Wild Surging a Bard

Plainsrunner

So I've been tinkering in NI for about 5-6 hours now trying to figure out how to apply the wild magic casting to a bard kit. At first I was just going to make a new spell and apply it to the class, with the spell granting the Wild Magic Opcode (280) at level 2, but no matter what I set the probability to there are no wild surges, nor any random caster levels. I shadowkeepered a bard into a wild mage kit, and it made it happen fine, but NI doesn't have a CLAB for the Wild Mage, so I can't even be certain if I'm applying the right abilities.

I got started off of this thread (https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/34986/how-to-add-wild-surges-without-adding-the-spells), but it seems either I've done something wrong or the persons in question were operating with a different engine or didn't check everything. Notably, I have no option under affect for every spell, only Unknown, Next Spell, and Duration. I've tried a combination of durations (including immediate/permanent, and duration/permanent with a duration of 1), and I'm pretty sure I used the Unknown once. I've changed the target after hunting down some abilities like the barbarian fast movement to see if that helped. I've checked Neera's cre file to see if I could find any hints there but there isn't anything I can find in her cre that links to those abilities. I know there's a Wild Sorcerer mod (I downloaded it but couldn't find how they'd applied the wild magic, and there was once a Wild Jester kit, so I can only assume this is possible. I just don't know how yet...

Any suggestions?

EDIT: It is possible to apply the wild mage kit to the bard via shadow-keeper. However, this does restrict me to a default bard.

Tresset

I can do that for you! Give me some time and I will see what I can whip up...

Tresset

So, what I can do is give you a spell that makes anyone randomly wild surge in a similar way to a wild mage. Variable caster levels and such are hard coded to the wild mage kit so I can't help with that, unfortunately. I obviously bit off a bit more than I could chew with this one. In any case I am going to give you the stuff I made to make people wild surge. This will cause a wild surge 5% of the time a spell is cast. Once cast the effect is permanent so be careful with it!
How to use:
1. Extract the files I have uploaded into the override folder.
2. Create a scroll for my custom spell with this console code:

C:CreateItem("mdk2summ")

3. Equip the scroll into anyone's quick slot and use it on the person you want to be surging.
4. Watch the cows fly.

Note: I spent the majority of my time making the spell look and sound flashy and cool... I hope that is appreciated.

Mathsorcerer

I think you were on the right track at first, @Plainsrunner. I just created a class spell, spcl823.spl, that applies the wild surge effect (affect of "use duration", timing mode "permanent (9)", probability of 100%) then added it to clabba01.2da with ap_spcl823 at level 2. I then created a straight bard, leveled her to 2, got her a scroll, scribed it, slept to memorize, then cast it--the spell wild surged as it was supposed to. Now I need to lower the probability, probably to 50%, then try several castings--half of them should surge. Once I can mostly confirm that, I can set the probability down to 5% or 10% and that is all that would be needed to create a Wild Bard.

Continuing that line of thought, shouldn't the Wild Bard have a song that makes *other* mages have wild surges? The "change bard song" opcode is 251, so all I would need to do is edit one of the existing songs with the new effect and apply it to the class 2da file.

As @Tresset notes, I can't do anything about the way wild mages have changes to their level applied before the spell is cast. That being said, perhaps there might be a way to use "change level" (opcode 96) but that might be a little difficult to work out short of using "cast spell on condition" (opcode 232) or "use eff file on condition" (opcode 272) and having the level change applied every round or every turn.

edit: hrm....my wild bard is getting surges all the time, even when I edit the probability down to 50% via EEKeeper. I suspect the probability only managed the probability of the effect applying itself; once applied it takes effect all the time. I may have to edit the class spell to use "use eff file on condition" then apply the effect every round with a 5% chance of hitting a surge. This is essentially how @Tresset already did it. At least I was on the right track.

AstroBryGuy

The Wild Mage's "wild magic" effects are applied by the kit's usability flag in KITLIST.2DA. This is how the Wild Sorcerer kit works. It uses the Wild Mage "0x80000000" usability flag. So, if you create a bard kit and give it that usability flag, it should get the wild magic effects.

Caveat: Usability flags mark items as being "unusable" by a specific class or kit. So, this would also mean that your bard kit would not be able to use any items restricted from Wild Mages (not mages in general, but a specific restriction that a Wild Mage cannot use the item). I can't think of any off the top of my head, but it's a possibility.

Plainsrunner

Hmm, that can work. Thanks.

Out of curiosity, you said that the variable leveling is tied to the Wild Mage Kit, so I tried adding the usability flag of the Wild Mage to a Bard in BG2. It worked splendidly, and still allowed access to bard items. The only trouble is that the wild mage isn't listed in BGEE's Kitlist.2da, so I have no idea if it will work there. Time to test it out!

And if not, yours will be a great backup. So many thanks for that and for the inspiration.

EDIT: It seems the Wild Mage is in there, and I managed to overlook it somehow. Anyway, the unusable flag (0x80000000) applies wild magic to the Jester kit when it uses it. You could probably even get it on a priest. As long as you make sure no mod overwrites that override (or you go back in and fix it after), it should be fine.

The only trouble is you still need to set the individual Wild Mage spells as usable by a Generalist (check the flag on each spell) in order for your Wild Kit to be able to select them, and this is necessary in BG2 character creation, since Wild Mage is treated as a specialist mage.

EDIT2: There were a few replies I didn't see between Tresset's post and mine. It looks like I just ended up doing ABG's suggestion, which is working fine. Basically I wanted to add a little more flair to the jester kit, so I made it a wild magic user, for when it doesn't want to be mixing it up in combat. In my Clab file, I gave them the Wild Mage spells automatically, since you can't find scrolls of those anywhere.

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Plainsrunner

Bard song has not caused any surges yet. But I haven't done extensive testing since getting it to finally work. I just really liked the synergy of wild magic and the more chaos inspiring theme of the Jester and wanted to add them together.

As far as NRD, I had not thought about that, but as I've only made it for personal use (I also made it give a free copy of Find Familiar when I misread a the code for NRD, but decided to keep it). I'll just have to not memorize 9th-level just for the potential to destroy myself.

Though, to be fair, level 1 Wild Mages could do the same.