Better Balanced Taunt and Persuasion (BBTaP)

"An adventurer should know the basics of Imperial law concerning life and property. Verbal assault, pickpocketing, and trespassing are minor crimes, punished by fines or hard labor. Theft and foul murder are felonies. (...)"

"Native Dunmer and Imperials alike recognize a noble's obligation to answer a challenge of honor. A challenge of honor is a public declaration of a scandal against a private party. Only nobles fight duels, and the higher the rank, the stronger the obligation. Law and custom despises dishonorable duelists. If the victim was bullied, intimidated, or goaded by a stronger party with suspect motives, magistrates often convict the stronger party of foul murder."

Many Morrowind players know that Taunt is a hilariously overpowered feature that allows the PC to provoke any character in-game into a fight with no consequences whatsoever. Despite what the in-game dialogue suggests, verbal assault is never considered a crime. You can taunt a Duke and you will get no bounty for this at all. Since there are no consequences for failed attempts, in Vanilla you can keep taunting the character until you are successful even when you have very low Speechcraft skill. It may take some time, but success is pretty much guaranteed due to the efficiency of spam clicks. After all, with no consequences for taunting, you can simply keep trying over and over again. This mod attempts to change that in a way that will make it feel quite Vanilla-like. Additionally, it implements a very basic anti-spam measure for persuasion attempts and improves some other aspects of the persuasion system in a few different ways.

[]Failed Taunt attempts can now give a bounty. Whether the player gets a bounty depends on the status of the recipient. In most cases, there will be no bounty because the NPC's status is simply too low. For example, Commoners and low ranking faction members typically don't really have a way to cause the player much harm. It will be very different in case of Nobles or high-ranking members of some factions. It is also very foolish to try to taunt the King or the Duke.[/]

[]Since I consider Vanilla bounties too low in general, fines for failed Taunt attempts were balanced with values used by Criminal Scum - Bounty Adjustments mod in mind (for context, Assault bounty in that mod is 500 gold while Murder bounty is 4000 gold). In my opinion BBTaP works best together with Criminal Scum, but it's not a hard requirement at all.

For example, failed Taunt attempt in case of an unaffiliated or low ranking Knight will give you 100 gold bounty while failing to Taunt a Noble or a Guard will give 250 gold bounty. The highest bounty is reserved for a failed Taunt attempt against a King - 1000 gold. Use your common sense.[/]

[*]Taunt and Intimidate attempts on