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

[SubRosa]

I found a weird side effect to my Kynareth amulets. They work by giving you the Voice of the Sky power you get from reading all the etched tablets on the way up High Hrothgar. All that really does is put you in the Kyne's Peace faction. And all that does is make the Predator and Prey factions friendly to you. Somehow this also makes vampires friendly. Yep, I just discovered this in Dimhollow Crypt.

I took at look at the vampires, and the only faction they seem to be in is the vampire faction. Taking a look at that, I do not see anything that would make them friendly to the Predator or Prey factions, and certainly not the Kyne's Peace faction. So I have no idea why this is happening. I set the vampire faction to be enemies of the Kyne's Peace faction, and will see what that does.

[Colonel Mustard]

I found a weird side effect to my Kynareth amulets. They work by giving you the Voice of the Sky power you get from reading all the etched tablets on the way up High Hrothgar. All that really does is put you in the Kyne's Peace faction. And all that does is make the Predator and Prey factions friendly to you. Somehow this also makes vampires friendly. Yep, I just discovered this in Dimhollow Crypt.

I took at look at the vampires, and the only faction they seem to be in is the vampire faction. Taking a look at that, I do not see anything that would make them friendly to the Predator or Prey factions, and certainly not the Kyne's Peace faction. So I have no idea why this is happening. I set the vampire faction to be enemies of the Kyne's Peace faction, and will see what that does.

The only possible explanation I can come up with for this is that maybe Vampires/NPCs in the Vampire faction are part of the Predator faction. Considering that in traditional vampire lore, and in the Ur-Text of vampire canon, Dracula, the Count (and presumably other vampires) is able to command predators like wolves, this might have been Bethesda working that into the game a little bit; members of the Predator faction are friendly to vampires to represent this command.

Alternatively, the coding may have just gone squiffy, that's another possibility.

[SubRosa]

I found a weird side effect to my Kynareth amulets. They work by giving you the Voice of the Sky power you get from reading all the etched tablets on the way up High Hrothgar. All that really does is put you in the Kyne's Peace faction. And all that does is make the Predator and Prey factions friendly to you. Somehow this also makes vampires friendly. Yep, I just discovered this in Dimhollow Crypt.

I took at look at the vampires, and the only faction they seem to be in is the vampire faction. Taking a look at that, I do not see anything that would make them friendly to the Predator or Prey factions, and certainly not the Kyne's Peace faction. So I have no idea why this is happening. I set the vampire faction to be enemies of the Kyne's Peace faction, and will see what that does.

The only possible explanation I can come up with for this is that maybe Vampires/NPCs in the Vampire faction are part of the Predator faction. Considering that in traditional vampire lore, and in the Ur-Text of vampire canon, Dracula, the Count (and presumably other vampires) is able to command predators like wolves, this might have been Bethesda working that into the game a little bit; members of the Predator faction are friendly to vampires to represent this command.

Alternatively, the coding may have just gone squiffy, that's another possibility.

I thought that too about the predator faction, so I looked at its members, and there are no vampires in there. I also looked at some of the vampires. But the only faction they belong to is the Vampire Faction. The Vampire Faction does have a friendly relationship with the Wolf Faction and the Spider Faction, but it has no relationship with the Predator faction. It is really strange.

Ah ha! I found it. I forgot to load the dawnguard esm when I checked before. The new vampires it adds are also members of the Prey faction for some reason. That would make skeevers friendly to them.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Dec 7 2013, 07:08 PM