Custom Spellcasting Classes
NullMagic
Member Posts: 5
One of the most infuriating things (from a modding perspective) has always been the number of Hardcoded features in NWN and it's successor NWN2. While they are many and varied (including such annoyances as spell lines that are hard coded to work on both enemies and allies such as the Cure line of spells forcing all other such dual nature spells to require two lines in the 2da and separate casting buttons, certain feats which shall remain unnamed, and that damned function for Detect Undead which makes up the entire spell) the hardcoded feature that I have found absolutely most aggravating is the inability to create new spellbooks.
For clarification, what I mean is this. You cannot, at this time, create a new class that uses an entirely custom list of spells, nor even one that uses an existing list of spells. Why? Because the spellbooks are hardcoded to certain lines in the classes 2da, and there is no way to add new spellcasting lists, or point them at 2da lines (or 2da lines to them which would be much preferable). This means that both NWN games had an inherent and immutable limit to the number of classes with spellbooks.
So my request is the ability to not only create new spell books, but also the ability to point class.2da lines to the correct spell book it should use, thus allowing us to create new spellcasting classes, as well as fix many of the PrCs which should have spellcasting abilities but instead ended up with wishy-washy feat based features.
For clarification, what I mean is this. You cannot, at this time, create a new class that uses an entirely custom list of spells, nor even one that uses an existing list of spells. Why? Because the spellbooks are hardcoded to certain lines in the classes 2da, and there is no way to add new spellcasting lists, or point them at 2da lines (or 2da lines to them which would be much preferable). This means that both NWN games had an inherent and immutable limit to the number of classes with spellbooks.
So my request is the ability to not only create new spell books, but also the ability to point class.2da lines to the correct spell book it should use, thus allowing us to create new spellcasting classes, as well as fix many of the PrCs which should have spellcasting abilities but instead ended up with wishy-washy feat based features.
7
Comments
The real problem is that you can ADD a class as CASTER CLASS, just put the flag to 1 in classes in column 'SpellCaster'.
The problem is that in spells.2da you do not have the column for this custom class and you CANNOT add spells to the new custom class book.
One idea could be :
- inside classes, you can write in 'SpellCaster' (maybe let's call it SpellCasterBook) the name of the column where, in spells.da, you check if you have/not have the spell.
Example: in line Wizard, you will have column 'SpellCasterBook' with 'Wiz'. Then in spells.2da, the column 'Wiz' will be read to understand which spells are in the wizard's book.
Then you do the same for Sourcer. You put again 'Wiz' and it works perfectly.
Then you have Bard with 'Bard', Cleric with 'Cleric' and so on.
Now, let's think about 'Antipaladin'. You would like to have the "nemesi" of the Paladin. In Paladin you will have 'Paladin' column and for 'Antipaladin' you will have 'Antipaladin'. You add 'Antipaladin' column in the spells.2da and the work is done. So Paladin and Antipaladin will be similar but with different spells.
- Wizards still memorize spells according to their progression
- memorized spells can be cast freely with a spell point system, and changed when resting at camp or inn
- spell points regenerate slowly on their own over time
- GUI element would be needed to represent spell points
- alternatively, spells could cost spell slots (like a Sorcerer) and always use up the lowest level available spell slot, and spell slots regenerate slowly over time
Would this be technically possible?
For example, I'd like to create a ring that, every so often, returns a spell slot. Is there a way to do that in the current system?