Trying to understand the spell effects choices in the CK

[dthompson32]

I'm trying to develop some custom spells based off of existing effects, and I'm not understanding what is populating the contents of the drop down box when I create a new effect in a spell. In order to test my idea I was trying to add a soul trap effect to a firebolt spell. When I look at the effects used my the current soul trap spell, it is using the effect SoulTrapFFActor. But when I add an effect to Firebolt, this effect isn't available from the effect drop down. I do find EncSoulTrapAimedArea, which appears to be the weapon enchantment version.

 

As I'm browsing through the list of all enchantments, I see that SoulTrapFFActor is a script, so I'm thinking that must be part of the problem. But trying to add an effect to the Soultrap spell instead of Firebolt, I see a completely different list.

 

Anyway, testing out the modified Firebolt spell, it will indeed trap a soul. I get the message that a soul has been captured and can verify in my inventory that my filled gem count is higher, but there is no visual effect. I assume that is because nothing is calling the Papyrus script "magicsoultrapfxscript" that is called by the SoulTrapFFActor script.

 

So what is governing the content of the effect drop down? I'm not getting it.

[dthompson32]

Bumping, hoping someone knows (or can point me to a resource that explains it)

[dthompson32]

I figured it out.

 

When you add an effect to a spell, the only effects that you are allowed to add are ones that use the same casting type AND delivery method. It will only show magic effects that share those attributes with the spell as defined. Since there are 3 casting types and 5 delivery methods, that is 15 different sets of magic effects.

 

What I was able to do it make a copy of the soul trap effect and change the delivery method from "target actor" to "aimed". Since it is combined with firebolt, it doesn't really break logic for it to be aimed. If you miss, you wouldn't expect the soul trap to work.

 

On my first test, it didn't work because I think the firebolt killed the target before the soul trap took effect. But on my second test (a giant) it worked fine, including the flowing soul effect.