This mod is a complete rebalance (and in some cases, a rebuild) of the spells in Arcane Accessories to bring them in line with the rest of magic in Skyrim. It's no secret that the AA Creation is both inventive and overpowered beyond comprehension, especially with regards to the Elemental spell line. This mod attempts to maintain the fun and interesting aspects of these spells without letting them invalidate other spell options.
There are two versions of this mod:
- The Rebalance Patchbalances the spells around vanilla magic and perks in order to ensure maximum compatibility with other spell packs and perk mods
- The Adamant Patchbalances around Adamant/Mysticism and the rest of SimonMagus' overhauls.
Spell List (Rebalance Patch): Spoiler: Show - Choking Grasp - Absorbs 8 points of Health per second from a target within Touch range. Apprentice Destruction. - Elemental Flare - Deals 8 points of fire damage. 50% chance of additional 8 points of frost and/or shock. Apprentice Destruction. - Fenrik's Welcome - Invisibility and Open Expert Lock for 5 seconds. Expert Illusion. - Unbounded Flames - Stream of fireballs dealing 20 fire damage to enemies in 6ft. Spawns a fire hazard dealing 20 damage per second. Master Destruction. Spoiler: Show - Elemental Flare - Deals 8 points of fire damage. 50% chance of additional 8 points of frost and/or shock. Apprentice Destruction. - Fenrik's Welcome - Invisibility, Muffle, and Open Expert Lock for 5 seconds. Expert Illusion. - Unbounded Flames - Stream of fireballs dealing 20 fire damage to enemies in 6ft. Spawns a fire hazard dealing 20 damage per second. Master Destruction.
- Strangulation - Absorbs 16 points of Health per second from target within Touch range. Adept Destruction.
- Hangman's Noose - Absorbs 26 points of Health per second from a target within Touch range. Expert Destruction.
- Touch of Death - Absorbs 40 points of Health per second from a target within Touch range. Master Destruction.
- Elemental Bolt - Deals 12 points of fire damage. 50% chance of additional 12 points of frost and/or shock in a 15ft radius. Adept Destruction.
- Elemental Blast - Deals 16 points of fire damage. 50% chance of additional 16 points of frost and/or shock. Expert Destruction.
- Elemental Burst - Deals 20 points of fire damage. 50% chance of additional 20 points of frost and/or shock in a 20ft radius. Master Destruction.
- Mara's Wrath - 8 damage per second to foes in melee range for 30 seconds. Turns undead up to level 16 for 30 seconds. Expert Destruction.
- Orum's Aquatic Escape - Invisibility, Water Breathing, and Night Eye for 15 seconds. Expert Illusion.
- Pride of Hirstaang - Summon bear, resist frost, and 50% health regen for 60 seconds. Expert Conjuration.
- Paralysis Rune - Cast on a nearby surface, it explodes when enemies are nearby, immobilizing them for 8 seconds. Master Alteration.
- Unbounded Freezing - 40 frost damage to health and stamina to targets in melee range. Freezes targets if you have the Deep Freeze Perk. Master Destruction.
- Unbounded Storms - 20 shock damage to health and magicka to targets in melee range. Random bolts deal an extra 40 damage over a large area. Master Destruction.
Spell List (Adamant Patch):
- Elemental Bolt - Deals 12 points of fire damage. 50% chance of additional 12 points of frost and/or shock in a 15ft radius. Adept Destruction.
- Elemental Blast - Deals 16 points of fire damage. 50% chance of additional 16 points of frost and/or shock. Expert Destruction.
- Elemental Burst - Deals 20 points of fire damage. 50% chance of additional 20 points of frost and/or shock in a 20ft radius. Master Destruction.
- Mara's Wrath - 8 damage per second to foes in melee range for 30 seconds. Turns undead up to level 16 for 30 seconds. Expert Destruction.
- Orum's Aquatic Escape - Invisibility, Muffle, Water Breathing, and Night Eye for 15 seconds. Expert Illusion.
- Pride of Hirstaang - Summon Bear, Resist Frost 50%, and Restore 3 Health per second for 60 seconds. Expert Conjuration.
- Unbounded Freezing - 40 frost damage to health and stamina to targets in melee range. Greatly slows targets for 15 seconds. Master Destruction.
- Unbounded Storms - 20 shock damage to health and magicka to targets in melee range. Random bolts deal an extra 20 damage to enemies in a large area. Master Destruction.
Spell Change Details:
Spoiler:
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All fixes included in the Unofficial Arcane Accessories Patch from UCCCP have been forwarded, you do not need to use the patch with this mod.
In general, the multi-school spells (Mara's, Fenrick's, Orum's, and Hirstaang) have an adjusted magicka cost equal to the sum total of their
vanilla/Mysticism equivalents.Any unique visuals or (intentional) mechanics have been preserved to maintain their identity. Ranks, mangitudes, durations, etc. have all been rebalanced around vanilla/Mysticism spells as well.
The Elemental spells have been distributed to appropriate vendor lists and will appear as normal with other Destruction spells. Multi-school spells like Fenrik's Welcome or Mara's Wrath can all be found in the Ancient Tome Chest in Hob's Fall Cave as normal.
The Absorb Health spells, such as Choking Grasp, have been reworked into Concentration Touch spells using the original blue visuals. This is meant to emulate their behavior in Oblivion more closely and eliminate some of the weird behavior the visual effects had when used with a Fire and Forget spell.
In the Adamant Patch, these spells are disabled since Mysticism already has a full set of Absorb Attribute spells.
