Diverse Races Discussion

The Mer

Elves are good at very specific things, and are therefore very good for very specific types of playthroughs. Pure mage? Play an Altmer. Pure warrior? Play an Orsimer. Dunmer are great spellswords and the Bosmer make fantastic explorers. There's nothing saying that you can't make a stealthy Altmer or a warrior Bosmer. They just aren't going to be as good in those roles as others.

Altmer
Altmer are the best at magic. There isn't really any arguing with that, so I wanted to give them an ability to make their lvl 100 casting stronger than another race's lvl 100 casting. This became the foundation for most of the mod. I decided to use a concept similar to the racial ability present in Skyrim Redone (Channel Magicka: While active, both spell cost and magnitude grow based on your available magicka at the time of casting). This ability was set to a toggle and, of course, had a more fine-tuned application than what I wound up using. The reasoning was simple. Altmer are notoriously arrogant. If they CAN cast stronger spells by spending extra magicka, there is no reason, based on their perspective, why they shouldn't.

Dunmer
Dunmer are known for their racial affinity for fire, their connection with their ancestors, and their abilities in using both magic and martial skills interchangeably. In Vanilla, the first two are represented by a Flame Cloak at will. Some racial mods chose to place this Cloak at a health trigger, which I liked, but I didn't like the defensive nature of it. Being the cynical and self-sufficient race that they are, it made more sense to me that the Dunmer ancestors would put their hand in not to protect their descendant, but rather to give them the tools they needed to protect themselves. This, unfortunately, would not be enough to distinguish the Dunmer, so I came up with the idea of an inner flame that would be fed by martial ability over time and used up by spells. Then I decided that this was too complicated and changed it to a simple buff from attacking, which was given the skill modifier in order to deter people from only ever using weapons for the buff.

Bosmer
Bosmer were hard. In all of the games, their only special power has been their unremarkable ability to take on wildlife as temporary allies. They are known as skilled archers, but nothing set a master Bosmer archer from a master archer of any other race. Other mods try to correct for this by giving the Bosmer an independent buff to archery, but I didn't want to do this. I didn't want to tell players that if they weren't using a bow with a Bosmer, they were playing wrong. I realize that this comes in contrast with how I approached the Altmer, and that is, again, because of the obscene arrogance of the Altmer race. They only learn one way of doing things. In any case, I wanted to give the Bosmer an ability that would encourage archery use, but which had other applications as well. And so I returned to Skyrim Redone- specifically, the ability that had been given to the Redguards, which slowed time and increased movement speed in order to give the race the skilled dervish movement that it was known for. I stripped out the movement increase in favor of simply allowing the Bosmer to analyze their surroundings with greater clarity (and to take the time to aim, which would give them their necessary edge). I later realized that a similar ability was already a perk in Vanilla, but I honestly couldn't think of a better alternative. The wildlife ability was an afterthought. I wanted Bosmer to be safe from predators, so I just used the faction system to allow for that.

Orsimer
In Vanilla, the Orsimer have the ability Berserker Rage. This is less of a berserk and more of a general buff with a visual overlay. I wanted something more effective, and I found something relevant in how Imperious Races handles, again, Redguards. And while I started with the buff on kill concept, I wanted to use a more active approach and wound up with the format that's present in Diverse Races now- an exponentially growing power dependent on the player being as recklessly violent as possible, as if they were in a Berserker Rage. Another aspect of the Orcs that I wanted to showcase was their craftsmanship. Other mods do this by increasing tempering limits, but I didn't want to pigeonhole players into necessarily playing a smith. So I took another page from Imperious, increasing equipment stats passively, and flavored it as the Orsimer being good at taking care of their gear.

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The Humans

Humans are generally pretty good at a little bit of everything, some moreso than others. If you want to play a more flexible character without feeling like you're wasting your potential, try a human. Obviously, based on what you want to do, some will fit into what you want to do better than others. A Breton or an Imperial, for example, will be casting spells more adeptly than a Nord.

Breton
The Bretons frustrated me. Here we had a race supposedly nearly on par with the Altmer, yet their only advantage is not getting hurt as much by magic. There's nothing there to justify their casting abilities or anything to allow them to hold their own against physical threats. Imperious Races came to my aid once again with one of the abilities that were given to the Altmer. With an enchantment boost, the Bretons become good at theoretically anything that they choose, and with the proper mods, you don't even need to invest in Enchanting to have effective enchanted gear (though doing so will certainly help your endeavors). Furthermore, while Enchanting itself isn't a favored skill for Bretons, Conjuration, and therefore Soul Trap, is. I thought it appropriately poetic.

