Morrowind: Reflection and Absorption

[Riddle78]

I'm playing through Morrowind again. It's an amazing game,and it's all sorts of fun to punch robots into unconsciousness and shortly thereafter,death. But that's simple. Wanna know what isn't? Playing as a facepunching mage born under the Atronach. From the get-go,I had a plan. Alchemy,enchanting,facepunching,light armour,and ALL THE MAGICS!

I tried doing some research. The only interaction that the UESP gives in Morrowind between Reflect and Spell Absorption effects is that Spell Absorb will always take priority for calculations if you're enjoying both at once. To those who do know: Can you absorb a reflected spell?

 

[Rayce Archer]

If you cast a spell on an enemy and it is reflected, NOTHING stops it hitting you, Final Fantasy style. Unfortunately unlike Final Fantasy, you cannot cast damage on yourself to hurt enemies. Nor can you feed yourself with absorbed damage, say enchanting a robe with constant elemental damage to self. In fact I think the last official patch just took out damage to self enchantments since you could exploit them to kill merchants.

HOWEVER

With the Atronach sign and a little enchanting it is quite possible to jam your absorb up to a level where almost no magic will hit you ever. And if you abuse fortify INT potions, you can easily make a potion that regens thousands of mana a second for days in-game, making any kind of casting you want easily within your reach.

Enjoy your facepunching, an absorb-maxed character is almost as awesomely broken as a fully chameleon-ed one. Heck, fortify your attributes and mana regen enough and you might be able to do both. Protip, you can cast the same spell in multiple simultaneous instances by giving it several names. So while casting SPELL A on yourself just resets SPELL A, you can have SPELL A, B, and C all going at once doing the same thing.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

ANyone make a mod that removes the annoying hit rolls on weapons ? I am so temped to play it again and finish it but sheesh its one heck of a time sink.

 

[Riddle78]

If you cast a spell on an enemy and it is reflected, NOTHING stops it hitting you, Final Fantasy style. Unfortunately unlike Final Fantasy, you cannot cast damage on yourself to hurt enemies. Nor can you feed yourself with absorbed damage, say enchanting a robe with constant elemental damage to self. In fact I think the last official patch just took out damage to self enchantments since you could exploit them to kill merchants.

HOWEVER

With the Atronach sign and a little enchanting it is quite possible to jam your absorb up to a level where almost no magic will hit you ever. And if you abuse fortify INT potions, you can easily make a potion that regens thousands of mana a second for days in-game, making any kind of casting you want easily within your reach.

Enjoy your facepunching, an absorb-maxed character is almost as awesomely broken as a fully chameleon-ed one. Heck, fortify your attributes and mana regen enough and you might be able to do both. Protip, you can cast the same spell in multiple simultaneous instances by giving it several names. So while casting SPELL A on yourself just resets SPELL A, you can have SPELL A, B, and C all going at once doing the same thing.

Excellent info. Thank you. Playing as a Dunmer,so I might enchant my Extravagant clothes with enough Resist Fire (Hello,base 75% fire resist!) to simply ignore reflections,and stick to Fire Damage spells. That,and keep Dispel potions handy. Because I'm gonna laugh like a madman when I throw Weakness to Fire an asston of times at a Flame Atronach,then burn it out with something like Fire Damage 5-10 pts/sec/10 secs,with a Paralyze for good measure.

A note on facepunching: It's slow. And a pain to kill Mudcrabs with out from Syeda Neen. However,once you train it to level 60 or so... You can knock out robots. And ghosts. And skeletons. AND GODS. By punching the wind from their lungs,and giving them five across the face. And once you knock someone's lights out,they're effectively out of the fight. Keep one target KO'd while you slap another to death. Might end up carrying around tons of Fortify Strength potions to dish out some FALKAWN PAWNCHes.

Edit: Custom spells. I've only made a handful of very specific ones. A set of lock openers,a restore spell for every attribute,and a cure disease and blight spell. If it's even possible to have a spell inflicting different magnitudes of the same effect,would those different instances of the effect happen with the one cast?

ANyone make a mod that removes the annoying hit rolls on weapons ? I am so temped to play it again and finish it but sheesh its one heck of a time sink.

