Changes to Find Familiar spell - How to?

[Salk]

Hello!

 

I wonder if someone here could help me with some modifications I'd like to make to the Find Familiar spell. I have practically no coding skill and I am only slightly proficient with Near Infinity so any help is appreciated.

 

This is what I would like to accomplish:

 

1) Make the spell grant a base +3% magic resistance to the caster as long as the familiar is alive

 

2) Change the casting time to 12 hours and outdoors only

 

3) Make it so that at the death of the familiar the caster loses the 3% magic resistance and the HP bonus plus make the caster save against shock according to the table under. If the caster survives, he still lose 1 point of constitution permanently until a new familiar is summoned. A new familiar can be summoned only after 7 days (in game) have passed

 

CON System Shock

------------------------

1 25%

2 30%

3 35%

4 40%

5 45%

6 50%

7 55%

8 60%

9 65%

10 70%

11 75%

12 80%

13 85%

14 88%

15 90%

16 95%

17 97%

18+ 99%

 

Anybody who'd like to help make my last modding wish come true?

[Jarno Mikkola]

2) Change the casting time to 12 hours and outdoors only

The game only has casting times up to 1 round... besides who the cheese is going to stay still for that long in a game ? Yeah, it would make the casting more true to it's name but 12 in game hours, really ?

 

The way this could be set up is making the summon Familiar set a timer that the responds to after a set amount of time... or has a chance to respond. But it's still a waste of resources.

 

3) So you think that the loose of life and Con bonus is not enough to make the player store the familiar to his backpack, but you have to add in a chance to insta-kill him when they loose the familiar. Darn that's WRONG !!! totally. And a 7 day delay. :blink blink blink: From what world are you really from ?

[Salk]

I am obviously from a world different than yours. And I think it's good.

 

About 2), of course the casting itself would be made long (1 round) but not unbearable. It would just be a matter of making time pass via script.

 

About 3), I like the idea of having real consequences for the loss of a Familair. The 7 days delay is a period of mourning caused by the mental attachment created between Familiar and caster. You can keep on playing but it'll be without a Familiar.

 

Said that, I am not interested in discussing the terms of the modification. Only in finding somebody capable of helping me with the editing and coding.

[Avenger]

Its a great idea to have a custom effect on death of familiar. It could apply any kinds of bad effects also remove the granted magic resistance.

You can script this by adding a Die() / StateCheck trigger to the familiar.

[Salk]

Avenger, I'd love to do that but my modding expertise is almost non existent.

 

I don't mean to idly make other work for me but I'd need somebody to help me with understanding how to proceed with it.

 

Doing what you're suggesting is easily done? If so, might I bother you with questions about necessary steps I'd need to take in order to learn how to do it? I've once tried to look at the WeiDu ReadMe and I didn't understand much of it. Nor did I gain much by reading a few tutorials here and there.

 

All help is appreciated.

[Avenger]

Well, modding is always trial and error, then more experiments.

1. make a spell that you want to apply on Player1 in case of death of familiar

1b. it could also be a script block.

 

2. add this script block to your familiar or baldur.bcs

IF
StateCheck("fam...",STATE_DEAD)
global("familiar_died","global",0)
then
response #100
Setglobal("familiar_died","global",1)
applyspell(player1, "famdeath")
end

 

This is what i would start with, then fix the bugs and mistakes i made.

 

About your questions:

 

1.

grant the 3% in the find familiar spell should be easy.

spell removal is not so easy

- BGEE would support removal of effects by resource name

- in BG2 you can remove spells by secondary type (opcode 221). Secondary type is 6 for spwi123.

 

2.

long casting time sucks, if you want to do this, make a script for the delayed summoning.

In this case, you can also go for a custom spell with a nice and unique secondary type, which you can remove much more precisely (because opcode 221 would remove all effects with sec type = 6) You surely know how to make a spell outdoor only, don't you?

 

3. already answered above about spell removal. So that 'famdeath' spell should contain an effect with opcode 221 and you may want to start a timer for the 7 days or have a familiar block effect (opcode 196) that is timed for 7 days.

[Salk]

Hello again, Avenger.

 

Thanks a lot for your help.

 

About "long casting time sucks", I want to point out that the player is not supposed to look at a casting animation for several minutes (like Jarno seemed to imply) but rather have the spell animation being the longest for a spell type and then let the game's time advance with 8 hours: ToBEx does this for monsters interrupting the party's rest and I thought it'd be possible to do the same somehow. But again, I am not so sure how to do it.

 

About 3, I was wondering if SetGlobalTimer and GlobalTimerExpired might work to disable the spell for a certain amount of time after the familiar's death.