Newbie questions: are these things possible without CE?

[clueso]

So after many years of not having played D2, I finally returned and got it installed again (which also was not without problems, but that is a story for another time).

I would like to make my own little mod that just has some smaller changes like changing some numbers on items, skills, monster damage, synergies and so on, however I thought it might be cool to also add/change certain things that I'll list below, but I am not sure if these are possible without code editing.

I already looked through the beginners guides here on the forum, but I couldn't get an answer to the question if these things are possible without code editing.

So besides changing some numbers, these are the things that I would like to implement, if possible:

• 1) letting some skills generate Mana instead of costing Mana when they are used (aka “negative Mana cost”) to create some Mana generating skills (like Fire Bolt, Ice Bolt, Magic Arrow, Bash etc.)

• 2) separating active and passive skills and letting level ups grant points for active and passive skills (the idea is that you can not spend passive skill points into active skills and vice versa)

• 3) redesigning the attribute system (aka letting each attribute have new affixes and effects)

• 4) letting health/mana potions stack (in the inventory as well as in the belt)

• 5) adding new affixes, which include: x% increased damage (overall damage increase – one affix that increases all damage, including spells, ranged attacks, physical damage, elemental damage etc), x% reduced Mana cost, x% reduced damage taken (reduces all damage taken by a certain percentage – another layer of damage reduction)

• 6) adding AoE/splash damage to certain skills

• 7) adding, removing or modifying elite monster affixes (for example lightning enchanted)

Bonus question: is it possible to use the tools that are linked here on the forums to mod patch 1.13d? I see that most tools are recommended to be used on patch 1.10.

Thanks so much!

[gcc]

1) letting some skills generate Mana instead of costing Mana when they are used (aka “negative Mana cost”) to create some Mana generating skills (like Fire Bolt, Ice Bolt, Magic Arrow, Bash etc.)
There is an assassin skill that generates mana, and it's possible to create skills that add x mana per second - works like other buff skills.

2) separating active and passive skills and letting level ups grant points for active and passive skills (the idea is that you can not spend passive skill points into active skills and vice versa)
You can restrict skill levels using the skillpoints column in skills.txt - this way you can force the player to invest in active and passive skills, but it's a little bit complicated.

3) redesigning the attribute system (aka letting each attribute have new affixes and effects)
You can use skills for that - like an aura that will always spawn on amulets and then adds effects based on character stats.

4) letting health/mana potions stack (in the inventory as well as in the belt)
Requires CE.

5) adding new affixes, which include: x% increased damage (overall damage increase – one affix that increases all damage, including spells, ranged attacks, physical damage, elemental damage etc), x% reduced Mana cost, x% reduced damage taken (reduces all damage taken by a certain percentage – another layer of damage reduction)
Easily doable, but will need some effort to work since you need to change stuff in many files. Reduced mana cost does not work without CE except for buff skills that drain mana while active.

6) adding AoE/splash damage to certain skills
Easily doable with missiles for almost every skill. There is a topic in skill clinic forum that lists several missile functions.

7) adding, removing or modifying elite monster affixes (for example lightning enchanted)
Some can easily be changed (+x% dmg to extra strong), while others require CE (lightning enchanted casting missile when struck).

[clueso]

Thanks for the answers gcc

There is an assassin skill that generates mana, and it's possible to create skills that add x mana per second - works like other buff skills.

You mean Cobra Strike? That is the only Assassin skill that comes to my mind that generates mana, but afaik it is more of charge that grants mana leech to your next finisher...

3) redesigning the attribute system (aka letting each attribute have new affixes and effects)
You can use skills for that - like an aura that will always spawn on amulets and then adds effects based on character stats.

Sounds complicated...

My idea was to have an attribute system like this, or something that is similar like this concept as good as it gets, if possible:

https://imgur.com/BovyuDt

7) adding, removing or modifying elite monster affixes (for example lightning enchanted)
Some can easily be changed (+x% dmg to extra strong), while others require CE (lightning enchanted casting missile when struck).

What I want to do is to let Lightning/Fire/etc Enchanted monsters to no longer gain additional resistances to the element that they are enchanted with. The overarcing thing that I want to accomplish with this is to remove immunities on enemies (not resistances in general, just that they are being 100+% immune to an element). Not sure if you can simply disable immunites by letting enemies also have a maximum resistance cap like players do, or if it is hard coded.

