Funky Spell Absorption, What is up with the Atronach Options

[SubRosa]

I have been trying out the game's default Atronach birthsign (before perhaps modding it to mirror how it was in Oblivion) with Hervor. I have been seeing something weird though. Sometimes when Hervor is hit by an animal, the swirly spell absorption effect goes off around her. It does not happen all the time with animals though, and never when she is hit by npcs with weapons.

Has anyone else seen this? I cannot tell if she is actually absorbing any magicka or not, since too much is going on when it happens. I am wondering if the animals are trying to give her a disease, and she is absorbing that somehow instead? I think the game treats diseases as spells, so it might.

Edit: Looks like I was right. The UESP page on Spell Absorption says it absorbs everything except base weapon damage, falling damage, and drowning damage. Wow, this birthsign is hugely overpowered!

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Dec 1 2013, 08:43 PM

[Grits]

Yep, the diseases have a chance to be absorbed. I haven’t noticed poisons being absorbed, though. Probably because there’s no magicka being used there’s none being gained, and half of the time they work. I’m pretty sure that Shouts have a chance as well, since when Jerric was not skating across the floor on his back in the last ruin he was gaining magicka. Of course there were also draugr covering him in frost the whole time, so I can’t be sure that Shouts give magicka either.

Also you have to be careful with mods since people use spell effects for things that are not magical, like snow sticking to you.

Taking magicka regen down to zero is really necessary for the Atronach, in my opinion.


eta: Oh, and there's also a Restoration spell you can't use because it refills your magicka. Circle of something. I mean you can use it, but it's kind of a cheat so I don't. Although that may be fixed in the unofficial patch. Jerric hasn't gotten that far in Restoration yet.

This post has been edited by Grits: Dec 1 2013, 09:02 PM