Utility: Spell Modding - Guide Version 0.11

[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.

[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?

[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.