Armored Mage Robes

Adds enchanted and unenchanted heavy and light armor versions to all standard College Mage robe sets.

While playing the game with the Vigilant Stendar themed character and the various additional spawn modules and difficulty boosters, I noticed that my character had a few... well... let's call them survival issues. I love all of these types of mods so much that I don't want to get rid of them, but in many cases the incoming damage is too much for standard robes, plus some characters tend to wear armor that gives you enough damage, reducing longevity by a long way.

Securing the mage's armor spells and perks was an option and a potential solution, but this became a tedious magic treadmill of casting armor spells -> fighting for a short time -> spells expire mid-combat -> not noticing your armor disappearing -> reloading the game after watching tattered corpses fly up. I'm tired of this but still want to keep the visual look of the character as I really like the way Bethesda did the mage's robes in this game.

So what this mod does is adds all the enchantment schools and armor variants of the standard mage robes that can be found in the game. Think of it like we've gotten armor slots back, or like getting layered clothing in Morrowind, and your robes are wearing normal breastplate. Anyway, that’s what I thought (can we dream?). There are both light and heavy armors, so users of both armor styles and various armor materials can choose how to use them. The robes I added don't represent every last armor material available in the base game, but there are good options for each armor type.

Visually, these added robes are identical to the standard mage robes already in the game, without the new mesh.

New and changed in v1.1

Unenchanted variants of all armored robes have been added to the mod. The functionality is exactly the same as in all original enchantment versions, and now you can simply add your own custom enchantments (or use dual enchantments on the main enchantment) if you don't care about your enchantments.

Armored robes usually come with the standard university robe enchantments. These unenchanted versions have been added to the same leveled list

as originals and should appear with them on the usual random chance basis.

New and changed in v1.2

New unbound armored robe variants have been more fully integrated into the standard vendor list, but can still be revealed from the same sources mentioned above, plus blacksmiths now have the opportunity to carry some unbound versions. Standard merchants where robes are typically found (such as general merchants and court wizards) will often see the unenchanted version older than the enchanted version to reflect the "mundane" and non-magical nature of their typical customers (i.e. non-magic or novice mages). The Academy's vendors initially start with armored robes at lower levels, but starting with robes at third level proficiency you'll start to find magically enchanted versions, and in some cases much earlier than the unenchanted versions.

As with the above merchant sellers, the unenchanted variants have been added to the same loot and clothing lists as above, and these flattened lists have been revised, so you may find that NPCs added by other mods or standard dungeon loot containing a set of robes are now slightly more numerous. Typically you'll see the unenchanted version before the unenchanted version, but as usual with lists and how they're populated, there's always an element of random chance present here. You may get lucky and find what you need earlier than normal, or you may be unlucky and not find what you want for a long time.

These new unenchanted versions can now also be created and improved separately at the blacksmith's forge and workbench, as creation and tempering recipes have been added for all variants. In the base game, all perks and material requirements are roughly the same between these armored robes and standard armor pieces, so for example, you'll need …