Skyrim Melee Staff Mod

I'd like to say that first off. I originally posted a short short version of this idea in a reddit post on skyrim, where someone complained about how staffs in the game were. And I agreed. I hate the staffs in this game, and as someone who likes playing mage characters, I find this to be absolutely bland and boring as it currently is. So I put some thought and ideas into how to improve them and someone liked the idea. So I expanded on it and now I have this.

Apr 29, 2013  Melee staves - posted in Skyrim Mod Requests: So, Ive just started another game, mage character for the first time. I was a bit disappointed noticing that unlike every other RPG game that includes the use of magic, you cant use a staff to defend yourself as a normal melee weapon when enemies come too close. How to setup hyperterminal. I did a bit of research on the Nexus and found some mods that add to the. Includes a variety of melee animations from various animation mods all in one pack. A mod for: Skyrim Special Edition T'Skyrim True Weapons Animated Armoury Patch - by ScarecroOw. Staff Discussion Forum User Discussion Forum. Make your own clone trooper armor.

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**THE REASON**
I think the biggest issue with staffs in Skyrim, is they are used as a replacement for spells. Any chump in the world can find a staff in a chest, and suddenly shoot a fireball the side of a **VW beetle**. What other wordly magic's allow random chumps to magically cast high level spells, but a mage studying hard in magic, can't do proper lengthy fights because he is out of mana so fast. This mod idea is here to change this! This aims to help bring back staff enchanting, bring in multiple types of staffs, and bring a whole new way to play and enjoy the mage class.
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**THE IDEA**
My idea for the mod is to implement three types of staffs. The three types are:
1. Amplification
2. Melee
3. Offensive
The idea is to try and keep the staffs the same now, giving the option to shoot firey death at people as someone who can't even cast flames, but give more viable options to people who actually want that **mage experience**, giving more depth and power to mages. I will discuss each of the types of staffs, what the general purpose of them is, and an example of how they would be used.
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**AMPLIFICATION**
This is almost the core experience of the idea in my personal opinion. The entire idea essentially grew from this one.
**HOW IT WORKS**
Essentially, this staff type would amplify the current power of a mages spells. It would be a staff that is equipped to a hand. At the same time, a spell could be equipped to the same hand, allowing the spell being cast, to be channelled through, and amplified to gain additional affects, damage, and other bonuses. This could help eliminate the ever so common pure mage **dual-cast to explode stuff**.
**ADDITIONAL NOTES**
This sort of staff would be able to carry multiple effects. Ranging from increasing//decreasing mana cost, to increasing//decreasing damage, to causing spells to be bigger, to causing spells to last longer. I will give an example below of how it might work:
**Staff of examplism!**
1. Destruction Spells Cost 15% more to cast
2. Destruction Spells do 25% more damage
3. Defensive Spells Last 50% Longer
4. Offensive Spells have a 20% chance to drain 25% of an enemies health
5. Illusion Spells can work on enemies 2 levels higher than normal
This is an OP staff. But only for the reason of explanation! Hence the name. Anyways, this would be a staff that one holds in his hand, and applies one of his spells to. Now, any spell that goes through this staff, will gain the benefits it gives. However, an alteration spell will **ONLY** gain the third ability, while destruction spells will gain the first, second, and fourth abilities.
Some of these staffs could, obviously, be placed throughout the world. At the same time, creating them via enchanting would be the other option. I will cover this at the end of the post.
This is the basic idea for Amplification Staffs. I could always put more detail into it, if anyone was planning to undertake the project. For now it is just an outter-shell of a mod idea.
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**MELEE**
This staff would be for more melee//casters and monks. Essentially, the staff has the option of casting the spell you have equipped to the hand, or attacking with it. Spells cast with the melee staff would cast faster, but also do less damage. The thought behind this, is you could hopefully make a melee caster, who has the ability to combo his attacks together, through a combination of staff strikes and quick-draw magic spells. This sort of thing comes in really hand when fighting mages as well.
**ADDITIONAL NOTES**
The melee staff would be 2-handed for balancing reasons. It would do a fair bit of damage [somewhere between two-handed warhammers and one-handed maces], and you would have the option to have a single spell equipped.
