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Darvete Doodlezoid Loki miken1ke Adri stuxjr Kulharin fenix31415

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About this mod

Makes several major tweaks and balance changes to Doodlezoid's "Chocolate Poise", including INI tweaks, comprehensive perk overhaul support, changes to stagger duration and type, and other minor fixes, the result of which is equal in scope to a typical combat overhaul.

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Features

Chocolate poise is a mod that I've been using and enjoying for quite a while. However, it took me a ton of tweaks and some complimentary mods to really bring the experience together. My goal is to share the culmination of these tweaks to other people who might be interested.

  • Adds poise perk integration for most major perk overhauls
  • Reworks stagger animations to better fit with a poise system
  • Tweaks INI and JSON settings to better fit with other combat overhauls
  • Adds integration with other combat overhauls

Hard Requirements


Note: Chocolate Poise comes with an ESP. The ESP adds extra conditions to prevent instances where you could attack, move, etc. while staggered and also changes the Vanilla "Power Shot" perk. All of the ESPs included in my mod already contain these fixes, so make sure you either delete or disable this plugin, as it may conflict with other mods.

Recommendations


Important Installation Notes

  • If you install this mod, make sure you delete or disable the ESP from the original Chocolate Poise mod to avoid conflicts
  • Keep in mind that Fenix Stamina Overhaul is only available on SE 1.5.97 and lower. If you are playing on AE, you will have to use a different combat overhaul.
  • If you decide to use both Fenix stamina overhaul and Valhalla, make sure you set Fenix's combat stamina regen to 0.00 and Valhalla's combat stamina regen to whatever you want (I would recommend anywhere from 1.5 - 2.5).
  • If you want to use the armor based staggers, you MUST install OAR and KID. It will NOT function without them.
  • SPID is necessary for the combat overhauls to function properly. Make sure you have it installed.

Additional Notes

  • Blade and Blunt is an excellent choice for users that prefer something closer to vanilla. 
  • Plus Combat is the most fast-paced and aggressive combat overhaul compared to the others listed above. It still requires good resource management and makes the game significantly more difficult.
  • If you use Fenix Stamina Overhaul with this mod, walking will now be an option you might actually consider in combat. Unless you want walking to be unbearably slow, I would recommend something like NK's faster walk speeds.
  • Sekiro Combat S is an excellent alternative to Valhalla with prettier visuals and a more focused design. This is a very solid alternative to Valhalla's timed block. Keep in mind though, that timing your blocks will NOT reduce incoming poise damage, which is why I personally prefer Valhalla's timed block system.
  • While the mod does work fairly well with just blocking as a defensive option, I would also highly recommend something like DMCO (you can get it on the Skyrim guild website) or TK Dodge + TK Dodge RE as another option to give yourself. 
  • Since all of the AIO plugins reduce armor rating globally, I would highly recommend using Armor rating rescaled to keep armor useful in the early game

INI Tweaks

Below is an explanation of what all the settings are and how Chocolate Poise Plus has changed them. 

[Settings]
Staggermode = 1 (Unchanged) - This is crucial to the balance of the mod. Without this mode on, stagger locking pretty much becomes an inevitability. Would not recommend changing this setting. 

[Health]
BaseMult - This value determines the base poise health of all actors. Because of the changes I made to the poise damage/health of weapons and creatures, increasing this value was necessary. If you want NPCs and actors to have a higher baseline poise value, then increase this number. 

ArmorMult - From my testing, this setting works as follows: If you have ArmorMult set to 0.5, for example, then every point of armor will increase your basemult by that amount. If I have 100 armor rating, then my poise health will increase by 50. 

This is one of the biggest changes from the default values. In the late game, you could pretty much ignore whatever the enemy was doing and just attack with impunity. I initially had this value at 0.1, but I found that even that was too much for the mid to late game. Chocolate Poise Plus drastically reduces the influence armor rating has on poise. Increasing this value will make armor rating more valuable, but be cautious as this is a particularly delicate setting. 

RegenRate - The rate at which poise health regens over time. The default was 30 seconds to regen to full. The increased regen rate means that retreating and waiting for poise health to regen is now a viable strategy while hopefully still making it possible for lower poise damage weapons like daggers to still stagger enemies.

