Regarding the Game Designers they boost the NPC health stamina magicka because they have become uncreative thats their only way to try and simulate a challenge they dont want to put any effort into the AI or combat mechanics they want to get this on the shelf ASAP for retail
Regarding Your Mod this mod looks totally cool, and has captivated my interest
but i want to bring up this one point, regarding Character versus NPC the character tends to have access to a bunch of gear, enchantments, potions and resources that the npcs do not a level 20 character might have 200 Health, but he might have all kinds of gear, and craft benefits. his real health might be 300 instead of 200. he might have armor bonuses +25 armor to each piece for crafting and more armor bonus for perks, he might wear a ring of +40% to one-handed weapons, he might wear multiple items that stack, that boost damage, health or another stat, he might have access to vampirism or werewolf or even vampire lord.
npcs tend to not have potions, extensive and well-planned out perks, enchanted gear, improved crafted gear. and they definitely lack combat awareness and strategy.
so. its my opinion that your mod looks worthwhile and is in the spirit of gameplay that i like. but i think that NPCs in general need a full point-by-point overhaul, to make them more challenging on an equal level basis.
the player can just choose to not stack up magical gear, maybe have 1 or two basic enchanted items, similar to the NPC, thats always a possibility, self-restricting. but thats not really how the gameplay happens.
However i wonder if the opposite, to give thoses bonuses to the player, would be more meaningful and interesting approach. The problem would be the offset because the player has no defined class, maybe based on the pick of health/stamina/mana.
Cuz let's be fair, the health "scaling" is a pain in the ass in skyrim, you either have too much damage reduction and it doesnt matter much or you get oneshot/two shots. ( plus the cam kill bugs ... fortunately fixable... by desactivating them). In vanilla, 10 levels to get twice the amount of health = you die in 10 seconds instead of 5 if you dont have damage reduction.
It also opens the path for more stamina instead of health so more damage for many classes. Magic never had dps problems too.
or disable the offset globally but keep the health per level.... i dunno.
Then we can easily balance the damage multiplier around it if needed.
Edit: a simple approach is to simply gives +5 extra to the selected stat choice per level. Npcs get it automatically in health, player can choose. For the offset, it can be disabled. +5 extra stamina or magicka offers more damage to the player too so it balances the "spongy" problem at higher level.
It's possible and it is quite easier. The offsets for the player are stored in NPC_ record 7 aka Prisoner. There you can see you get +50 Health, Magicka, Stamina bonus for the player. You can edit these values to change your starting attributes. There is also a game setting called fPCHealthLevelBonus. This controls the amount of additional health gained on level up by the player. By default it's set to 0. You could set it to 5 to get the same amount as NPCs get. Finally if you'd like to change the amount of bonus attributes gained per level from 10 to something else there is a tool called uncapper on nexus that can do that. Hope this helps you.
I also made a different version of this script that disables offset for generic NPCs but not unique NPCs for boss battles with Alduin etc.
very useful post, thank you again, time to mess with thoses settings! I will use this script for my next character and see if the high level balance feels better :)
But your character has a brain and NPCs don't have a brain and can't 'micromanage' or adopt smart strategies. You can't fix this big difference with xEdit script.
There are some mods that improve on AI like Wildcat or Ultimate Combat. Old school rpgs managed fine without resorting to such cheap tactics like damage sponge. Same with that stupid jedi dodge npcs do in an unmodded game.
There are game settings, game difficulty mods that fix your settings without requiring to edit every record of NPC Scrambled Bugs even expand difficulty tweaks to followers.
Edit. NPCs AI tweaks mods aren't that smart: they are algorithms. For example, a mod like this make sneaking extremely hard (RAID is a pie compared to it) and despite this I learned NPCs AI weakness from it and know always how to exploit it.
IIRC difficulty settings only pertain to how much damage the player receives. This won't remove cheat stats because they are stored in NPC_ records. Only way to get rid of them is to mass patch them out. My point is that damage sponge mechanics suck.
