New Questions

[Lawful_g]

I am doing spellthief at the moment, it has a spell list that is a limited subset of sorceror/wizard spells (only abjuration, divination, enchantment, illusion, and transmutation school spells).

Now, I see that in the editor, for the "Secondary Spells" section, you can limit the secondary spells to be only sorceror/wizard spells from certain schools. This is exactly what I would like to do with the main spells, so that future additions of spells are automatically added to the spell list. Is there a way to do this in the main spells section? The secondary spells section is inappropriate because it only allows you to add X number of extra spells per level, not define when spell levels are added or how many spell slots there are at the various levels.

[Lawful_g]

My second question relates to the Alienist prestige class "Extra Summoning" ability, which reads as follows:

From 6th level on, an alienist gains one extra spell slot at her highest spell level. This slot can be used only for a {i}summon monster{/i} spell. As an alienist becomes able to learn higher-level spells, the extra slot migrates up to the new highest level.

I understand how to add spell slots (I think), but how do I make a script to figure out what the highest level of spells available is?

[Lawful_g]

Alright. I also just came across another question. I have entered in the Warlock class, which has invocations rather than spells. Some prestige classes add to warlock's invocation ability, just as many others add extra magic levels.

How would be best to handle this so that the invocations become available at the right time, level wise?

This is my idea.... right now I have added the invocations as Custom abilities, with the different rankings (lesser, greater, dark) requiring a certain level of Warlock to be available. I could instead make a special that has a CalcValue, add a script to warlock to add one point to it per level of warlock, then have any prestige classes also add to it via script. I'll have to change all the Custom ability pre-reqs to check for the value of this new special.

Can you think of any simpler way to do this, mgehl?

[Mathias]

Originally Posted by Lawful_g

I am doing spellthief at the moment, it has a spell list that is a limited subset of sorceror/wizard spells (only abjuration, divination, enchantment, illusion, and transmutation school spells).

Now, I see that in the editor, for the "Secondary Spells" section, you can limit the secondary spells to be only sorceror/wizard spells from certain schools. This is exactly what I would like to do with the main spells, so that future additions of spells are automatically added to the spell list. Is there a way to do this in the main spells section? The secondary spells section is inappropriate because it only allows you to add X number of extra spells per level, not define when spell levels are added or how many spell slots there are at the various levels.

I'm sorry - the mechanics that construct a list of secondary spells allowed/disallowed don't exist for the primary spells - the standard classes have their own spell lists, rather than having subsets of another classes' list.

Creating a new set of spells for a new class is the standard method for this, but I admit that's a lot of work. A workaround might be to add an eval rule to the spellthief class - it would use a foreach to search through all the spells the spellthief class had added, and make sure that each spell was from the correct school. It doesn't help during the spell selection process, but it will flag any mistakes afterwards.

For the future, I suggest you put your questions in different threads - if you repond to my answers for any of these three questions, it's going to get difficult to track which answer belongs with which question.

[Mathias]

Originally Posted by Lawful_g

My second question relates to the Alienist prestige class "Extra Summoning" ability, which reads as follows:

From 6th level on, an alienist gains one extra spell slot at her highest spell level. This slot can be used only for a {i}summon monster{/i} spell. As an alienist becomes able to learn higher-level spells, the extra slot migrates up to the new highest level.

I understand how to add spell slots (I think), but how do I make a script to figure out what the highest level of spells available is?

I think this is best done as secondary spells, with the appropriate summon monster spell being the only spell available at each level. Set up the secondary spells as normal.

Once that's done, you can modify the array that stores the maximum number of secondary spells the character gets at each level - cSecMax, with an eval script on the class.

cSecMax is calculated at Post-Attributes/10000, so you can run this after that time:

 
~create a variable, and start with the 9th level spells
var i as number
i = 9
 
~this variable will be set to one once we find secondary spells we can cast
var notmax as number
notmax = 0
 
~counting down from 9th level spells to 0-level spells
while (i > -1)
  ~if we've already found our highest level of spells
  ~then this level gets 0 secondary spells
  if (notmax <> 0) then
    field[cSacMax].arrayvalue[i] = 0
 
  ~if that's not the case, see if this level of spells has secondary spells
  ~if so, set notmax = 1, so that every level after this will have its 
  ~secondary spell count set to 0
  elseif (field[cSecMax].arrayvalue[i] <> 0) then
    notmax = 1
    endif
 
  ~go on to the next level of spells down
  i -= 1
  loop

[Mathias]

Originally Posted by Lawful_g

Alright. I also just came across another question. I have entered in the Warlock class, which has invocations rather than spells. Some prestige classes add to warlock's invocation ability, just as many others add extra magic levels.

How would be best to handle this so that the invocations become available at the right time, level wise?

This is my idea.... right now I have added the invocations as Custom abilities, with the different rankings (lesser, greater, dark) requiring a certain level of Warlock to be available. I could instead make a special that has a CalcValue, add a script to warlock to add one point to it per level of warlock, then have any prestige classes also add to it via script. I'll have to change all the Custom ability pre-reqs to check for the value of this new special.

Can you think of any simpler way to do this, mgehl?

Can you use the cMagicLev field on the class instead of the class level? That's already defined, and the "Extra Magic Levels" mechanic is already set up to let prestige classes add to it.

[Lawful_g]

Since I can't be sure that the prestige class is being applied to a particular class (it could be druid, wizard, sorceror, or whatever else) how do I set up the secondary spells for their spell lists? Furthermore, in the case of wizards, they may already have secondary spells, so won't this interfere with those they might have via specialization?

Or do you mean I should create secondary spells on the Alienist prestige class? The code you included, while I am not completely sure I understand it, seems to be presupposing that the Alienist has spells and is detecting the number of max spell level there rather on the hero as a whole...

Originally Posted by Mathias

I think this is best done as secondary spells, with the appropriate summon monster spell being the only spell available at each level. Set up the secondary spells as normal.

Once that's done, you can modify the array that stores the maximum number of secondary spells the character gets at each level - cSecMax, with an eval script on the class.

cSecMax is calculated at Post-Attributes/10000, so you can run this after that time:

 
~create a variable, and start with the 9th level spells
var i as number
i = 9
 
~this variable will be set to one once we find secondary spells we can cast
var notmax as number
notmax = 0
 
~counting down from 9th level spells to 0-level spells
while (i > -1)
  ~if we've already found our highest level of spells
  ~then this level gets 0 secondary spells
  if (notmax <> 0) then
    field[cSacMax].arrayvalue[i] = 0
 
  ~if that's not the case, see if this level of spells has secondary spells
  ~if so, set notmax = 1, so that every level after this will have its 
  ~secondary spell count set to 0
  elseif (field[cSecMax].arrayvalue[i] <> 0) then
    notmax = 1
    endif
 
  ~go on to the next level of spells down
  i -= 1
  loop

[Mathias]

Oh, I didn't catch that the class was modifying another class's spellcasting, not its own. Let me think about it.

[Mathias]

Could you tell me what the class says would happen for an Alienist/Wizard/Cleric - would Wizard and Cleric both get summon monster bonus spells?

[Lawful_g]

Preferably it would be the class which is getting the extra magic levels added to it. Although the ability if read strictly seems to imply it is simply the highest of all her spell levels.