[Damage]
BashMult - Determines the poise damage of bash attacks. This one is definitely going to be something you might want to tweak. The problem with vanilla bashing is that it's instant and has 0 telegraphing. Moreover, most combat overhauls like Valravn as well as mods like Enhanced Enemy AI make NPCs bash way more frequently and intelligently. The idea here is that bashing already makes the enemy recoil when timed during an enemy's attack. Bashing is now more strategic and situational.

BowMult - Determines the poise damage of bow and arrows. Keep in mind, the weight of the bow still matters for the purposes of poise damage calculation. Unless you've made tweaks to projectile speed, arrows in vanilla are insanely fast and basically undodgeable. Moreover, mods that add more enemies or increase enemy damage make archers plentiful and extremely deadly. In my opinion, archery is already very strong as it is. Lowering the poise damage of bows means that getting constantly staggered by enemies becomes less of an issue. 

CreatureMult - This value determines the poise damage of all creatures. Because of the base poise health changes, this value has been increased. 

MeleeMult - This determines the poise damage of melee attacks, including, I think, creature melee damage. The main reason why you might want to tweak this is if you want to keep the poise damage of ranged attacks like Chaurus spit the same while increasing the poise damage of creature melee damage. 

To PC Mult = 1.0 (Unchanged)
To NPC Mult = 1.0 (Unchanged)
Even-Steven. Both you and the enemies deal equal poise damage. If you want either the NPC or yourself to take or deal more, you can change these settings, although I personally like it the way it is. 

Weight - This value determines how much the weight of your weapon influences poise damage. Higher values = greater influence. One of the biggest change made to the INI. Weapons within the same class (Swords, Axes, and Maces) will usually deal similar poise damage to each other, with maces dealing slightly more than swords and axes. The same is true of Greatswords, Battleaxes, and Warhammers.

With Fenix Stamina Overhaul, there is now a tradeoff. Heavier weapons deal more poise damage, but cost more stamina to attack and bash with. If you find that poise damage is too high, then you can lower this setting. The main reason you might want to change this value over global poise health is if you want to adjust the poise damage of weapons while keeping creature damage the same.

GauntletWeight - The influence that the weight of your gauntlet has on unarmed poise damage. The higher the value, the greater the influence your gauntlet weight has on the poise damage you deal. This setting is mostly used when calculating the poise damage of unarmed attacks.  

UnarmedSkill- I'm going to be 100% honest, I'm not sure sure what this setting does, but it seems to work fine at default values so I've kept it in as is. 

[TrueHUD]
Specialbar - This determines whether TrueHUD will display the poise health of actors. If you set this to false, poise damage and health will be invisible. I would recommend turning this on and overwriting Valhalla's stun meter if you use this so you know exactly how close you are to staggering the enemy and being staggered. It also lets you make informed changes to the INI in case you don't like any of my settings. 

IgnoreValhallaCombat - If enabled, Chocolate poise's poise health meter will overwrite Valhalla's stun bar. I would highly recommend setting this to true, as I think poise damage is much more important information to know than stun damage.

JSON Changes

"Races"
In Chocolate Poise, the poise health of every race is determined by their base mass. There are two ways to edit this: You can either directly edit this value in SSEdit in the race section, or adjust the JSON included in Chocolate Poise as I have for better compatibility and ease of use.

Nearly every enemy in the base game and DLC have had their poise health values adjusted. Larger enemies like Giants, Dwarven Centurions, Mammoths, and Giants usually have very large mass values between 5-7. Other races, like Bears are somewhere between with mass value of 3. Draugr and Falmer have very low base mass (1.0), but deal a ton of poise damage themselves, making them somewhat like glass cannons. Chaurus and Flying Chaurus have had their mass drastically reduced to compensate for how poorly telegraphed and high damaging their attacks are (reduced to 1.2 and 0.5, respectively). Flying Chaurus in particular hit like a truck and constantly barrage you with ranged attacks. The change I made reduces their poise health, making it more rewarding to close the gap against them. You can use these numbers as a reference to make your own adjustments in the JSON if you don't like something I changed. 

"Magic Effects" and "Recovery"
This tab determines how damage and healing to Health and Magicka influences the poise damage and recovery of spells and magic effects, respectively. The settings here were taken directly from Kulharin's tweaks, as I think they work well. If you don't want spell poise damage, then set all of the values in this section to 0.0. 

