epic spells unavailable to DM-possessed NPC ?

[Legacy_MrZork]

               Hopefully, this is an easy question, but my searches didn't turn up an answer.

I am new to the DM client and am playing around with possessing some creatures in an epic module to make them (particularly spellcasters) more challenging for the player. The creature I am possessing is an arcane casting sphinx (8 Magical Beast / 50 Wizard) with 36 INT and 50 spellcraft and several items (the items don't matter, same issue when the creature is created with no items). And, obviously, she has the epic spell feats. I am not getting any warnings from the Toolset when I save the creature (e.g. no warnings that she has too many spells at a certain level or anything).

The problem is that I can't get find the creature's epic spells in the radial menu. She has the feats and is rested, but there are no epic spells under the usual "Cast Spell" area of the radial menu. When I let the AI run the creature (unpossessed), it casts its epic spells (buffs and summons), so it seems like everything is there that should be. But, when I posses (normal, not with full DM powers) as the DM, I can't get to them or assign them to the quickbar.

What am I missing here? Is there something I have to be careful of when creating casters for use by the DM? Is there a gui problem when a creature has so many levels of a class (I checked cls_spgn_wiz in xp2.bif, but it looks fine)?

I also notice that she should have 6 9th level spell slots (from level and INT), but the toolset only allows me to set 4 because two empowered 7th level spells won't "stick" (they are gone the next time I open the creature's properties). And, in-game, the creature has extra (empty) 7th level slots, that she shouldn't. Is that related?
               
               

               
            

[Baaleos]

               Is the creature classes ordered  
8 magical beast, and then 50 wizard?

What happens if you make the primary class Wizard? (eg-  make the base class Wizard?)
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               It doesn't seem to matter. I cleared the creature's classes, started him with one level of wizard, then used the level-up wizard to add 49 levels of wizard and then 8 levels of magical beast. I still don't see the epic spells when I create the creature in game and possess him.

(BTW, I did notice that the sphinx I was using didn't initially have the feat Epic Wizard. The one created using the level-up wizard had it. But, I made sure it was there and tried again with no luck.)

Actually, I have never used the DM client to possess an NPC (of any kind) and have him cast an epic spell. So, maybe I am just not looking in the right place or I am going about it all wrong. I have been assuming that the epic spells would be in the same place in the radial menu that they would for a PC, but maybe that's not the case.

Could someone please use the DM client to possess a creature and step through the process of having it cast an epic spell for me? Choose any module and any epic caster. (If there are epic spellcasters in HotU, that would be an easy example, but I don't know of any.) For example,

1) Start DM Client. 2) Start multiplayer game. 3) Choose New->Other Modules->Sands of Fate 3: Pyramid of the Ancients and enter as pre-made DM character. 4) Open Creator tool and Creature->Custom->NPC->Humans->Long Dead Arch Mage [this NPC is a level 40 wizard with Epic Wizard and Epic Spell: Hellball feats]. 5) Possess the NPC (normally, not with full DM powers). 6) Right-click on open terrain to open radial menu and choose Cast Spell->Epic Spells->Hellball.

If someone could do that (just use any module I can get from the vault) it would be very helpful. As it is, I am stuck at step 6 where there is no option for Epic Spells.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par MrZork, 18 juillet 2011 - 10:05 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Xardex]

               I don't know much about NPCs casting epic spells, but I do know that class order wont affect it, and a creature should be able to cast the spell even if he had no caster levels at all, as long as it has the feat.

Also the feats like Epic Wizard give no benefit to the creature and are given to players for purely informative purposes.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Xardex, 20 juillet 2011 - 10:26 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               So, I am a bit lost then. Can someone who (unlike me) has some experience DMing NWN tell me how to possess a character and have that character cast an epic spell, please? Frankly,as ridiculous as it would seem, at this point I am wondering if it can even be done. What should be a simple thing is looking to be, at the very least, obscure.

