Permanent summoned/forced followers with the UAP - enabled

You may have heard of the spell permanency trick. If not, it consists of two methods with the same end result:

• [1] Cast spell X on NPC -> cast Dweomer Shield on the NPC -> cancel Dweomer Shield
  [2] Cast spell X on NPC -> cast Reflection Shield on the NPC -> cancel spell X -> cancel Reflection Shield

The result of the trick is making spell X permanent on the NPC (usually but not necessarily a follower). Both methods work for most spells, though there are some for which only the first or second one works.

Now, the trick can be used to make non-recruited followers permanent, where non-recruited stands for summons, sentients with dominated will, controlled animals and created undead.

The spell permanency trick is obviously a bug and it has been partly disabled because of it in Drog's Unofficial Arcanum Patch. The part of the trick that has been disabled is making non-recruited followers permanent.

If you, however, like to think of the trick as a feature rather than a bug and are interested in having both Arcanum patched with the UAP and the ability to make non-recruited followers permanent, download THIS FILE and place it in your Arcanum/data/rules/ directory.

It's the SpellList.mes file from the latest UAP in which I have undone this one particular fix.

Have fun!

 

Ahh I love the perma trick. Did alot of messing around with the files in the past to get the same result as you have now Thanks for the upload though!

The perma trick doesn't work on critters with a willpower of 20 (and animals or undead hostile beings) though. But with the musle maker you could lower the willpower of the critter its used on and force them anyway

Offcourse you can edit some spells again that would lower the willpower as an easy alternative but you might consider that cheating I edited the dominate will spell so it works on undead too (welcome stringy pete using the Bangellian Scourge)

 

I had no doubt it's not a difficult modification for someone with modding know-how. Thought it would be a good idea to make it easily accessible for those who never planned to modify game files and/or who wouldn't know what exactly should be done to achieve this effect, though.

There's also the Mental Inhibitor for such an occasion.

 

After some googling I found:

I'll be damned and here I went though all that trouble to create the muscle maker while I could have used the mental inhibitor instead.. thanks!
I might replay arcanum with this info.

Also I changed the necromizer effect time to infinity so the item got a boost in power.

Does the permatrick in your spelltrick.mes also perm the status bonuses of some spells?

 

Not sure if I understand this question correctly.

If you mean making other maintainable spells not related with summoning/forcing followers permanent, it is already possible in the UAP without the modified SpellList.mes.

If you mean making non maintainable spells (like Flesh to Stone or Stun) permanent, then no. I wasn't aiming for anything more than undoing a single specific bug fix here.

 

Thank Muro, you answered my question perfectly.

 

Ye, I discovered this fix as well. IIRC it had something to do with disallowing mind controlled and summoned targets at these two spells.

 

This is priceless, Muro.

You rule!

 

I will never understand the rules concerning grave digging in this place...

 

The rules are simple: gravedigging is strictly forbidden.

How and when to break the rules is a more complex issue.

Which reminds me, here's a token contribution to the discussion: It is possible to make the Flesh to Stone spell permanent on yourself, with or without the UAP. This is theoretically useful in making the PC indestructable while he or she heals, kind of a 19th C version of the regeneration caccoon.

 

Re: Permanent summoned/forced followers with the UAP - enabl

If there's a way to do it, it's not with this simple hack.

It would require changing the spell so that it would require maintaining. Keep in mind that spells made permanent are just that - they can't be dispelled and keep working even after the target dies. Flesh to Stone with such properties isn't a spell I would want to cast on myself.

 

Re: Permanent summoned/forced followers with the UAP - enabl

You can dispel some permanent spells. I do it with flesh to stone all the time. Simply cast it on the NPC again and it will go away after the charge runs out (Flesh to Stone only lasts a few seconds). I haven't tested Perma-Stoning the player yet but I have with polymorph.

 

Re: Permanent summoned/forced followers with the UAP - enabl

I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing. What I had in mind were maintainable spells made permanent with the spell permanency trick described in the first post of this thread.

An unaltered Flesh to Stone isn't maintainable, while maintainable spells usually cannot be cast again on the same target. Few can (such as 1st level elemental spells), but they stack when cast multiple times on the same target rather than negating each other.

