Item abilities on a Weapon

[MindTyrant]

I am trying to recreate Artblade (the Ary'Faern'Kerym) +6 from the forgotten realm's novels in BG2EE.  I need to give it a few item abilities and I do not have much experience with them.  To simulate the sword's ability to create light in the novels, I am thinking about adding Dancing Lights as an x5 day or at-will power. 

Yet I am not sure what the best practices are to do this.  Do I use opcode 148 or just copy the effect at the desired casting level from the spell and paste it over.?  Are there any traps or pitfalls of which I need to be aware when modding item abilities?

[MindTyrant]

Is it really as easy as I suggest?  I feel like I am missing something...

[jastey]

CamDawg's made several items that can cast a spell one a day in his Item Creation stream.

As much (little) as I know from item creation, I'd say adding an ability that casts the according spell 5 times a day would be your way to go. This has the disadvantage that it might call the Cowled Wizards in Athkatla, which can be circumvented by making the used spell a custom one that is flagged as an innate, which has other disadvantages like having to consider other spells and items who grant immunities for it etc. but those can be neglected for a light spell imho.

[subtledoctor]

Item ability effects need to be in an ability header, not just in the item’s bare effects. 

But yeah, beyond that item abilities are very similar to spells. Set your target/projectile/etc., and then whatever spell effects you want. 

[MindTyrant]

On 11/6/2024 at 12:16 AM, jastey said:

As much (little) as I know from item creation, I'd say adding an ability that casts the according spell 5 times a day would be your way to go. This has the disadvantage that it might call the Cowled Wizards in Athkatla, which can be circumvented by making the used spell a custom one that is flagged as an innate, which has other disadvantages like having to consider other spells and items who grant immunities for it etc. but those can be neglected for a light spell imho.

Wow... that is an annoying thing to worry about.  Since Casting level does not matter to want to do, I guess making an innate version of the spell probably the best option.    I wish I understood the consequences better.

On 11/6/2024 at 5:30 AM, subtledoctor said:

But yeah, beyond that item abilities are very similar to spells. Set your target/projectile/etc., and then whatever spell effects you want. 

I was actually trying to have dancing lights as x5/day, Identify as a x3/day spell, with dispel magic as a x1/day.  Unfortunately, identify does not look possible.  Any help would be appreciated.

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, MindTyrant said:

Unfortunately, identify does not look possible.  Any help would be appreciated.

You could change Identify into a spell you cast from the man screen, using the UI tweak made by Bubb. That would change the way the Identify spell works everywhere so it would be a big change for users for one item. But I think it is a change for the better, since it lets you make innate versions of Identify, priest versions if Identify, item abilities, whatever. It can scales with level, or not, as you see fit. That code can be dropped in and deployed in any mod. (I think with some tinkering you can even use the tweaked Identify for your target use-case and leave the original spell alone. I think. I haven’t actually tried that, myself, since my many mods that use Bubb’s function generally need the original to be usable as an innate.

[MindTyrant]

On 11/7/2024 at 7:49 PM, subtledoctor said:

You could change Identify into a spell you cast from the man screen, using the UI tweak made by Bubb. That would change the way the Identify spell works everywhere so it would be a big change for users for one item. But I think it is a change for the better, since it lets you make innate versions of Identify, priest versions if Identify, item abilities, whatever. It can scales with level, or not, as you see fit. That code can be dropped in and deployed in any mod. (I think with some tinkering you can even use the tweaked Identify for your target use-case and leave the original spell alone. I think. I haven’t actually tried that, myself, since my many mods that use Bubb’s function generally need the original to be usable as an innate.

I got it to work!  Well, as well as the Glasses of Identification and the Mirror in SoD work... If you notice, both the glasses and the mirror start fully identified but only start with one charge.  After resting, it gets x3 charges per day.  Both items worked as scrolls of identify that did not disappear and just drained the charge instead.

On my sword, it will work the same if you have it as the last of at least two item abilities.  In my sword's case it has three item abilities, sunray/dispel/identify and the last one is identify.  It works just like the glasses and mirror with x1 charge at first and then x3 upon rest.  It works even if the weapon requires 255 lore to identify.  I made the unidentified description be an instruction to start the "Blade-rite" by using the sword as a scroll to identify itself, and then the identified description explains what happened and why it ran out of charges after one use before resting.

Interestingly, when used as a scroll of identify, it would drain charges from whichever item ability is listed last, even if identify was not so listed.  It will not work at all if put as item ability one right after melee damage.  It must be listed as item ability two or higher and listed last.