N'Garde. Vanilla-Friendly Parry and Active Block.

[strong lynx]

And then keep all control and toggles and api methods inside the class instance

[rustic latch]

Mostly cause I had different fish to fry, there are some methods that are currently not inside it. Very specifically the timers it relies on and "onThreat" even handlers and senders. I'll see what I can do, but no promises

[strong lynx]

Naw no worries, dont stress it,its an open invintation, not a request of entitlement

When ill be closer to releasing and balancing it all i can poke you again to see if it can be coherently integrated

[rustic latch]

Fair enough

[rustic latch]

@here

** 0.6.1b **

At this point, and from my perspective the mod is code complete. What's left on the to-do list are "maybe" items, That I'm not particularly feeling like tackling right now.

All weapon types have animations, and even if I make better animations in the future - what's there is fine.

In this version:

• Finally fixed move speed penalty for raised guard.
• SFX feedback for all weapon types on perfect parry. For "wood" and armor materials as well as h2h - this currently means that original perfect parry SFX will play together with their assigned sfx.
  • this means PP has uniquely identifiable sound, but also makes more sense for other materials and weapons besides swords.
• Code cleanup and fixes.

At this point I need balance feedback most of all. How does it feel? Not from just watching videos but from people playing. So, if you're so inclined, and have time and/inspiration - give it a spin. Play some quests, play as monk, play with a staff or a spear. And let me know how it goes.
as a reminder - the mod features as implemented right now are here: https://discordapp.com/channels/260439894298460160/1482416741077356692/1482416741077356692
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGvKOBIbB_8

[waxen cliff]

.arrean

N'Garde, outlander!

So, it's time to stop spamming #showcase. And maybe a good idea to get some design feedback.
Welcome to the land of incredible jank. Beta now.

Design idea:

Allow parry/active block that would not feel out of place in vanilla Morrowind.
Allow NPCs to parry each other and the player. Add ability to block ranged projectiles.
Make combat for a melee character more difficult but also more rewarding(you can block arrows!)

Current features:

1. Block and parry NPCs and Creatures
   1.1 Weapon using creatures and NPCs can block and parry the player and each other
2. HandToHand "Iron Palm" Style block/parry and Perfect parry that become available (and feasible) at certain related skill level. Effectiveness of both of these grows rapidly over next 10 skill levels after the threshold. Configurable
3. Utilise your gauntlets' armor or go full DnD monk and take advantage of your sky high handtohand skill and parry enemy weapons with bare hands.(or both)
4. Catch enemies attack at just the right time to negate all damage and stagger them for a brief period.
5. Shield Active Blocking
6. Block enemy arrows with shield. NPCs will block yours too.
7. Per Weapon type parry effectiveness and Move speed penalty while holding guard
8. Parry magical component of the enemy's attack.. Now you can give that Camonna Tong thug with a paralysing dagger what for
   1. Point (no area) enchantments can be blocked by defaut.
   2. AOE can not be blocked by default. (VFX would still play on AOE enchants if parried).
9. "All Attacks Hit" mode, an attack that would've been a miss now becomes a "fumble" still hits, can be parried, doesn't grant skill increases, but deals only a quarter of possible damage. Disabled by default
10. Spark VFX on weapon and shield blocks for NPCs and player.
11. Constant slow fatigue drain while holding guard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGvKOBIbB_8

Linked by @​.arrean from #N'Garde. Vanilla-Friendly Parry and Active Block. Beta · Mar 14, 2026, 4:34 PM

[valid berry]

This looks awesome.

[uncut sun]

starting to look really good. just one thing. in your showcase, it might be an idea to turn off the 3rdP animation plugin. i believe it's simply good etiquette to do so.

[strong lynx]

awesome, ill give it a spin when ill get some free time, you know that im skeptical with the whole ability to insta react as well as npcs randomly parrying player without telegraphing, so probably ill be able to provide some sincere feedback, apart from just glazing how cool it all looks haha

Quite excited to try it honestly

[rustic latch]

That's fair

[rustic latch]

Just play and let me know. "randomly parrying" is very much not the case - they always try to parry if threatened and how quickly they react depends on their speed and weapon/block skill level.

The reaction times for NPCs have been tuned to be slower than real-life human reactions to account for lack of long attack telegraphs in the game, and for the speed of parry animation

[strong lynx]

I didnt mean literally randomly, i meant randomly as in suddenly, i.e without telegraphi g and giving any opportunity to counter-react and do something to avoid it

[rustic latch]

I mean if you release the attack immediately - yeah. but that's "as intended". If you charge - you can "feint" by threatening, then not attacking and attacking again once they lower their guard

Or you can turn and strike to the side to avoid enemy perfect parry, etc etc. There are ways to game it

And e.g. lower skill npcs will cower behind their guard more than higher skill ones, and will react slower to "threat lost" state change, as well as to "threatened"

giving you time to just punch through the weak guard

[strong lynx]

Yea exactly, to me just sounds like that intended aproach will not be fun because it takes away player agency

[rustic latch]

in what way?!

[strong lynx]

But im not saying that you have to change it or anything like that, just sharing my opinion here

[strong lynx]

Player can not do anything about it

It just happens

[rustic latch]

See

no

you can

before you make a choice to release the attack

once you've commited - you can't

and that's by design

"think before you strike" instead of just mashing LMB was one of the ideas

[strong lynx]

Once again, i understand that how you want it by design, im only saying that to me that design doesnt sound fun

[rustic latch]

:P

I get it. There's one last thing I may consider - e.g. enabling "isParrying" state only when "stop" key for the parry animation is reached

[strong lynx]

Exactly this, it takes away something that was arguably fun about vanilka combat

[rustic latch]

but that would mean lowering reaction time for NPCs

[strong lynx]

Spamming enemies is sometimes fun

[rustic latch]

I get it, and I'm not as against vanilla combat as some people are. But that was kinda the whole point of this excercise - more difficult, more rewarding. And I think I'm most of the way there.

[strong lynx]

But once again a i get it, i understand this is your design, im only explaining why to me on oaper it sounds off in some places, im not saying that its objectively bad and neeeds to be different

And i also havent tried it yet, maybe it only sounds like that on paper

[rustic latch]

Do report back once you play through a couple quests with it yeah

[strong lynx]

I will!

[rustic latch]

Speaking of, and since you're on steamdeck - I recommend dpad-left for the controller layout. At least that's what I did when I tested that

[strong lynx]

This might make player blocking more interesting/challenging

[rustic latch]

and NPC too

I'll lower reaction times to low human range then

currently they are 100-150 ms longer

[strong lynx]

Why not put it on left trigger, seems like the most natural place

[rustic latch]

I think I had something assigned there already, but that's just what kinda worked for me

I'm not a big controller player

[strong lynx]

Yea default controller layout is weird, they had 4 dpad buttons for utility stuff but they put it all (like rest menu etc) on "main" buttons like triggers and shoulders

[rustic latch]

Not the kind of game I'd play on controller - but yeah, a bit weird in general

[strong lynx]

After taking some time to redo the controller layeout, and with target locking from dynamic camera - honestly it plays pre good

although I am playing mostly on kb+mouse still anyway

I rarley do anything in handheld

[rustic latch]

Yeah, that's just my personal preference. I never had a console/handheld growing up so never touched controllers till relatively recently

[strong lynx]

same! I mean except sega, but i got addicted to a conveniences and how nice it is to slouch away with a controller in comparison to sitting with kb+m

[rustic latch]

Enabling is parrying state on last frame of the parry animation
Well, I think imma add this as a setting and call it "hard mode"

[maiden tangle]

I‘m running these animations now, but I noticed that weapon swings have a lot of latency. Before the weapon can hit the opponent, sparks from the impact effects mod are already visible and hearable (with vanilla animations a damaging hit would be in sync). The actual hit for damage connects later. The slower the swing speed of the weapon the mire latency there is.
Do you have the same problem in third person?

In first person there is no problem, but those animations are from a different mod (you also use) anyway.

[rustic latch]

Hmmmmm. I didn't really notice that

Let me poke at it

Do you have an example of weapon with a slow swing speed?

Also, does it happen for you on e.g both left and right swing? Cause alt-attacks only adds alternate swings, not replces the original ones iirc

[rustic latch]

I can only assume no one tried it since I've posted 0.6.1 yesterday, cause NPC parry was slightly borked.

** 0.6.2b **

• Unfucked NPC reaction-delayed parry function calls.

[strong lynx]

Btw with this shield pose "issue" shield is only used for a single weapon anim group right, i.e one-handed

So its possible to just make a nice upper body pose for it

Would you like some help w that? I can make one

Or was this resolved?

[rustic latch]

Which issue specifically?

[waxen cliff]

semaro

Are you planning to also edit the block animation? The first picture shows how a raised shield currently looks like and to me the chraracter's defence is a bit open to the front, unlike in the second picture which shows the vanilla charged-chop-stance animation.

Attachment(s)

screenshot001.png
screenshot000.png

Quoted by @​.arrean from #N'Garde. Vanilla-Friendly Parry and Active Block. Beta · Apr 6, 2026, 2:28 PM

[rustic latch]

^this?

Wasn't really. I didn't have time or energy to remake it

[rustic latch]

That one is the most egregious, but a few of them will need to be redone, especially the 3rd person ones, as finger weirdness moved there now

[strong lynx]

Yes this, yes, so if you want i can help, but ill need some info, there must be some rules on how to properly make upper body anims so they face same direction while standing and rinning, probably something to do with a hip bone, do you know whats the rule here?

[rustic latch]

I've got no clue, sorry

[strong lynx]

No worries

@covert jewel you around per chance?

Or maybe @jade valley ?

[tough juniper]

yeah i want to nwo this too

[maiden tangle]

So after klicking the attack button, initiating the a weapon swing:

1. hear the swing sfx (coudn't record sound because my sound card is crurrently not)
2. see sparks vfx (from impact effects)

• here comes the latency into play, that wouldn't be there if you'd either use vanilla or the previously used 3rd person animation replacer

3. see actual swing animation -> hit target + hit sfx (how it also functions for vanilla)

For showcase I used these two weapons:

1. blunt 1h weapon with a speed of 0.800
2. short blade 1h weapon with a speed of 1.500

My be a bit much for this thread here now and I should probably ask fallchildren about it, since it's their mod

Oh yeah, for comparison. 1st person works fine as you can see

[rustic latch]

Yeah, weird. Probably something about when impact effects spawns the vfx

[maiden tangle]

latency on faster weapons is much less noticable

[rustic latch]

does it do the same for blood? Cause that would mean fallchildren's animations are behind where the engine is

[maiden tangle]

Interestingly no. Blood effect spawns when the hit connects and the opponent gets damaged, so it's aligned. But if you'd fight against someone with a heavy amor, the impact effect sparks and hit sound would come in too early at the start of the swing, right after you had released the attack button.
So might be a light incompatibility between fallchildren's animations and impact effect?

[rustic latch]

Yeah, sounds like it

I'll need to take a look at how Impact effect decided when to spawn to know for sure

[maiden tangle]

Thanks for doing so. 🙏
Hope you'll get something from it, that isn't just solving my problem. Maybe like some better understanding for you modding.

