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.
  • Powers can be used by the player once per day and show up in a separate section of the magic menu.
  • 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 or at the caster. (For example, effects with a non-zero Area are AoEs centered at the caster, affecting every actor in range except 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. Note that setting this doesn't do anything on its own beyond setting the SpellHasCastingPerk function. You need to set up a "Mod Spell Cost, Multiply Value, 0.5" entry checking the SpellHasCastingPerk condition in the respective Perk (as is done with the vanilla spell cost reduction perks).
• Range: The maximum range of this spell, in feet.
• Disallow Spell Absorb/Reflect: Prevents the spell from being absorbed by actors with spell absorption greater than 0%.
• Ignore Resistance: Whether this spell should ignore any applicable Resistances the target might have.
• Area Effect Ignores LOS: By default, spells can only affect targets that the caster has a line of sight to; line of sight in this context simply means that there is a sufficiently unobstructed line between the caster and the target in any direction (this includes targets that are behind the caster, for instance). If this option is checked, the line of sight requirement will be ignored, allowing this spell's effects to affect any targets that are in range regardless of any obstacles (trees, walls, people, etc) that would otherwise obstruct the line of sight between a target and 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.
  • There appears to be a limit of 15 effects to a spell's effects list. If more than 15 effects are attached to a single spell, the 16th effect onwards may fail to apply regardless of whatever conditions for its application return true. (Currently testing, but appears to be the case...)
• 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, including effects which will not be included because their conditions are not met.
  • If unchecked, these values can be set manually.

Notes

• If a spell has an Area, then it will never affect the caster, and it will always affect nearby actors within the area. This occurs even if the Delivery type is Self, as in that case, the spell is an AoE centered on the caster rather than a spell applied to the caster.
• 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. Even when auto calculate is disabled, only magic effects with a non-zero Base Cost will count for experience gain (though the specific amount is irrelevant in the calculation). If the Base Cost is zero for an effect, the experience gain will be as well. One in-game example of this is Storm Thrall, which gives 4800 experience normally, but drops to 0 with Elemental Potency because SummonStormThrallPotent's Base Cost is 0.

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