The staff would not give the option to block if you have a spell equipped. This is essentially due to the weapon being:
1. two-handed
2. having a spell to cast
If no spell is equipped, the button which would use the spell, would instead be used to block. This allows people to vary their builds or block if in situations where magicka is short or mages are using wards.
This is almost an addition to the idea. I wanted three types of staffs, and I figured melee would be a good idea, especially if it could be implemented properly.
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**OFFENSIVE**
Offensive staffs are essentially what is currently in the game now. Staffs that have capabilities to be used by the average chump. However, I do propose a slight change in the way this is done. This is more or less done in the form of a skill-tree fix.
Essentially, I feel that each of the Novice, Apprentice, Expert, Master ranks of each of the spell types, should affect the intensity of the spells themselves. This gives people with no magic power, a slightly weaker but still usable staff which can be used in specific situations, instead of just '**LOL I MAKE STUFF ASPLODES!**', and will reward higher level mages for using these staffs.
The offensive staffs could be held in reserve, where they have their own mana reserves built in [thus the charges], which allows for a mage who has become low on magicka, to still deal damage with the staffs if he needs to use them. These staffs could also be enchanted to have bonus effects, like larger area damage, etc.
**ADDITIONAL NOTES**
For the perk changes, I feel the following changes would help:
1. Each staff is labelled as novice, apprentice, expert and master, depending on the tier of spell attached to the staff.
2. When a mage has a specific perk in correlation to the staff [as in, a mage with apprentice under destruction and a staff with firebolt], it gives a damage boost or greater usable amount of charges to the mage.
3. Each of the novice, apprentice, expert and master perks will over-all increase all staff damage by 3%, for a total of 12% more damage for master level mages when using offensive staffs.
Again, these are just loose outlines for the idea. More detail and such can be added. But I feel this would help ease people into the idea of using staffs, over just dual wielding all the time. It also adds opportunity for manoless mages, who use staffs for their main source of magic damage, instead of just building magicka or magicka regain gear to stack on their character.
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**SKILL TREES**
I am unsure as to how to go about this to be honest. I will put 100% thought and effort into this if someone takes up the project. But I expect no one will. Anyways. I feel the way I outlined the staffs to work with the different trees, would sort of make this tree a bit unnecessary and force people into building to heavily into just a couple trees to get any real benefits. But if a tree were to be done:
* Three separate branches, for each of the three staff types
* First perk would be 5 ranks -- each rank giving 5% better enchantments on staffs
* Amplification Staffs: All spells are 3% stronger. 9% at max rank [3 ranks]
* Melee Staffs: Spells cast 10% faster. 30% at max rank [3 ranks]
* Offensive Staffs: Staffs have 15% more charges. 25% at max rank [3 ranks]
These are just a couple examples of what the skill tree could offer. Specific ones would be for higher level staff users, etc. The main reason I am iffy about adding a skill tree, is it could make this easily much to over-powered for mages who spec entirely into a very specific build that makes them massive damage casting machines, where they have no weakness due to the way offensive spells would work.
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**ENCHANTING**
This is the part that will deal with making // enchanting staffs.
Firstly, these staffs would be findable throughout the world, just as regular staffs are. This, however. Lets you create them to your liking.
The idea behind making the staffs, I feel, should not be easy. They should be expensive. And they should reflect your mages ability, not your mages ability to powerlevel one skill. That being said, I will go into detail on how I think each one could//should be done:
**AMPLIFICATION//OFFENSIVE**
I feel this should be the most expensive. Because THIS is what could make a really good pure mage, an absolute powerhouse at high levels.
The staff should be assembled from three parts.
1. **Base**: This would be made via smithing. However, no perks in smithing are required.
Essentially, every staff could have the base made by anyone. But by having skill points into the type of staff base you want [glass, orcish, elven, daedric, dragon bone, etc] you can upgrade the base and it will automatically gain a special bonus [unsure as what to do for this just yet].
At the same time, so those people don't get shafted by not going with smithing, you can pay master-level blacksmiths to make and upgrade them for you. For a very, VERY high cost [around 15,000 septims]. If you want to know why it is expensive -- it's to allow those who WANT to play a specific role [and mages don't smith, sorry], still get the same bang out of their staffs as someone who breaks immersion to be super-powerful.
