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Exalted Magic - Infinite Buffs

TLDR:
Makes buffs less of a time-sink and more of an interesting choice by allowing them to be toggled on/off at the cost of maximum Magicka.


Long Explanation:
Buffs in Skyrim are generally just a chore: You just have to recast them every few minutes, but they do not offer any choice at all. Having Oakflesh active is never worse than not doing so. In essence, those spells trade player convenience versus character power. This mod fixes this.

Instead of having a short duration and a high mana cost, the buffs have a near-zero "cost" and a duration of 24 hours. But they come with a drawback: Your maximum Magicka decreases by a significant amount as long as the spells are active. Of course, you can drop them at any time by casting the new Release-spell (free for everyone, check your inventory for the tome). This results in a more interesting choice of power versus flexiblity.

Or as people want to point out: "Like in Dragon Age", though that was not my inspiration in the slightest.

Perks:
The "cheaper Alteration Spells" perks have been changed to reduce commit-costs in addition of casting costs by one third. The same holds true for Destruction perks.

Affected spells:
Armors: Oakflesh (30/20), Stoneflesh (45/30), Ironflesh (60/40), Ebonyflesh (75/50), Dragonhide (225/150)
Destruction: Cloak of Flames, Frost and Lightning (45/30 each)
Utility: Candlelight (10)
Stealth: Muffle (30)

Missing but planned: Water Breathing, Resist [Element], Regeneration

Future possibilities: There are a lot of spells that would not work well with the old system or be really annoying, but work fine like this, such as Regeneration. Anything exceptionally powerful would be so short as to be useless, or not affordable.

This is part of my Exalted Magic series (http://steamcommunity.com/id/kdansky/myworkshopfiles), a list of mods that are meant to make Magic in Skyrim less boring and unbalanced.


Bugs:
1. Descriptions of the affected spells are not ideal, because they mention both costs (with and without perk) instead of just one.
2. Active effects display two effects instead of one. This is a Skyrim bug, and I can't fix it.

Comments: I am not sure if the values are balanced, because I have not playtested much for balance, as I lack a mage-character right now. If you have suggestions, go ahead.



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Probably incompatible with mods that also modify the mentioned spells.

If you want to modify the perks that I changed, load your other mod after this one. My only changes to the perks themselves are their descriptions, not their behaviour.

If you can't find the Release tome in your inventory on loading the game (which really should never happen, but who knows what other mods do), try the following: Open the console (with the key left of 1), then type "help Release". This will print out (at least) two lines, which state the id of the tome, and the id of the spell. Now type "player.addspell xxxxxxx" with the id that just came up for the spell (not the tome, of course).

If you end up with a wrong amount of magicka, you can fix that through the console: "player.setav magicka 150" for example, or you can unload the mod.

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Revision 2
Changed name to "Release", and cleaned up a few ids (you might get an irrelevant error on load and have to relearn the Release-Spell).

Revision 3
Added the Cloak of [Element]

Revision 4
Fixed issues with Dual Casting: You can now DC the buffs for increased effect, but at increased cost. Many issues with stacking of identical effects are fixed (though probably not all). Changes to Alteration perks (see above).

Revision 5
Fixed wrong sound and graphics of Release, and it's now castable with one hand only. Cleaned up a few things to

Revision 6
Fixed stacking issues. You can now cast any of the shields in any order, and only one (the most powerful one) will stick.