[rustic latch]

Eh, needed a break anyway.

The "all attacks hit" mode is breaking my brain - I forgot about "normal weapon resistance":P

I've implemented hard mode however, where parry becomes "active" only after guard is fully raised

got killed by dremora like 7 times while testing - timing parries is much harder now

(don't worry, it's in settings)

That said - I can't easily find what Impact Effects is doing for "when" - it seems they are spawning it when certain animation keys are met

So if a replacer animation has more frames, or a key in a slightly different place - that would make sense that it won't work exactly right

[maiden tangle]

I mean these animations are definitely more "fancy" and have probbably more frames to achieve that.
So eventually I should forward this issue to either fallchildren or taitechnic. I think fallchildren isn' that active on the server and taitechnic isn't on the server at all.
Might contact the latter through Nexus then.

[rustic latch]

Yeah, probably comment on nexus and see what they say

[rustic latch]

Fixed animation sillyness that happened when switching stance, or swapping weapons while holding parry

** 0.6.3 **

• Animation properly switches when changing stance or swapping weapon via hotkeys.
• Fixed a bug where equipment was being reprocessed each frame even if it has not changed.
• Hard Mode implemented:
  • Parry becomes active only when fully raised
  • NPCs reaction time 100ms lower across the board
  • To make above a bit more bearable parry animations play 20% faster
  • In settings - off by default
• Fixed "All Attacks Hit" mode. Now respects armour and normal weapon resistance
• Attack swing animations excluded from preventing parry list, attack charge animations stay. Attack animation still mostly plays if one switches to parry as soon as the attack is released, parry can still be interrupted by stagger. Feels better and more responsive
• Some other minor fixes

Primary T0D0 is looking good:

Didn't make the cut:

• WIP - stagger limit, otherwise even without "all attacks hit" - too easy to stunlock enemy with quick attacks

[maiden tangle]

Funky moves 🪩
And nice update!

[rustic latch]

Thank you! Just glad the weapon swapping/stance switch works right finally

I think I'll need to mark https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/58262?tab=files as partial incompat. at least for now. With it enabled NPCs lose the ability to move while parry is raised. And don't dash ofc.

Otherwise mods work fine together, but do keep this in mind

[opaque raptor]

I haven't tested it extensively, but for the moment, everything is working correctly ^^
The work done is impressive

[rustic latch]

Thank you! For testing and for the kind words

[true umbra]

This simple addition really brings a Kingdom Come Deliverance style of combat that I really like to Morrowind

🔥 😘

[rustic latch]

🤜 🤛 Thank you.

Now. I think "final" -ish mechanical addition. At least for today.
** 0.6.4b**
I don't like how it's possible and easy to stunlock an enemy with repeated quick attacks, even with "all attacks hit" disabled - it is easy to cheese.

• Hence - stagger cooldown. from 0.4 to 2.2 seconds depending on endurance, strength and block skill of the target that is being hit. Only applies to "fencer" targets, because those are the only ones I'm additionally limiting while "stagger" animations are playing, so NPCs, Player and creatures that can use weapons.
• Also fixed Hard Mode settings group key, so it now can actually be enabled or disabled

note to self, if an NPC perfect parries player they should immediately switch out of parry stance and counter attack

And that was easier than expected. Also stagger cooldown now applies to player

[maiden tangle]

From how I imagine it, this might actually turn out as a more "realistic" feature. Being able to dodge while parrying sounds like an unbreakable defence in my opinion. Might be better if NPCs decide if they rather dodge or block/parry an incoming attack.

[rustic latch]

Yeah, I can see that

[maiden tangle]

Could be a setting for the future 🤭

[rustic latch]

To "decide" however I'll need to either re-implement the dodge on my end, or the Dash Dodge to have some interop, which it doesn't

I'm also looking at it and not understanding why it breaks, cause rn - when parrying they don't dodge and don't move. Although it seems that they should be able to do either

I am also currently lost in the weeds of fixing the h2h parry. Will probably try and reach out to Rosynant when I'm done with that and see if they have anything to say

Cause the two really play quite nicely together

[maiden tangle]

Yes, they complementing each other. Most of the time I don't even use myself and just have it on for the sake of more versatile combat behavior of the NPCs.
Mercy and Dynamic Camera mods on top (for the lock on) and Morrowinds combat just became one of it's strong features

[rustic latch]

That's actually a great testing suite you got going there - glad it works well with all of those

[maiden tangle]

All other those other mods I mentioned added already a lot to the combat system, but your's made me activly searching for enemies in the world that could use parry mechanics now, because of the fun it adds. 👏

Me doing Quests latley: "Hmm I could talk my self out of this heated situation... Nah, let's fight instead!" ⚔️

[rustic latch]

"N'Garde, outlander"!

[rustic latch]

If you have PTR installed - do visit Abecette in Anvil and the Narsis Arena

Adds a whole another layer to those

[maiden tangle]

I already did, but as soon as Poison Song comes out, I'm starting a new game anyway and head torwards those again!

[rustic latch]

nice

[tough juniper]

I love just watching fights in there arena now

[rustic latch]

Making sure NPC vs NPC fights are handled was probably the best decision :P

I'm testing Iron Fist compatibility right now. h2h and iron palm and all of that has taken more time to straighten out than core systems

[maiden tangle]

Lately I often let my followers fight groups of bandits for me, while chilling in invisibility next to them, watching an awesome fight

Using this mod, adding many more hostile encounters in an immersive way https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/55825

Out of disposable followers? Use this Gothic style mod to knock out a bunch of bandits, then when they regain consciousness (mostly not hostile), raise their disposition to nearly 100 by „paying“ them for their future service and assign them by the Rapport mod as new followers.

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/58576

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/54132

[steel kayak]

I made a mod that adds infinite "Servants" you can hire, I plan to release it in the modathon. It uses LUA to generate a servant on the fly. They cost 150 gold per month & have a 1,000 gold hiring fee.
Right now its just basically glorified slaves, but I am working on making it so you can hire different classes.
I also have the infinite slave mod currently out if thats your style lol

EDIT: My bad, I quickly skimmed & didnt realize you were sharing other mods.

[maiden tangle]

Oh that sounds nice! Will you also add the possibility to let them teleport with you? It became kinda like a mandatory quality of life feature for me.

[rustic latch]

Alright. Calling this one beta 7.

** 0.7.0b**

• Better, fully featured handling for h2h + gauntlets and iron palm. Tested and seems generally compatbile with Iron Fist.
  • Either high h2h skill or heavy gauntlets necessary for good effectiveness
• Now properly handles both fatigue and health damage on all h2h attacks. Fatigue damage gets reduced, Health damage converted to fatigue (after original fatigue damage was reduced)
• Some more bugfixes regarding stance switching/animations and h2h specifically.
• Higher default amimation speed for h2h 3rd person block
• Higher default animation speed for "shield hit" animation - otherwise it stunlocks the target, may drop it entirely
• "knockdown" and "knockout" animations no longer prevented by "stagger cooldown" - if you've knocked the enemy out - you've earned it.
• More general code cleanup on state switching

[rustic latch]

I think Daisy's Lua multimark handles that

meaning irrespective of other follower mods

[rustic latch]

That sounds fire. I was considering messing with generating NPCs - thought maybe I'll add a courier for "birthday gifts" in Holidays&Birthdays. But dropped that idea at some point

[steel kayak]

It's not a bad idea. Mine works by just cloning a random NPC from a bank (seperate banks for each sex/race), using MWSCRIPT to randomize their clothes (couldnt get it right in lua), then reassigning their class/stats/name/script via lua

[rustic latch]

Yeah, I was going for something like that. I've eventually decided that having the gift just show up is funnier, considering another "funni" idea about gifts I've actually ended up implementing :P

[rustic latch]

And ofc as soon as I go and retest something I didn't even work on - everything is on fire:

** 0.7.1b**

• guarding against "object is not available" in ItemData calls

• ignoring 0 condition items that are not yet unequipped for equipment checks

• fix for All Attacks Hit mode for archery

• clamping item condition to 0 - seems to more reliably unequip it then

Also, tested more with Dash Dodge, and I don't think it's any interaction with it that causes them to jiggle and stop on parry. ;/

No clue at this point - I've reworked that part like 6 times, and each iteration seems to work, except when it doesn't

[true umbra]

I used to watch the NPCs duel in Ald Marak, Kogotel to see N'Garde in action, but with the latest release I am not seeing any of the two NPCs ever parry. Is this a bug on my end perhaps? When I fight an NPC, they parry normally. Maybe it is a problem between NPC vs NPC battles?

[rustic latch]

Huh. I'll need to take a look at that. I don't think I've touched that part

[rustic latch]

Ok. I don't think something is fundamentally broken. But they may need quicker reaction time

e.g. in "Old Ebonheart, Guild Of Fighters: basement" - the sparring NPCs do parry, but very rarely. Those in Kogotel, indeed do not.

And their reaction time should be quite low, as speed, weapon skill and block are all over 60 for both pairs

I'll test more

Oh yah, with logging enabled it reports reaction time of ~450ms, way too high for that skill level. I've overtuned the formulas down I think

[rustic latch]

This should be better, but will affect both npc vs npc and player vs npc fights. Reaction time generally slightly lower. And I've taken out part of "threat lost" logic for now, as it was causing weirdness. I'll keep working on this, but probably much later today

I may have to implement longer attack windups somehow, or see if another mod does that - iirc Mercy may - those will help too

don't want to 100% depend on Mercy either, but base game NPCs barely charge their attacks, animation is very quick. Which is cool - means it's harder to parry, but for NPCs vs NPC fights with any reaction time at all - this means they don't have time to react. And then either raise the guard after the attack hit, or don't try to parry at all

Can't really artificially lower reaction time if attacker is an NPC - that's plain silly

[true umbra]

😘

[rustic latch]

** 0.7.3b **

• Attack windup hold implementation. NPCs will hold their attack for a short random duration before swinging - charging it more(?) and better telegprahing to eachother and to player so that parry can be raised in time
• on "hard Mode" - windup is slightly longer, again, to make it playable at all. With this - it may become my intended way to play, still disabled by default
• Another all attacks hit mode fix for ranged attacks
• Restored threat lost logic partially - simpler this time and causes fewer issues
• I think(?!) finally found a way for NPCs to more reliably move with shield raised, at least not what they do feels more natural
• EquipChange detection fix
• Correction of h2h attacks detection
• NPC counterattack on perfect parry is now reaction delayed
• slightly higher playback speed and lower priority for "shield hit" animation, so it causes less weirdness

Ah dammit.

And fixed a case of rigor mortis reintroduced in 0.7.3b

[rustic latch]

0.7.5b

• Fencing measure handling. Melee NPCs will run at you if they are too far away. Then walk, then try and stay in range of their weapons never attempting to give you a hug. (unless you have a mod that modifies weapon range and they have a very short range dagger)
• Minor windup window adjustment

[strong lynx]

hmm you might also want to reduce a pause between attacks then maybe? Otherwise simply making them charge more will probably skew balance to a simpler side (they do less attacks per second)

although people can ofcourse just raise difficulty slider or smth

[rustic latch]

It's already more difficult. The windup is between 175 and 450 ms, randomly at the moment, it doesn't really seem like the make fewer attacks

NPCs never spammed really

[strong lynx]

yea, i think they had more or less constant pause between attacks, so if they hold windup and pause between attacks is the same then they do less attacks per second overall

or not?

