Tweaking Priest Spells

[Ayce]

I've always had a problem with the way a lot of priest spells overlap in the IE games (clerics with animal summoning spells, druids with bless and armor of faith, etc.). Much of this was due to poor manner in which spheres were organized upon the release of PnP 2nd edition rules. C'mon now, animal summoning was meant to be a druid-specific spell.............. Just because it's a "summoning" spell doesn't mean it should be put in the summoning sphere........................anyway..............

 

I've learned that that in IE games, the individual spell settings are responsible for this and can be modified easily enough with near-infinity or IEEPro. What I still can't figure out is how to customize individual priest lists. For example, how does only Jaheira get the "Harper's Call" spell.

 

Let me explain where I'm going with this, Cernd is said to be from the north (I'm assuming like Icewind dale north), in IWD, I custominzed my druids to to have Ice spells like Blizzard (Ice Storm) and Howl of the North (Cone of Cold).......

 

So, I have two questions........................

 

1. I know I can create items to teach these spells to priests in game. But how can I get some of these custom spells on the default list of known spells for a cleric or druid. Which file governs what spells a priest will learn when they advance to a level sufficient to learn a new level of spells (i.e. 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th and so on)?

 

2. How can I customize them to individual priest characters as with the Harper's Call spell for Jaheira.

 

Thanx for entertaining my questions.

[CamDawg]

1. I know I can create items to teach these spells to priests in game. But how can I get some of these custom spells on the default list of known spells for a cleric or druid. Which file governs what spells a priest will learn when they advance to a level sufficient to learn a new level of spells (i.e. 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th and so on)?

Just about any file starting with spprXYY will be picked up by the engine automatically. X is 1-7 (depending on the spell level) and YY has to be from 00-50. In the spell file itself, there are flags to tell the engine if it's a spell for clerics/paladins, druids/rangers, all four, or none.

 

2. How can I customize them to individual priest characters as with the Harper's Call spell for Jaheira.

Jaheira's a bit of a cheat, as they've added the spell directly to her creature files so it's not added via the conventional divine spells route. To get an individual spell to appear for a particular character during the game, you'll need to script it.

 

Incidentally, have you checked out Divine Remix?

[Ayce]

Yes, I've looked at the Divine remix. I like tha basic idea but.............

 

Me, I'm pretty fussy about how spells are assigned to spheres, as I said, I felt the organization of the priest spheres in 2nd Edition PnP was very poor. I once sat down for hours organizing them into something that made a lot more sense (at least to me they did). Anyway, I imagine some of my ideas on assigning priest spells to priest spheres and assigning priest spheres to priest characters won't entirely jive with Divine Remix (i'd have to see the file specifics to know for sure - any chance I can get that info without installing the whole thing first?).

 

For example, I created a number of spells for a "custom" sphere I call fairie (or woodland), I also assigned some existing spells to this sphere as well. The ideas behind this sphere is that they employ/mimic the abilities of many fairie creatures.

This was my way of getting spells like Call Woodland Beings out of the summoning sphere (as it was in 2nd Edition PnP) and out of the hands of clerics with major access to summoning. That just didn't make sense (I know that isn't the case with IE, but I'm just saying for exampe..............).

 

Also, as mentioned above, I've added a number of cold spells to the weather sphere (but just for "northern" druids). Individual flavor is the key to keeping

things interesting I always say.

 

I do, however, like that druid alignment restrictions have been loosened. I' ve always had trouble with the idea of shadow druids being True Nuetral. Faldorn

is clearly evil in BG2 (if not in BG1 also). I think there's a strong case for arguing that Cernd is Nuetral Good in his motivations and dialog, Jaheira seems to be

struggling with True Nuetral and moving toward nuetral good, perhaps a mod that scripts and alignment change for her is in order. Anyway, I know how to edit the alignment.2da and .cre files to accomlish this.

 

Anyway, I guess what I'm saying in a long-winded way (maybe hoping to generate some interest in my own mods, I dunno :-P) is that I probably wanna stick with my own customization/mods of assigning specific priest spells and spheres to specific characters.

 

Thanx for the tip on Jaheira though, this gives me a guide to customizing other priest characters with my own custom spells. I wonder, can this help me with my

Keldorn project as well (I posted this as a quest yesterday, that was me). If I go into his cre file and put spells there and enable his spell casting button (by editing the clabpaXX.2da file), will that work?

 

Can I also "erase" certain spells or all spells from certain characters this way as well? I've got a certain mod for Valygar in mind that calls for him not gaining priest spells the same way Keldorn doesn't. Funny, I'm trying to figure out how to enable Keldorn's spell progression while disabling Valygar's spell progression at the same time. :-P

 

All that said, I do have one last question..................

 

Is it possible to erase a current spell out of a priest scroll, the same way you can erase spells out of wizard spellbook in ToB?

 

Just about any file starting with spprXYY will be picked up by the engine automatically. X is 1-7 (depending on the spell level) and YY has to be from 00-50. In the spell file itself, there are flags to tell the engine if it's a spell for clerics/paladins, druids/rangers, all four, or none.

 

Ok, two questions, how does IE pick up custom spells? I never noticed any of my custom spells in the override folder being simply being picked up and added to a priest scroll without them having to learn it with "learn spell" item first. Please clarify

 

Thanx for your Time & "Peace"

[Miloch]

(i'd have to see the file specifics to know for sure - any chance I can get that info without installing the whole thing first?).

I'd recommend checking out the spreadsheet in the second post in this thread.

 

It's somewhat dated and unfinished. I updated that spreadsheet for my own purposes while adding some spells and balancing the kits as per the 2e rulebooks, which state divine kits each should have a "cost" for major and minor access to each sphere, to avoid game imbalance.

Is it possible to erase a current spell out of a priest scroll, the same way you can erase spells out of wizard spellbook in ToB?

Not easily. Divine Remix does some work in this respect. (When are we getting an update to DR anyway?)

how does IE pick up custom spells? I never noticed any of my custom spells in the override folder being simply being picked up and added to a priest scroll without them having to learn it with "learn spell" item first.

There are some hoops to jump through here with modding certain files via WeiDU etc. You might check this post.