Quadratic Wizardry - Scaling Spell Power and Cost for MWSE

“I do not know the ways of wizards. I have heard they honor the tests of life and death, as we do. The ones who live, live a long time. The ones who die are forgotten. They are old, and strange, and terrible. I know little. But I am afraid. And that is my counsel to you. Be afraid. It is no time to be bold and careless. It is no time to hoard your treasures. With wizards, there are no second chances.” -Nibani Maesa

The mod serves two functions:

-Make the magicka cost of spells scale with skill, both for PCs as well as NPCs. Creatures are not affected.

-Make spell power and resistance scale with the caster's and target's willpowers respectively. Applies to all actors.

There are no actual quadratic functions involved. The mod is named after the "Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard" trope established by early DnD and inherited by the first two TES games.

You can use another mod of mine, Wizard Equalizer, to make PCs and (most) NPCs play by the same rules when it comes to determining their maximum magicka. I recommend using the Telvanni version so that any race and birthsign combo can result in a viable spellcaster.

SPELL COST SCALING

The casting cost of the player's spells now scales with the relevant magic skill (chance is unaffected). There are four options for making the cost of spells, each separately assignable to PCs and NPCs (you can also turn scaling off for each separately). Exponential starts drastically more expensive but ultimately makes spells cost a mere fraction of what they would have in Vanilla. Linear starts at the vanilla cost and goes down more slowly, ultimately reaching the same values for 100 skill and beyond. Both have alternate x2 versions, which have doubled starting points but reach the same values at 100+. By default, the Spellmaker will show the scaling-adjusted magicka cost, and then the base cost in parentheses.

Because I don't know any way to make NPCs actually understand that the spell cost is dynamic, they cannot fully take advantage of the system. They will still be able to cast more spells with high skill, but not to the same extent of the player. To avoid them trying to cast spells they have no magicka for, I have idiot-proofed NPCs by letting them use the last of their magicka to cast any such spell they attempt, so long as they at least had enough magicka to cast the spell at its base cost. The end result is that they are not affected by cost scaling as much as the player is.

Graph of each formula option

EXPONENTIAL: The cost starts at x5 and uses an exponential formula up to 100 skill where it hits x1/5, then a linear formula up to 200 skill, at which point the maximum efficiency of x1/10 is achieved. This is the default and intended setting for PCs and NPCs.

0:        5. 00x cost

25:      2. 24x cost

50:      1. 00x cost

75:      0. 45x cost