[rustic latch]

Doesn't feel like that, maybe the pause is from attack start?

[strong lynx]

I see, yea maybe, no clue tbh 😄

[rustic latch]

I haven't looked into that part really, and tthat would be in the combat package somewhere I assume

so not touching that at the moment

[strong lynx]

are you working on any hotfixes rn or this latest version is somewhat stable?

I think id have time to run it tomorrow or even a bit today

would be nice to start a newb char and just enjoy the game for a bit

[rustic latch]

Latest few have been stable, instability was caused by me moving staff around mostly, and some stuff working not exactly as intended

no error spam in logs, no other issues so far

few funny things happened when I was implementing distance keeping

[strong lynx]

mmmm, like in lua? I dont thing things like that exposed to lua, maybe its a gloabal game variable, but eh dont know

[rustic latch]

but those didn't make it in

[strong lynx]

you know yea, probably its a global variable, that wouldve made sense

[rustic latch]

No clue, honestly

I would've assumed it would be in the AI package for combat

that's a logical plce for something like that

[strong lynx]

do you recommend doing anything to my difficulty slider?

or just run it at 0?

[rustic latch]

I didn't do anything

I recommend keeping "all attacks hit" and "hard mode" disabled in settings until you get a feel for basic settings

windup was essential to making "hard mode" playable, otherwise - there's literally no telegraph

[rustic latch]

Ok, teaching spear wielding enemies to backpedal was a bad idea

[rustic latch]

Or a great idea. It's up in the air. But you now gotta either back them to the wall, or paralyze/burden/damage strength

[uncut sun]

fought a mabrigash and it was jumping around when in combat. never seen an npc do that before. was it your mod what did that?

[rustic latch]

Definitely not O_o

I only taught them to go forward if out of range, and back off if too close

You got mercy installed maybe? Although in my (albeit limited) testing with Mercy I haven't seen them do it

[uncut sun]

yeah i have

was cool though

only happens once

[rustic latch]

Interesting.
@strong lynx , did you teach NPCs to jump in Mercy?

[uncut sun]

i could try to recreate it some other time

[rustic latch]

That's a cool feature if anything, not mine though

[strong lynx]

yup, some very rare npcs can jump lmao

[rustic latch]

Nice

[strong lynx]

its one of the rare behaviours, i have few somewhat silly/annoying behaviours in there, but they are around 10% rare

another one are enemies that nonestop zoom around you like idiots

they are pre good at dodging like that actually

[rustic latch]

naturally

[strong lynx]

exactly, you never expect shit like that to happen, and then it just strikes you out of nowhere 😄

randomisation is also recordId seeded so theoretically behaviours should be stable between reloads, so itll really feel like that specific npc is just a special snowflake

[maiden tangle]

Encountered one of those in the past. Had to spam big AOE spells on the ground to get him, very fun 😁

[tough juniper]

thats so cool

[maiden tangle]

@rustic latch I noticed that I can get damaged, even with an active block stance, as if hits are getting through.
Though not always, maybe 1 out of 3 times or so. Is This international? I don‘t have hard mode enabled.

[rustic latch]

Do you hear the parry sound?

But yeah, well. You still get damaged through weak parry, just less

I've bumped the ratios a bit last update actually,

oh. Another thing. You playing shortblades right? Those only have 100 parry arc degree arc
about like this:

so if you turn a bit - it may go through

(Secretly hoping it ends up beign balance feedback and not a bug-report :P)

[maiden tangle]

I hear the metal sound, so not the perfect parry one.
And at 420 hp I got like 100 points of damage, which I also nearly receive when not blocking (leaving out any armor and difficulty calculations).

Good that you pointed out the block/parry arc for short blades, though I usually don‘t habe any problems with getting perfect parries often.
In general I just wanted to test how combat feels, if I‘m activly going for just block and weak parries.

And I don‘t think it might be a bug actually. Probably just balancing stuff 😉

[rustic latch]

Hoold up. What is your weapon skill and block skill at that point?

oh

and fatigue

should I take out current fatigue from that calculation?

I probably should...

the formula is
((diminishingCurve(Block) + diminishingCurve(WeaponSkill)) * currentFatiguePercent)/100) * weaponTypeParryEffectiveness

Meaning we take skill effect of both main and secondary skill (either block and block for shield or weapon + block for everythign else). multiply by current fatigue percentage, and then multiply that by weapon parry effectiveness - the thing in settings.

so let's say that number ends up being 0.65 - that means you will negate 65% of incoming damage

Fatigue sorta makes sense here. But not really, and I think it may be too punishing

[maiden tangle]

Most of the time I get that punishing hit while blocking as the first encounter with an opponent, when my fatigue is still nesrly full.

Short blade and block skill are at 100 btw.

[rustic latch]

oh

first hit

fuck

yeah, that's a bug

well, oversight rather

let me see if something leftover of that logic is still in there

[next vector]

I don't know, I like that the ability to parry better or worse is connected with fatigue. It feels more natural and keeps the player monitoring that resource.
Of course, there's always room for an option to use a different formula in the settings.

[rustic latch]

Huh, that's weird. I see no leftover logic from the early days of the mod when presence in targets list was necessary. I'll keep looking

[rustic latch]

Yeaah, which is why it's there - but it seems too punishing, at low fatigue perfect parry is very difficult, but we also punish "weak parry" quite severely

Which sort of makes sense - at that point, drink potions or try to run

but

I don't know if it's too harsh

[next vector]

Maybe it could be up to player preference?

[rustic latch]

More options for the god of options I guess

But I'm torn on which one shoudl be the default

[next vector]

I like the more punishing one, but there's always the option of a poll.

[uncut sun]

makes a lot of sense. you don't realise npc act differently because its so natural. i really could never switch to mwse

[rustic latch]

How unanimous it's going so far may convince me that an option is not necessary after all

Oh, I've also made a mistake in the formula. Weapon effectiveness is not taken correctly.

Gotta patch that

[rustic latch]

Right.

0.7.6

Consider this a hotfix

• Fixed the parry defence formula - now correctly takes weapon effectiveness

[true umbra]

Okie dokie

[rustic latch]

What's I'm reading from this, is that ya'll like the pain :P

[rustic latch]

Multichoice is enabled btw.
And I guess I'm implementing all three, but will keep the current one default

** 0.7.7b **

all three formula options from the poll are implemented. Choose which one you like. More settings for the god of settings

No other notable changes, and I'm done for today. Sleep beckons

[true umbra]

Thanks a bunch

😘

[ionic echo]

Is this compatible with openmw perchance?

[rustic latch]

OpenMW only in fact

I think Storm was working on something similar conceptually for MWSE. This here though is pure openmw lua, however

[maiden tangle]

Talked about the issue with the latency for alt thrid person animations with taitechnic on Nexus now. He said, that I actually made impact effects while having fallchildren's mod enabled and in mind.
Tested now, that even without impact effects enabled, vanilla swing sfx and the actual hit comes in earlier than the attack animation. Could probably only reach out for fallchildren at the very end and he doesn't seem to be that acive in the morrowind servers lately.

Edit: Tested again with a very slow weapon. The actual hit gets triggered according to the slwo swing (and the vanilla blood spilling afterwards). So it's just the vanilla sfx is early

[rustic latch]

Well, damn. Wonder what it might be then

However, I've went on a little side-quest yesterday adding double-tap-to-roll to Fallchildren's roll mod, and was told that he may be back soon-ish. Not sure when though

[maiden tangle]

Yeah saw that and nice addition ti the mod. Instant download! Even though im on Keyboard an mouse, I didn't wanted to assign another extra key for dodging, so your solution was very welcomed.

Btw. I tested holding the block with short blades again and it seems to be fine now. Did you chance something about that by the latesd version? Could also be that I was very careful now with positioning in terms of the arc window.

[rustic latch]

Btw. I tested holding the block with short blades again and it seems to be fine now. Did you chance something about that by the latesd version? Could also be that I was very careful now with positioning in terms of the arc window.
Well, I think you specifically suffered from a bug in the formula - it was not taking weapon's effectiveness properly, so the "defence factor" was getting multiplied by 0 on weak parry

meaning - there was actually no defence

so I fixed that :P

[maiden tangle]

Thanks for that 👌

[rustic latch]

Also am realising that for roll - I can't make it work with controller Maybe blur will cook something up

I'm happy with double-tap on keyboard though

[maiden tangle]

Btw, about the alt third person animations mod. Do you have impact effects before or after those in the load order?

[rustic latch]

let me see

After, both data dir and the omwscripts files

Impact Effects is actually almost at the very top of my load order, and 3pAltAttacks is down towards the bottom

[maiden tangle]

Then it's the same for me. But is it actually important, in which order the data directory is assigned? I assumed only the load orders of omwscript and omwaddon files are so.

[rustic latch]

not for these two, no. But generally yes. E.g. if you have two mods that replace the same mesh or texture

the one that has its data directory later will take priority

[maiden tangle]

I see, good to know!

[rustic latch]

e,g. Morrowind Optimisation Patch may replace some mesh or texture, hopesfire and trueflame for example - and then let's say you want another replacer for those two swords. You'd need to load it after

Another reason really why I advocate for adding each mod's data dir as a separate directory in the launcher and not stuffing them all into data files

[maiden tangle]

Yeah, since we talked about it in the past (and also with dubious and Blur) I only do it this way now. Before this I often hesitated to download for example short quest mods, that included a lot of extra mesh and tecture files, because I didn't want to bloat my Data Files or manually delete every file independently afterwards to uninstall the mod.
Such a quality of life feature with this now approach.

[rustic latch]

Yup. OpenMW launcher is awesome like that

[rustic latch]

Current formulas high level breakdown:

• Parry defence - only applies outside of perfect parry window:
  * Affected by current weapon skill(or block for shields) + block skill, multiplied by weapon type parry effectiveness and current fatigue percent
• Parry Fatigue cost
  * affected by weapon weight, weapon skill and block skill, as well as weapon type parry effectiveness
• Perfect Parry Window
  * Affected by current fatigue percentage, weapon skill and block skill
• Parry Cooldown - only affects NPCs - lower for higher skill
  * affected by weapon skill and block skill
• Reaction time - only affects NPCS - lower for higher skill
  * affected by speed, weapon skill and block skill
• Parry Hold Duration - Higher skill NPCs will hide behind their guard less. Minimum 0.5 seconds
  * affected by weapon skill and block skill
• Stagger Cooldown - affects player and NPCs, prevents stunlock from repeated fast attacks
  * Affected by endurance, strength and block skill

[ionic echo]

Oh absolutely beautiful

I just saw this mod and was like "man if this isn't openmw compatible I'm going to cry"

[rustic latch]

lmao, nah, openmw only. And I think we are close to release

pretty sure just balancing is left, and even that is mostly where I want it

So, as I request from anyone coming over - do play around, with base settings and potentially with "hard mode" and "all attacks hit", do a few quests and let me know how it feels

[rustic latch]

And I mean, it would be little reason for me to have main thread for it in OpenMw discord if it was not compatible :P

[ionic echo]

Which version can i download, im setting the keybind to the recommended buttons but im not sure if its working

[waxen cliff]

.arrean

** 0.7.7b **

all three formula options from the poll are implemented. Choose which one you like. More settings for the god of settings

No other notable changes, and I'm done for today. Sleep beckons

Attachment(s)

NGarde.0.7.7b.zip

Quoted by @​.arrean from #N'Garde. Vanilla-Friendly Parry and Active Block. Beta · Apr 11, 2026, 2:17 AM

[rustic latch]

^ this is the latest

[rustic latch]

If that one doesn't work. I'll need to see your openmw.log

[ionic echo]

It's not, give me a second to get to it

[rustic latch]

How's that log coming along?