"Weapons"
This tab lets you assign predetermined poise damage values to weapon types independently of weapon weight. I have already assigned values to each weapon, but you should absolutely play around with the settings if you do not like the current values.

New Additions

Chocolate Poise Plus.esp

 I've included an ESP called "Chocolate Poise Plus" that makes the following changes.

  • The player can no longer jump out of a stagger animation  
  • Magic effects and attacks from certain creatures (e.g. Giants) that force stagger have had their effect removed to prevent instances where you could attack while staggered
  • Adds keywords that support armor-based stagger resistance (Requires OAR and KID)

The FOMOD also includes an all-in-one variant of this ESP that merges all of the changes from the optional ESPs below into one plugin. 

I suspect there are very few mods that edit these same records, but just in case you'll probably want to load this near the bottom of your load order. 

Complete Perk Integration

Chocolate Poise Plus features comprehensive perk integration for most major perk overhauls. Since there are quite a few changes, a full list can be viewed in a separate changelog under the "Articles" section of this mod page.

Integration With Other Combat Mods

I've come to realize that resource management and poise systems are inextricably linked to each other. The big problem with lots of other stagger reworks that I've seen is that they only look at their poise system in a vacuum, without considering how the rest of the game's mechanics interact or influence the feel of combat. This can result in unintended consequences like infinite staggerlocking, encouraging the player to only rely on one kind of attack, certain things feeling unbalanced, etc. For this reason, I would HIGHLY recommend pairing Chocolate Poise Plus with ONE (1) of the following mods for a more integrated and thoughtful experience.

Option 1: Fenix Stamina Overhaul INI Tweaks

Fenix Stamina Overhaul goes all-in on the resource management aspect of my poise system, focusing primarily on stamina as a way to keep staggerlock and power attack abuse in check. While not as dynamic in other areas like Blade and Blunt, this option leans harder into other aspects of gameplay, like accentuating Heavy vs Light armors.

A preconfigured INI for Fenix Stamina Overhaul.

Some general things to expect:

  • Base stamina regen has been greatly increased. However, unlike most stamina systems, there are many variables that influence stamina outside of base regeneration rates. Armor weight, type of movement, and weapon type all influence stamina regen and consumption
  • All attacks have a Stamina cost equal to a base value of 5 + 1.0x weapon weight. 
  • Running has a default stamina regen modifier of 1.0. Walking or standing still grants a 50% stamina regen bonus, encouraging different types of movement 
  • The weight of armor heavily influences stamina regen speed. The heavier the armor, the slower your stamina regen. This combined with the previous change, turns heavy armor users into slow juggernauts, being forced sometimes to walk or stand still to maintain good stamina regen, while light armor users are more nimble and can move freely with less penalty. With this mod, the type of armor you wear can also influence the type of stagger you receive as I'll explain further down. Also, heavy armors generally tend to have higher armor rating than light armors, which is another reason why I made this change. 
  • Jumping costs stamina (mostly for immersion)
  • Power attacks now consume stamina equal to 2.5x the cost of normal attacks. Generally speaking, this is a buff compared to Vanilla.
  • Power attacks can no longer be done as long as you have at least 1 stamina. You cannot power attack if your remaining stamina is lower than the cost of a power attack
  • Attacks with bows now consume stamina equal to their weight. Drawing and holding a bow is also influenced by weight
  • The player cannot bash, jump, power attack, or properly draw/shoot a bow when they have no stamina. If you are using Valhalla's exhaustion system, the same is true for NPCs.
  • By default, light attacks scale with current stamina, decreasing in damage with low stamina and increasing with high stamina. If you change the normal attack settings in FSO's MCM to "deny" (which I would strongly recommend if you are using the Synthesis patch), then you simply cannot attack if you do not have enough stamina.
  • Stamina regen delay is now based off of Stamina consumed. Big, heavy attacks from something like a Warhammer will make you take much longer to start regenerating stamina again compared to something like a light attack from a Dagger.
  • By default, the vanilla perks "Fighting Stance" as well as Ordinator's "Trained Fighter" and any other equivalent will now reduce stamina costs for BOTH light and power attacks, making these essential perks. A patch is included in the FOMOD to revert the stamina reduction of Ordinator to the % based reduction of vanilla.



