Utility: Spell Modding - Guide Version 0.11

[Psientist]

Aside from the "death dome" spell, It would be nice to beable to craft a ritual spell to temporarily cast "gluttony" on a number of enemy army units. That would be an interesting twist. However, you haven't teased out whether the spell bitmaps cover all the possible unit attributes, have you?

[DrPraetorious]

I've tested all the digits in the bitmask - and none of them appear to do that.

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

[Psientist]

Perhaps! When I am next overwhelmed with free time, maybe I'll try it out. I was thinking it would be an interesting spell defense against mega-armies.

[Wish]

i just found that if you halve the damage on dragon master, instead of giving you dragon mastery, it gives you a permanent regeneration.

[DrPraetorious]

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.

[llamabeast]

Sorry for being thick, but on the last page Dr P you suggest pairing a spell with a different effect, such as Twist Fate, to get it to cast. How do you do that?

I've read the modding manual now, but still not really on the ball.

[DrPraetorious]

Add together the bitmasks. So, for example

#effect 10
#damage 262656

Will give you both pain transfer (512) and Quickness (262144) at the same time.

[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.

[Psientist]

Maybe this is obvious, but if you summon a unit with special abilities (create gems, domsummon, etc.) with #effect 10001, the effects are stripped. You have to summon the unit as a commander (#effect 10021) to retain those abilities.