:P

[true umbra]

The Numidian dreams

[ionic echo]

It works, i just had to reinstall

[rustic latch]

Excellent, good to know

[tough juniper]

getting this spammed in my logs, its about n'garde, right? could it be a load order thing? i had to make a few changes to my list

[22:03:35.443 E] L@0xc8ca[scripts/sc/actor.lua] onLoad failed: Lua error: [string "scripts/sc/actor.lua"]:20: Key not found: HandToHand
[22:03:35.443 E] stack traceback:
[22:03:35.443 E] [C]: in function 'error'
[22:03:35.443 E] [string "..."]:30: in function '__index'
[22:03:35.443 E] [string "scripts/sc/actor.lua"]:20: in function <[string "scripts/sc/actor.lua"]:15>
[22:03:35.443 E] [C]: in ?
[22:03:35.443 E] [C]: in ?

[rustic latch]

nah

sc is not me

and I don't even have actor.lua script -it's fencer.lua and creature.lua

not sure what sc would be though

it's usually scripts/modname/some_script.lua

all mine are ngarde

[tough juniper]

oh sorry i searched it and thats where it led me

brain fart

[rustic latch]

Nah, no worries

[rustic latch]

So, I'm considering a release sometime soon.

Haven't been much in terms of feedback, which either means no one is playing with it, or it's fine. I can't do anything about the first one, and the second one is what I want

Any thoughts, feedback, requests?

@here

[tough juniper]

barely had a chance to play with it, but no issues so far. using it along with Foxunder's mods is wild, i got parried, knocked out, disarmed and then they stole my sword and half my money

[rustic latch]

"welcome to vvardenfell"

[tough juniper]

thats the juice man

[rustic latch]

Welp, that's done already and that is indeed the default

[next vector]

1. Feinting or an just an alternate attack would be neat, like you've pressed attack+parry and you get a feint or shield bash depending on what items are equipped that causes the NPC to drop their guard.
2. Other than that, an option to tune how often the NPCs parry, or how often they are staggered might be fun to play with. (Overall, I think I'd like it a bit more if the NPCs hid behind shields more often*)
3. This is might be out of scope, but tripping with polearms (the character being tripped could just fall down or be staggered) and/or pushing could add more elements to the fighting

• but I'm a little weird and made a LUA mod to give all the NPCs shields, so it might not fit the use case

[rustic latch]

1. Considered, - still a maybe, specifically the block bash of some description - still in my todo. But, I don't have a good idea of what it should look like, what it would do and how
2. I probably can expose some more settings. But all of those are skill based formulas - higher skilled NPCs will have lower parry cooldown, but will hide behind it less. And for stagger - the higher the endurance/skill level the longer the time between possible staggers
3. Oh, definitely out of scope, and will need a new set of animations. I may consider it, if I decide to add "specials" of some descriptions to all weapons, this would fit the bill for spears and staves, but I'm not aiming for general combat overhaul, not yet

Otherwise - are there any parts that feel plain bad or unfun for you?

[next vector]

I was thinking a feint could just be a "half attack" where the player looks like they are going to attack and then the NPC drops their guard might be the easiest way to implement that.

I suppose that's the main unfun part, is that there is no real way to break their guard (unless I'm missing something).

[rustic latch]

Well, yeah, the only real way is distance and timing

You can threaten - then wait for a tiny bit, they'll lower their guard

[next vector]

Right, which is fine one-on-one, but I like to aggro large groups all at once. 😁

[rustic latch]

Yeah, that's fair. And I had a nasty encounter in TR myself while doing Akamora FG quests. On the way to the shrine -there's a telvanni nercomancer with 3 skeletons, it was hectic

But that's part of the idea - in those situations you really want to make sure you're not getting flanked etc, fighting more than one enemy should be tricky

For "feints"

although it's a bit cheesy -

you can raise and release the attack while looking at one enemy, then quickly turn to another

iirc - it will register

[next vector]

Oh, definitely, it does increase the difficulty of encounters and makes you think twice about just going gung-ho

[rustic latch]

though may need to test

[rustic latch]

Yah, main thing for me was making sure that it is also more fun and rewarding. I personally quite enjoy the "parade-riposte" gameplay

catching an opponent with your parry, hitting back

etc

But I may really think about feints. Problem is - I'm not sure how to implement them

Right now "breaking guard" is all based on timings and cooldowns

so that s not really a thing that is easy to slot in

hmm...

[next vector]

Definitely, it is much more fun. I played for a little bit without and the combat felt sparse. Parrying is now a must-have mod.

[rustic latch]

Very pleased to hear that, and thank you

personally - it's something I was always missing in MW, so here I am

I may have half an idea of how to do feints... This may not work out, so not promising anything, but I'll take a look

[next vector]

Cool, no pressure.

[rustic latch]

Two main things is that I don't want to add another button

and I don't know how good it'll feel/play, especially NPC vs NPC

[next vector]

Reasonable. That's why I was thinking a button combo

[rustic latch]

always can do only for player, ofc. But this whole thing I have here is explicitly enabled for npcs too

And if I didn't do that - the mod wouldn't be half as good

so excluding features from NPCs seems odd

[next vector]

Something like an attack combo might be within the constraints. Like, if the player or NPC does 3 short attacks it would break some low-level parrys or something. Or if the player/NPC does 3 short attacks the NPC backs off and resets their guard.

I guess that would be more of a disengage, but similar idea.

[rustic latch]

https://tenor.com/view/writing-notes-daffy-duck-looney-tunes-gif-17872468

[rustic latch]

Speaking of "backs off"

did you fight any NPCs, especially those with spears, since the last update?

[next vector]

I engaged a few in larger melee battles, but I'll try to find one by itself.

They did seem to keep behind the other's with shorter weapons

[rustic latch]

yup

they now stay at the edge of their weapon range

[next vector]

A nice addition.

I didn't even notice until you said something.

[rustic latch]

1v1 vs skilled spearmer is now annoying af

but very satisfying when you rush them

[next vector]

I'll have to seek out a worthy foe.

[rustic latch]

base game behaviour generally caused NPCs to keep in almost hugging distance

I feel like this is better, but e.g. spearmen guards are now even tougher than they were

just because of that

they also should generally telegraph attacks more since last couple versions - so should be easier to tell when to parry

[next vector]

I wonder if they intentionally try to flank while in groups.

[rustic latch]

Not on my end, iirc that's vanilla behaviour

since they seek "line of sight"

[next vector]

True.

[rustic latch]

it's quite primitive, I don't know if e.g. Mercy does anything with that

but it's there in base game too

[next vector]

That probably explains why I'm always backing up in large group battles.

[rustic latch]

that gives me an idea...

[next vector]

Too bad there's no group tactics

[rustic latch]

Not for group tactics mind you

but in most games, egregious example being e.g. mount&blade - spears are weak because NPCs don't fear them

but it doesn't only affect spears

Maybe I should add something so that lower skilled enemies try and backpedal a bit when threatened

Not sure if it'll feel good

but may make spear gameplay better - as you'll be able to keep them at bay a bit more easily

I may be getting ahead of myself

[next vector]

Not a bad idea to not have them go and try to impale themselves

[rustic latch]

I'll see if I can do anything reasonable with it. If not - eh

out of real scope anyway

but maybe

[next vector]

Nothing wrong with giving it a go.

It sounds like it would add another dimension to spear gameplay.

[rustic latch]

On the other hand it may make it worse -if they back off out of range

Need to sleep on it

Will try feints first

[next vector]

Oh, does the spear-distance thing work with other two-handed weapons? I noticed an NPC with a two handed mallet going for a hug.

[rustic latch]

it works on all weapons

but - it depends on the actual range that is defined for them

and all weapons in game are 6ft, except spears which are 10.8

in base game that is

e.g. Vultureman uses one https://discordapp.com/channels/260439894298460160/1482416741077356692/1490018136823431350 - which would alter this behavior

but mallets/etc are same range as daggers if unomodified

[waxen cliff]

vultureman

its esp

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/49156?tab=description

Linked by @​.arrean from #N'Garde. Vanilla-Friendly Parry and Active Block. Beta · Apr 4, 2026, 4:00 PM

[next vector]

Ah, I didn't know that spears were the only differently ranged melee weapons. I had thought they were all the same.

[rustic latch]

e.g.

staves are 10.8 too

spears and staves

Huh. Actually. Warhammers are 9 ft.

I somehow completely misremembered that

why the hell 2h swords would have shorter reach than hammers

well, anyway - there you have it. That + half bounding box is about the distance they should try and keep

I guess I just rememberd the sillyness of a dagger being same range as a claymore and applied it universally

[next vector]

Still a bit silly, though

[rustic latch]

oh very much

but that's Morrowind

20 quid says they had plans for proper melee reach system but ran out of time

[next vector]

Definitely wouldn't bet against that

[rustic latch]

Which is why it's "there" but this half-baked

[rustic latch]

Welp. After some prototyping I think I'll have to drop feints idea for now. Can do the proper inputs (e.g. left click while parrying) but feints will require animations and I have no energy left for blender for the near future

[dusk palm]

after using it for longer I really gotta give the mod creator props
those attack range are very accurate to the length of the weapon model. 2 handed swords have way more range than one handed swords or daggers. Which does kinda fuck up the balancing tbh
As a matter of fact im not sure if daggers can even reach cliffracers

[rustic latch]

They probably can't

Cliffracers have weird hitboxes as is, where you often need to jump with a 1h sword to fight them

so with those short daggers - likely impossible

[dusk palm]

true

thankfully I use 2 handed swords

[rustic latch]

Yeah, that certainly would be easier

[eager crane]

Just to leave my feedback here: this mod works perfect for me. Next gen achieved

Thank you

[rustic latch]

Thank you for feedback. If you encounter anything that feels weird or unfun - do let me know. We are pretty solidly in balancing phase here, but some changes may still be made

[dusk palm]

What I like is that the range isnt based on the weapon class but on the actual model of each weapon, except for modded weapons which get a range based on the average range of that weapon class

[rustic latch]

Hmmm. Average? I wonder how they did it

that sounds great, I may actually install it. Cause what has been stopping me is that I play TR/PT and use mostly weapons from those

so I thought it just won't affect them

[dusk palm]

Nah, I play that too and still use it

[rustic latch]

nice

[dusk palm]

definetly give it a try

I think it works great with your mod

[eager crane]

ancient brawler

[rustic latch]

Installing it as we speak

oh no. This is what I was afraid of

I don't think they do anything for average for moded weapons. They've dropped fCombatDistance GMST to 64 from 128, which is fine, but then they edit "reach" property of each weapon, and those that are not edited have vanilla values of 1, 1.8 etc, and e.g. for modded 2h swords it's 1, in game units 1 * 64 is ~3 feet. One foot in game is 21.333333333 units

[strong lynx]

woops broke something

tried to block with throwable

and heres using lockpick 🙂

[rustic latch]

Good man. Now what did you expect whould happen? however, both of those should put you into h2h parry mode. I'll check it out whn I get home

[strong lynx]

well, i expected nothing to happen tbh, but instead i saw console errors haaaa!

lockpick does put you into h2h

throwables dont

[rustic latch]

Yeah I've probably missed something in the latest rewrite

Ill be home in about 30

[strong lynx]

i wanted to quickly test on a new char but then i realised that tere are barely any melee fighters around seydaneen, gotta go adventuring to find someone to fight

[rustic latch]

Well, there are a couple in Addamasartus, but yeah, not much beyond that

[rustic latch]

Well apparently ItemData.condition can return nil, I guess I'll just make it treat all throwables as "broken" so it just goes into h2h mode.

