Creating RP Spells

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This document covers how to add simple, dummy RP Spells to ALFA. An RP Spell is a spell that has no mechanical effect outside of a DM session.

To help with the quick generation of spells, we have created the Quick Spell Generator tool. This GUI simplifies the experience slightly so that you don't have to do hexadecimal math or know the valid choices for certain columns.

Creating the TLK Entry

To edit TLK files, you'll need a third party program. In this example, we'll be using NWN2 TLK Editor. You will need to open ALFA-Base-Resources/tlk/alfa_acr02.tlk with the program.

  • Enter '16778568' and hit Find Ref. Scroll down to the next empty entries.
  • In the Quick Spell Generator tool, on the Text tab, copy or type the spell's name, and click Clean for NWN2. Copy the text from that box to the empty 2DA line.
  • Do the same for the spell's text. The text can usually be copied from SRD, cleaned, then put into the TLK file. Failing to clean the text results in boxes instead of valid characters.
  • Note the two lines you used in the last two steps. You will use them in the Quick Spell Generator. You do not want the StrRef column number. Instead, click on the line, and you will see something like: "StrRef = 1352 0x548 16778568 0x1000548, StrSize = 1194, SndRes = N/A". From this string, you want the first long number, e.g. 16778568.


Creating the spells.2da Entry

See also: spells.2da

Each spell in Neverwinter Nights 2 is stored as a line in the spells.2da file. This line contains information about how the spell should function, what script is used by the spell, and who has access to the spells. See the spells.2da page for specifics on what each column means.

Use the Quick Spell Generator to do the following:

  1. Find the last entry in ALFA's spells.2da file, and set the ID to one after it.
  2. Set the Name column to the TLK line of the spell name created above.
  3. Set the SpellDesc column to the TLK line of the spell description created above.
  4. Set the ImpactScript column to 'acr_s0_rp'.
  5. Fill out all the information (again, see spells.2da for specifics about each column).
  6. Use the Output tab to Regenerate Output.
  7. Copy the line in the text box to the bottom of ALFA's spells.2da].