How to make Intelligence appealing to non-mages?

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Greywander
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How to make Intelligence appealing to non-mages?

Post by Greywander »

In my recently released mod, Natural Character Growth and Decay, I gave a small incentive for non-mages to stack up some Willpower in the form of a small Health boost (also the fatigue boost that was already present). I've been trying to think of a way to make Intelligence more appealing, though. Obviously, mages have a use for Strength (more carry weight), Agility (easier to dodge), Endurance (HEALTH!), and Speed (speed), so it only made sense to give the traditionally magic oriented attributes some appeal to non-magic users.

As far as I understand it, in the base game, Intelligence only adds to your Magicka pool, nothing more.

One thought was that you might add one tenth of your Intelligence to all your skills with a fortify bonus. I've already made a mod that implements this, but I'm not really sure about it. Another thought was to give the player spell absorption, telekinesis, and/or a detect effect that gets stronger as their Intelligence increases.

Anyway, what are some of your thoughts?
Naugrim
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Re: How to make Intelligence appealing to non-mages?

Post by Naugrim »

Honestly, if you ask me I would not bother. Magic is already very overpowered on its own.
The little bit of extra health helps, specially nice at the beginning when you don't have good spells yet, but this could be made into a "diminishing" way, so the more will power the less extra health.

Another option to provide extra bonus could be playing with your system of primary/seconday/tertiary, instead of 4-2-1, maybe 4-2-2 or just adding some forth attribute. That way you can add bonuses without adding more layers of complexity.
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Greywander
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Re: How to make Intelligence appealing to non-mages?

Post by Greywander »

Well, this isn't really about NCGD, per se, but more in general. This would be a standalone mod that you could use on its own, or with NCGD.

As for the point distributions in NCGD, I, either by accident or on purpose, I can't remember, stumbled on what is possibly the ideal system: There are 8 attributes and 27 skills, thus each skill gives 8 points and each attribute receives 27 points (meaning when all your skills are at 100, you should have balanced attributes aside from racial and class bonuses). (Remember, each skill has Luck as a second tertiary attribute, so the distribution is actually 4-2-1-1.)

I tweaked the previously mention mod so that it fortifies all skills by one point for every 20 Intelligence (i.e. it adds 5% of your Intelligence to all your skills, as opposed to the previous 10%). I've been using it on a new game, and it's okay. I'm still not sure it fits.

It just seems kind of silly to me that that you can be as dumb as a rock and as long as you're not casting spells it doesn't mean anything.
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Faelian
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Re: How to make Intelligence appealing to non-mages?

Post by Faelian »

How about making scrolls and magical items have different effectiveness depending on characters intelligence? Scrolls could require a certain amount of it to be cast succesfully (if you're below that, it will fail just like a spell) and enchanted items could for example, follow the same procedure regarding on-cast items.
Another idea regarding magcal items is a system of identification where you need to identify magical enchantment on items and you need to have certain intelligence to do it (Or pay another wizard to do it for you)
Naugrim
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Re: How to make Intelligence appealing to non-mages?

Post by Naugrim »

Greywander wrote:It just seems kind of silly to me that that you can be as dumb as a rock and as long as you're not casting spells it doesn't mean anything.
I agree, but same could be said for other attributes right? Little disclaimer here, being at max +5% it really doesn't impact a lot, but let me explain here my thought :P
I love the idea of providing bonuses based on attributes but it feels odd and possibly OP. For instance, intelligence already improves potions, so by adding a +1 o +2 to alchemy you're adding an extra bonus. The way I see it, attributes are meant to provide bonuses to intensity while skills affect chance. Same way with Str and weapon skills, str increases damage for all melee but long blade defines the chance to hit. You wouldn't increase weapon skills with str right, but you do increase them with int? this is what feels odd to me.