The second one doesn't look like it's me though - that's in projectilephysics, innit

I'm not doing anything special with lockpicks - I'm just ignoring them and putting actor in h2h parry mode

[rustic latch]

Alright,

0.7.8b

• Some minor formula adjustments
• NPCs should lower their guard slightly quicker after perfect parry (their perfect parry) to counter-attack
• Shield hit animation no longer plays on perfect block (imagine you got the perfect angle, not just too the brunt of the hit on your shield) as it didn't make sense and interfered with counter-attacking
• Fix some weirdness that happened for NPCs when guard was lowered after hold timer expired
• Fixed item condition check, now lockpicks/probes/trownweapons put actor into h2h parry mode properly

And actually up to date archive

[rustic latch]

Holy fuck, why nexus text editor is so bad at nested lists O_o

[eager crane]

a fight with a golden saint teamed up with lame corprus stalker turned out to be legendary. It took me minutes and loads of consumables just to land a (1) strike on her. Very good challenge

[true umbra]

Noice.

Really nailed that Kingdom Come feel.

[eager crane]

I can't wait to level up my long blade. It's one of my worst weapon skills. But it would be so cool to fence with a proper long sword/rapier/saber

[inner hare]

prepare to meet your doom

[rustic latch]

Other weapons are effective too, although I must admit, I play a lot of longblade and did a lot of balancing around that

[rustic latch]

That sound like I maybe overtuned it a bit? What were you weapon/block skills at the time? And did you feel like it's too difficult?

[strong lynx]

some quick feedback from very abrupt testing,

i think right now misses are parryable, right? Maybe they shouldnt waste (as much) of player stamina though?

That thing with attack and parry blending together and attack becoming invisible is still certainly happening, i think maybe they are allowed to parry during some of the attack anim stages?

I like that npcs dont really turtle completely in block and that they react after some time to your charged attack, and that they will not hold block indefeinitely when you keep holding charged attack, so its possible to wait for it and still strike, thats nice

Im still on a fence in re of npcs reacting to quick attacks, if they were react to attack spam for example - that would've felt more fair, but to a single quick attack, that just feels like a random thing out of my control, i had no chance to notice that they are blocking and to change my tactics, but maybe ill warm up to it in a bit

Preparation to parry overall feels somewhat sluggish even on hard mode, feels like there should be no reason why the character takes all the time in the world to simply raise a sword, feels like irl that motion can be done twice as fast

I really like trying to get a perfect timing on a hard mod though

Also weould've been cool to have some kind of special attack anim right after perfect parry, i.e a riposte, but prob out of scope, i get it

Parry hands recoil anim i feel would've elevated it, I can help with that if youd like... that is as soon as i get more free time ugh

I was not expecting parry to constantly sap my stamina, i dont understand why would it do so, I dont know what i feel about it, but i certainly was not expecting it

I have 35 block and 50 longblade, it feels to me like holding parry barely reduces damage i get, like maybe by 30%? I personally would expect blocking with 2h to atleast reduce it by 50%. Tbh even if my block was 0 - this would've felt weird and i wouldve still expected noticeable reduction

since im pying with stamina for this, it should give me SOMETHING in return even at low skill

id rather have it block 30% + skill dependant increase but have amount of stamina used for blocking being very high at low skill levels

And i really like that they dont try to react to every attack, atleast it seems so on low level chars, on those it feels like its at a comfortable level, like they will block some of my attacks when i over-commit, but they will not tdo it on every attack,

[inner hare]

Btw @rustic latch there have been many mod updates so I will ask about the latest version. When using a 2H weapon or 1H with no shield, which skill do you use for scaling? Weapon skill or Block?

[rustic latch]

both, "main tool skill" and block as secondary

so for 2h sword it would longblade and block

[inner hare]

ok

I'm on the fence here.

[rustic latch]

for shield it's block twice

[inner hare]

in Vanilla, Block is shield-only

not sure whether it should be kept that way

[rustic latch]

It's "primary" for shields, I treat is a "general active defence" skill. Same as TES4 e.g. does

[inner hare]

What Oblivion does is besides the point as TES3 is base reference point 😅 .

I can see arguments for both options

but since it affects skill picks... maybe a toggle?

or would that be too much of a bother

?

[rustic latch]

That would be tricky, block generally has much lesser impact

I don't think - it being secondary should force you to choose it as major or even minor

give me a sec

[inner hare]

do you have the exact formula somewhere?

[rustic latch]

yes

[inner hare]

maybe it's fine

[rustic latch]

let me find it

[inner hare]

ok

[rustic latch]

and then finish writing up the response to Max

[inner hare]

sure, sure

I plan to put the mod to some rigorous testing when I get the time. I think that you are still gathering feedback, right? 🙂

[strong lynx]

re non-hardmod, to me personally its quite easy, i just parried probably 10 times in arow that lady in a first cave with a shortblade, thats on mercy though, which is im not sure easier or harder

[rustic latch]

Yeah, after recent changes "hard" is the intended way to play

[strong lynx]

... and i just killed a dark brothehood assassing on level one with nothing but a sick 2h claymore parry skills

[rustic latch]

Yes. Nexus page is up but non,published I want balance feedback for next several days

[inner hare]

🫡 You have my axe. I will get back to you before the weekend.

[strong lynx]

hard, well, dont throw stone at me - but id say on hard parry windup is waaaaaay to slow and long, like it just feels unnecesarry sluggish, im here totally thinking more of a dark souls levels of timing, where its not a whole second of prep but rather something in 300-400ms range

[rustic latch]

It's 15 frames sped up by 2x on hardmode in last version

[strong lynx]

thats it from me, sry for a wall of text haha

[strong lynx]

is it not bound to anim!?

[rustic latch]

It is - animaton speed is increased by 2x when hardmode is enabled

All animations are 15 frames

[strong lynx]

i mean, parry is not ready when the sword is in its final pose, its ready earlier?

[strong lynx]

at which blender fps?

(that matters)

[rustic latch]

on "easy" - ready on "start" key, on "hard" - ready at "stop" key

[rustic latch]

No bloody clue. 60 I think

It doesn't feel sluggish to me at all, however. So I wonder what's different

but I may increase the animation speed overall

[rustic latch]

Now, let me deal with this for a sec

[strong lynx]

30 i guess, i just roughly measured it, take around 0.5 sec to raise a parry

[rustic latch]

...

wat

it should still be 0.25 since animation is sped up

in hard mode

or did you just test easy?

[strong lynx]

apparently this is parry timing chart from ds3 i believe

notice though that its 60 fps, so divide by 2 to be directly comparable to yours

[rustic latch]

Would it make sense that I don't really care about how DS does it?

[strong lynx]

nono thats hard

claymore

ah wait i needed to do reloadlua

after chaning the setting

lemme try to parry some stuff with 0.25 anim

[rustic latch]

wat?

no you don't

unless there's some weirdness

[strong lynx]

I mean i might be going insane but prob not

[rustic latch]

it should read that setting on settingsChange

[strong lynx]

are you subscribing to settings updates?

[rustic latch]

ofc I do

[strong lynx]

ah well, doesnt seem to do so

i dunno

[rustic latch]

what is it, amateur hour :D

[strong lynx]

I usually dont im too lazy for that ahaha

[rustic latch]

I'll doublecheck

[strong lynx]

but i recently made a wrapper for that

[rustic latch]

needs a wrapper about as much as "isEven" needs to be a module 🤷‍♂️

but fair

[strong lynx]

i usually just leave a "yo run reloadlua or reload your game" on top of my setting, and then just blame users haha

[strong lynx]

naw, you just dont have a good taste for wrappers, you dont wrap subscription cmon, you wrap the whole settings system so you can get setting by wrapper.settingName and all those settings are also automatically updated by the sub system

[rustic latch]

Now, for your feed back: p1:

i think right now misses are parryable, right? Maybe they shouldnt waste (as much) of player stamina though?
fair, I can hook in cost reduction for unsuccessful attacks.
That thing with attack and parry blending together and attack becoming invisible is still certainly happening, i think maybe they are allowed to parry during some of the attack anim stages?
The swing animations are allowed, feels better with some attack cancelling than without any. But I may consider changing that.

Im still on a fence in re of npcs reacting to quick attacks, if they were react to attack spam for example - that would've felt more fair, but to a single quick attack, that just feels like a random thing out of my control, i had no chance to notice that they are blocking and to change my tactics, but maybe ill warm up to it in a bit

NPC's have reaction time, generally 200-400-500 ms, depending on their skill level. Minimum is 150, and never lower

Preparation to parry overall feels somewhat sluggish even on hard mode, feels like there should be no reason why the character takes all the time in the world to simply raise a sword, feels like irl that motion can be done twice as fast
Abstractions and conditions, so RL logic doesn't stricly apply., I also don't know why you feel it's so sluggish - felt fine to me. I wonder.

[strong lynx]

ok, yeah with 0.25 anim pulling off a perfect parry feels satisfying af

[rustic latch]

Also weould've been cool to have some kind of special attack anim right after perfect parry, i.e a riposte, but prob out of scope, i get it
Definitely out of scope

Parry hands recoil anim i feel would've elevated it, I can help with that if youd like... that is as soon as i get more free time ugh
again, out of scope for now, but I've thoguht about that
I was not expecting parry to constantly sap my stamina, i dont understand why would it do so, I dont know what i feel about it, but i certainly was not expecting it
It's in settings - default is 3 per second iirc, set it to 0

I have 35 block and 50 longblade, it feels to me like holding parry barely reduces damage i get, like maybe by 30%? I personally would expect blocking with 2h to atleast reduce it by 50%. Tbh even if my block was 0 - this would've felt weird and i wouldve still expected noticeable reduction
I'll need to plug that into the formula, but should be more than 30%, what weapon type?