That,sadly,is an absolute impossibility. It's a limit of the engine. Every applicable action is tested against a die for every attempt. The factors are,primarily,the skill in question,the governing attribute,and how high your fatigue is. For swinging a weapon,chance to hit is also influenced by agility,as is blocking with your shield. Luck (the stat) also plays a role in everything you do. I find this to be incredibly realistic,believe it or not. Imagine your Short Blade skill is at five,and your agility is thirty,along with your luck. You're of average dexterity and luck by these values,and less than a total novice at using short bladed weapons. You don't know the first thing about swinging the weapon without hurting yourself,or telegraphing your strikes without a great ash storm,to say NOTHING of proper edge alignment. For every miss,it might not be a miss. You might have hit,but it was so spectacularly bad that you done nothing but leave a superficial cut or bruise. And even masters screw up when they're so tired they can barely breathe...

Despite the mushroom citadels,I find Morrowind's gameplay to be far more realistic than Skyrim's. There's more to swinging a sword than sticking them with the sharp end.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

If you cast a spell on an enemy and it is reflected, NOTHING stops it hitting you, Final Fantasy style. Unfortunately unlike Final Fantasy, you cannot cast damage on yourself to hurt enemies. Nor can you feed yourself with absorbed damage, say enchanting a robe with constant elemental damage to self. In fact I think the last official patch just took out damage to self enchantments since you could exploit them to kill merchants.

HOWEVER

With the Atronach sign and a little enchanting it is quite possible to jam your absorb up to a level where almost no magic will hit you ever. And if you abuse fortify INT potions, you can easily make a potion that regens thousands of mana a second for days in-game, making any kind of casting you want easily within your reach.

Enjoy your facepunching, an absorb-maxed character is almost as awesomely broken as a fully chameleon-ed one. Heck, fortify your attributes and mana regen enough and you might be able to do both. Protip, you can cast the same spell in multiple simultaneous instances by giving it several names. So while casting SPELL A on yourself just resets SPELL A, you can have SPELL A, B, and C all going at once doing the same thing.

Excellent info. Thank you. Playing as a Dunmer,so I might enchant my Extravagant clothes with enough Resist Fire (Hello,base 75% fire resist!) to simply ignore reflections,and stick to Fire Damage spells. That,and keep Dispel potions handy. Because I'm gonna laugh like a madman when I throw Weakness to Fire an asston of times at a Flame Atronach,then burn it out with something like Fire Damage 5-10 pts/sec/10 secs,with a Paralyze for good measure.

A note on facepunching: It's slow. And a pain to kill Mudcrabs with out from Syeda Neen. However,once you train it to level 60 or so... You can knock out robots. And ghosts. And skeletons. AND GODS. By punching the wind from their lungs,and giving them five across the face. And once you knock someone's lights out,they're effectively out of the fight. Keep one target KO'd while you slap another to death. Might end up carrying around tons of Fortify Strength potions to dish out some FALKAWN PAWNCHes.

Edit: Custom spells. I've only made a handful of very specific ones. A set of lock openers,a restore spell for every attribute,and a cure disease and blight spell. If it's even possible to have a spell inflicting different magnitudes of the same effect,would those different instances of the effect happen with the one cast?

ANyone make a mod that removes the annoying hit rolls on weapons ? I am so temped to play it again and finish it but sheesh its one heck of a time sink.

That,sadly,is an absolute impossibility. It's a limit of the engine. Every applicable action is tested against a die for every attempt. The factors are,primarily,the skill in question,the governing attribute,and how high your fatigue is. For swinging a weapon,chance to hit is also influenced by agility,as is blocking with your shield. Luck (the stat) also plays a role in everything you do. I find this to be incredibly realistic,believe it or not. Imagine your Short Blade skill is at five,and your agility is thirty,along with your luck. You're of average dexterity and luck by these values,and less than a total novice at using short bladed weapons. You don't know the first thing about swinging the weapon without hurting yourself,or telegraphing your strikes without a great ash storm,to say NOTHING of proper edge alignment. For every miss,it might not be a miss. You might have hit,but it was so spectacularly bad that you done nothing but leave a superficial cut or bruise. And even masters screw up when they're so tired they can barely breathe...

