[b]Discription[/b]
Utilizing magic as an archer or two-handed warrior can be a bit jarring in the world of Skyrim. It involves lots of retreating into the menu system to switch out weapons and spells. This off putting aspect of what I believe should be a viable play style led me to create this mod here. Spells as Incantations adds lesser power variants of most non-concentration spells that can be learned via spell tome. These lesser powers cost magicka, are effected by relevant perks, and provide experience when effectively used. My hope is that this will allow players to explore more styles of play from spell swords and arcane archers to powerful wizards who can cast three spells simultaneously.
[b]Spells added
[/b]Most vanilla spells that are not concentration spells and can be learned via spell tome are obtainable as incantations. (With the exception of Bound Weapons and Spectral Arrow)
You can see a complete list of the spells added by typing "help incantation" in the console while in-game. The spells and their IDs should be the first thing you see.
Note: There are a few spells you will see here that are only acquirable via the console due to them not being learned by spell tome (Summon Arvak) or not being normally obtainable in the game (Spectral Arrow.)
[b]Distribution
[/b]The incantations can be learned from reading incantation spell tomes, but these tomes cannot be obtained in the typical manner; they are not included in any leveled lists. You make these unique tomes yourself. The Hall of the Elements, located within the College of Winterhold, now has five special stone tablets that each contain ancient knowledge of the practice of incantation for one of the five major schools of magic. If you bring an eligible vanilla spell tome to the appropriate tablet, you can use the ancient knowledge to edit this tome such that it can teach you an incantation.
ex: activating the destruction tablet will prompt a menu listing several destruction spells. If you have a fireball spell tome and select the fireball spell, the destruction tablet will yield the fireball incantation spell tome.
Note: The original spell tome is lost in this process. This makes it doubly expensive if you were to, say, buy two of each master spell so you could cast them regularly as well as by incantation. Also, some spell tomes are unique, ex: Flaming Familiar and Conjure Mistman. This means there are a handful of spells that can only be learned as regular spells OR as incantations. Not both. That is, unless you use console commands.
(I thought this was an interesting method of distributing these new spells. Feel free to let me know how you think this method could be refined or to suggest another method. I am not opposed to using the regular leveled list method of distribution, but would like to do so via script and am not yet comfortable navigating the master spell ritual quest requirement. Also, again, I thought this tablet method was interesting.)
[b]How it works (for those of you who want to know)
[/b]The majority of the spells I added do not actually do much of anything at all. They are simply linked to a dummy magic effect that is attached to a script that triggers the player to cast the appropriate spell. That's how I got these lesser powers to grant experience. The rune spells and summon spells don't work as well with this method, so those spells have real magic effects but are attached to scripts that grant experience upon successful casting (in combat condition for summons and upon detonation for runes.) All of these scripts are suuuuper short, so they are unlikely to cause any performance issues.
There is a lesser power cooldown of 3 seconds built into the game. In the Creation Kit, I changed this to 0.5 seconds to let players cast much faster. If you want to mess around with this value, load up the kit and find the "Gameplay" tab. Select "Settings" and search for "fMagicLesserPowerCooldownTImer". Change this to whatever you want. Again, vanilla is 3 seconds.
The stones are attached to looping menu scripts that check to see if the player has a specific tome in their inventory, removes said tome, and provides the incantation tome. These scripts are only triggered upon activation, so, again, they shouldn't effect your performance.
(The source files for all the scripts I used are included; feel free to scrutinize them and let me know if you have any ideas for higher efficiency or greater functionality.)
[b]Limitations
[/b]-Magicka cost: The base cost of each added spell is the same as its vanilla counterpart and is affected by the appropriate perk, but the comparison isn't perfect. Vanilla spell cost scales with their respective school skill level as well. Once, you are level 100 in a school, spells from that school should cost around 60% of what they would cost at level 0. The spells I added are lesser powers and don't scale in this manner. It's tolerable. Maybe even good for balance, since these lesser powers will end up costing more than their analogous vanilla spells. I can probably emulate the proper scaling via script, but I'm afraid to increase the length of a script that could be fired so frequently.