[strong lynx]

when they go into parry right at the beginning of follow-through attack anim it looks a bit glitchy bcs follow through starts right after the damage delivery frame, i.e not at the end of swing but in its very middle

[rustic latch]

id rather have it block 30% + skill dependant increase but have amount of stamina used for blocking being very high at low skill levels
I may add a base count, iirc it's 0.10 base right now - may increase it

And i really like that they dont try to react to every attack, atleast it seems so on low level chars, on those it feels like its at a comfortable level, like they will block some of my attacks when i over-commit, but they will not tdo it on every attack,
This is the reaction time at play

so it works

[rustic latch]

Yeah, fair. I'll re-add swing animations to list of "can't parry during"

[strong lynx]

claymore

[strong lynx]

if you want to be like annoying about it, you can check anim duration for a current weapon type and say allow to parry only after half of the follow-through anim

kinda overengineering, but you know, flexible

[rustic latch]

Not the formula, but ratios:
here's all the "secondary" ones for block:

defenceSecondarySkillRatio = 0.30

perfectParrySecondarySkillRatio = 0.13

fatiugeCostSecondarySkillRatio = 0.1

staggerCooldownSecondarySkillRatio = 0.025

parryCooldownSecondarySkillRatio = 0.35

npcReactionTimeSecondarySkillFactor = 0.15

imo, it's generally low enough impact that getting it leveled just from parrying should feel enough

[rustic latch]

so 50, 35 and claymore.

and full fatigue, I hope?

[strong lynx]

naw, probably like half fatigue, i was fighting

[rustic latch]

and if not - how much and which fatigue formula? ( it's in settings)

[strong lynx]

i didnt change default settings re that

[rustic latch]

full impact then

so let me calc that

well, you were spot on

about 30 percent

that's on half fatigue

at full impact

woudl've been 62% at full fatigue

32.5 being your main skill impact, 9 is from block. 1.5 is 2h long blade default effectiveness

so, again to Cybvep's point - block is lower impact on this, to the point where I don't think it force you to pick it as primary or seconday skill

Now. I need to get to work, will make some changes based on feedback later today

[strong lynx]

ah so fatigue is a direct multiplier, ok

[rustic latch]

yeah
and far as I can tell - my testers love the pain:
#1482416741077356692 message

[waxen cliff]

Raw embed linked by @​.arrean from @​.arrean in #1482416741077356692

poll_question_text

Default formula for "weak" parry

victor_answer_votes

6

total_votes

8

victor_answer_id

1

victor_answer_text

Include fatigue percentage

[inner hare]

this doesn't seem bad. More like a small bonus than anything important.

[rustic latch]

yeah, that was the idea. But for shields, block is primary and secondary

[inner hare]

makes sense

I will provide more direct feedback after doing in-game testing

[rustic latch]

Much appreciated

[inner hare]

I play with Mercy, if that makes a difference.

[strong lynx]

well, opinions opinions as usually, to me that doesnt feel good, im fine with fatigue scaling things, but literally being a direct multiplier makes it so blocking at anythinng but the highest fatigue is almost pointless, it borderline invalidates even the mechanic of fatigue itself, since if you HAVE to have the highest fatigue all the time, thats practically the same as not having fatigue as a mechanic at all

imo should more like be a small factor scaled by ffatigue

[rustic latch]

switch formula to 50 impact or remove it

that's why there are options

50% impact effectively "caps" it. So that as you go below 50% fatigue impact stays at 50%

I may handle that slightly differently, but that's the current implementation

May also do so that multplier goes down slower

now, I really need to work

so see ya'll later

[strong lynx]

I wouldve not understood what that option does until you explained it to me

yea now i get it, ill just do no fatigue effect

see ya!

[rustic latch]

can also tune base parry cost

25 maye be too aggressive

[strong lynx]

Although smth strange now happens with no fatigue formula - fells like im blocking all the damage no matter what, and i dont think im that lucky

when im not parrying ever 2nd enemy attack lands, when im holding block i just blocked all attacks until my stam run out and 0 damage

[strong lynx]

To me current on-hit cost felt quite reasonable so far, that is assuming fatigue does not play a big role in how much i block

but i also have 190 fatigue, maybe thats a lot

And my offer of animation help still stands, doesnt seem like you are interested in that, but you know if you will be - lmk

[rustic latch]

That's definitely a bug. I'll need to doublecheck the formula. It should just set the fatigue multiplier to 1 no matter what

but not affect anything else

[rustic latch]

Let's consider it "day 2" features. I want to do "parry impact" animations, for when you weak parry, same as I do for shield right now - if parry is not perfect I play the "shield hit" animation from base game

But it's 10 animations, for 1st and 3rd person each

bleugh

Then - If I do that, I'd also want to do feints, which will start in "parry full raised" pose and imitate an attack, but again - fuck ton of animations

[rustic latch]

Shouldn't. Shouldn't much at least. I don't currently have mercy enabled, but people played with it and it seemed to work without confict

[strong lynx]

oh are 1st and 3rd person anims very different, tbh i thought you are reusing 1st person anims for both

[rustic latch]

Exported separately, but take a look at fingers in 3rd person e.g. in "staff" animation on left hand

that's caused by exporting off 1st person rig

Not very different, but I'd want them to be eventually, if I have energy for that

Well, exactly the same, but made specifically for 1st and 3rd

[strong lynx]

got it

[rustic latch]

the only one that's really different is h2h block, cause 3rd person was made by SaintJ, and first person by me

[eager crane]

my blunt weapon (I was fighting with an auroran mace) is 60+. The fight was hard but felt like this is how a fight with a demon-champion coupled with the strongest corprus monster should be

[strong lynx]

btw you are using ARP rig for anims right? I noticed that your wrists are kinda twisted sometime/dont align with palms, if you want to tweak it - check the latest blend rig file i updated in MAOP discord, ive exposed a controller to adjust wrist rotations

[eager crane]

I also was out of most potions and didn't want to abandon my companion (a Bosmer pauper from Gnaar Mok I recruited)

[strong lynx]

sometimes its kindof necessary since that whole segmented mesh just cant do proper writs twisting

that is on vanilla meshes, im not using any body replacers

[rustic latch]

arp first person yeah, the one G7 shared, I tried to do it manually by adjusting elbows

but some weirdness remains

[rustic latch]

Got it. Well, still noted as balance feedback

[strong lynx]

yes, so the one i updated in tools chanel there is the same thing but tweaked and improved

[rustic latch]

Got it, thank you

Ah, dammit. Need to update blender then

Loading "/mnt/data/modding/TESMods/Morrowind/MW-blender/Original Rigs and Tools/morrowind-armature-arp-v1.5.blend" failed: Cannot read blend file '/mnt/data/modding/TESMods/Morrowind/MW-blender/Original Rigs and Tools/morrowind-armature-arp-v1.5.blend', incomplete header, may be from a newer version of Blender

I'll figure it out later

[amber slate]

Nels really gave me a workout

ignore that I stole his pants

I absolutely adore this, so far. If and when it hits the Nexus, I hope it's a huge hit!

[inner hare]

I just shot this guy with an arrow two days ago

[rustic latch]

Thank you!

Hopefully soon, I'm in a "this is perfect for it ends here" stage for last couple of days, so needs some balancing, minor fixing and maybe exposing more settings. but functionality wise it's where I want it to be for 1.0

[rustic latch]

Shame he doesn't have a shield ^^

[inner hare]

https://tenor.com/view/loki-loki-sad-yes-very-sad-loki-show-marvel-loki-gif-23592461

[uncut sun]

if it helps at all for balancing. with my many.. many.. many hours in for honor, i have learned that for videogame parries 400 ms is very quick and very hard to react to. 300 ms is pretty much impossible. 500 ms is a little slow with a bit of practice. if the time from the attack to your parry input activating is faster than 500 ms, it starts to feel very punishing, perhaps even a little to gamey if the parry windup is to show, as max has been saying.

[rustic latch]

Two difficult things in programming.
2. Threading

1. Naming things
   3.Off by one errors

Looks like I've fallen victim of #3 and now all formulas need a review

[rustic latch]

Yeah, we've figured it out - the animatin speed was indeed not switching correctly when going from "hard" to "easy" mode. Sped up animation feels fine in hard mode and is not necessary on normal since parry is active immediately

So the delay between you clicking a button and being protected on hard mode is actually about 250ms

which seems fine - it's quick enough that one can press "parry" after seeing enemy attack start - and it is ready by the time attack lands

most of the time

Actually, may just increase animation speed across the board. No reason to keep it slower on "normal" mode

[uncut sun]

that seems like it would be the perfect timing. if an attack is 500 ms then with a reaction time of 250 ms, which is fairly normal, that would just line up

[rustic latch]

attack windup is between 175 and 450 ms on normal and 350-450 on hard. Then add attack animation duration to that

so yeah about that long

like - if you watch opponents weapon hand - you can reliably parry every attack

in a hectic fight - you won't be, and that's by design

[maiden tangle]

In general I completely agree to that and would be pretty fine with it, if the reaction time would be changed as juggested.
Though for what I experienced with Morrowinds NPC behavior, even with the Mercy mod enabled, that I tend to kinda forsee when NPCs would „want“ to attack me and often perfect parry accordingly. Me and the opponent often trigger our actions simultaneously.
Just an opinion and nothing that I wanted to bring forward as a counter argument

[rustic latch]

Noted on both counts

[strong lynx]

My 5 cents - important to note that parries do not have to be reactive! In DS pvp you can only react to gratswords or slower weapons, parrying a shortsword is about baiting and predicting, not reacting!

[strong lynx]

Exactly and i personally REALLY like that it plays out like that often right now

You do not merely react, you foresee attacks using your sick warrior's sixth sense, exactly kind of feeling i was hoping Arrean will be able to balance, and i think it is very much there

And btw mercy does randomise a lot of stuff including hold times and pauses between attacks, so its not really a simple pattern to get attuned to and you dont always feel it right, but it just feels so satisfying when you do!

[regal egret]

Blocks/Parries with shields don't seem to be giving block skill

[rustic latch]

Hmmm? That's odd

Another thing to check out

oh... They kind of do, but I may be invoking skill gain wrong.

Yeah, I'll fix that in a minute

Was about to post a version with changes and fixes based on morning feedback

[rustic latch]

Do you happen to have Skill Evolution installed?

[regal egret]

Yeah

It doesn't report any skill increases at all

[rustic latch]

it's weird. For me it only gives me any skill gain on perfect parry. But SE debug logs report gain either way

[inner hare]

sth was changed for better compatibility with skrow's new mod today in SE. Maybe it's a similar case, i.e. some easy tweak. Worth a report. Mym usually resolves things like that quickly if he can.

[rustic latch]

Oh yeah

with SE disabled skill gain works fine

both on weak and perfect parry

Gonna try latest version of SE and if it still happens - ask Mym

Yup, still borked

I wonder

[inner hare]

oh well

get the logs, send them to mym

also, is it 0.5 or 0.51?

maybe it matters

[rustic latch]

0.51

from a couple weeks ago

[inner hare]

does your mod have a Nexus page btw?

[rustic latch]

unpublished

"pre-release"

I also need to make some screenshots and videos with the latest version

[inner hare]

is 0.51 a hard req?

