Overwhelmed by spellmodding. Any help, please?

[Burnsaber]

So, I've tried my dirty hands in spell-modding, and damn, I'm overwhelmed. Nothing I try seem to work..

Code:

---

#newspell

#copyspell "Lightning Bolt"

#name "Purging Lightning"

#descr "irrelevant"

#school 2

#path 0 1

#path 1 0

#pathlevel 0 1

#pathlevel 1 1

#fatiguecost 25

#damage 8

#precision 10

#range 5020

#effect 24

#nreff 1000

#spec 128

#flightspr -1

#explspr 10219 

#restricted 75

#researchlevel 3

#end 



#newspell

#name "HAX"

#descr "...."

#restricted 75

#path 0 1

#researchlevel 0

#school 4

#pathlevel 0 1

#aoe 0

#effect 10

#damage 1010

#fatiguecost 0

#nreff 1

#range 0

#precision 0

#explspr 10053

#spec 8192

#end

---

Purging Lighting seems to work, it does the 3x damage to undead and demons as intented. I tried to copyspell "lighting bolt" to get the "hit" tag, so that it couldn't be parried and always hits. My testing suggest however that this is not the case as it seems to miss half the time. Is there any way I can get the hit tag?

I downloaded the Dr.P's spell data and made the 'HAX' spell. It was intented to be a personal buff that gives Air Shield and Cold Aura. So spec should then be 8192 + 8 = 8200 with effect number 10? Does nothing in testing. So then I tired just cold aura, 8192, and nothing still happens.

I took a look at Llambeast's Tomb Kings mod as it seems to have a working "douple-buff" spell that gives both Str boost and fire resistance ("resilience" is the name). It apparently has spec 75518080. WTF? I can find no clues why should the spec number be so high in neither the modding manual nor Dr.P's database. Shouldn't the spec be 128 (for str boost) + 1024 (for fire res) = 1152?

I'm very confused. Have I missed something crucial?

I also found that there is a effect called "Astral Weapons" in the Effect10 table. I can't recall any spell in vanilla Dom3 giving something like "astral weapon", does anyone know what it does?

[DrPraetorious]

You have missed something crucial. The bitmasks for effect 10 go in the *damage* field, not the #spec field. Try setting the damage to 8200 and it should work.

Does it miss because it deviates or does it miss because it lands in the square and is shield-parried? If you literally want the spell to always hit, raise the precision to 100. But I have only done very simple testing, and cannot say for sure that I'm right about this.

You should be able to set the "hit" tag using the #spec field - I believe that the bitmask is 16384 but, again, my testing is very limited.

#spec 75518080 = Armor Negating + Magic Resistance Negates + Always Hits (I think) + Works Underwater + Only vs Undead. Look in the #spec field of bitmasker.xls.

[DigitalSin]

Seeing as there's already a thread open, I might ask a quick question. Is it possible to make a ritual version of, say barkskin, or personal regeneration?

[DrPraetorious]

You can, but it goes away immediately, it's not permanent.

If you look it bitmasker.xls, the green background indicates that a particular effect/damage combo is permanent.

[lch]

There are some rituals that "charge" a unit with a specific spell effect, though. How do these work?

[Burnsaber]

DrPraetorious said:
You have missed something crucial. The bitmasks for effect 10 go in the *damage* field, not the #spec field. Try setting the damage to 8200 and it should work.

Thanks, that was pretty crucial error from me. I thought that damage field set how much fire resistance/ chill aura/ etc.. you got. So now I've got another question, how do you set the amount of let's say Fire resistance you get from a fire resistance giving spell?

DrPraetorious said:
Does it miss because it deviates or does it miss because it lands in the square and is shield-parried? If you literally want the spell to always hit, raise the precision to 100. But I have only done very simple testing, and cannot say for sure that I'm right about this.

It lands on a square and gets shield parried, and it can hit on a square with troops and just miss, like a missile. I'd like it to always hit if lands on square with troops, like all of the lighting evocations.

In my testing, the Bandar undead kept on parrying the holy undead-scorching lighting with their bucklers..

DrPraetorious said:
You should be able to set the "hit" tag using the #spec field - I believe that the bitmask is 16384 but, again, my testing is very limited.

I'll try that out and report the results. Thanks for the help, now I hopefully won't have to swear at my computer as I did when I tried to get that spell working.

[DrPraetorious]

In answer to lch's question -
Become Prophet, Become Pretender, Twiceborn, Ritual of Returning, Inner Sun and Dragon Master are all persistent.

This is a property of the effect/damage combination and not of the spell, per se. So any spell, even a combat spell, which grants twiceborn to people, they'll still have twiceborn up after combat.

A spell cast out of combat that gives Flaming Arrows will go away after the turn - I believe that the timing is such that you actually have to cast it *that turn* to get any benefit.

So a "combat meditation" spell that gave you crazy bonuses would have some application in defending a lab, but wouldn't be very useful otherwise.

[Burnsaber]

I tested this, and can verify. 16384 gives indeed the hit flag.