Companion Trainer Spells

So... I wrote a new mod last night; but I haven't uploaded it anywhere because I'm not sure of the appeal.

As I have mentioned in non-specifics before, in my recent Oblivion games I've been toying heavily with a mod set called Lovers; a rather expansive and modular group of files that adds many... more adult aspects to the game.

One of these that the scripting behind has so captured my fascination, is a sub-set called Tomago Club. Basically, what it does is add pregnancy to the game for females (NPCs and player both). Now, this isn't some lame mod where after a certain number of acts or random percentage or whatever an NPC just magically gets knocked up. It adds full menstrual cycles; ovulation, the whole bit. Once the bun be in the oven, the NPC or player carries to term (though reduced length -- I don't think I've ever even seen an Oblivion game that could go 9 months of game days without the saves getting corrupt...). When the time is up (presuming that the mod settings on miscarriage and so forth let it reach that far) a new NPC is spawned, with the mother's hair color and similar features.

It took awhile to get working, but once I did I've played about a game-month, and now seem to have several kids around. Whoopsie.

Mods like MCS that I linked to before let you take the kids as companions; whether to move them to a new location, or to have them along on adventures -- but the problem is that they don't match level with the player (even at a reduced rate), and they default to Commoner class, I think it is. Which means less than ten hit points and no discernible weapon skills. Take them along on an adventure, and they die. Quickly.

MCS allows setting essential, but it doesn't have any provision for class or level. You can set such things via the console, but setting class via hex gets old fast.

So. Thinking on this issue the other day, I decided to write a set of "training" spells. A touch-range lesser power, that when cast on an NPC sets their class, combat style, and matches your level. Three spells at the moment: one each for Archer, Mage, and Warrior -- the three most useful general purpose classes I've found for companions.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any function to flag them as auto-leveling, so the spells just match your level at the time of casting; though I did condition all the spell effects so that it only applies the ones needed at the time -- EG: if you cast the mage trainer and the NPC is already a mage, it won't set the class and add spells again; if they're already your level it won't change the level again.

The trouble is, the spells have what you might call a limited appeal. I don't know any of my audience here that uses Lovers; and the spells aren't good for a lot else. If you use MCS or EZ or whatever to take general NPCs as your companions it might be useful; but those are more easily reset via the CS. The spells here are really only useful for game-generated NPCs that can't be edited any other way.

They appear to work fine; I've only had occasion to use the spells twice since writing the mod -- once for a mage and once for a warrior -- and both times went without a hitch.

Of course, I suppose I could just direct you all to the Lovers forums to get you running the mods... Spread the love, as it were.

...'Course, then you guys would probably want my edited plugins, too...