Utility: Spell Modding - Guide Version 0.11

[Wish]

DrPraetorious said:
Are you sure that it's permament? When I tried that, it gievs you regeneration, but it vanishes next turn. Could be a special ability setting or something, though.

it certainly is (i hosted again to check, just now)

oh, wait, it goes away in battle.

[Foodstamp]

DrPraetorious, I have some new information for you that I hope helps with this initiative.

I tested Farsummons. Here is what I have found. If you choose a random creature to farsummon, a commander version of the unit and a standard version of the unit will appear in the province. So there is no way I have found to farsummon just a commander into a province, he will be accompanied by a standard unit of the same type.

Now here is the COOL part!
What makes farsummons unique seems to be tied into the unit you choose for the farsummon. For instance, if you choose monster #284 "Wolf" as your unit type in the damage field, the same rules apply to the farsummon that apply to the spell "Call of the Wild". I created a custom spell and used 284 as my damage type, the force was led by a werewolf! And on top of that, the fact that I did not choose a forest province for my farsummon reduced the effectiveness of the spell.

My guess is the other farsummons work the exact same way, with the unique commanders and effectiveness being tied to the monster chosen as the damage type for the spell.

Also, I tried effect 68 in combat to try to get random animals to spawn. I had no luck.

I hope this helps you some on your ambitious project if your still working on this.

Your spell modding guide has been extremely helpful to me and I appreciate your effort.

[DrPraetorious]

I put in a request to make this "lead by" field modable at one point - didn't want to put that in the guide until there was some way to change it.

I hadn't known that increased nr. of effects in forests was a property of the unit, although I should've been able to figure that out. Seems like an odd thing to attach to the unit itself. Maybe any unit with forest-survival generates extra effects when farsummoned into a forest? It's worth examining.

I hadn't known that effect 68 doesn't work, though. Odd. Did you try fiddling with the special ability field?

I'm definitely going to do another edition at some point - I was planning to incorporate what I learned from my Black Tome mod, but that's been falling behind schedule as well.

[Foodstamp]

I did not try messing with the special ability field. I will give it a shot when I get a chance.

[Psientist]

Dr. Praetorius said:

I believe that you can induce starvation, if that's any help.

Hmm, I found some time to play, and I think I see the bitmask you were referring to (#effect 11). However, that would make it a battlefield spell, and I was thinking more of a remote-province attack spell (#effect 10041).

While that leads to some ideas for new battlefield spells (mass disease/7 year fever, mass battle fright, mass hunger), I guess there's just too many unmapped masks to figure out how to combine the mallus effects for remote casting.

It would be really nice for the devs to shed some light on this!

[Psientist]

Another thought... We have magic items that increase "penetration" (e.g., spell focus, etc.). I was trying to brainstorm a way to make that into a spell equivalent - the hostile opposite of "protection" and "mass protection". But, I got nowhere. Does anybody have any suggestions?

[DrPraetorious]

As far as I'm aware, ritual spells do not reference the bitmasks for effect 11 at all.

I haven't tried effect 10011, though.

Most of the ritual mallus spells either deal damage and have their own effect number (flames from the sky, for example), or trigger events, and the ones that trigger events reference an event list not a bitmask.

[mivayan]

DrPraetorious said:
I hadn't known that increased nr. of effects in forests was a property of the unit, although I should've been able to figure that out. Seems like an odd thing to attach to the unit itself. Maybe any unit with forest-survival generates extra effects when farsummoned into a forest? It's worth examining.

Most of the logic for Call of the Wild is probably hard coded to the wolf's unit number.

A lot of dom3 works like this... otherwise there would be fewer spells and features that are different.

[Psientist]

More feedback for the Bitmasker spreadsheet. I think Effect 23 / Damage 16 is incorrect; the following spell produces "susceptibility to fire 25%" on friendly troops rather than the desired "Fear +0". Tried a couple versions. (note, spell 534 is Fog Warriors, and no, different "damage" versions of Fog Warriors doesn't give the Fire Susceptibility but rather the correct bitmask as listed)

#newspell
#copyspell 534
#name "Possessed Warriors"
#descr "A group of friendly soldiers become possessed by demons, causing their features to become distorted, horrific and fearsome to enemies."
#school 6
#path 0 7
#damage 16
#fatiguecost 400
#aoe 666
#explspr 10003
#end

[Sombre]

I've been messing around trying to make a poison res spell for the skaven, to make globadiers and censer bearers a bit less painful to use. These spells are currently using test values and aren't intended to be balanced.

---- Nurglitch's Favour 1

#newspell
#copyspell "poison ward"
#name "Nurglitch 1"
#descr "The priest invokes the incredible resilience of Nurglitch, Lord of Decay, granting a number of troops further resistance to poison."
#restricted 73
#researchlevel 0
#path 0 5
#path 1 8
#pathlevel 0 1
#pathlevel 1 1
#fatiguecost 10
#range 20
#end


---- This one adds poisonres 50. Only casts on friendlies, doesn't keep casting once they're ressed up. It won't cast on anything with poisonres over 50 though, making it useless if I leave my plague monks at poison res 80.


---- Nurglitch's Favour 2

#newspell
#copyspell "poison ward"
#name "Nurglitch 2"
#descr "The priest invokes the incredible resilience of Nurglitch, Lord of Decay, granting a number of troops further resistance to poison."
#restricted 73
#researchlevel 0
#path 0 5
#path 1 8
#pathlevel 0 1
#pathlevel 1 1
#fatiguecost 10
#effect 599
#damage 200
#range 20
#end

----- this one gives them poison immunity. It doesn't cast on enemies, but it keeps casting on friendlies even after they're immune. This is not good, obviously.


---- Nurglitch's Favour 3

#newspell
#copyspell "resist poison"
#name "Nurglitch 3"
#descr "The priest invokes the incredible resilience of Nurglitch, Lord of Decay, granting a number of troops further resistance to poison."
#restricted 73
#researchlevel 0
#path 0 5
#path 1 8
#pathlevel 0 1
#pathlevel 1 1
#fatiguecost 10
#range 20
#aoe 15
#spec 4194304
#end

----- this one gives poison immunity. It doesn't cast on enemies, doesn't cast on friendlies once they're already immune.



Now poison itself is pissing me off somewhat, because poison res of 80 doesn't actually seem to help that much vs poison clouds,.. but anyway,....

Unless someone can help me with suggestions about how else I could do this, I have a choice here between Nurglitch 1 and Nurglitch 3 (2 is just a dodgy version of 3 really).

If I go with Nurglitch 3, any skaven will get total immunity. This seems a bit much - I don't want it to be a total no brainer combo with the poison cloud and globadier units - skaven should take casualties from their weapons most of the time.

If I go with Nurglitch 1, I can alter the poison res of certain units (such as plague monks) to 50, making them perfect targets for it. It will also be able to bump the average skaven with poisonres 35, to a respectable 85 res. I think I prefer this option.

I'm just wondering if any of you have any input. Particularly you Dr P - is it possible for example to give an amount of poison res other than 50?