Illusion and Mysticism Spells

The Scope of Illusion Spells

The primary motivation for creating these spells is to enable the player to rely primarily on Illusion magic. That does not involve nuking everything between Solitude and Riften with a meteor shower, instantly killing an enemy that is asleep, or auto-casting fire frost and lightning whenever an enemy approaches.

The school of Illusion has historically (TES) not been used to inflict physical, poison or magic damage to other creatures. That is the domain of destruction magic and alchemy. I find it unfortunate that some other mods include damage-spells under the school of Illusion. I think they draw inspiration from other games where distinctions between different schools of magic is hardly a topic at all.

On the other hand, Mysticism does provide health and stamina absorption spells, but I'm not sure as to whether I wish to implement them. I have worked around the fact that Mysticism has been cut from TES: V by adding a requirement to certain spells that the caster must be trained in one or several additional schools before the spell will have any effect. This includes teleportation and luminosity spells (alteration), absorption spells (restoration) and reflection spells (destruction). Additionally all spells listed as Mysticism spells require the Mirror perk.

You are encouraged to check out the UESP lore page on Illusion. That page serves as general guidelines on what these spells should do. Here is a quick summary:

Illusion spells can change a target's visibility, produce or remove light, produce or remove noise, charm a creature, induce hatred in it or calm it down, enhance or remove a creature's courage, prevent a creature from seeing or moving, or allow the target to see even in total darkness.

Illusion Spells

All spells should be available for purchase with vendors that sell Illusion spells and at locations in the game where Illusions spells occur via leveled lists (loot chests and so on). You will notice that all entries state LL under Availability. That means what I just said. I the future, I may decide to distribute some of the spells in the world manually, but given the frailty of this approach, it's probably going to be released as an "optional file".

Remarks

[1]: The caster of any sanctuary spell is subject to contacting a "greivous wound disease" that will stop health regeneration until healed at an alter or with a cure disease potion. Chance to get a bleeding wound increases with number of hits taken.

The damage reduction points (15-75, 35-155, etc) are calculated at random, i.e. not depending on the game difficulty or any other factors.

[2]: Original muffle spell (0x43323) is untouched, use it if you think it's any good.

Mysticism Spells

Remarks

[1]: If a target is affected by Absorb Speed, re-casting it will result in a "Actor resisted spell" notification and no effects will be applied. Casting the spell on several targets will slow them all, and affect only one speed bonus for all targets. If the spell exhibits different behaviour then it is a bug.

[2]: If you use Recall to alleviate the tediousness of some fetch quests, the outcome may not always be optimal because some quests pose objectives that require activation of specific doors before the quest advances to the next objective or stage (e.g The Way of the Voice). I have no intention of working around this issue.

[3]: Casting Mirror the first time (after installing an additional spell plugin or DLC) will produce a message box. It should not appear again once the process of sorting supported spells is completed. With Skyrim alone (188 single-projectile spells), the initialization takes about 15 secondson my computer. If enough people complain about this, I might make the init-routine run when the mod is installed instead of when the spell is used.

The Perk Tree

Some changes were necessary to the Illusion tree, because:

• it was entirely ineffective against some enemies
• difficult to level naturally (without grinding or exploiting some mechanism)
• melee combat and destruction are far more powerful

The last point is not entirely true at early levels, but I think it's a valid claim for levels above 20.

It became increasingly annoying after several play-throughs that Illusion could not be used effectively to deal with all enemies. That holds for any definition of effective which involves fun and not just watching NPCs hack at each other. Destruction, bows, hammers, etc. became much more powerful (much sooner) in dealing with enemies. Effectively rendering Illusion spells pointless and boring at best. By the time I could unlock Quiet Casting or Master Mind, other skills were so dominant, that even spending those perk points was more of a role-playing decision than a practical advantage.