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Can I also use the modding tools from this website to mod patch 1.13d or do they only work with 1.10?

Thanks!

[gcc]

You mean Cobra Strike? That is the only Assassin skill that comes to my mind that generates mana, but afaik it is more of charge that grants mana leech to your next finisher...

The skill functions for charge up skills used can be used in other skills, too.

Sounds complicated...

My idea was to have an attribute system like this, or something that is similar like this concept as good as it gets, if possible:

https://imgur.com/BovyuDt

Can be done with code editing.

What I want to do is to let Lightning/Fire/etc Enchanted monsters to no longer gain additional resistances to the element that they are enchanted with. The overarcing thing that I want to accomplish with this is to remove immunities on enemies (not resistances in general, just that they are being 100+% immune to an element). Not sure if you can simply disable immunites by letting enemies also have a maximum resistance cap like players do, or if it is hard coded.

+Resist for fire/cold/ltng enchanted monsters and many other stats are hardcoded. Resist cap for monsters would also require code edits.

Can I also use the modding tools from this website to mod patch 1.13d or do they only work with 1.10?

Most modding tools will work for all 1.1x patches. Tools that alter the game directly such as adding additional levels or other stuff that can be done with code edits will usually only work with a specifiv version.

[clueso]

You mean Cobra Strike? That is the only Assassin skill that comes to my mind that generates mana, but afaik it is more of charge that grants mana leech to your next finisher...

The skill functions for charge up skills used can be used in other skills, too.

Does it also work with spells, so that I would let skills like Charged Bolt / Fire Bolt / Ice Bolt generate Mana?
Because afaik mana leech only works with physical damage.

Or can it be done the other way you suggested, like that Charged Bolt / Fire Bolt / Ice Bolt etc also give you a very short duration buff (maybe 0.x seconds) that generates mana over the duration when you cast them?

+Resist for fire/cold/ltng enchanted monsters and many other stats are hardcoded. Resist cap for monsters would also require code edits.

too bad, that was one of the main things that I was trying to do...
But is it possible to lower the resistance of certain monster types individually in each difficulty, so that they are not completely immune anymore?

Can I also use the modding tools from this website to mod patch 1.13d or do they only work with 1.10?

Most modding tools will work for all 1.1x patches. Tools that alter the game directly such as adding additional levels or other stuff that can be done with code edits will usually only work with a specifiv version.

Thanks for the info!
I appreciate this!

[k0r3l1k]

Set minmana column to a sub 0 number and you can cause a skill to generate mana with negative mana cost.

This does have the issue of working without hitting a target.

Alternatively, you can create a "mana on hit" attribute, then apply some srcdmg to the skill in question. Keep in mind this will have some weird side effects, but i sort of like having srcdmg on skills, though i have my own methods of keeping the side effects to a minimum.

[gcc]

Using skill functions to achieve something special (like generating mana) means that you cannot use them for any skills that already have another skill function. Also, some skill functions require a melee hit, this is most likely the case for the one generating mana. You can spawn missiles with any skill function, but only with some functions you can control how many are spawned unless you use some workarounds. Buffs also require special skill functions. For example it would be very easy to add mana recovery to concentrate or frenzy.

Mana on hit and srcdmg is nice, but as said previously, this has side effects. Slow target, lifesteal, ctc skill on hit,
ctc skill on kill, crushing blow, etc will work if you add srcdmg. This can be a nice effect for some skills - let's say you add a little bit of srcdmg to charged bolt - suddenly stats like slow target or crushing blow become interesting for a sorceress using this skill.

Reducing resists to completely remove randomly spawned boss immunities will have a major impact on game balance. Elemental damage becomes much more powerful, while skills like lower resist or -% enemy resist stat on items become weaker.

[clueso]

Alternatively, you can create a "mana on hit" attribute, then apply some srcdmg to the skill in question. Keep in mind this will have some weird side effects, but i sort of like having srcdmg on skills, though i have my own methods of keeping the side effects to a minimum.

Mana on hit and srcdmg is nice, but as said previously, this has side effects. Slow target, lifesteal, ctc skill on hit,
ctc skill on kill, crushing blow, etc will work if you add srcdmg. This can be a nice effect for some skills - let's say you add a little bit of srcdmg to charged bolt - suddenly stats like slow target or crushing blow become interesting for a sorceress using this skill.

