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Total Shadow Spell Revamp
Going down a more serious route for Illusion to have Shadow spells help their school a lot, is to have the spells act more like their PnP 3.5E counterparts.
The change to the spell levels (and addition of Shadow Evocation) should be fine. For two reasons:
- The AI doesn't use them properly with talents so rarely were added to blueprints (and Shadow Conjuration isn't changing level)
- We could validate blueprints with some searches for the spell Ids in Nasher
- Players won't lose spells if a Sorcerer since they'll get the upgraded ones for "free". Bard may lose Greater Shadow Conjuration though.
These are detailed below:
| Spell Name | Class/Level | Description | 8 Example Spells | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shadow Conjuration | Bard 4, Sorcerer 4, Wizard 4 | "Shadow conjuration can mimic any sorcerer or wizard conjuration (summoning) or conjuration (creation) spell of 3rd level or lower." Will save else take 20% of the given effects (eg if damage from Melf's Acid Arrow) and 20% as powerful/last 20% as long. Summoned creatures have 20% of the HP they'd usually have. | Long: Medium: Short: Touch: Personal: Spare 1: Spare 2: Spare 3: | Not the best spell but has it's uses. Changing to just Conjuration makes sense. |
| Greater Shadow Conjuration | Sorcerer 7, Wizard 7 | Same as Shadow Conjuration but up to level 6 Conjuration spells, but at 60% effectiveness even if they pass a will save. 60% for HP of summons. | Much more powerful at 60% effect even if saved. | |
| Shades | Sorcerer 9, Wizard 9 | Same as Shadow Conjuration but up to level 8 Conjuration spells, but at 80% effectiveness even if they pass a will save. 80% for HP of summons. | Very effective even if saved can get also any level 8 or under conjuration spell. | |
| Shadow Evocation | Bard 5, Sorcerer 5, Wizard 5 | "You tap energy from the Plane of Shadow to cast a quasi-real, illusory version of a sorcerer or wizard evocation spell of 4th level or lower." Will save else take 20% of the given effects of damage, 20% as powerful etc. Gust of Wind or similar "non-effect" driven spells are always at full power. | Evocation only spells. | |
| Greater Shadow Evocation | Sorcerer 8, Wizard 8 | Same as Shadow Evocation but up to level 7 spells at 60% effectiveness. | A lot more effective! |
Technical Implementation
The problem with the current method of 8 set spells is figuring out what a good set of spells to use for those 8 slots are. It becomes also redundant when you can have nice NUI spell selectors and more spells are added later! 
The main problem with having slots you can choose is is an issue of text, since we can have SetTextureOverride apply a new spell icon to a given subspell icon. SetTlkOverride does work but conflicts if another caster changes theirs (NPCs can do whatever too but this can be set/set back pretty much on the timing of casting). This might be enough to be honest?
We could also mix it up and have these:
- 5 for the different ranges: Long, Medium, Short, Touch and Personal
- These default to particular spells (at least their icons do) so people can quickbar them.
- 3 for set spells that can't be changed
Sadly we don't have 10 slots since we could do "area" and "targeted" for each. For now we'll just have to have every single target be valid and add additional validation in the shadow spell script.
For the spell data we can have some nice "illusion-ary" VFX and SFX used for conjuration and casting. We then do more magic in the spell script:
- Set a parameter to alter the spell ID of the next one called
- Execute the spell script of the spell we are mimicing
- Have wrappers to do the 20/60/80% effect on illusion saves for various effects.
The key effects are to reduce the effectiveness if a (separate) Will save is successful:
- Before the effect is applied alter the duration/damage amounts based on a will save result. Only need to call this will save once the save-or-negate, SR etc. parts of the spell are done of course
- Easiest to do it successful or not in the usual save throw function (With a global for it to track).
- Dice roll and duration functions take it into account
- Other "effects" like amount of Attack Damage or whatever if a spell had it, might be nice to change, but not sure...
Original Ideas
3 spells in this range:
- Shadow Conjuration - level 4
- Greater Shadow Conjuration - level 5
- Shades - level 6
...