The approach to the solution is simple;

• make Illusion even more powerful early
• introduce tools that remain effective and fun beyond level 50
• deal with Dwemer machines

Dragons remain a problem for an Illusionst. I think that is fair because they have been around for some time and are difficult to trick. Although I do think it should be possible to pacify them after gaining some recognition as their peer or when you master more shouts than they do.

Details about perks

Format
NN Perk name [old name] {KK}
   granted bonus \n, ...

Perks in italic are unchangnd beyond lowering minimum level to unlock them.

Perks
00 Charisma (Novice Illusion, second rank) {floor(Speechcraft/10)} * ! 0.19
     speechcraft level increases spell magnitude. 

20 Illusion Dual Casting
     None of the spells in I&M use the default magnitude calculation mechanisms
     because they are scripted. Some of them provide a flat x2 boost to maximum
     magnitude, others make effects longer.  

20 Animage {8,8}

25 Hypnotic Gaze {8,8}
     pandemonium (sound) works on undead (draugr)
     raises magnitude for command humanoid (vampires, elves, men, khajiit)
     raises magnitude for command creature (falmer, draugr)

30 Artificial Intelligence {8} * !0.19
     raises magnitude for spells against machines
     improves or unlocks effects against machines (dwemer automatons)
     sanctuary reduces more damage and has a higher percentage to block
     blind works (misses a single of a few hits)
     pandemonium (sound) works - becomes disoriented
     Chameleon works better (~ 17%)

45 Quiet Casting
35 Aspect of Terror {10}
35 Kindred Mage {10,10}

45 Mirror (Mysticism)
     Unlock absorption, reflection and supernatural spells

65 Rage {6,12}
     raises magnitude for all command spells against all enemies ! 0.19

70 Master of the Mind

Implementation Progress

A spell is considered...

...flawless when it satisfies all criteria of earlier 
	completion levels, has reasonable game balance and can be used by NPCs.

...to be not thoroughly tested:
	- may work on creatures that it's not meant for
	- can produce weird side effects
	- can simply not work in some cases
	- but it should not cause game crashes or lockups at this stage.

...to be working well when:
	- it work in a predictable manner on the intended* creatures or NPCs
	- perk effects work as documented

...completed when:
	- dual casting works as documented
	- target negative magick resistance works as documented

Completion levels
	0 - not started
	1 - not thoroughly tested
	2 - works well
	3 - completed
	4 - flawless
	. - minor problems
	, - questionable game balance

* more or less what I decide, within the lines of traditional TES

List of all spells and their status

Minor Problems

Light spells: Balefire will sometimes leave behind the light object. This happens when cast on an actor and can be cleared up by re-casting the spell on an actor.

Chameleon: Changes game settings in a way that is not persistent across saves. That is, if you save and quit, values will be reset to vanilla levels (or default levels of a mod that changes them). The affected game settings are given below, read the comments in tox_iam_chameleon_QuestScript.psc for more info.

    fDetectionSneakLightMod
    fSneakDistanceAttenuationExponent
    fSneakLightExteriorMult
    fSneakLightMult

Mods that change these game settings are supported with the global _tox_chameleon_reset:

1. Wait for chameleon spell to wear off, if cast
2. Next, set <the global> to 1 and save
3. Finally, install the new sneak or stealth mod and load

- - -
Next there is the minor issue of light and shadows showing through the PCs hands in 1 st person, I don't really mind that.

Charm: The effects are ubiquitous; everyone gives better prices after casting this spell on anyone.

Reflect: There is seemingly no way to intercept an incoming spell. As such spells cannot really be reflected, only detected on impact and cast back. Nevertheless, in essence, I think the effect comes close enough to the original. A more serious issue is that papyrus gets overwhelmed and dumps the stack when there are many incoming spells. In practice this means that some spells will not be cast back when they should be. This happens when fighting groups of 5-7 or more mages.

Mark: The marker may remain once for every room where the spell is used.

Frequently asked (or anticipated) questions

Q. Why do I hear a cat meowing when casting a mirror pell?
A. The first time it is cast, some conditions are checked to make sure that it can function properly. 