BTW, I know how to use the toolset to give epic spells as creature abilities (and how to get to those from the special abilities radial menu) and I know how to have any character possessed with full DM powers cast epic spells (because that's really the DM's epic spellcasting at work, not the possessed character's). Those may be (flawed) workarounds if using a creature's own epic spell feats isn't possible with normal possession, but those are not what I am trying to figure out here.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par MrZork, 21 juillet 2011 - 10:54 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               Just double-checking: It can't be done, then? I figure with all the experienced DMs around, someone would have played the part of an NPC epic caster and tried to do this...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_the.gray.fox]

               Hello.

Some time ago I did create some feats for my players.
They were "active" feats, meant to be dragged off the radial menu onto the quickbar, and to be clicked from there. Nothing sci-fi.
And they were meant to equally work for PC and NPC.

But when I possessed a test NPC with my DM, my active feats were nowhere to be found in the radial menu.
Yet I knew my feats _were_ at disposal of the NPC.
The NPC would use them when left on its own devices.

The only way to make the creature use said feats was to script it.

Epic Spells are the very same thing: active feats you can drag to the quickbar.
And of course they suffer from the same problem.

Can you script? This is easy to do.

Your best move, to solve this, is to create a special "wand" (or other item) meant solely for your DM.
When you possess a creature furnished with Epic Spells, you spawn said "wand" in her inventory and you use _that_ to trigger the casting of epic spells.

(Open...
Well, you could do it by means of "chat commands" handled through the OnPlayerChat event.
But you would lack the ability to elect a "target" object for your spells.
By using an item instead you gain a proper targeting reticle.
... closed)

Just make sure that the scripts empowering your wand will take care to discharge the feat charges of your possessed creature. So it will be like the creature did click her own Epic Spell feats.
Oh. Also make sure the wand is made "undroppable". The last thing you want is to let such turbulent thing drop as part of the "Remains".

I know this is not a proper solution.
Barely a workaround.
But it is better than nothing -- and your players can not notice the difference anyway.


-fox
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ShadowM]

               Did you posses the creature with full dm powers? If you did it should be there, did a test and it was as 1.

If you just normal posseed creature.
I will add this to the conversation in hr_dm tools and put the fix in HR base. Thanks for the catch.
Ok went and tested this sorry your problems is a little differant then I first thought. It partly because of  radial changes they made with 1.69 that cause errors radial and the class 2das. Similar to the horse feat bug I found. You need to make the first class of the creature commoner. Edit the class.2da of creature giving it the epic spells at high levels like 99 and put 1 on the menu. It will show up now on the left when you normal dm possses it.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par ShadowM, 26 juillet 2011 - 05:07 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Brainless Mike]

               When creating the creature in the toolset. Add your epic spells as "Special Abilities" rather than "Feats".
This should allow you to access said epic spells from the radial menu, as a special ability rather than a spell.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               Hey folks, thanks for the replies.

the.gray.fox: I can script and I think I could put together such a wand. There might already be one available, because I started a DM tutorial mod a while back, but I don't recall if the DM wands did this exactly. For sure, I could figure out the wand approach, maybe even link it to the possessed creature's feats, so that the wand updates it's available epic spells when the creature is possessed so that it doesn't show available feats that the creature has already used.

ShadowM: As noted earlier, I know it can be done when a creature is possessed with full DM powers, but that's a marginal workaround because I can't tell what epic spell the creature really has because the radial menu shows all of the ones available to the DM, who has all of them (and all other spells), whether the creature has them or not.

The issue you described related to the horse menu sounds right on target. Can you give a link for the earlier discussion about the radial menu issues and class 2DAs related to the horse feat bug? I would love to read up on that discussion. I know the archive boards are down right now, but if you could recall any keywords I could perhaps find them in google's cache. I also have the NWN Omnibus. What I found on my search just now was this thread, which was quite handy, but I was wondering if there was a little more detail. E.g. why does the first class have to be commoner? What if the first class is a class with no special class feats? What modification to which class 2DAs needs to be made to get around this? Sorry for the flurry of questions, but it looks like what you are talking about is stuff I should work on understanding.

Brainless Mike: As I said, I know how to add the epic spells as special abilities and that may be a backup workaround, but I don't want to have to redesign every NPC with an epic spell in every module I might want to DM.