What the staff is made of, is yet to do anything specific for the weapon, except what it looks like. I haven't thought of what each thing could 'add' to a staff, and it doesn't make sense to otherwise give random magic powers to random metals.
2. **Crown**: This would be the top of the staff. This is where the magic will, eventually, come out of.
I do not have a set number of things to use this for. With how many items are in the game, there are possibly hundreds of usable things.
Things I have in mind are:
* Soul Gems
* Daedra Hearts
* Specific Plants
* Skulls [human, troll, etc]
* Dragon Bone
* Metal Ornament
* Dragon Claws [Gold, Ivory, Sapphire, etc] [most likely not due to quest items]
* Miniature Statues
* Gems
These would each come with their own unique properties when the staff gets enchanted. Examles being:
* Skull staffs may give conjuration bonuses
* Daedra hearts may give you the ability to steal health
* Soul Gems amplify destruction damage or give soul-trap to any spell cast through the staff
* Gems make certain elements stronger
* Miniature statues give bonuses based on what statue is [talos, mara, etc]
* Dragon Bone gives 5% increase to any stats on the staff.
Generally, the list could become massive. Huge, and way beyond my scope of knowledge of items in the game. I would, again, be willing to go into much more depth if someone took this on.
3. **Bind**: This would be used to enchant and create the staff itself. This would be what seals the powers into the staff.
The bind would essentially be the final ingredient. It's the ingredient that will give the staff it's power. It will determine how strong the enchantments will be, as well as the charges.
The bind would be created from 1-3 items. Each item further increases an aspect of the enchantments.
1. **First part** would be a soul stone. This determines the charges on a staff. Using Azura's Star will **COSUME THE SOUL GEM**. HOWEVER. For anyone willing to sacrifice such a previous item -- It will give 300% more charges [for offensive Staffs] and +30% to all stats on an Amplification Staff. Depending on the strength of gem used, depends on charges or total increase of all stats, depending on the staff you're making.
2. **Second Part** This would be a random ingredient. Until I get a list of stuff that would be logical to use for items, I can't really do anything for this. I assume some sort of alchemical ingredient. -- This will determine how many different effects could be on an Amplification staff, or how many 'bonus effects' could be on an Offensive Staff. Bonus effects for Offensive staffs could range from increases damage radius, to higher damage to having soul trap on the spell.
3. **Third Part** A Flawless gem. Depending on the types of abilities on the staff, you will be required to have different gems. This may require you to have 4-5 different flawless gems, making the total item count go up to 6-7. However, for each gem you don't have for a corresponding skill type [example Ruby for fire damage increase, sapphire for frost damage, amythest for destruction, diamond for alternate and illusion], you will not get that enchantment on the staff.
Again. I want this to be an expensive procedure. I don't feel being able to make a super powerful staff that, you'll likely keep forever, should be something easy to make and throw away on a whim. So if you've picked all your enchantments, and then you have 25% more fire damage on your amp staff, but no ruby, then when you create the staff, the additional 25% fire damage WILL NOT be on the staff.
**MELEE**
I am unsure as if melee staffs should be under smithing or enchanting, as they don't fit either very well. Melee staffs can only have reduced casting speed enchantments on them [and they all have them], however the power of them can vary depending on how they are made.
If anyone has an idea for this, let me know. For now, I am sticking with they are made simply through smithing [because it is a melee style] with heavy and light versions of the staff. As you can imagine, heavy does more damage and moves slower, and light does less damage but is faster.
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This is my mod idea in a nutshell. It is not, by any means, close to being 'finished' or even really touched on. This is just a broad, albeit, lengthy post about what I think could really change how mages are played. Staffs are so underused, and even more so, useless in almost all cases. So I thought this could work. If anyone is interested in this sort of project, let me know. The best help I can offer on it, is trying to help create skill-trees, more depth into crafting, etc, and helping decide what would balance and make things more lore friendly with the Skyrim world. If you read this, kudos on you and thanks. Feedback is always welcome.
**TL;DR** -- This seriously can't be summed up. Sorry lazy readers lol