-Bound Weapons: Testing these had some weird effects. The weapons wouldn't dispel when sheathed and effects could somehow stack on top of each other. Oh, and the weapons were often invisible.....among other weird things. I may work on getting those spells working, but they honestly don't seem to be super critical to me for the style of play this mod is going for anyway.
-Organization: All of the spells I added are lesser powers. Therefore, they can be found and equipped under the lesser powers tab in the magic menu instead of in their respective schools. This obviously isn't ideal, but I'm not sure how to fix that. The lesser powers tab can get quite cluttered if you learn lots of these incantations. I'm looking into making an "unlearn lesser power" spell to deal with this, but I'm not sure how to do it yet. For now, you'll have to use the player.removespell command to get rid of unwanted lesser powers.
-Balance: This is subjective, but you may find the instant casting and 0.5 second cooldown a bit too overpowered. If people feel like they can spam the spells too much, I may increase the cooldown. I'll see what people say before making that decision, and you can make the adjustment yourself in the meantime. Instructions on how are in the "[b]How it works" [/b]section above.
[b]Bugs
[/b]Everything seems to work fine, but I am sure you will tell me if this is not the case :)
[b]Installation
[/b]Same as most mods, it's best if you install with a mod manager. If you want to manually install this mod, extract the contents of the folder, put the .esm file in the Skyrim/Data folder and the scripts in the Skyrim/Data/scripts folder.
[b]Compatibility
[/b]-This mod references vanilla spells. If a mod changes those vanilla spells, this mod will not behave normally, with spells either failing or having unintended effects.
-This mod does make some changes to the Hall of the Elements in the College of Winterhold through the placement of the five tablets. I tried to put them in unobtrusive spots, but other mods that make changes to the Hall of the Elements (ex: Immersive College of Winterhold) could conflict with this mod.
-Other spell mods will work fine with this mod, but there will not be incantation versions of mod-added spells. I would need to make patches for that. May look into that if the demand is there.
Utilizing magic as an archer or two-handed warrior can be a bit jarring in the world of Skyrim. It involves lots of retreating into the menu system to switch out weapons and spells. This off putting aspect of what I believe should be a viable play style led me to create this mod here. Spells as Incantations adds lesser power variants of most non-concentration spells that can be learned via spell tome. These lesser powers cost magicka, are effected by relevant perks, and provide experience when effectively used. My hope is that this will allow players to explore more styles of play from spell swords and arcane archers to powerful wizards who can cast three spells simultaneously.
[b]Spells added
[/b]Most vanilla spells that are not concentration spells and can be learned via spell tome are obtainable as incantations. (With the exception of Bound Weapons and Spectral Arrow)
You can see a complete list of the spells added by typing "help incantation" in the console while in-game. The spells and their IDs should be the first thing you see.
Note: There are a few spells you will see here that are only acquirable via the console due to them not being learned by spell tome (Summon Arvak) or not being normally obtainable in the game (Spectral Arrow.)
[b]Distribution
[/b]The incantations can be learned from reading incantation spell tomes, but these tomes cannot be obtained in the typical manner; they are not included in any leveled lists. You make these unique tomes yourself. The Hall of the Elements, located within the College of Winterhold, now has five special stone tablets that each contain ancient knowledge of the practice of incantation for one of the five major schools of magic. If you bring an eligible vanilla spell tome to the appropriate tablet, you can use the ancient knowledge to edit this tome such that it can teach you an incantation.
ex: activating the destruction tablet will prompt a menu listing several destruction spells. If you have a fireball spell tome and select the fireball spell, the destruction tablet will yield the fireball incantation spell tome.
Note: The original spell tome is lost in this process. This makes it doubly expensive if you were to, say, buy two of each master spell so you could cast them regularly as well as by incantation. Also, some spell tomes are unique, ex: Flaming Familiar and Conjure Mistman. This means there are a handful of spells that can only be learned as regular spells OR as incantations. Not both. That is, unless you use console commands.
