused me that Flame Atronach (a very strong creature) this is just an Apprentice skill level. And you can summon him an infinite number of times!
This is a "me issue" that I planed on fixing when I first made the mod, having summon levels scale with you so each tier stays relevant for longer. I uh.... never got around to that and didn't know if it was a matter of simply ticking the "PC lvl mult" box in Creation Kit or not.
Then I had no idea how to actually make a summon's attack power scale alongside level, which would just up their stats, leaving most summons being tanky as all hell, but not being able to do much damage later on. Which is solvable, the person who does it just has to pass the very low bar of being smarter than me when it comes to CK.
Actually, would I just be able to look up a specific summon/NPC's stats with a script and then just set my summon's stats to be the same as it spawns in? That way balance changes to vanilla stuff would affect this mod. I think that works with spells, hp,mp and skills, ect, but I'm not sure if the Lvl mult/scale with player level stuff would still work.
Despite my curiosity on if that would work, I hate using CK and despite how simple and easy the work is, it makes me wanna die. So I probably won't find the effort to do it unless I ever feel the urge to play skyrim again.
That being said it still seems like a cool concept in of itself
Though I imagine it could feel frustrating if you're not keeping track of whether you've got a spare soulgem or not.
Guess It'd be added in the same way potent atronachs are, where the spell has two effects. One for the loyal summon, another for the unbound summon
13/4/22
In opening the mod again, "Error reloading script". I don't understand why this happens, but it does. I'm guessing it has something to do with me not including the script's source or something similar? I don't even know what a "source" is.
It's just that I've edited every conjuration spell tome to give this mod's conjuration spells instead of the vanilla ones
The only exception to this is Mysticism, where I was too lazy to duplicate every summon to make a player exclusive variant. But unless you have another mod which gives NPCs Mysticism conjuration spells, It shouldn't be an issue as there's no way for NPCs to use them regularly
remove them. Though that would take hours.
You could just remove the spell itself, which should be much easier. Just search up "Atronach" "Familiar" and the other summon names under spells and delete them. No clue if deleting these will cause any long term issues, but it should work.
do I use zedit or something else?
Warning, mod plug ahead...
You mentioned in your description that you recommend getting a mod that allows you to combine or convert soul gems into other soul gems. You said that you found some. I'd like to share my favorite one, Soul Salts - A Soulgem Mod by GallumX. But you also said you didn't really care for the conversion rates for the mods you did find. I was in the same boat, even with Soul Salts. So, with GallumX's permission I published a mod that tweaked the recipes to be more consistent and, in my eyes, not cheaty. It is Soul Salts - Tweaks?. Hopefully this is something you and others may like.
Plug over.