I like this kind of mod, I consider them a foundamental part of every playthrough. For me it is about immersion. At the highest difficulties, not only the player deals pitiful amount of damage until late game, but NPCS and creatures also do far less damage to each other. They can keep hitting each other for minutes. A Dragon Priest can even struggle killing a guard.
What I do is getting mods like this one, then mods that give weapons, spells, abilities, perks and better AI to the enemies. I also like increasing the number of the enemies.
The mod I'm using right now is NPC Stat Rescaler, I like that I can easily adjust the values as I wish and in a way that works for me. I would have liked to have more parameters to adjust though, especially more creatures.
I have the same sentiment. There are so many unimmersive thing about this game. Like distributing ebony/daedric weapons to common thugs when you level up. Like wtf? I like to mod all such stuff out. OBIS, Revenge of the Enemies, Immersive Creatures (purist mode of course) plus mod spells distributed via SPID will keep combat interresting and deadly. Funny thing about dragon priest you mentioned. It has base health of 1000 so it should not have a problem at all with a guard who has base health of 50 when you remove cheat stats.
12 comments
they boost the NPC health stamina magicka
because they have become uncreative
thats their only way to try and simulate a challenge
they dont want to put any effort into the AI or combat mechanics
they want to get this on the shelf ASAP for retail
Regarding Your Mod
this mod looks totally cool, and has captivated my interest
but i want to bring up this one point, regarding Character versus NPC
the character tends to have access to a bunch of gear, enchantments, potions and resources that the npcs do not
a level 20 character might have 200 Health, but he might have all kinds of gear, and craft benefits. his real health might be 300 instead of 200. he might have armor bonuses +25 armor to each piece for crafting and more armor bonus for perks, he might wear a ring of +40% to one-handed weapons, he might wear multiple items that stack, that boost damage, health or another stat,
he might have access to vampirism or werewolf or even vampire lord.
npcs tend to not have potions, extensive and well-planned out perks, enchanted gear, improved crafted gear.
and they definitely lack combat awareness and strategy.
so. its my opinion that your mod looks worthwhile and is in the spirit of gameplay that i like. but i think that NPCs in general need a full point-by-point overhaul, to make them more challenging on an equal level basis.
the player can just choose to not stack up magical gear, maybe have 1 or two basic enchanted items, similar to the NPC, thats always a possibility, self-restricting. but thats not really how the gameplay happens.
However i wonder if the opposite, to give thoses bonuses to the player, would be more meaningful and interesting approach. The problem would be the offset because the player has no defined class, maybe based on the pick of health/stamina/mana.
Cuz let's be fair, the health "scaling" is a pain in the ass in skyrim, you either have too much damage reduction and it doesnt matter much or you get oneshot/two shots. ( plus the cam kill bugs ... fortunately fixable... by desactivating them). In vanilla, 10 levels to get twice the amount of health = you die in 10 seconds instead of 5 if you dont have damage reduction.
It also opens the path for more stamina instead of health so more damage for many classes. Magic never had dps problems too.
or disable the offset globally but keep the health per level.... i dunno.
Then we can easily balance the damage multiplier around it if needed.
Edit: a simple approach is to simply gives +5 extra to the selected stat choice per level. Npcs get it automatically in health, player can choose. For the offset, it can be disabled. +5 extra stamina or magicka offers more damage to the player too so it balances the "spongy" problem at higher level.
I also made a different version of this script that disables offset for generic NPCs but not unique NPCs for boss battles with Alduin etc.
Scrambled Bugs even expand difficulty tweaks to followers.
Edit.
NPCs AI tweaks mods aren't that smart: they are algorithms.
For example, a mod like this make sneaking extremely hard (RAID is a pie compared to it) and despite this I learned NPCs AI weakness from it and know always how to exploit it.
Here is the list of Skyrim's difficulty settings.
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty?mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop#Skyrim
What I do is getting mods like this one, then mods that give weapons, spells, abilities, perks and better AI to the enemies. I also like increasing the number of the enemies.
The mod I'm using right now is NPC Stat Rescaler, I like that I can easily adjust the values as I wish and in a way that works for me. I would have liked to have more parameters to adjust though, especially more creatures.