Spell

Spells are the most common means of using or applying Magic Effects. Spells include actual Spells, Powers, Shout effects, Perk effects, Diseases, and Poisons.

Spell Dialog

Base Data

• ID: The form's Editor ID.
• Name: The spell's display name.
• Type: A spell's Type determines which subcategory it appears in under Spell in the Object Window. It also determines some of the spell's secondary effects or use restrictions:
  • Abilities are always-on, constant-effect spells, such as the Wood Elf's racial resistance to poison and disease.
  • Addiction is not used.
  • Diseases represent diseases the player can acquire. Disease Resistance offers protection from these spells.
  • Lesser Powers are classified as Powers in the Magic Menu, and can be used multiple times a day, such as the Khajiit's Nighteye Power.
  • Poison represents poisons the player can use or acquire. Poison Resistance offers protection from these spells.
  • Spell represents standard spells. These will be sorted by school in the Magic Menu.
  • Voice Power represents the spell effect of a Shout.
• Casting Type: Specifies how the caster triggers the effect.
  • Concentration Effects are cast while the button is pressed, and continually drain Magicka while the spell remains in effect.
  • Fire and Forget Effects must charge, then fire when the button is released.
  • Constant Effects are always active.
  • All of the effects on a Spell must have the same casting type.
• Delivery: Specifies how the effect is delivered to the target.
  • Self: Effect is applied to the caster.
  • Contact: Effect is applied to the target by contact (a hit event). This only works for Weapons.
  • Aimed: Effect is attached to a Projectile which is then fired at the crosshairs. If it makes contact with a valid target, the effect is applied.
  • Target Actor: Effect is immediately applied to an Actor in the crosshairs. No projectile is fired.
  • Target Location: Effects is applied to the object/landscape under the crosshairs. No projectile is fired.
  • All of the effects on a Spell must have the same casting type.
• Menu Display Object: The appearance of the Spell in the Magic Menu.
  • If NONE, the appearance of this spell will be the Menu Display Object of the first Effect in the Effect List with a Menu Display Object. If none of the Effects has a Menu Display Object, the spell will have no visual effect.
• Equip Type: The spell's Equip Type.
  • For one-handed spells, this should be EitherHand, meaning the player can equip it to either or both hands.
  • For two-handed spells, this should be BothHands.
  • For Powers and Shouts, this should be Voice.
  • Enemy spells sometimes restrict which hand a spell can be equipped to. For example, Draugr can only use spells with an equip type of LeftHand-- they will never consider equipping a spell with any other equip type, even EitherHand spells.
• Casting Perk: The Perk (if any) that reduces the cost of this spell.
• Range: The maximum range of this spell, in feet.
• Disallow Spell Absorb/Reflect: Not used.
• Ignore Resistance: Whether this spell should ignore any applicable Resistances the target might have.
• Area Effect Ignores LOS: By default, spells only affect targets the caster has line of sight to. If checked, the line of sight requirement will be ignored. Targets behind walls and other obstacles remain unaffected. This should be checked for area effect spells centred on the caster, otherwise the spell may not correctly hit targets behind the caster.
• PC Start Spell: Not used. Player starting spells are set on the Preset Actors.
• No Dual Cast Modifications: If checked, dualcasting this spell does not add to its cost, magnitude, or duration.
• Description: Optionally, an override description for this spell's effect. If no Description is provided here, the description for the spell will be a concatenation of the descriptions on each of the spell's Magic Effects, in the order in which they appear in the Effects List. To see what this will look like, press the Test Concatenated Effect Descriptions button.

Effects

• Effect List: The list of effects that occur when the spell is cast.
• Auto Calculate:
  • If checked, the spell's charge time and cost will be automatically calculated based on the effect(s).
    • Calculated charge time is the greatest number between all effects in the list.
  • If unchecked, these values can be set manually.

Notes

• If Auto Calculate is checked, then the Area field in the spell's Magic Effects in the Effect List will be grayed out (even if the Magic Effect does indeed have an area specified and does not have No Area checked). In the grayed out field is the correct area inherited from the Magic Effect, but when you Ok out of the Effect List, the area will get set to 0. Saving in this state does cause the spell to have an area of 0. To prevent this, either disable Auto Calculate or simply open and close the Spell dialog before saving. Be careful, you can unintentionally modify vanilla spells due to this.
• The spell cost for spells with Auto Calculate enabled is calculated at load-time, based only on the mods loaded up to that point. This means that if you modify the Base Cost of a Magic Effect for a spell that's not present in your mod (e.g., if you're modifying a built-in spell), it will have no effect. A spell in the same or a later-loading mod, however, will use the new Base Cost as part of its calculations. This may mean that you have to create a dirty mod in order for built-in spells' costs to be changed. It also means that there are some "gotchas", like Flames becoming inordinately more expensive if a modification to the spell is loaded after Dragonborn.esm is.
• Disabling Auto Calculate in order to manually set a magicka cost is not a good substitute for specifying a magicka cost in the Magic Effect, unless the spell is not meant to be used by the player. This is because experience gain depends on the Base Cost of the spell's Magic Effect, multiplied by its Skill Usage Mult. If the magicka cost is off to such a degree that you want to enter a sensible value manually, the experience gain will most likely also be off. In addition, if the first magic effect of a spell is inactive (e.g., Storm Thrall with Elemental Potency), the experience gain will be zero, since the entire manual cost of a spell is applied only to the first effect.

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