 

[token contribution]
Beware of perma-polymorphing your PC, as the damage bonus penalty will still apply after you dispel the other effects; this is also true of perma-shrink and -body of air.
[/token contribution]

 

1) Since I can see that the last posts are quite fresh I decided to create that account and share with my 10+ years of experience with this game. So regarding this topic 'bout spells permantency: from what I've observed each certain-time-working spell (include all maintainable spells as well as all non-maintainable spells but ones which work certain amount of time ex. flesh to stone) in Arcanum is actually divided into two different spells: first is a spell which triggers the effect and then comes the second spell which disables the effect (I'm not sure if I explained it quite well but imagine that you don't have ex. only summon undead; the truth is that you got summon undead effect on (in your magic bar) and summon undead effect off (in your maintaince bar)). That's why when we ex. summon an undead, cast a reflective shield on it and then USE SPELL SUMMON UNDEAD "OFF" (on maint. bar), it gets reflected into the caster so we actually unsummon ourselves (we can't do that so we are still alive and our undead is also still "alive"). Same goes for dweromer shield (except summoned units which will simply get banished) but this time ex. agility of fire: we use AgOfFire on our virgil, then use dweromer shield but dweromer shield doesn't work like disperse of magic; instead it prevents any spells from beeing cast on the target, so it also prevents from casting spell AGILITY OF FIRE EFFECT OFF and thus this spell disappears (different than in reflect shield case cause this time we don't see any graphic effect on ourselves cause simply it wasn't reflected but banished). So from my block of text we can conclude that every disable spell has to work on the target of enable spell. And now as I said before ALL spells that its effect last a tiny bit of time can be permanent; so 'bout flesh to stone it has both enable and disable spells but the only difference is that disable spell is cast after certain amount of time after enable, and thus to make flesh to stone permanent you have to use reflect or dweromer shield on your target and maintain it till the effect naturally would wear off. (also there are a few perma-effects which you can disepel despite that its said to be undisepelable like ex. flesh to stone)

2) Now start some questions and observations of mine: dunno if anyone would be interested but some tech devices/elixirs such as ex. necromizer are seen as the actual spells they imitate and can't be applied when the target has dweromer or reflective shield. Seems to work with all stat changing devices from "enemy".

3) Any ideas on making possible perma self-buffing via reflective shield/dweromer shield? I've only thought about making a follower cast on me a buff spell and then I would cast reflect shield but making any of the followers cast such a spell is really.... impossible to do.

4) Trick when you are fighting and nearly dead: cast reflective shield on a dead corpse and then when you know you'll die in like 5s cast resurrection on yourself. Then you die and your reflected resurrection resurrects ya (pretty hard to do; well dunno bout turn based combat but i think its only doable in real time). Now I was wandering whether theres an easier way and tried with tech res device bought at herbalist; you actually can use it on yourself after death but unfortunatelly it does only graphics, uses the device but doesn't resurrect. Wondered if it would be possible with schematic-created resurrection device, cause they could be a little different in code which would lead to success but was too lazy to check it out. Nope; you can't use necromizer or create self-undead while dying (didn't try with followers using necromizer, but hardly imaginable they would; followers with black magic never use their create undead so didn't try anyway).

5) Regarding 4th point any ideas on making myself undead in singleplayer? Its actually possible in multiplayer but the effect is kinda bugged when cast in multi and causes the player either to become an undead for the time of play (after save/load to next map the player returns to normal), caused the player to die or simply resurrected like resurrection spell but with some damaged hp (around 50% of max hp). I'm asking cause I've done arcanum like twenty times and actually trying to do the best possible for me character and... Well immunity to poisons, mind-control, fatigue damage and faint resistance of undead sound pretty encouraging to do...

 

Re: Permanent summoned/forced followers with the UAP - enabl

So as far as permanently buffing yourself goes, it's very doable. Cast reflection shield on a companion, then reflect the buff you want back onto yourself. Then cancel reflection shield and cast dweomer shield on the NPC you used for the reflection. This auto-cancels the buff spell on the companion, leaving you with the effect.

 

Re: Permanent summoned/forced followers with the UAP - enabl

Hello friends, this fix isn't working for me. I think it has something to do with my GOG version of arcanum, it doesn't have the directory "arcanum/data/rules". Any workarounds for this sort of thing? I can't play without UAP because I'm using windows 8.1

 

I would also like to know. Same problem. Sorry for necro.

 

Does this fix work with newest (2.0.2 ) uap version?