Race creation tutorial

Introduction

Hi, welcome to the race creation tutorial where you'll find everything you need to create the perfect race that suits your character.

In this tutorial you will learn how to:

change the look of your race
balance your race's attributes and skills
make your race unique and suited to your style of game play

It's recommended to save regularly to avoid losing a lot of work by a crash.

Creating your race

Open the Construction Set, And either select a plugin file that you've already created or create a new one by only loading the oblivion.esm file. Creating a new plugin file is recommended unless there's a good reason not to.

Along the toolbar at the top of the Construction Set there's a menu titled 'Character', click it and select 'Race...'. This is the window were all the races in Oblivion are listed even the unplayable ones like the Vampire and Dremora race.

When creating a new race you can either start from scratch, or use one of the other races as a template, using an existing race is recommended. To create a race from scratch right click in the list of races choose 'New'. You'll be asked to give your race an Editor ID, this is not the name used in-game, only the ID used to identify the race in the CS. To use an existing race as a template right click on that race and select duplicate, the Editor ID of the new race will be RaceCOPY0000 where Race is the name of the race you duplicated. You can change the ID by selecting it and pressing F2.

Editing the Race Data

The properties of a race are divided on the tabs General Data, Body Data, Face Data, FaceGen Data, Text Data and Reactions. You can select the tabs at the top of the window, we will go through them one by one.

General Data

The General Data tab covers the base attributes, skill bonuses, abilities and any powers that your race will have. You can also change the voice of your race here.

Base Attributes

The attributes are listed on the left side of the General Data tab, they are abbreviated but what they stand for is fairly simple (from top to bottom: strength, intelligence, willpower, agility, speed, endurance, luck and personality). Next to each attribute there are two boxes one for males and one for females. Most races have a specific area they excel in for example, Orcs excel in combat due to their high strength and endurance and Bretons excel in magic due to their high intelligence and willpower. You don't necessarily have to follow this pattern.

Under the male and female column there's a number that shows the total of all the points, for all Vanilla races this is 320. Custom races can have more or less but it's harder to balance a race with higher or lower attributes than the other races.

Skill Bonus

The Skill Bonus section is in the middle of the General Data tab, there are 7 slots to match the number of major skills available in-game but not all of these need to be filled. Vanilla races have a total of 45 bonus points, the total is displayed at the bottom or the column.

Specials

In the specials section you can add abilities, powers and lesser powers to your race, there's no limit to this. Most vanilla races have one resistance and one power. You can add powers and abilities by dragging them from the Object Window into the Specials list.

Voices

Under the specials, the voices used by the race can be selected with a drop-down box. Not all races have their own voice, some voices are used for more than one race. The High Elf voice for example is used for all elf races.

Body Data

On the Body Data tab you can find all data that determines a race's appearance, except for the face data, which is in the Face Data and FaceGen Data tab. There are two sections, male and female, each section has the height, weight and texturing for that race. Height determines how tall your race is, making your race too tall or too short will give various problems in-game reaching from not being able to walk inside a house to drowning every time you swim. A value between 0.85 and 1.20 is recommended, higher or lower could cause these problems. Weight determines how wide your race is, you should consider the height when choosing this number. A high number will make your race wide a low number makes your race look thin. The remaining buttons in the male and female sections are for the textures and the tail model. You can assign custom textures, or textures of an existing race if you unpacked the BSA Files. Click one of the buttons and select a new texture to do this. Along the right side there are two boxes labeled 'Eye color' and 'Hair Styles' where the eye color and hair styles of a race are listed. To remove an eye color or hair style, select it and press Delete. To add an eye color open the Eyes window, you can find it in the Character menu on the toolbar. In the eyes window drag an eye from the list into the Eye color list on the Race window. To add a hairstyle open the Hair window and drag a hairstyle from the hair window to the Hair Styles list on the Races window. Only eyes and hair with the playable box checked will show up in the character creation in-game. Unplayable hair can only be used by NPCs created with the Construction Set.

Face Data

This tab allows you to change what the head looks like, you can add or take away different features like the ears teeth or tongue, you can also change the heads texture or make the race have a back tongue or a white inner mouth, the best option though is to leave this section as it is unless you are more experienced with race creation.

FaceGen Data

On this tab you alter the race's default face. There are two control types and two symmetry types to choose from when changing the face. By selecting Geometry you can change the shape of the face. By selecting Texture you can change the skin color. When Symmetry is selected the changes you make are made on both left and right side of the face. When Asymmetry is selected you can make changes without changing the other side of the face. You can change the shape of the face by selecting an area from the list and moving the slider, or by right clicking and dragging in the face. Textures can only be changed by moving the slider, you can still change the shape by dragging even if Texture is selected as control type.

Text Data

On this tab you can add a description of your race the name and make it playable. At the top of the section there is a box to type in the name of the race, this name will appear in-game so make sure to add spaces here if necessary. On the top right side is a check box to make your race playable. Unplayable races, like unplayable hair and eyes can only be used by NPCs created with the Construction Set. The second text box is the race description, this gives you the chance to go wild with the races history and make up a huge story behind them but unfortunately there is only a certain amount of text that can be seen at character creation in-game so use what the default races have written as a template.

Reactions

This tab determines how much your race likes other races, you can add an entry by right clicking in the list and choosing New. Or you can modify an existing entry by selecting it. On the right side of the window you can select the affected race in a drop-down box and set the modifier in the text box underneath. Most races have a disposition modifier of 5 towards their own race, this means that when talking to someone of the same race their disposition towards you is 5 higher than it would be when talking to a NPC of another race. Vanilla races don't have any modifiers higher than 10 or lower than -10.

Making your race playable

Once you've finished your race you will want to make it playable at the start of the game when Valen Dreth throws insults at you whilst in the cell. He only does this at the vanilla races, follow these instructions to make it work for your race. You can also download a race fix plugin to do it for all races.

Close the race window by clicking OK if you haven't done that already. In the Object Window expand Actors, NPC, Dark Elf and click on Male. The list of Male Dark Elf NPCs will load in the right side of the Object Window. Scroll down to the bottom of the list and select ValenDreth, double click on the name to open the properties window. Click on the Dialogue button at the bottom left to open the Dialogue window. At the top of the window click the Conversation button. In the EditorID list underneath that button select 'CharGenTaunt2'. A list of dialogue responses loads on the right side of the window. Find one that suits your race and right click it and select copy. You can read an entire entry by selecting it and double clicking on the response text that appears in the window underneath. There are two things you need to edit when you've copied a response. In the second box below the list of dialogue thats labeled 'Result Script' change the +1 to +3 this makes the game only need 1 response before the quest can progress. Then change the conditions needed for this particular response, in the Conditions box select the line with the Function Name GetQuestVariable and on the bottom of the window change the value to 0 if it isn't 0 already. Select the line with the Function Name GetIsRace and on the bottom of the window click on the button that says Race:'Orc', where Orc could be any vanilla race depending on the response line you choose. In the window that appears select your race and click OK. Delete the line with the Function Name GetIsSex to make the response count for both female and male versions of your race. Leave the line with the Function Name GetIsID as it is. In the end it should look like this:

Target-|Function Name----|Function info-----------|Comp-|Value-|----|
no-----|GetQuestVariable-|Quest:'Charicteren',t...|==---|0.00--|AND-|
Yes----|GetIsRace--------|Race: '(your race)'-----|==---|1.00--|AND-|
no-----|GetIsID----------|NPC: 'Valen Dreth'------|==---|1.00--|AND-|

Conclusion

There could be some problems further on in the game caused by the custom race but these can be solved with plug-in files from various download sites.