Stamina Regen with Light-weight armor (Very fast)


Stamina Regen with Heavier Armor (Slow)

Bound Weapons Weight 

An optional plugin exists which adds weight to bound weapons. Only for use with FSO.

Weight of weapon's Daedric counterpart x 0.5 (rounded down)

You can tweak this value in SSEdit or use Arost011's version (and overwrite my mod), which is EQUAL to the weight of the weapon's Daedric counterpart and also includes a patch for Animated Armory. 

Note: If you are using Valhalla Combat, only ONE stamina regen value will take effect. Whichever MCM you open will overwrite the other's stamina regen multiplier. By default (when you first load the game), Valhalla's stamina regen will take priority over FSO. If you want to use both, make sure FSO's combat stamina regen value is set to 0.00 and then set Valhalla's to whatever you want. Don't worry - all of FSO's other features (weight based regen, custom stamina delay, weapon stamina costs, etc.) will still work. You don't need to worry about this if you install the INI with Valhalla support, but in case you want to make edits, this information is here.

Most of these settings can be changed in Fenix's MCM, although I have found these settings to work very well in my setup. If you do not like these changes or you don't want to use FSO, then you can opt out in the FOMOD. [/spoiler]

Option 2: Blade and Blunt Integration

This option features an ESP that fully integrates and adapts the best aspects of Blade and Blunt for use with Chocolate Poise. In contrast to Fenix Stamina Overhaul, which focuses exclusively on fleshing out Skyrim's stamina system, Blade and Blunt is more overarching and factors in more aspects of combat like situational advantage, weighing the advantages and disadvantages of different attack types, etc. Of course, Blade and Blunt still requires the player to manage resources, but the way it does so is much closer to Vanilla than FSO. 

Things to expect:

  • Features a new JSON and INI configuration specifically for use with Blade and Blunt. Weapon weight matters less, weapon type matters more. Since most vanilla weapons increase in weight as you move across the tiers, this means your poise damage will still increase as equipment improves
  • Light attacks deal 10% less poise damage across the board
  • Stamina regeneration has been significantly increased compared to Blade & Blunt's default setting, to account for the faster pace of combat
  • Blocking now grants the Player AND NPCs a 50% reduction against incoming poise damage, which makes it difficult to break an enemy's guard with light attacks
  • Blocking no longer has a random chance to stagger the attacker. 
  • Parrying now reduces incoming poise damage by 20%
  • In order to break an enemy's guard, you have to use power attacks!
  • Blade and Blunt's forced stagger mechanic has been removed from power attacks. However, power attacks deal significantly more poise damage compared to Vanilla, making them the ideal option to break through an enemy's defense. Dodging, interrupting with a bash, or strafing are now the ideal way to deal with enemy power attacks
  • While power attacks are very powerful, be wary of overextending and reducing your stamina to 0. Doing so will leave you in a Vulnerable state
  • When an actor has 0 stamina, they:
  • Deal 25% less damage
  • Attack 25% slower
  • Move 25% slower
  • Block 50% less damage
  • Take 100% more poise damage
  • No longer gain a 50% reduction against incoming poise damage while blocking
  • Situational advantage has been expanded on
  • Attacking a target that is drawing a bow, casting a non-ward spell, or power attacking will grant a 75% poise damage bonus, making light attacks ideal for striking during your opponents vulnerable moments
  • Read the situation and pay attention to BOTH you and your opponent's stamina and poise to emerge victorious! 


Notice how much poise damage I deal with this single light attack. He takes bonus poise damage because his stamina is depleted and is still in a power attack animation.


Power attacks deal a TON of poise damage. Do your best to avoid them!


My stamina is completely depleted and as a result, my guard breaks and my poise health gets obliterated by a single light attack.

An optional ESP is available in the FOMOD which removes Blade and Blunt's parry system. Recommended if you are using Blade and Blunt alongside Valhalla Combat or Sekiro Combat S.

Option 3: Plus Combat (Author's Choice)
Plus Combat is a mostly standalone combat overhaul developed SPECIFICALLY for use with Chocolate Poise Plus. It builds off of Blade and Blunt and the Blade and Blunt CPP addon, but makes several other changes to better suit modern combat setups. This is my personal recommendation. 