[rustic latch]

no

[inner hare]

ok

[rustic latch]

Not a req at all, I'm just running the latest

[inner hare]

ok

[rustic latch]

Now, If you plan on grabbing it now - hold up a few minutes

[inner hare]

no

I'm on 0.5

[rustic latch]

I mean the mod

:P

[inner hare]

ah

not today

tomorrow

probably

[rustic latch]

No problem, I was just about to post when i ran into the skill gain thing

[inner hare]

I play with Mercy, SE, NCG and a shitton of other mods, so it's a good testing ground

[rustic latch]

what's weird is that it works on perfect parry path - I don't get what's different between the two

I only change the value

[inner hare]

curious

mym probably explained it somewhere but I forgot

[rustic latch]

Well, I've looked at what he's talked to Skrow about - not my case, I do provide skill use type properly

so I'm stumped. Going to poke at it a bit more

[inner hare]

poke-poke

like with a rapier?

stick them with the pointy end!

[rustic latch]

that's the way to do it

[rustic latch]

Alright. Quite a few bugs fixed. Let's call this RC-1

Still can't figure out what's wrong with skill gain. Works reliably with SE disabled, doesn't work at all with latest SE. Asked Mym, we'll see.

** 1.0.0 RC-1**

Dammit it felt good to type that.

• Fixed hard mode animation speed multiplier not applying immediately when setting was changed.
• "Missed" attacks if parried now only cost 1/3rd the normal fatigue cost to the defender.
• Fixed off by one error in getStatCurve method used in every single formula. The bug was causing it to take an extra "curve section" where it shouldn't have. Basically meaning that skill level of 50 was being interpreted as 95, for curve step of 45 e.g.
• As a result of the above - had to double or nearly double ratios for all formulas to retain previous behaviour.
• Fixed some calculations that were happening too often on update
• increased the minimum defence value provided by the weak parry

[rustic latch]

And Fuji, just for the record, which OpenMW version are you on?

[regal egret]

Dev build, probably not the newest

[rustic latch]

right, so similar to mine

good to know

Actually - also re-enabled more animations that prevent parry

let me know how it feels

[regal egret]

ab779287d5

[rustic latch]

17df1f7669 on my end. Unless one of us goes digging through build pipelines that's not easy to compare though

[rustic latch]

Re: Skill Gain with Skill Evolution installed if any of you are not reading Skill Evolution thread.

SE prevents block skill gain if damage is non zero(on weak parry)

and SE prevents weapon skill gain if damage is zero or nil - which it is when we parry, as we didn't hit anyone

Mym thinks SE may need to be more permissive, and is looking into it

On my end - I've added a compatibility tweak, so that if SE is installed, we use SE interface to register onHit handler, not native interface, which also helps a bit

[inner hare]

this is the latest version?

[rustic latch]

ye, for now

[inner hare]

ok

https://tenor.com/view/zorro-sword-gif-16835158829204076164

time for testing

[rustic latch]

One thing - do take a look at available settings if something feeld odd - there may be a switch or a value for that

[inner hare]

Hard Mode is No by default

What's your intent?

I want to test your intended settings before making tweaks, if any

[rustic latch]

User choice.

But, the way I'd play is HardMode on, all attacks hit on, and defaults for everything else

I may rename that setting to "easy mode" and flip its effects

[inner hare]

Def no for all attacks hit

[rustic latch]

That's up to you

I just like it

There's no significant balance difference between the two - just better feedback imo in that mode

the "glancing" or "fumbled" attack damage is reduced so much that it may as well be a miss

Take a look at the readme here, if you want:
https://gitlab.com/Arrean/openmwluaparry

That however may call for a poll, cause I don't think I've got that info.

[inner hare]

I don't want to remove on hit rolls as they represent MW's core. It would be too much of a divergence. Parrying is just an additional combat element. I will put Hard Mode on first, though.

[rustic latch]

It still counts them, just gives you a tiny bit of damage if the attack was going to be a miss originally

@here. Please take a look at two polls above

[inner hare]

Min durability loss is nominal?

[rustic latch]

Default is 3 right?

Yeah, that should be fine

on weak parry you'll lose that + remaining damage after defence factor is applied

on perfect parry - just that

so inverse of base game - on hight skill shields break slower not faster

[inner hare]

For final release you should consider adding console debug log on/off

[rustic latch]

yeah, easily done. All logging is handled through logger module. I can just set log level based on that setting

[uncut sun]

this is of course valid. my one slight disagreement is that when game mechanics turn to much from reaction to predicting, it starts to feel very gamey. this is especially bad when npc have the same ability (parrying in this case) and they also have to "react". tuning npcs "reacting" can be very hard. usually you program combat around these issue to make them non issues ie features. but this is straying to far from discussing mr arreans fantastic mod i think

[rustic latch]

It may be tooting my own horn a bit, but what you describe here is what I was aiming for. Some reacting, some predicting. NPC reaction time is generally a struggle, I may need to tighten the range difference between low and high skill level NPCs, but genereally - the higher their skill level the better they react.

Achieving the intended effect of better fighters reading you like an open book and weak fighters not being able to react to most of your attacks

Not 100% sure I've achieved that, but that was the goal

And I think completely clearing it is a question of tuning at this point

[inner hare]

First hour of testing. The mod is very fun, that's for sure. Makes combat more dynamic but it keeps Morrowind vibe. Nice 🙂 . I'm writing my notes right now. BTW where can I find the formulas? Mod settings are vague.

[rustic latch]

Formulas are not exactly written down.
Top level overview is in the readme on gitlab:

Diminishing returns, most skill/attribute values used in formulas below become less effective for the calculation after a certain point
Parry defence - only applies outside of perfect parry window:
Affected by current weapon skill(or block for shields) + block skill, multiplied by weapon type parry effectiveness and current fatigue percent
Parry Fatigue cost
affected by weapon weight, weapon skill and block skill, as well as weapon type parry effectiveness
Perfect Parry Window
Affected by current fatigue percentage, weapon skill and block skill
Parry Cooldown - only affects NPCs - lower for higher skill
affected by weapon skill and block skill
Reaction time - only affects NPCS - lower for higher skill
affected by speed, weapon skill and block skill
Parry Hold Duration - Higher skill NPCs will hide behind their guard less. Minimum 0.5 seconds
affected by weapon skill and block skill
Stagger Cooldown - affects player and NPCs, prevents stunlock from repeated fast attacks
Affected by endurance, strength and block skill```

but it's top level

[inner hare]

...

I wanted numbers 😅

I read the readme 🙂

[rustic latch]

then here

https://gitlab.com/Arrean/openmwluaparry/-/blob/master/scripts/ngarde/controllers/parry.lua?ref_type=heads#L187

line 187 down

e.g. fatigueParryCost:

[inner hare]

I will ignore SE compatibility stuff as it's already been reported and is being investigated. As for the other stuff:

1. General combat feeling is good. The mod is a big improvement over Vanilla.
2. PC skill threshold seems to make things a bit too easy. A lvl 1 player who exits chargen can already have 40-45 skill. I made an Imperial Crusader, an average pick, and it was a bit too easy. Long Blade 45, Blunt Weapon 40. Used dai-katanas, maces, warhammers. I guess that it's a bit generous to consider 40 the base threshold for perfect parries. Based on mod settings, it was not exactly clear how exactly everything is calculated but the description said sth about next 10 skill levels greatly contributing to effectiveness. If 10 skill levels mean up to 50, then that seems a bit dubious as well. It's not a high skill level. It's sth which the average character can have in the first few hours of the game.
3. Why can I parry creature strikes? I mean ogrims, mudcrabs etc. This doesn't feel right, i.e. very gamey in a bad way. Only shields should be allowed as in Vanilla. If you want to keep that for weapons, I would suggest making it a toggle. If there is one, I missed it. I played on default settings except setting Hard Mode on.
4. When blocking with HTH, I got sounds as with weapon parries. That was weird.

[rustic latch]

1. Thank you
2. It starts at 50% of "effectiveness as determined by skill level" and then goes to 100% "effectiveness as determined by skill level" at 50, then continues rising as skills rise
3. Not a toggle, I'll add it.
4. Did you have gauntlets on? It will play armor sounds. depending on gauntlest. If bare handed - it will play a "bruce lee style thwack". If it's a perfect parry - the ding overlays base parry sound and plays together

[inner hare]

4 - I used iron gauntles. Then I unequipped them mid-combat and I got the same THUNK sound as with weapon parries.

[rustic latch]

Should be separate sound, I'll doublecheck - I think used a "slap" sound effect, for 80s hong-kong action film effect

[inner hare]

2 - a curve would help, I guess. I mean, a visual graph. Not that it's anything pressing. However, mod settings are very vague IMO.

[rustic latch]

I'm bad at math. I know how to express it in code, but give me a graphing software and I'm lost

[inner hare]

5. I used the mod with Fair Care and Mercy and it seems to be working well which is encouraging.
6. Keeping distance seems to be working quite ok for most part. One thing I noticed, though, is that the actors don't seem to be registering obstacles behind them. They keep going backwards even when a rock or a wall is behind them and they are not moving at all. If possible, you could encourage them to sidestep when they are trying to move backwards and not really moving.

[rustic latch]

6 is kind of a feature, though sidestep is to be added. if they were much smarter about it - spear enemies would be even worse

teaching spearmer to backpedal was already potentially a mistake

5. Good to hear

[inner hare]

no, it feels good

also, I'm using HBFS as well. It has no backwards running option for player and the enemy

and it's working well as well

I'm also using Lucky Strike mod which adds critical hits and so far it seems to be working well as well

all these mods combined create a much better experience

[rustic latch]

Nice to hear, I tried to ensure compatibility, but of those - I don't have a single one installed

Tested with Mercy at least though

So, added to to-do:

• add sidestep to backpedal if there's an obstacle behind
• toggle to forbid parrying non-fencer creatures, or only with shields
• Doublecheck H2h Parry sounds, and when gauntlets are unequipped
• review perfect parry skill and threshold formulas

[inner hare]

7. Static guard fatigue cost seems to be a bit low. Is it scaled with skill? If not, then it might be an idea. 3 is almost unnoticeable. It's barely above base Fatigue regen (and with endurance bonus it will be well below).

[rustic latch]

completely unscaled, but opinions are divided, so I set it specifically to only counteract base regen at middle of the road endurance

Some people hated it, others wanted more

so default is "there, but barely"

[inner hare]

I think that scaling option would make sense as a toggle. I mean, you can always turn it off by default but it's sth that would make sense for scaling.

What's the difference for heavy/medium/light shield?

I saw it mentioned in the mod settings

but it was vague

(there is a pattern here 😅 )

[rustic latch]

Constants.gauntletParryModMap =
{
["heavyarmor"] = 0.5,
["mediumarmor"] = 0.3,
["lightarmor"] = 0.15,
}
Constants.shieldCategoryModMap =
{
["heavyarmor"] = 2.5,
["mediumarmor"] = 1.75,
["lightarmor"] = 1,
}

^ shields and gauntlets

gauntlets is "for each gauntlet"

[inner hare]

but what is that?

effectiveness?

parry window?