Imperials
The generic race, right? I'd thought so myself, until I looked at what races would theoretically be the best spellcasters, and it turns out that Imperials have a considerable amount of talent- or at least enough for me to drop their Stamina instead of their Magicka when adjusting their Health to be higher. Their abilities were another concern. They aren't better than any other race in any way beyond their silver tongues and sheer luck. And yet, despite that, they created the Empire in the first place. I decided to look into what abilities might give them the ability to do that. My initial thought was simply to use Imperious Races' (they're coming up a lot; Enai does solid work) ability Discipline, but I received a criticism that the ability wouldn't help players that don't use followers. I accepted this and added the enhanced stagger with the logic that Imperials would be better at creating and exploiting weaknesses than other races.

Redguards
Redguards are known to be fierce warriors, toughened from the desert, and skilled with both sword and spell. And being good at everything, I realized that they would necessarily be great at nothing. They became my most generic race, being given the Vanilla stat spread, a generically useful boost to weapon speed, and several small yet useful resistances. Their most defining trait is the endurance sprinting, which was something that I pulled from Morningstar.

Nords
There wasn't much that I'd wanted to do with Nords. I knew that I hadn't wanted to give Nords a Shout boost, considering that doing so would only really benefit the player character, but other than that, all I had to work with were the facts that they were stubborn and skilled warriors. At first, I'd considered using the Warrior's Heart ability from both Skyrim Redone and Imperious, but I reconsidered since I felt that doing less damage as you take damage is, overall, more realistic. Instead, I gave them a resistance to staggering (Morningstar), which conveniently makes them an excellent foil to the Imperial's semi-active effect. In addition, I increased their power attack damage to pay homage to their fighting skills and to give players an excuse to shout a lot even while waiting on their cooldown.

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The Beasts

With the Mer being the best at one thing and the humans being good at several things, it might not be surprising that the beast races are alright at basically everything. They don't excel- they survive. As a Khajiit or Saxhleel, you'll need to pick your battles wisely where you may have leaned on a racial ability elsewhere. You'll need to be prepared. You'll need to distance yourself from attacks when possible. You may even need to use the shadows to simply take whatever edge you can get.

Khajiit
There was one thing that I wanted to do with Khajiit. Their claws. I hate that the Khajiit claws are the end-all for unarmed fighting in Vanilla. I decided to change that by replacing the damage buff to unarmed attacks with a bleeding effect. Now Khajiit still have an edge in brawls, but it's a different kind of edge. Orcs have their heavy fists and berserker rage. Nords are strong and can throw a hell of a haymaker. Khajiit now deal very little damage with each swipe but also deal damage over time. Get in a few key hits and the enemy falls over on their own. (Note: do not try this with undead or mechanical enemies. They don't bleed.) For their movement abilities, I used the ones present in Skyrim Redone and Races of Tamriel.

Saxhleel
You may know them better as Argonians. There is a small list of things that I know about them. The first is that they are strongly resistant to poison and disease. The second is that they're amphibious. The third is that they have an ability relating to the Hist, sentient trees that they deify, that allows them to regenerate health at a greater rate at will. Well, if you know anything about me by now, you know that I love to take on-command abilities and make them semi-passive abilities. I chose to come to the conclusion that the Hist was also responsible to their resistance to toxins, and extended that to a more nuanced control over their metabolism. Put more simply, they shut down the bad stuff and increase the potency of the good stuff. Now, Saxhleel can have more health regeneration- as long as they have a health potion. Anything that they eat or drink, in fact, will have its effects magnified. I gave them the swim speed increase from several mods and a less extreme version of the Khajiit claws because their animation for unarmed is the same.

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Spells

I don't like the starting spells. Even the weak healing spell available makes potions largely ignorable, and most races aren't magically attuned enough to have a history in spellcasting in the first place. And for two of the three that are, Altmer and Bretons, the spells chosen are ones that I don't think would be instinctive enough for every member of the race to know. So I replaced that. Altmer, being the pinnacle of magic, have two spells- one for attacking and one for protection. The magical effects of the Bretons are largely defensive, so I gave them a defensive spell as well- a willful focusing of their natural essence, basically. As for the Dunmer, I gave them the only spell that made sense- Flames, which Bethesda couldn't give them because every race already had Flames. And on the subject of Bethesda stepping on their own feet, I also replaced the spellbook in Helgen's Keep with Conjure Familiar, which I felt would be able to introduce characters to magic in a way that would be universally useful without becoming a crutch.