AA's Paralysis Rune has been eliminated in the Adamant Patch, as Mysticism already has its own version.
Mara's Wrath now actually turns undead of the level shown, and scales correctly with both Destruction fire perks and most any perk that would affect Turn Undead spells.Its base magnitude and magicka cost have been recalculated based on the basic Fire Cloak and Turn Undead spells. It is still an Expert Destruction spell.
- The displayed damage still sometimes doesn't reflect every perk affecting it, but that's a vanilla cloak issue as well.
Pride of Hirstaang's summoned bear now has the same stats as Mysticism's Spectral Bear, but it does not have the Familiar FX shader (just like the old Summon Bear from Morrowind and Oblivion).
In the Adamant Patch, the Health Regeneration % effect has been replaced with Mysticism's Restore Health over time effect. At 600 Health, 3 Health per second is the base regen rate in combat in Blade and Blunt and it's only an Adept spell in Mysticism.
Unbounded Flames is now a Master Destruction spell (it was originally locked behind the Destruciton ritual quest, but was only Expert rank). It now deals 20 fire damage per second with the projectile and 40 from the hazard (was 8 and 20).
It also now benefits from all Adamant fire Destruction perks as well as Dual Casting.
Unbounded Freezing is now a Master Destruction spell. It still deals 50 damage per second, but the cloak radius has been reduced. It benefits from all Frost perks. The vanilla paralysis effecthas been replaced with a stronger Slow effect that persists for 15 seconds, like the Freeze spell from Dragonborn. The original paralysis effect invalidated the Deep Freeze perk and was a nightmare to try to truly balance.
Unbounded Storms was already a Master Destruction spell. It now deals 20 damage per second with both the cloak and 20 with the storm bolts (was 40 and 30), and the cloak radius has been reduced. Magicka cost has been recalculated based on the damage potential. The cloak
(and the lightning bolts)benefits from all Shock perks. For maximum effectiveness, stand near your target so they take damage from both sources.
Elemental Spells:
The Elemental spells have been reworked to more closely match the original Oblivion spells. Rather than dealing a buggy mix of Magic and Shock damage as in the original Creation, they now deal Chaos damage like the Arm of the Sun from The Arms of Chaos Creation. Each spell deals a base amount of Fire damage, with a 50% chance each of also dealing Frost and Shock damage. They will benefit from all Augmented perks in vanilla or Adamant, but will not benefit from elemental capstone perks like Intense Flames or Deep Freeze. Because of this, these spells start out with high costs and very low magnitudes, but scale exponentially with investment in each element and eventually deal more damage than any single-element spells at the cost of unpredictability!
Elemental Perk Details:
Spoiler:
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In the Rebalance Patch, Elemental spells will benefit from Augmented Flames, Frost, and Shock. But will not benefit from Intense Flames, Deep Freeze, or Disintegrate.
In the Adamant Patch, Elemental spells will benefit fromall three Augmented perks, as well as Firebrand, North Wind, and Unstable Current. But they do not proc Combustion, Permafrost, Static Field, Wildfire, Deep Freeze, or Power Surge.
Dual-School Robes:
Dual-school robes have been reworked per the college robes from Thaumaturgy enchanting overhaul. They provide 25% cost reduction to spells of the chosen school and rank, as well as Fortify Magicka Regen, but impose a 15% cost increase to spells of any other school.For example, the Adept Robes of Destruction & Alteration reduce the cost of Adept, Apprentice, and Novice Destruction & Alteration spells by 25%, but increase the cost of all Conjuration, Illusion, and Restoration spells by 15%. In addition to 25% Fortify Magicka Regen.
This is intended to reward specializing in a particular playstyle without making the dual-school robes objectively better than any other. - i.e. Destruction & Alteration mages armoring up and combining debuffs and damage spells; Conjuration & Illusion mages using summons and enchanted foes to do all their fighting for them, or using Illusory stealth with Bound weapons for a nightblade playstyle.
A set of unenchanted robes for both colors can be found in the Ancient Tome Chest in Hob's Fall Cave.
Compatibility:
Changes should be compatible with both Special Edition and the Anniversary Edition, so long as you have the latest updates to Arcane Accessories.
It should be mostlycompatible with perk and spell overhauls like Ordinator, but I can't guarantee every modded perk will work with every spell.
The Adamant Patch is obviously only intended to be used with Adamant, and will be perfectly compatible with the whole Simonrim Experience.
Not compatible with Unofficial Creation Club Updates or any other mod that rebalances Arcane Accessories.
Known Bugs:
- Mara's Wrath's spell effect description is a bit weird. The values are right against foes, but the magnitudes in the spell selection menu and the active effects window don't always match. This happens with vanilla Flame Cloak too.
- Apparently the LOS detection on Unbounded Storms can be fickle. I'm not sure what the root cause is yet, but I didn't change the spell's mechanics so I don't think this mod is the cause of it.
- The Lightning Bolts fired from the Unbounded Storms spell in the Adamant version have been made to detect and scale withtheplayer'sperks, but will not respond to NPC perks. If you are using a mod that distributes this spell to NPCs somehow, make an exception for Unbounded Storms or just be aware NPC casters might benefit from Power Surge.
- Elemental Blast no longer one-shots dragons for 5 magicka. This isn't a bug, but I expect someone to complain about it. Now it should take at leasttwo shots to kill a dragon with max perks.
Credits:
SimonMagus for making Adamant and Mysticism, from which I copied a lot of tricks to rebuild these spells.
Bethesda Game Studios for doing their best