[rustic latch]

yeah

[inner hare]

damage threshold?

[rustic latch]

effectiveness

[inner hare]

so why is an iron shield so much better than glass shield?

why the arbitrary bonus?

[rustic latch]

Don't even go there

[inner hare]

😄

[rustic latch]

I am not doing it per item

you get per armor class and be happy

[inner hare]

I'm saying that I don't see the reason

shields already have variable condition

variable AR

light shields tend to break much more easily

compare chitin shield with iron shield

but why you give such a huge bonus to heavy?

iron shield wouldn't really be better than orcish shield

[rustic latch]

hmm

actually

I can do it by AR

[inner hare]

that would be much better

and it would scale with armor skill

which seems legit

[rustic latch]

idea was - based on in-game lore
lgiht armor - even outliers like glass is good not because it protects well, but because it allows mobility

so actively putting your LA item in harms way reduces that effectiveness

but

doing armor rating is better

[inner hare]

yeah, much more universal. Note, however, that if you use any value other than base, then it will vary a lot.

so the formula should take that into account

[rustic latch]

nah, base for sure

[inner hare]

ok

easy

[rustic latch]

I have enough other levers to worry about without adding implicit armor skill effects into the mix

[inner hare]

ok

make it the same for gauntlets for consistency

IMO

[rustic latch]

yeah

that's a given

so, added that to TODO as well,

And also - I'm assuming you want documentation lol

[inner hare]

😄

[rustic latch]

cause that seems a theme

[inner hare]

well, yeah

[rustic latch]

FAir

[inner hare]

I will read your code in a bit

but

[rustic latch]

I'll see what I can do

[inner hare]

for the final release, you def want docs

I mean, it's fair to expect that the relevant info is either in mod settings or in mod readme

[rustic latch]

Yeah, I keep forgetting that only I know it inside and out

[inner hare]

so when I read sth about next 10 skill levels contributing more to parry window or sth, I wonder how much more and what's the difference between skill 40, 50 and 80

many people won't give a shit

but it's good for balancing

and troubleshooting

[rustic latch]

Nah, it's good - so if people want to dig in - they can without looking at source code

I was avoiding doing anything with that tbh, because there were many formula rewrites

last one yesterday

[inner hare]

yeah

that's fair

[rustic latch]

They are mostly in a good place now though, where I'd probably only want to tweak values

so, that is doable

[inner hare]

I really like what you are cooking btw

so everything I say here is out of the desire to improve the mod and generate more meaningful feedback

I think that your "core" is solid

[rustic latch]

Nah, it's all appreciated and noted. Even if I disagree on some points - making those toggles or options is fine by me

[rustic latch]

And thank you

[inner hare]

yeah, I know that half of the things here will be subjective. It's fine. That's what settings are for 😄

[rustic latch]

e.g. I don't see an issue with parrying non-fencer creatures, but making it a toggle is fine

[rustic latch]

more settings for the god of settings

[inner hare]

blood for the settings god!

[rustic latch]

To be honest - when I started this - I knew it would be somewhat complex code wise - that turned out to be easier than expected. The balancing and optionals turned out to be trickier than i expected though :P

[inner hare]

you are very responsive and are making a lot of effort

I saw some mods which have great concepts but I doubt the modders playtested them 😅

[rustic latch]

I mean - I'm fundamentally changing core gameplay - without testing it would've been shite

[inner hare]

yeah, but unless you use that always hit thing, the rest feels very Vanilla-like

[rustic latch]

Did you try it? Cause imo it's not that big of a departure, I'm not forcing hit chance to 100, no fortify attack or anything

and to double check that I didn't miss anything:

☐ toggle to forbid parrying non-fencer creatures, or only with shields
☐ Doublecheck H2h Parry sounds, and when gauntlets are unequipped
☐ Do shield and gauntlets effectiveness by base armor rating instead of class
☐ Documentation for all the formulas```

^ that about right for your feedback?

[inner hare]

Yeah!

looks good

[inner hare]

Nah, not enough time during 1h testing session to test the setting which I won't be using. I have no problem with the fact that the option exists, though. I'm all for more options. More customisability. That's great.

[inner hare]

if you want to consider this, then also guard Fatigue cost scaling option

[rustic latch]

hmmm.
let's say - lower drain with better endurance? Or skill too?

[inner hare]

I would just use skill

and there is a reason for that

[rustic latch]

main skill then

[inner hare]

Endurance already contribues to Fatigue

and fatigue regen

same as AGI, WIL and STR

so you will have more Fatigue

[inner hare]

yeah

[rustic latch]

so block for shield, and relevant weapon skill for h2h and weapons

[inner hare]

yes

exactly

[rustic latch]

Ok, I can see that

will need to think what base, max and min values would be

[inner hare]

currently base is low

if you want to keep that, then you can always keep scaling off by default

and leave it up to the player

[rustic latch]

Ok, I do come from corporate software. I guess for mods it's different, but in my experience most users never touch settings :P

[inner hare]

default settings matter because most players will use them

I mean, a typical person who downloads the mod

but customisability is not for them

they trust the author

so default is sth which you consider suitable for "mainstream", I guess

[rustic latch]

Probably

So will need to think on it

Will probably get some of it in either late-late today or tomorrow

[inner hare]

cool, cool

one thing I've been thinking about is sth which always annoyed me in Oblivion (which introduced active blocking to TES), i.e. daggers somehow "parrying" warhammers. I was about to write that it should not be allowed. However, in-game the animations are generic and fast enough and enough damage gets through for standard/weak combatants that a proppa warhammer strike stills feels heavy enough.

[rustic latch]

dagger base effectiveness is also very low

[inner hare]

yeah, I saw 0.7

[rustic latch]

meaning - "you can try, but unless you're a god - you will get bonked"

still a fantasy game, so don't want to forbid it completley

and it's a setting so if a player wants to ninja-bullshit - they can

[inner hare]

and I know that it's sort of an abstraction. Just as a guy with fists isn't really parrying a warhammer strike. He would deflect or catch your hand or catch the weapon by the pommel

[rustic latch]

yeah

[inner hare]

so I know that animation fidelity doesn't allow that

[rustic latch]

Abstractiosn and engine limitations apply

[inner hare]

seems good enough

[rustic latch]

E.g. I can't get actual weapon position in world

[inner hare]

yeah

[rustic latch]

while it's being held

[inner hare]

the animations are still far less janky than I expected

they feel good

considering Morrowind "core"

[rustic latch]

That's a surprise, cause most of them are my first ever foray into animating anything

[inner hare]

Morrowind animations always suxxed. That was true even in 2002.

[rustic latch]

Shield is by Xe, h2h 3rd person is SaintJ

[inner hare]

what matters here is that they seem to be fast and fluid enough in order to feel good

[rustic latch]

others are mine

glad to hear

I'm particualrly happy with 2h warhammer/axe and staff. The hand sliding up to grip it differently was the missing piece I needed

(and spear)

[inner hare]

all the blocking animations in games are usually eh

it's not how combat works

in real combat what is a parry and what is a hit is more "fluid"

you don't block like in Mortal Combat

[rustic latch]

Oh, I'm aware

[inner hare]

with static "guard"

[rustic latch]

(HEMA experience that informed my animations for swords)

[inner hare]

😄

but I know that here we are severely limited by the game and frankly, I'm surprised that it still feels so responsive

[rustic latch]

Animation speed up in hard mode was key for that. They all play in about 250 ms, which seems enough to feel "fast, fluid and responsive"

[inner hare]

yeah

I think that you got that just right

probably good idea to make hard mode default

you can always tell people to git gud. Just joking... but it's a toggle

[rustic latch]

I was thinking about that

Well, @here everyone roundly ignored the Hard mode poll :P
#1482416741077356692 message so no idea really

[waxen cliff]

.arrean

Linked by @​.arrean from #N'Garde. Vanilla-Friendly Parry and Active Block. Beta · Apr 14, 2026, 1:01 PM

[rustic latch]

Depends - I like it default, and it feels good enough now, that it may make sense

[inner hare]

#1482416741077356692 message look at the poll results here so far

[waxen cliff]

.arrean

Linked by @​cybvep from #N'Garde. Vanilla-Friendly Parry and Active Block. Beta · Apr 14, 2026, 1:01 PM

[true umbra]

I play with Hard Mode on, so ye

[rustic latch]

yeah, saw that

no one likes "all attacks hit" so that stays off :D

[inner hare]

😄

all attacks hit scream Oblivion/Skyrim

[true umbra]

You can parry enchantments but not spells right

[rustic latch]

But I don't scale damage! TTK is the same

[rustic latch]

Not spells no

enchanted weapons arrows

[inner hare]

omg that dmg scaling in Oblivion

those fucking paper swords

[rustic latch]

and not AOE enchancts by default

[true umbra]

I turn All Attacks Hit off simply because of attack speeds. If combat was slow like Kingdom Come it may be on, but NPCs typically shank me fast, so...

[rustic latch]

Hmmm. Does it feel that way even with attack windup added?

I guess that's fair

[true umbra]

It's definitely much better, but I play on mobile so my fingers can't react too quick either

[rustic latch]

Ah

completely fair

[true umbra]

I am out here mashing my finger to parry and strike, and on a small screen it gets a bit smushed

[rustic latch]

Nah, completely understandable. Just glad it works on mobile at all

[true umbra]

It's very fun though

[inner hare]

what was funny in Oblivion is that weapon hits felt more arcadey than in Morrowind which had hit rolls. It's as if there was thin air instead of a body and that damage scaling is a huge part of it. In Morrowind you get full damage when you hit (scaled by STR, condition, AR etc.) so when that warhammer hits somebody, you can feel it. In Oblivion that's the not the same and it seems weird.

[true umbra]

Probably because they float around

[rustic latch]

and windup diration

[rustic latch]

I guess yeah, that convinced me

all attacks stays off

won't cut it out, but off by ddefault

[inner hare]

no reason to remove the option

it's already there 🙂

[rustic latch]

yup

[inner hare]

this mod will be a banger 😁

[rustic latch]

Right. Good feedback, and keep it coming if you have more. But Imma need to get off discord for a few hours

[inner hare]

I'm not seeing much difference between parry threshold 50 and 100

On skill 45 and with iron dai-katana, it seems to feel the same

[rustic latch]

wat

Ah. I see it

well, it's on to do for review anyway

both the setting description and the actual way threshold multiplier applies

I'll handle that

yeah, I moved the multiplier from the threshold to the wrong place

I'm honestly considering just dropping it

[inner hare]

Static guard cost setting def works as I see the difference between 3 and 6

[rustic latch]

I didn't do "perks" because perks don't apply to NPCs

[inner hare]

Yes

[rustic latch]

yeah, it's not cause setting doesn't work, it is there, just that it was multiplying small part of the formula instead of the end result

[inner hare]

Maybe in the future a submod with perk framework. Ignorable atm

[rustic latch]

But back to this - I'd probably just remove thresholds. Idea was to make perfect parry and iron plam impossible until a certain skill level, but it makes no sense. Skill curves take care of that

[inner hare]

It's fun that you can KO enemies who have low Fatigue if you keep attacking and they block