Q. Why do I hear a cat meowing when casting a command (Subjugate, Possess) spell?
A. This happens when the script detects an error that I have failed to safeguard against. 
   Certain steps will be taken to try and recover from the error. If the cat complains 
   more than once in a row, the only way to fix the problem is to restart the command quest;
	   stopquest _iam_command
	   startquest _iam_command

Q. Some spell was resisted or my skills were too low, why did I still gain XP?
A. The spell was cast successfully as far as the game is concerned. 

Q. Why do I see a big ugly box when casting Mark?
A. It's the monolith and it is full of stars. It may be rather crude, but I quite like it.

Q. Why do the spells cost so much magicka?
A. They are intended for (in descending order) mages, wizards, mystics, 
     night-blades, agents, sorcerers, witch hunters, pilgrims, healers, priests,
     spell-swords, rogues, bards and knights. Ever wonder who would need Banded 
     Armor of Major Illusion and why? Well, now you know.

Q. How do I "Study Mysticism"?
A. Check out the Illusion perk tree. It has a new perk that can be unlocked when Illusion reaches level 45. 

Q. How do I use the console?
A. google: UESP skyrim console

Q. Why do you find in necessary to flood my Papyrus log with garbage?
A. I don't. Use the console and set _iam_debug_util to 0 ()

Spell Ideas

• taunt (force spell casters and archers to charge)
• Shadow Weave
  • Chameleon 20 pts for 10 s on Self
  • Sanctuary 20 pts for 10 s on Self

TODO

Subjugate and command
- should not work on ghosts (Rannveigs Fast)
- should not work on Ice Wraiths (?)
- should not work on Spectral Draugr in Labyrinthian
- make notification icon/effect appear once for every subject
- remove notification effect on death
- summoned atronachs will attack the illusionist when the conjurer is commanded (actually that makes sense...)
- commanded actors should attack whatever a (quest) follower is in combat with 
- subjugate and command should persist across _all_ cell boundries (worldspace?)
  perhaps this can be detected OnCellLoad()
- make servants better at keeping up (maybe like convenient horses)
- follow package makes largest creatures push the caster (e.g. chaurus)
- keep time since possessed. if repossessed when duration is less than 80%, increment immunity counter
  if immunity counter greater than two, make objectref immune to command for one minute  
- (around sarthaal) pit wolf and imperial soldiers retaliate when their team mates are attacked (not really a prob.)

Other

- chameleon, make a better shader (spider-texture is almost invisible in the sun, setAlpha flickering)
- sanctuary, make a better shader
- divine intervention, move follower(s).

- third vision, initial state variable is not set correctly, causing first toggle to re-apply instead of disabling
- sixth vision ii-iv, alter the ismod to be unique in several parameters, not just duration
- charm, what's a milk drinker like you doing out here?
- charm, mastermind

Done
=== 0.19 ===
+ (command) add a dummy effect to caster that times the spell
+ (command) do a notification with a dot 5 sec before a spell expires of play a sound or maybe an ismod
+ (command) swap costs of level II spells [had wrong casting perk]
+ (command) tone down the sfx (on-hit)
+ (silence) add level cap (or improve the AI. force them to use staffs, in particular)
+ (sanctuary) better feedback when sanctuary blocks a hit (distinct sound is played)

Magick effects from Oblivion and Morrowind

Some of the magic effects I have missed are listed below. The descriptions are based on the UESP wiki, with minor changes where needed. I put together this list mainly for my own sake while deciding which spells to include. Use it for reference or not at all. The list of Morrowind character attributes is relevant to the various absorbption spells.

UESP Links

Morrowind:Mysticism
Morrowind:Mysticism_Spells
Morrowind:Illusion
Morrowind:Illusion_Spells
Oblivion:Mysticism
Oblivion:Illusion
Oblivion:Spells#Illusion
Oblivion:Spells#Mysticism
Oblivion:List_of_Spells_by_Effect

Oblivion, Illusion