(I thought this was an interesting method of distributing these new spells. Feel free to let me know how you think this method could be refined or to suggest another method. I am not opposed to using the regular leveled list method of distribution, but would like to do so via script and am not yet comfortable navigating the master spell ritual quest requirement. Also, again, I thought this tablet method was interesting.)
[b]How it works (for those of you who want to know)
[/b]The majority of the spells I added do not actually do much of anything at all. They are simply linked to a dummy magic effect that is attached to a script that triggers the player to cast the appropriate spell. That's how I got these lesser powers to grant experience. The rune spells and summon spells don't work as well with this method, so those spells have real magic effects but are attached to scripts that grant experience upon successful casting (in combat condition for summons and upon detonation for runes.) All of these scripts are suuuuper short, so they are unlikely to cause any performance issues.
There is a lesser power cooldown of 3 seconds built into the game. In the Creation Kit, I changed this to 0.5 seconds to let players cast much faster. If you want to mess around with this value, load up the kit and find the "Gameplay" tab. Select "Settings" and search for "fMagicLesserPowerCooldownTImer". Change this to whatever you want. Again, vanilla is 3 seconds.
The stones are attached to looping menu scripts that check to see if the player has a specific tome in their inventory, removes said tome, and provides the incantation tome. These scripts are only triggered upon activation, so, again, they shouldn't effect your performance.
(The source files for all the scripts I used are included; feel free to scrutinize them and let me know if you have any ideas for higher efficiency or greater functionality.)
[b]Limitations
[/b]-Magicka cost: The base cost of each added spell is the same as its vanilla counterpart and is affected by the appropriate perk, but the comparison isn't perfect. Vanilla spell cost scales with their respective school skill level as well. Once, you are level 100 in a school, spells from that school should cost around 60% of what they would cost at level 0. The spells I added are lesser powers and don't scale in this manner. It's tolerable. Maybe even good for balance, since these lesser powers will end up costing more than their analogous vanilla spells. I can probably emulate the proper scaling via script, but I'm afraid to increase the length of a script that could be fired so frequently.
-Bound Weapons: Testing these had some weird effects. The weapons wouldn't dispel when sheathed and effects could somehow stack on top of each other. Oh, and the weapons were often invisible.....among other weird things. I may work on getting those spells working, but they honestly don't seem to be super critical to me for the style of play this mod is going for anyway.
-Organization: All of the spells I added are lesser powers. Therefore, they can be found and equipped under the lesser powers tab in the magic menu instead of in their respective schools. This obviously isn't ideal, but I'm not sure how to fix that. The lesser powers tab can get quite cluttered if you learn lots of these incantations. I'm looking into making an "unlearn lesser power" spell to deal with this, but I'm not sure how to do it yet. For now, you'll have to use the player.removespell command to get rid of unwanted lesser powers.
-Balance: This is subjective, but you may find the instant casting and 0.5 second cooldown a bit too overpowered. If people feel like they can spam the spells too much, I may increase the cooldown. I'll see what people say before making that decision, and you can make the adjustment yourself in the meantime. Instructions on how are in the "[b]How it works" [/b]section above.
[b]Bugs
[/b]Everything seems to work fine, but I am sure you will tell me if this is not the case :)
[b]Installation
[/b]Same as most mods, it's best if you install with a mod manager. If you want to manually install this mod, extract the contents of the folder, put the .esm file in the Skyrim/Data folder and the scripts in the Skyrim/Data/scripts folder.
[b]Compatibility
[/b]-This mod references vanilla spells. If a mod changes those vanilla spells, this mod will not behave normally, with spells either failing or having unintended effects.
-This mod does make some changes to the Hall of the Elements in the College of Winterhold through the placement of the five tablets. I tried to put them in unobtrusive spots, but other mods that make changes to the Hall of the Elements (ex: Immersive College of Winterhold) could conflict with this mod.
-Other spell mods will work fine with this mod, but there will not be incantation versions of mod-added spells. I would need to make patches for that. May look into that if the demand is there.