Overview

Dragonborn Aptitude rediscovers the idea of utilizing Dragon Souls, but it does so in a unique way. Its main goal is to provide means to buff Shouts without interfering much with existing skills (like Speech) or creating custom altars.

The mod achieves its goal by introducing three new mechanics: Souls Containment, Souls Overflowing and Thu'um Fluency. First two focus on Dragon Souls and make Shouts more powerful while third one let's you improve Shouts cooldown.


Souls Containment

As you normally absorb Dragon Souls they are contained within you. This allows you to tap into them to make yourself and your Shouts more powerful.
This continues up to the Overflowing limit. You'll still be able to absorb more Dragon Souls, but Souls Containment won't include additional Souls.

• Ancient Vigor
  

Each contained Dragon Soul fortifies your physical body and mind increasing your Health, Stamina and Magicka by 10 points.

• Ancestors Echo
  

Each contained Dragon Soul fuels your Thu'um making your Shouts 3% more powerful.

Note: This also includes duration of the Shouts.

• Soul Fusion
  

Absorbed Dragon Soul meld with your own soul temporarily doubling the effects of all contained Dragon Souls.

Note: Soul Fusion lasts 4 in-game hours. Absorbing another soul while Soul Fusion is active will renew the effect.

Souls Overflowing

When you reach certain amount of contained Dragon Souls (10 by default) you enter an Overflowing state. In this state Dragonborn cannot control all of the Dragon Souls living inside, and this produces various unique effects:

• Soul Eater
  

When overflowing with Dragon Souls, your shouts inflict 25% more damage to dragons.

Note: This also extends duration of the shout's effect on dragon by 25%

• Primordial Power
  

When overflowing with Dragon Souls, there is a 10/30/50% chance to infuse a Dragon Soul in your next Shout to double its power.

Note: Chance depends on a number of Words used in the Shout.

• Staggering Thu'um
  

When overflowing with Dragon Souls, your Shouts stagger nearby targets.

Note: Staggering Thu'um works only in combat.


Thu'um Fluency

Thu'um Fluency provides a way to improve Shouts Cooldown simply by practicing Shouts. It is unrelated to Dragon Souls.

• Thu'um Fluency
  

 Practicing Shouts slowly reduces their cooldown. For every 50 shouts you gain 1% cooldown reduction.

Note: This caps at 50% reduction.


Customization
Most of the features are customizable through MCM and settings are persistent throughout different saves (thanks to MCM Helper).
MCM is also localizable, feel free to translate this mod :)

As of 1.2.0 the mod now contains three exclusion lists that you can use to exclude Shouts from receiving certain buff.

• DA_ExcludedMagnitudeShouts - Shouts (Spells associated with Words) added to this lists will not scale their Damage/Power with Dragon Souls.
• DA_ExcludedDurationShouts - Shouts (Spells associated with Words) added to this lists will not scale their Duration with Dragon Souls.
• DA_ExcludedSoulInfusionShouts -  Shouts (Spells associated with Words) added to this lists will never trigger Soul Infusion.
  

By default Magnitude and Duration lists are empty, so if some Shouts bother you, you can add them to either or both lists.

DA_ExcludedSoulInfusionShouts comes prepopulated with Shouts that had no benefit from Soul Infusion.
The list of excluded Shouts:



Compatibility
In general the mod is technically* compatible with Shouts mods, Perk Overhauls and even other Dragon Souls mods. 
* While there are no direct conflicts having too many mods boosting Shouts damage might introduce some balancing issues

Here is a short list of popular mods that buff Shouts:

• Adamant - A Perk Overhaul (up to +100% Power/ up to -50% Cooldown)
• Vokrii - Minimalistic Perks of Skyrim (up to +50%)
• Pilgrim - A Religion Overhaul (up to +50% Power/ -25% Cooldown)
• Thaumaturgy - An Enchanting Overhaul (up to +50% Power)
• Forceful Tongue - Shouts Overhaul (up to +75% Power/ -25% Cooldown)
• Dragonborn - Shouts Perk Tree (up to +75% Power/ -25% Cooldown)
  

If using all of the above (with either Vokrii or Adamant) you end up with +350% Shouts power and -125% Cooldown reduction (this causes weird negative values in UI). This doesn't feel right :) While high Shouts power is tolerable, cooldown reductions close to 100% or higher absolutely break Shouts.

I use those mods myself, so I tried to keep values within acceptable range. So my suggestions would be:

• Remove Shouts perks from Adamant. I created Adamant with Vanilla Perks that addresses this, by restoring original Speech perks that Shout perks occupied. (Not that critical for Vokrii). 
• Consider dropping Shouts Perk Tree (or this mod). I've designed Dragonborn Aptitude as a "simpler" alternative to Shouts Perk Tree mod (see notes). Alternatively, you could disable Thu'um Fluency to avoid breaking cooldown limits.
• Tone down Ancestors Echo to 1% per Soul or disable it completely (set 0%) and/or disable Soul Fusion to further decrease total buffs.
• If using 3 or more mods that reduce cooldown, adjust maximum points in Thu'um Fluency to decrease its cap to something like 25% or lower.
  

Notes
Thanks DeltaRider for Dragonborn - Shouts Perk Tree. My initial idea was to create an add-on for that mod to add several perks related to Dragon Souls. But without Custom Skills Framework on AE this idea was a dead-end. So it eventually turned into a Dragonborn Aptitude, though I still used several ideas from that mod, so kudos to DeltaRider :)


Support
Thank you for using my mods! If you enjoy them and would like to support me, you can use the links below.