Looking into interest in a Class Chooser Mod for Skyrim

[ElsissSurana]

Hello guys, I hope you are all doing well.  
I'm posting this to get a feel for how much desire there is in the community for a mod that would attempt to restore the class system from earlier Elder Scrolls games.  
Currently the mod is in a playable state, with all the classes implemented, but before I started posting it I thought I would get more opinions on it.  What follows in the rough draft of the mod description that I have been working on for the Nexus site.

 

Brief Overview:
This mod is designed to restore the class system of the earlier Elder Scrolls games.  By restricting the skill trees that the player can put points into, the mods aims to encourage new play styles and character builds.  Each class is provided six skill trees that they are proficient in and thus can allot skill points to.  Of these six skills, at least one is an offensive skill and one is an armor skill.  This allows each class to remain a viable option for play even at legendary difficulty.  This mod has been balanced for, and thus play tested at, legendary difficulty.

 

Detailed Description:

This mod aims to restore the class system of earlier games in the Elder Scrolls series.  We have attempted to recreate the classes as closely as possible from the previous games.  Unfortunately, due to the changes in skill trees, including the removal entire skill sets, some changes had to be made in order to ensure each class feels distinctly different to play from all the others.

 

Mod Philosophy:
- Compatibility.  With one exception, none of the base Skyrim assets have been modified.  We can only add new material to the game to make this mod work.

- Diversity of play. One of the most important commitments we made when starting this mod was to encourage a diversity of playstyles by using the class system.

- Viability of all classes.  We worked hard to ensure that each class remains a viable choice for a playthrough even at the highest difficulty levels.

- Incentivise the use of low popularity, or hated, spells and skills.  By adding class specific perks, we have attempted to make certain spells, skills, and enchantments that are normally disregarded by the community more attractive to use as part of the playthrough.

- Disincentivize the use of game braking crafting skills.  If you are a class that is lucky enough to have a crafting skill, you will only get one.

- Try to keep the feel of Minor skills from the earlier games.  We have not restricted the player from leveling up skills that their class is not proficient in.  You will not get the benefits of skill perks in these trees, but you can still use them to enhance your build.

- Viability of Mage Armor builds:  We put a great deal of effort into ensuring that classes that utilize the Mage Armor spell for defence remain viable even at high levels on legendary difficulty.

[Gukahn]

That sounds actually amazing and would finally stop me from turning my 2 handed barbarian into a spellsword ? And it would force me to put some thought into my party choices. I really like that idea.

[ElsissSurana]

One thing you guys might like is that we were able to bring back the monk class.  It took a lot of work to get it figured out, since there is no unarmed skill, but we think we managed to get it to a place that players will be happy with.

[ElsissSurana]

One thing that I forgot to mention in the opening post is how we have set this mod up so that there are three different armor skills.  The first two are obvious, heavy and light armor, the final one is the mage armor spell from alteration.  Now I know in base Skyrim the mage armor spells are next to useless on most of the difficulty settings, but we worked very hard to make a cloth only mage armor character viable.  Since we couldn't change any of the in game spells in order to buff alteration, we accomplished this by adding two new things to this mod

1. New Perk: Unarmored Defence.  All classes that have this perk receive a base 100 armor rating as long as they are not wearing armor.  We did this to make up for the fact that every piece of armor you wear gives you a bonus 25 armor rating just for wearing armor in one of the four slots.

2. New Enchanted Items:  Our mod adds three new enchanted items to the game.  They can be bought from magic vendors and the enchantments on the purchasable items being sold becomes more powerful as you level up.  You can also disenchant these items to learn the corresponding enchantment.  The three enchantments boost your armor rating as well as granting you some resistance to one of the elemental damage types.  So, for example, you could have a necklace that grants you 75 armor rating and 15% resistance to ice damage.  The enchantments are only available for chest pieces, necklaces, and rings with the highest potency on purchasable granting you an additional 75 armor rating. 

 

When all these additional boosts are combined together with the Ebony Flesh spell, and full perks to boost the potency of the mage armor spell, you will obtain 625 armor rating.  Which brings you close to armor cap.  The reason we didn't bring the character right to armor cap is because we still wanted players to want to use the Dragon Scale spell that you get for completing the master level alteration skill quest.

[phillout]

On 7/5/2021 at 7:56 PM, ElsissSurana said:

a mod that would attempt to restore the class system from earlier Elder Scrolls games.

 

 

...literally exists for quite a long time, and here is the latest incarnation.

 

Classic Classes and Birthsigns SSE

 

Edit: sorry, wrong mod linked.

 

[ElsissSurana]

6 hours ago, phillout said:

 

...literally exists for quite a long time, and here is the latest incarnation.

 

Classic Classes and Birthsigns SSE (Reimagined)

 

This mod looks interesting, but takes a very different approach to how it deals with the classes.  One of the things that pops out to me is that it allows you to pick a class, but doesn't lock you to it.  You are not restricted in the trees you can put perk points into.

[phillout]

6 hours ago, ElsissSurana said:

This mod looks interesting, but takes a very different approach to how it deals with the classes.  One of the things that pops out to me is that it allows you to pick a class, but doesn't lock you to it.  You are not restricted in the trees you can put perk points into.

 

You kinda are. It sets skills outside of those belonging to the chosen class to negative values, and using them doesn't raise the skill.

[ElsissSurana]

3 hours ago, phillout said:

 

You kinda are. It sets skills outside of those belonging to the chosen class to negative values, and using them doesn't raise the skill.

I never said that we were completely unique, just that we were doing things differently.  Because we lock you out from putting perk points into non class trees, it removes a great deal of the utility of those trees thus making it much harder to make them a core part of your build.  Even with a negative modifier on you skill level, you can still level it up and put skill points into it in order to gain many of the benefits of the tree.  Like I said, it's nothing unique, it's just a different way of doing something similar.

[Gukahn]

2 hours ago, ElsissSurana said:

 

there is never a harm in having 2 mods with similar ideas and different approach ? Otherwise we would have one Follower Framework, one Outfit Replacer.. One for everything ?

[phillout]

7 hours ago, ElsissSurana said:

Even with a negative modifier on you skill level, you can still level it up and put skill points into it in order to gain many of the benefits of the tree. 

 

As I said - "using them doesn't raise the skill". You don't get XP for using a skill, you can't level it up, you can't put a perk into it since perk have skill requirements - at least 5 IIRC. You still can break out of this by using trainers though, but for me personally it isn't much of an issue, I can restrain myself. Just not being able to level them up naturally is enough for me, plus it's gives you a guaranteed compatibility with all perks overhauls.

 

I don't mind another mod doing this, it's just that this particular line has caught my attention: " how much desire there is in the community for a mod that would attempt to restore the class system from earlier Elder Scrolls games.  ".

 

I mean - there is one that works already. If you think you can do it better - go right ahead, sure. And if you haven't seen the mod I linked before (apparently you haven't), you might learn a thing or two.