Hi everyone, I just started item modding, and it's going great, but I've recently bumped into a problem...
Basically, what I'd like to do is make a mage-only 'offhand' item (goes into the shield slot but uses one of the Ioun Stone icons) that periodically leeches the Magic Resistance of all enemies in a large area around the holder of the item. Yeah, it's cheesy, but Edwin is sick of drow resisting his skulltraps, and he'd kill for something like this...
Anyway, the idea was to have an equippable item that 'pulses' once per second and lowers the MR of all nearby enemies by 5% every time it does. This penalty would stack, of course, and bypass Magic Resistance, but could be avoided by a Spell save, and would have a duration of only a couple of seconds. So, the concept is simple, but I can't get it to work...
To clarify, I'm using DLTCEP.
I've copied a vanilla shield, and have this on equip:
"Spell: Apply Effect on Condition [272]"
It's set to fire once per second, and then triggers an external effect which is this:
"Stat: Magic Resistance Modifier [166]"
Now, the problem is, despite what's entered into the 'Target' field of either of the above, the damn effect never lowers the Magic Resistance of anyone except the person actually holdng the item. I've tried setting the Target to Everyone, Party, etc., and all the other settings offered, but it doesn't work. I've tried every combination of every option, but the damn .eff ignores all the 'Target' fields and just spams the effect on the item-holder. Messing with the frequency hasn't helped either.
To simplify, the intent was: item is equipped > it fires an external effect once per second > external effect is the cumulative lowering of the Magic Resistance on all non-partymembers in the area (it would be nice if this could be constrained to a small area around the caster, and not the entire map, but meh). Again, simple, except the damn external effect refuses to work on anything except the 'caster', despite what's entered into either of the two Target field.
I've even tried a workaround method, substituting
"Stat: Magic Resistance Modifier [166]"
for
"Spell: Cast Spell (at Target) [146]"
which then fires a custom Wail-of-the-Banshee 'projectile' that manages to 'tag' all nearby hostiles in a large area around the caster and lower their MR via the spell itself. I've gotten it to work via this method, but the problem is that since a spell is being fired every 1.0 seconds, the combat log is being spammed with 'Edwin casts CustomSpellName'. Needless to say, this is very annoying and far from the elegant solution the first approach should've offered.
Anyway, sorry for the wall of text, but my inability to figure this out is driving me crazy.
Any and all help would be much appreciated!