| Animal Trance | |
| Spell Information | |
| Spell level : | Innate level: 1, Bard: 2, Druid: 2 |
|---|---|
| School : | Enchantment |
| Descriptor(s) : | Mind-affecting |
| Components : | Verbal and Somatic |
| Range : | Close |
| Target/Area : | 25 ft. Radius + 5 ft. per 2 levels |
| Duration : | 1 Round / Level |
| Save : | No |
| Spell resistance : | Yes |
Description[]
Your swaying motions and music (or singing, or chanting) compel animals and magical beasts to do nothing but watch you for a number of rounds equal to your class level. Only a creature with an Intelligence score of 1 or 2 can be fascinated by this spell. Roll 2d6 to determine the total number of HD worth of creatures that you fascinate. The closest targets are selected first until no more targets within range can be affected. For example, if Vadania affects 7 HD worth of animals and there are several 2 HD wolves within close range, only the three closest wolves are affected.
Gameplay Notes[]
There are several differences between the spell's description and its actual functionality, most of which can be considered bugs.
- While the range of Animal Trance is stated as Close, i.e. Short range in its description, the spells.2da defines it as a Medium range spell. But since you can't target the ground nor any other creature but yourself, Animal Trance is actually a Personal range spell. You can, however, also target items and placeables, although this is used only for crafting; casting Animal Trance on an item on the ground or a placeable does have no effect on any potential target creatures next to the item or placeable, respectively.
- What the spell's description states as its range is actually its area of effect. And while the description corretly uses feet, the spell script uses meters, which means that Animal Trance has a an actual area of effect of about 82 ft. + 16.4 ft. per 2 levels.
- Another mistake in the spell script is that not the caster's class level is used to calculate the spell's area of effect, but his character level. Combined with the erroneous use of meters instead of feet (see above), this means that Animal Trance has an area of effect larger than any other spell in NWN2; it's a circle with a 328 ft. radius around the caster (656 ft. diameter) if cast by a 30th level character with at least three druid levels or five bard levels (only four bard levels if the character has a Charisma score of 14 or higher). This is most likely due to the fact that Yuan-ti Purebloods gain this spell as a spell-like ability, combined with some laziness on the part of developers of Storm of Zehir'.
- Animal Trance affects not only animals and magical beasts like stated in its description, but creatures that belong to the RACIAL_TYPE_* animal, beast, magical beast, and vermin, respectively.
- Animal Trance also doesn't distinguish between hostile, neutral, or allied creatures, and completely ignores any difficulty/PvP settings. This means that even the caster's own animal companion, familiar, or any other summoned creature in his party (including animal companions and familiars of party members) are valid targets for Animal Trance.
- The spell applies EffectMesmerize() to any affected creature. EffectMesmerize() is similar in its repercussions to being dazed, but allows for certain conditions to break the effect. In the case of Animal Trance, an affected creature returns to normal immediately if it is attacked (MESMERIZE_BREAK_ON_ATTACKED). Note that the hard-coded Mesmerize effect is buggy and immunity to mind-affecting effects will NOT stop it from being applied. This won't help you with the Bard Songs Cloud Mind and Fascinate, because the spell scripts provide an additional saving throw check against mind-affecting spells, which will stop the bard songs from working on creatures immune to mind-affecting spells, but Animal Trance will actually work on creatures immune to mind-affecting spells like beetles (it will, however, not work on spiders, not because they are immune to mind-affecting spells, but because their intelligence is too high - Animal Trance only works on creatures with INT <3). Also, since no spell effect in the game is properly backed by the NPC AI, this effect is subject to usual bugs you will experience with other effects like TURNED or FRIGHTENED as well: Mesmerized enemies will actually try to get closer to vanished enemies (perception loss triggers when enemies go invisible/ethereal/sanctuary or move out of sight), they may attempt attacks of opportunity (tumble failure/no defensive casting) etc. To fix, mesmerized targets must be prevented from running through their AI, for example, the OnNotice script NW_C2_DEFAULT2:
if (GetHasEffect(EFFECT_TYPE_MESMERIZE)) return; //kick mesmerized NPCs out of the AI script, don't let them determine their combat rounds
- No metamagic feats at all can be used with Animal Trance, although you should be able to use all of them:
- Extend Spell because Animal Trance is neither an instantaneous nor permanent spell but has a level-dependent spell duration of 1 round/level.
- Persistent Spell because you can (or at least should be able) to extend Animal Trance, and it's of low enough spell level.
- Empower Spell and Maximize Spell because Animal Trance affects 2d6 HD worth of creatures; this is a variable, numeric effect.
- Still Spell and Silent Spell because Animal Trance has both a somatic component and a verbal component.
- Quicken Spell because Animal Trance is of low enough spell level to be quickened.
Due to the many bugs and the rather low number of Hit Dice worth of creatures Animal Trance can affect, this spell is of doubtful worth. Under the right circumstances, however, Animal Trance can still be of some use. This spell can be extremely useful to prevent enemies from notifying their allies that they have been attacked, which may force ALL enemies in an area to move towards the player, which sometimes results in 50-100 enemies attacking the player at once. When enemies are attacked or killed, they shout to their allies, notifying them of enemy location. This echo spreads from enemy to enemy in a chain reaction and will notify all enemies in the area of your presence unless you mesmerize (or charm) a link in the chain, which will allow you to kill a group of enemies without other enemies in the area noticing anything, since a mesmerized target will not be able to pass the shout to other enemies, so you effectively interrupt the chain reaction.