For information on what this changes, check out the Plus Combat modpage. 

Reworked Stagger System

In Vanilla Skyrim, the default stagger animations and durations work well enough. However, Chocolate Poise naturally makes staggers more frequent and potent. In order to address this problem, I've reworked the stagger system to account for this.

(Requires OAR and KID)
This adds a new armor based stagger system using Loki and stuxjr's cool animations! Depending on what armor type your cuirass is, the stagger type will differ. 

Naked
  • Unchanged ("Cover yourself! Have you no shame?")

Light Armor/Clothing
  • Smallest Stagger increased to -> Small Stagger
  • Small, Medium, and Large stagger -> Untouched
  • Largest Stagger (when hit from the front) reduced to -> Large Stagger
  • Largest Stagger -> Can only occur when hit from behind

Heavy Armor
  • Smallest Stagger increased to -> Small Stagger
  • Small stagger -> Untouched
  • Medium Stagger reduced to -> Small Stagger
  • Large Stagger reduced to -> Medium Stagger
  • Largest Stagger (when hit from the front) reduced to -> Large Stagger
  • Largest Stagger -> Can only occur when hit from behind

Draugr
  • Medium and Large stagger -> Small stagger
  • Can only be large staggered when hit from behind


Notice how I don't stagger during his second power attack. You only take poise damage when your stagger animation finishes, reducing the likelihood of stagger lock.


Thanks to my heavy armor, I only take medium stagger here instead of a Large one.

Few things to note here:
  • Should support first person, although I have not tested this fully
  • Smallest stagger has been removed because it barely even had an animation. This ensures that every attack that breaks poise has a decent baseline stagger duration
  • Different armor types grant very distinct stagger resistances. Heavy Armor reduces the impact of blows, allowing the wearer to recover faster and shrug off weaker blows at the cost of reduced stamina regen and movement speed, while Light Armor users have the superior speed and stamina regen at the cost of longer stagger durations.
  • While you might sometimes feel invincible in Heavy Armor, BOTH armor types are vulnerable to being hit from behind. Protect your rear!
  • If using FSO, heavy armor now has a meaningful tradeoff - you are much less vulnerable to heavy staggering, but stamina regen and movement speed are significantly slower. The opposite is true for light armors.

Installation

  • (Mandatory) Download and install Chocolate Poise as well as all of its requirements. Make sure you either disable or delete the ESP plugin that comes with it.
  • (Optional, but highly recommended) Download and install either Fenix Stamina Overhaul or Blade and Blunt and all of its requirements
  • (Only if you want the Armor-based stagger system) Download and install Open Animation Replacer and Keyword Item Distributor as well as all of their requirements 
  • (Mandatory) Download this mod, making sure this overwrites all of the mods above
  • (Optional, but highly recommended) HAVE FUN AND ENJOY THE MOD!

Compatibility

Tl;dr, basically anything that is compatible with the original Chocolate Poise mod will also be compatible with Chocolate Poise Plus, including things like stoppage of Staggerlock.

Any mod that interacts with the vanilla stagger system should probably be fine. If not, let me know and I can look into making a patch.

Also, I hope this goes without saying, but do NOT use Chocolate Poise and Loki's Poise at the same time. They both touch the same things and using both will have strange results in-game.

Final Notes

This is my first mod on the Nexus, so please let me know how I did. If there are any issues, especially with the animations or things just not working, please let me know so I can try to fix them. I am unfortunately very much an amateur modder, but I will try my best to help with any problems that might come up. 

Credits
  • Doodlezoid for the fantastic Chocolate Poise 
  • Ersh for OAR
  • Powerofthree for the highly versatile Keyword Item Distributor 
  • Fenix31415 for his incredible mod, Fenix Stamina Overhaul
  • Simonmagus616 and colinswrath for the incredibly polished Blade and Blunt
  • Loki, Miken1ke, and Adri for POISE and the excellent animations that come with it 
  • Akira1364, for their conversion of POISE animations to vanilla conventions
  • Special thanks to stuxjr, who very kindly allowed me to use assets from "Large Stagger Animation"
  • Kulharin for his initial balance tweaks