Physical Damage and Armor factor

[Corsayr]

The back story...

 

So for a while now I have been using a mod called Armor Rating Redux (Nexus Mod: 78419) 

 

and what it does is allow several different mathematical computations for calculating damage mitigation based on armor factor. 

 

I use this because I wanted a steeper armor protective curve, I wanted mitigation to ramp up and cap out much much faster. The purpose was to make it so that wearing even a little armor added up to a lot of protection so I could set the damage levels very high. Thus creating an environment where while fully armored my character would be quite formidable, but without armor very squishy.

 

Then allow equipment degradation mods to slowly destroy my protection creating a need for a more conservative gameplay style. 

 

 

The problem...

 

It doesn't seem to be working. ? 

 

Even with armor and what should be a 90% mitigation of physical damage, I am getting 1 and 2 shot all the time in full armor unless I turn down the vanilla difficulty level at which time I am relatively durable with or without armor.

 

The Question...

 

So what I am wondering, is there something to damage mitigation I am not fully understanding in Skyrim? Do mobs not correctly use the armor factor mitigation in their damage calculations? Is the mod I am using not really doing what I think it is doing? 

 

How can I achieve my goal of Reasonable if not formidable protection while armored, but grave danger while not armored? 

 

As always your thoughts on this matter are greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your attention to this.   

[karlpaws]

Mobs do use it, but looking at the mod page linked I didn't see if it changes the max armor cap or not.  I would suspect not since the 667 number is referenced a lot.

 

Vanilla Skyrim had a damage mitigation cap (though I think they called it something else) where you could only reduce/remove ~ 85% of damage. There is a similar magic resist cap but by layering resist and absorb effects you could become magic immune.  Other mods can add resists that do actually cap out at 100% resist making you truly fire or poison immune and certain perks (like Deft Armor in Light armor) give you a chance to avoid all damage. This can be edited to be 100% if you wanted that.

 

in SkyTweak, there are a couple ways you can change how armor (link direct to image) works.  I think if you change the base and armor scaling values higher, and the maximum armor resist all the way up, you could get to where you want. The more and better armor you wear, the more protection you'll get but lose it and you get vulnerable fast... though with high damage values you'll probably get one shot in fur or clothing.

 

You do have sliders in SkyTweak for how much damage you do and take per difficulty level, so you could set the Novice level to 0.1 % probably and be invincible no matter what, with an easy slider move, just in case you needed to test something or deal with an impossible situation.

[Gameplayer]

Skytweak has a setting that adjusts the damage multiplier over levels as well....

 

Yes Skyrim has a natural damage increase over levels....So if your using mods that change the level cap of enemies well they actually can do more damage to you.  Something like another 20% on top of whatever the difficulty setting is for damage outputs.  This depends on the level of the enemy, not yours....So there will be enemies that wont get a bonus but if the enemy is level 20 well they are very likely going to get a 20% bonus....If your much higher in level and facing high level enemies it could be even higher.

 

I would suggest using Skytweak as it gives you a lot of control over the various variables in the game that effect gameplay mechanics in action.