Despite the mushroom citadels,I find Morrowind's gameplay to be far more realistic than Skyrim's. There's more to swinging a sword than sticking them with the sharp end.

I prefer always hit with 0-X damage modifiers for any kind of "in person" real time action game(GOW/Zelda/CV/Darksiders ,ect as well as FP games of course), While Morrowind is superior to most the hit rolls are stupid and out of place for a real time setting you have control over, if it was more team based real time like BG/ME/DA:O/FF12 and such I could forgive it but in FP where I am in control? No never it just makes no sense..

I recall some trying to up the attack of races to a high number ensuring you always get a hit but that's about all I can remember.

Trying to find something to give Morrowind a go after I finish up Skyrim even if it takes 100+ mods to make it worth a damn(and still trying to make it worth a damn its just not a 50+ hour game its a 10 hour hack and slash where combat gets old after 5 hours or less and do not get me started on how fast you level up and gain skills........ well Oblivion/FO3 and newer are the same really...). Oh gaaaa I bet FO4 will be so watered down it will just play itself.....

edit
AFAIK if you make a spell/enchantment that dose different magnitudes of the same effect it will stack, I also made Treta spells that did cold/fire/lighting damage at once but stat effects and damage are a bit different. I'd have to get Morrowind installed and everything up and running to check it.

Most of my modding/script knowledge comes from FO3-NV and Skyrim to a much lesser degree, the more I find out about Skyrim the more I'd like them to not remove stuff from previous games mod/edit wise so its in the base code and easily be put back in....... Skyrim is missing so much its not funny....

edit
now that I think you may could make a mod that lowers weapon skills and strength based on fatigue level thus resulting in very low damage output numbers, that is if you can do something about the darn hit roll LOL.

 

[small]

ANyone make a mod that removes the annoying hit rolls on weapons ? I am so temped to play it again and finish it but sheesh its one heck of a time sink.

while you cant strictly remove it you only have to put up for it for a tiny bit of time in game.

its a bit cheaty but it works.

go to the mages guild make a "drain skill (insert weapon skill here) 100 target self" go to a fighters guild, etc that has a trainer in that skill cast spell train, it will only cost you 1 gp to do it, cast spell, train, keep repeating, quit around 60-70 skill and try not to do it for any others as it breaks the game

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

ANyone make a mod that removes the annoying hit rolls on weapons ? I am so temped to play it again and finish it but sheesh its one heck of a time sink.

while you cant strictly remove it you only have to put up for it for a tiny bit of time in game.

its a bit cheaty but it works.

go to the mages guild make a "drain skill (insert weapon skill here) 100 target self" go to a fighters guild, etc that has a trainer in that skill cast spell train, it will only cost you 1 gp to do it, cast spell, train, keep repeating, quit around 60-70 skill and try not to do it for any others as it breaks the game

I've kinda done that before , I might try raising the attack value then lowering it when fatigue hits a certain amount.


Morrowind is a bit over designed and being a bit cheaty wont hurt it, unlike Skyrim where they made it basically in dev mode where half the cheats are turned on not to offend the console gamer.... ><

 

[Rayce Archer]

Oh, I don't know if this interests you but there are also some leveling mods for Morrowind you may want to check out that modify it so stat gains are automatic; eg raising destruction just automatically increases willpower and a bit of int. I always preferred playing that way. I don't wanna go into mods a bunch though cause it sounds like you're already a bit of an OG at this and morrowind threads ALWAYS turn into mods, SO.

Per spell effects, you cannot put multiple instances of an effect on one spell at different magnitudes (like a spell that does +50 fire resist and a spell that does +40 fire resist) but you can cast two different spells with each of those effects and they will stack.

Per hit calculation, while you can't totally avoid the roll except by leveling your skills, you can disable the different swings by choosing "use best attack" in the options. I think originally the different strikes like chops, stabs, etc. Were meant to do different damage types and that just never made it into the game. So don't feel bad about sending the low-damage animations away