Selecting spells that are only used internally

[temnix]

There are many spells in all of the games that are only used by NPC in cutscenes or special cases. Teleports, for instance. SPWI995.SPL (DRYAD_TELEPORT) is one such spell, but there are also abilities like dragon breath. All these quasi-spells have one thing in common - they have a name, unlike nameless utility spells and sub-spells that the engine or modders may use. They are not supposed to be available to the player, though, so the designers never bothered with their descriptions, icons or types. I'm going to open these up - bards will have a passive ability provisionally called Eagle Eye for picking up spells and powers used in their presence. This will include both the wizard spells that are available the usual way, on scrolls, and these other specials, none of which have any reason to be of the Wizard type (1). I would like to select all spells that are not "real" and change their type to Innate (4) and their icon location from Spell (2) to Ability (4). Is there a distinguishing feature of the named spells meant only for internal use? They usually have a Symbolic name, but so do standard spells. Maybe take this name and compare it to SPELL.IDS, and patch them only if it doesn't contain "WIZARD"? First I would need to check that file for the numbers of their SOURCE_RES after "SPWI," though. Can someone tell me how?

[subtledoctor]

25 minutes ago, temnix said:

They are not supposed to be available to the player, though,

Some innate spells in SPELL.IDS are available to players - the Bhaal powers, for instance.

25 minutes ago, temnix said:

I would like to select all spells that are not "real" and change their type to Innate (4) and

My advice would be to use a hand-curated static list of spells you want bards to be able to learn, rather than combing through everything and hoping something game-breaking doesn't sneak in.

Also, I suspect most of the spells you are talking about are already type=4, and are in the SPIN and SPCL groups. So no need to change the type. To the extent something is not already an innate ability, then changing its type could break any scripts that call upon it (such as those dryads' or dragons' combat scripts, for instance). Probably better to simply clone each such spell to a new spell (with a modder prefix ) and then whatever mechanism you plan to use can check for something like "if a bard sees the original version, they can learn the new version." This way the spell that is learned can be innate, or go in their spellbook; they could be cast as memorized, or once per day, or one time only after seeing it done; etc. - you'll have freedom to make it work however you like, without fear of disturbing existing game mechanics.

Edited March 14, 2022 by subtledoctor

[jmerry]

Yeah, if you didn't curate the list ... hey want to use "Green Dragon Breath"? Enjoy your spell with a big flashy projectile that does absolutely nothing. Or there are spells like "Dexterity Increase" that would be absurdly overpowered if you could repeat them - Lum's Machine uses spells to do its thing.

[temnix]

Of course I'm not going to "curate" (rhymes with "castrate") abilities in advance. The whole idea is to let bards learn everything they come across, even if it's potentially useless or self-destructive, like some of those pretend teleport spells that unsummon the caster in reality. It's the risk they take by not being proper wizards, which is where you get the nice, tidy, safe power list. And I want the ability to include powers and spells from other people's mods. There are a couple of criteria in place, worry not. As for making a copy of the original spell to be learned by the bard, I did that for a special ability where the visual effect had to be different when used by the monster, but there is no reason to do this for everything. Changing the spell type is not going to break any scripts. So, nobody actually knows how to select names four characters from the beginning?

Edited March 15, 2022 by temnix