Thanks again.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ShadowM]

               Ok I go over what I remember and suspect some of the reason are for this. Before patch 1.69 everyone wanted no hak version of DM powers and player powers even though you could do that with a small hak and I already had a version that worked fine which I had to change after the patch. Well when you look under the radial class powers. Picture link
4.bp.blogspot.com/_rboYMweTuV8/SMLVl_T0oSI/AAAAAAAAAB0/TlmEDVHoK_o/s1600-h/Dm_error.jpg

You see there are 8 spots.  3 are suppose to be for the three possible class combos. 1 for detect , 1 for stealth , 1 for taunt. 1 for crafting. 1 for special power of creatures (like dragons). This all worked fine until after the patch when they put in horse menu and DM tools when playing a DM. I suspect bioware tried to try some rotation system of icons to make it work, but this caused it to block one of the classes as  you can see in the picture instead of having the barbarian and his rage and the horse menu the horse menu got priority over the class menu. So certain combinations cause some class abilities not to show on the radial when played by a DM. I do not think this happens with just the players, but might happen with player tokens enabled, I have not tested it. They should of just put special ablities and put dm tools under that. I showed them this after the patch and they said you should been in the beta even though I was busy like other people with RL and other projects. Well the reason I suggest commoner is because it the one I found consistantly worked bringing back radial abilities that were not showing up, when I was testing differant combinations to try and find a work around for this. I think the commonor is used as the one that is blocked out allowing the other class or two classes to show. I think when the game detects three class it know it has to allow all the class icons to show. I think it mainly affected barbarians and druids combinations of classes. Another reason it might be working is if you look into the classfeat.2da most of the npc classes use the commoner class feat 2da file. I wish bioware fixed this before they called done, it a headache that has pop up now and again for DMs. That why I have all the base races with 1 level of commoner in HR DM tools so a DM can level them in differant combinations and still have their radial abilities show up. For a fix I put all the radial feats / epic feats into the all the base class 2da with a 99 level and 1 on menu setting (or at least the commoners one). I have not tested it with the epic spells I just tested with class abilities missing. In HR DM tool I prob just put it into the conversation with a check to see if the creature has the feat for the non hak version. I noticed that when you do posses the creature with full powers it show if the creature has it or not. It will show a little 1 next to the epic spell (if it does not have the feat it will have no number meaning the DM can cast as many as he/she wants, if you cast it then it will go to 0. At least that what I noticed with hellball testing. There was more discussion on it on the old forums with me and other CC people, but I think we never came up with a better work around or solution. If anyone has found a better solution I love to hear it.  I put out some more feedback as I do more testing and add fixes to my systems.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par ShadowM, 28 juillet 2011 - 10:20 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               Thank you for that explanation. I will have to play a bit with the ordering of classes to see how that affects availability of the epic spells. It seems a little odd that the horse menu issue should have had this effect on the epic spells, seeing as they are normally under the Cast Spell radial submenu, which (as far as I know) isn't connected to the horse system.

When I tested, I am pretty sure that possessing with full DM powers didn't show any numbers next to the epic spells. They couldn't be cast more times than the creature would have had them, but I couldn't tell whether they were available without attempting to cast them first and waiting for the "no remaining uses of that.feat" message. That's not really so bad, but it's a bit of a problem if I didn't remember if a particular NPC actually had the epic spell or had already cast it (and sometimes I want to know that even if I'm not ready to cast it yet).

Thanks again and I'd love to hear what else you find out.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ShadowM]

               Did you put it on the shortcut menu bar at the bottom that the dm has? it weird if I possessing a creature with full powers I cannot cast any epics unless they have the feat already. When you posses a creature with no epics and you put them on the menu bar you see a 0 next to it and when they do have it , it will have a number. Weird. I still work on seeing it with possessing normal.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               ShadowM, you are probably right about that, then. I didn't add the possessed creature's epic spells to the quickbar. Since there are only a handful of epic spells, I just use them from the radial menu. I guess I am used to the regular spells, which have the number of remaining available casts in the radial menu as well as in the quickbar.