Draw – A Dueling Mod
Settle your conflicts like a real Nord! Single combat with any npc, no damaged faction relations, no strings attached. Killing your opponent optional.
Let’s talk about Roggvir.
In the last moments of his life, gazing at a venomous crowd, Roggvir chose his final words to be about tradition. According to him, challenges to fair combat are a custom of Skyrim, to be respected even from a legal standpoint.
Despite this, we are unable to issue our own challenges to NPCs. Our closest alternative is to commit murder and then reload a previous save.
That’s not good enough. This mod fills that void.
[What this mod does]
This mod adds (and unlocks automatically) a single shout to the player called Challenge. When all 3 words of the shout are used, the NPC in the player’s crosshair is challenged to fair combat by the player. In order for the targeted NPC to accept the challenge, they must have a negative relationship with the player. Don’t worry about that too much though because challenging someone to a duel hurts your relationship, naturally.
If the NPC accepts the challenge (read: negative relationship, and not currently following you), you enter combat with them. Their allies will not jump in to help them, nor will their factions declare you an enemy. When either the player character or the enemy drop below 20% health, they will go unconscious. The fight is over at that point. If you won the duel, you have the option of either executing your downed target by attacking them again (WILL kill essentials), or allowing them to live by sheathing your weapons. If you lost, the NPC will allow you to live and continue on with their business.
Duels aren’t without risk though. It is possible for either you or your combatant to kill the other accidentally if enough damage is dealt to a weakened foe. If you kill your opponent during the duel, there will not be any bounty or aggression because of it. It was fair combat, and people die in combat.
As a bonus, if you unequip your weapons during a duel, your opponent will follow suit, allowing you to engage in fist fights freely with NPCs. These also tend to result in death less often than a typical duel. As the opponent gets wounded, they will get desperate. Depending on their base confidence, a health threshold is implemented. Once they pass this threshold, they gain a chance (proportional to their health percent) to ignore that they are in a fist fight and draw their weapons on you.
Nothing about the NPC is permanently changed to get them to engage in the duel, so this should be safe to use on any NPC. Just take care not to kill them if you want them alive. (Note that this isn’t restricted to humanoids. I left in the ability to challenge animals if knocking out dogs is your cup of tea)
To toggle between allowing your followers to help in the duel or not, simply use the first word of the shout. The mod defaults to not allowing them to help. To toggle between allowing essential NPCs to be killed, use the second word of the shout.
—New with Update 1.3—
Unconscious enemies can be looted. Just target their body and activate them. A fleeing system has been added that works much like the desperation system detailed above. Once the enemy health passes a certain threshold (dependent on confidence), they gain a chance to flee combat that is proportional to how much health they have left. You can chase a fleeing target and hit them to knock them out, or allow them to make some space between the two of you, ending the duel. Finally, a sparring system has been implemented. Activate friends or strong targets with the challenge shout equipped and you can choose to talk to them or spar. If you spar, you’ll find that the system works mostly the same as dueling, only this time there are no hard feelings or risks of death.
Thanks to Sinitar Gaming for the shout out! This mod is shown starting at 4:13
Thanks to Brodual for the feature, and the motivation to get this ported to SE!
[Things to remember]
-All 3 words of the shout need to be used for the shout to do anything (this is to prevent accidentally challenging people to duels)
-Targets only accept the challenge if you have a negative relationship with them. Your relationship rank is reduced by 1 every time you use the shout on them (won’t go below -2 though, to prevent attacking on sight)
-Current followers can’t be challenged
-Current followers can help in the duel or sit it out. Use the first word of the shout to toggle between the two
-Unequip your weapons if you want to engage in a fist fight. Targets may get desperate and draw their weapons on you
-Even essential characters can be killed when the NPC has lost the duel and is at your mercy
-This works on animals as well. I knocked out Stump in Riverwood just to test it
[Installation + Compatibility]
Does NOT require SKSE.
Installation is standard. Manual or mod manager, both will work.
Everything is self-contained, so this should be compatible with all mods. However, tweaks to the Havok physics system may produce odd results. NPCHavokHit causes the characters to melt into some kind of body soup upon going unconscious.
It would seem that UFO conflicts with the spar functionality of this mod. I’ll look into rectifying that.
[Credits]
Special thanks to you, for reading this and trying my mods. I actually make a lot of personal mods that I don’t release, so if you’d like to see more from me, let me know. Oh, and have a good one!