So adding srcdmg to elemental spells will let them work like physical skills that have a chance to proc on hit, CB and maybe even Deadly Strike etc?!
Okay, that is cool.

Reducing resists to completely remove randomly spawned boss immunities will have a major impact on game balance. Elemental damage becomes much more powerful, while skills like lower resist or -% enemy resist stat on items become weaker.

The idea behind this was to make it optional to use a second element on your char, however, if you choose to only use one element, you would have a harder time against certain enemies with high resistances to your element and if you use a second element you would have an easier time to deal with these enemies, but it would require more points and therefore drawbacks in other areas of your build.

[gcc]

So adding srcdmg to elemental spells will let them work like physical skills that have a chance to proc on hit, CB and maybe even Deadly Strike etc?!
Okay, that is cool.

srcdmg actually does add weapon dmg to a skill or missile. The damage can also be converted to elemental dmg, like lightning dmg for charged bolt. Just makre sure not to overdo it - charged bolt would become ridiculously powerful with 128 srcdmg (equal to 100% weapon dmg) since all elemental dmg from weapon, including charms or other items runewords and also skills like enchant or elemental auras on runewords, will fully get added to the charged bolt damage.

The idea behind this was to make it optional to use a second element on your char, however, if you choose to only use one element, you would have a harder time against certain enemies with high resistances to your element and if you use a second element you would have an easier time to deal with these enemies, but it would require more points and therefore drawbacks in other areas of your build.

You could also add the possibility of improving more than one element with items. +% spell dmg and -% enemy resist are extremely rare in vanilla D2. If you change the +x to max resist on some runes to +x to spell dmg, and then add +x to spell dmg to some items that are not impossible to get, using more than one element becomes viable. Also think about replacing sorceress masteries with other skills and about removing or changing synergies. Masteries and synergies are the reason for a fire/ltng sorceress doing so much less dmg than a pure fire sorceress.

[clueso]

So adding srcdmg to elemental spells will let them work like physical skills that have a chance to proc on hit, CB and maybe even Deadly Strike etc?!
Okay, that is cool.

srcdmg actually does add weapon dmg to a skill or missile. The damage can also be converted to elemental dmg, like lightning dmg for charged bolt. Just makre sure not to overdo it - charged bolt would become ridiculously powerful with 128 srcdmg (equal to 100% weapon dmg) since all elemental dmg from weapon, including charms or other items runewords and also skills like enchant or elemental auras on runewords, will fully get added to the charged bolt damage.

Really? That is awesome!
I actually did not know that this is possible.

I always thought it might be cool to let ~50% of your damage from the weapon and the other ~50% come from the skill itself, no matter if it is an elemental spell or a physical melee attack.

I know that Brother Laz did something like that in Median XL. Some skills did a certain amount of weapon damage and also added magic damage which iirc increased per character level and per point you spend into the skill.

Does this also work with other elemental damage besides magic?
What I mean is if it is also possible for let's say the skill Chain Lightning to deal x% weapon damage (which it converts into lightning) and also +x-y lightning bonus damage per point?

Follow-up question: if I have a skill that converts 100% of its weapon damage into let's say lightning, does it still proc stuff?

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Yeah, that all sounds great, but this all would probably require a much bigger overhaul than I anticipated, because I probably also had to rebalance runewords and uniques in order to adjust to the changes.

I always thought I have some great ideas to improve this game, but since I know basically nothing about modding/programming etc or anyone who could help me to make such a mod, I never really thought about changing so much. Thanks for the input anyway.

[Hells_Lord]

I may not know how to make a stackable potion via softcoding just yet but I do know how to make an item hold multiple items such as potions, gems and runes. If that would work for you check my sig for the link to the tutorial I made on it.

[gcc]

This will work for all types of damage. However, converting physical damage to elemental will not work for poison. Non-physical damage on weapon attacks (for example if you have an amulet that adds 10-20 fire damage) will not get converted.
Procs and almost all other stuff including slow, openwounds or crushing blow will work as long as srcdmg is at least 1. Leech will only work with physical damage, so if your skill has 100% conversion, no leech will work.