But I think I understand where you are going to. It all depends on how you interpret attributes, for me intelligence revolves is about understanding the magical forces and being able to concentrate them to create spells. It is not about being smart.
If you understand them as being smart, then it would make sense to increase all skills, similar to how skill points works in Fallout3. But then maybe other skills-attribute should be rebalanced...dunno, it gets to a point where I feel I am overthinking XD After all is a system about 3 branches of skills with 2 attributes each, so some sacrifices are made to match the numbers.

To sum up, I like the idea of having a secondary attributes, because it acknowledges this duality of meaning in attributes and allows to provide indirect bonuses without messing too much with the system. Adding another layer of bonuses on top is too much.
CMAugust
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Re: How to make Intelligence appealing to non-mages?

Post by CMAugust »

Intelligence does have a utility to non-mages in the form of Alchemy as mentioned, but that's about it.
For what it's worth, an in-universe description of intelligence is given in dialogue thusly: "A creature's intelligence is its property of reasoning, analysis, and retention of facts and experience. Other than its critical utility in problem-solving, this property is most important for the comprehension and manipulation of the arcane forces associated with magic, and creatures with high intelligence are proven to have greater capacity to cast larger and more powerful spell effects."

Unfortunately, Bethesda's efforts only lived up to half of this description; there aren't any real opportunities for this "critical utility in problem-solving" to be used in gameplay. In contrast, a game like Fallout featured an Intelligence statistic that affected your skill points per level, your First Aid, Doctor, Science and Repair skills, your Perk requirements, and (most interestingly) played a major role in dialogue choices and quest progression. I'm afraid that sort of utility would require huge changes to Morrowind, and outside your intended scope for a mod.

As far as Elder Scrolls games go, in Arena the intelligence attribute affected the success of bartering for an item as well as picking locks, in addition to the usual spell points. In Daggerfall there is a reference in the manual to intelligence being useful for "negotiations," though I don't think that game included it in any relevant social formula. Perhaps for Morrowind it can have some influence on the Speechcraft and/or Mercantile formula, which at least seems plausible - and IMO those skills need all the help they can get anyway.
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AnyOldName3
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Re: How to make Intelligence appealing to non-mages?

Post by AnyOldName3 »

I've seen games with no real use for their intelligence stat make it provide a bonus to experience, so clever characters can learn faster. It shouldn't break the game too thoroughly to do this.
Loriel
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Re: How to make Intelligence appealing to non-mages?

Post by Loriel »

A couple more possibilities -

Training could be cheaper with high intelligence

Skill books could be dependent on intelligence - if you can't read you aren't going to learn much from them. Either chance of failing, or minimum intelligence required (perhaps price-related).

Loriel
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Ravenwing
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Re: How to make Intelligence appealing to non-mages?

Post by Ravenwing »

CMAugust wrote:Intelligence does have a utility to non-mages in the form of Alchemy as mentioned, but that's about it.
For what it's worth, an in-universe description of intelligence is given in dialogue thusly: "A creature's intelligence is its property of reasoning, analysis, and retention of facts and experience. Other than its critical utility in problem-solving, this property is most important for the comprehension and manipulation of the arcane forces associated with magic, and creatures with high intelligence are proven to have greater capacity to cast larger and more powerful spell effects."
I would say you could build the "retention of facts and experience" into your optional decay part of NCGD. Characters with higher intelligence would lose their skills more slowly.

More generally, I would say that alchemy and security are fairly universally useful skills, so I don't see much problem as is. Of the listed ideas so far, I'm the biggest fan of having it affect how fast your skills increase. Not sure if that can be implemented now or if it has to wait for post 1.0. I'm excited for these mods though!
Chris
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Re: How to make Intelligence appealing to non-mages?

Post by Chris »

Not sure if it's possible with Morrowind, but one general idea I've seen thrown around is to have Intelligence improve your critical hit chance. The more you know about the physiology of people, creatures, etc, the more effective you would be at knowing where to hit to do extra damage. The main issue is, IIRC, Morrowind doesn't really have "critical hits" as such, just sneak attacks.
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