Creating Spell Effects

[Rastaban]

I have two separate but related questions. My group is using the d&d 3.5 ruleset and when I add Glitterdust to my spells it auto populates the effect entry. While looking through the spells entries there were no lines for Glitterdust to create effects. The effects for spells must be stored elsewhere but I haven't been able to locate them.

The second question was about the effects as well but creating new ones. I have done searching and have been able to find out how to create them but what I was wondering is can I add to the default conditions available. As an example I want to add an effect called Bless, so that I can then add Bless as an effect to the spells.

I do know that I can add an effect entry with a line like "Bless; ATK: 1 morale" but I would like to add to the systems internal effect entries like blindness and sickened if possible.That way there is an effect called bless and I only need to add bless to the spell effect for it to trigger.

Edit-----------------------
I did some more research and it looks like the answer to the first question is that there is a parser that reads through the spell description for effects and damage, etc. and then adds it in. That would explain why fly,swift got a damage action since it has text for damage when you fall. That is very nice if it is the case, it means I just need to look at the formats it accepts and copy those for new spells and it should create the entries for me. Any documentation on the parser available?

[Callum]

You can add effects to a spell in the Action tab of a character sheet by right-clicking on it and selecting "Add effect" from the radial menu.

[Rastaban]

Thanks for your reply

What I was wondering was if I could create my own campaign wide effects. so instead of adding "Bless; ATK: 1" to the effect line you mentioned I could add it into the campaign and then reference it as "bless" Like blindness does.

[Trenloe]

Thanks for your reply

What I was wondering was if I could create my own campaign wide effects. so instead of adding "Bless; ATK: 1" to the effect line you mentioned I could add it into the campaign and then reference it as "bless" Like blindness does.

You could, but you'd have to change the ruleset to be able to recognise this as a named effect with specific resulting bonus. For the 3.5E ruleset this would probably need modifications to the data_common.lua script (to allow the spell parser to recognise "Blessed" as a condition/spell effect), manager_action_attack.lua to trigger the effect result (nAddMod = nAddMod + 1).

Do a search for "Dazzled" in the above files and you'll see how this is handled for the -1 mod Dazzled gives.

As these condition modifiers are hard coded into the ruleset, you can't just add an effect to the campaign effects and have it picked up automatically.

[Callum]

As Trenloe says, above, you could do this by editing the ruleset. But I'm just wondering why you'd want to do it? You'd still have to add your newly-created Bless effect to the spell, so all it would be doing is saving you typing the "ATK: 1" bit at that stage (and making you not able to see that bit, and thus exactly what the effect was doing). Since it's not a very generic effect, it wouldn't come up that often - only when you're using a bless spell. And conceptually a spell effect is different from the conditions that are hard-coded into the ruleset. So what do you see as the benefit of doing this?

[Rastaban]

Thanks guys so much for the answers, that is what I was looking for.

To answer the question why, the other players are not as use to setting up effects so I was hoping I could just tell them to add an effect like "bless" rather than try and give them the correct scripted formula.

I will look into how it is setup, it very well may not be the optimal way to address this issue but it seemed the best way to automate certain powers. Now that I know more about the spell parser it may not be needed.


Thanks again for the help guys I greatly appreciate it.

[Callum]

Ah - helping the other players out is a noble goal! I take it you're not the GM, then? If not, adding effects for other players to use is tricky. The GM can add effects to all the players' character sheets, and also the Campaign Effects List, but players can't do this.

In my game, where I'm GM, I've just added effects to the spells in the character sheets of all the players who aren't keen to do it themselves. I use the Campaign Effects List for conditions, and ad hoc effects (such as strange environmental effects).

[Rastaban]

No I'm not. I will keep the environmental effects in mind I like that idea. I think we will run a few as default and then see if we really need the additional effects or not and move on from there. Thanks again!