Trying to create (or rather modify) a spell so that it applies 2 different buffs to your character.

Specifically, I'm taking the Cloak spells and applying a secondary buff (in addition to the cloak itself) that resists the element of the cloak.

Set everything up, made a new magic effect that raises elemental resistance and added it to the cloak spells. Gave the magic effect its own description. "Concatanated" description for the spell as a whole works fine, listing the descriptions for both effects in the spell window. So for example my concatanated Fire Cloak description now reads "For 60 seconds, opponents in melee range take 8 points of fire damage per second. Targets on fire take extra damage. Flame Cloak's swirling flames block 10% of fire damage." This also shows up correctly in-game when bringing up the spell in the Destruction tab of the magic interface.

But once I cast the spell in-game and look at my active effects, a minor bug arrises. There are 2 different effects added to the character's active effect list as expected (so I'm sure both effects are working), however both of them use the description of the resist effect, rather than one effect having the resist description and the other having the cloak's description.

So instead of having 1 effect labled "Flame Cloak - For 60 seconds, opponents in melee range take 8 points of fire damage per second. Targets on fire take extra damage." and a second effect labled "Flame Cloak - Flame Cloak's swirling flames block 10% of fire damage." as it should be, instead I simply get 2 seperate active effects that both give the resistance description. In other words, somehow the Cloak portion of the spell is ignoring its own description and stealing the description from the resist portion.

Without the plugin active, casting Flame Cloak and then looking in Active Effects does indeed give an effect of "Flame Cloak - For 60 seconds, opponents in melee range take 8 points of fire damage per second. Targets on fire take extra damage.". So I know the description for the cloak portion does work, at least under normal circumstances. So why the heck does adding a completely seperate effect break the description for the first effect?

*sigh*

All these random bugs that keep popping up as I change the vanilla spells are annoying.

Hmm... if I check the "Hide in UI" box for the resist effect, the description for the Cloak in active effects reverts to its normal (correct) description. But of course if I do that there's no indication the resist is actually working to players.

I suppose I could band-aid the problem by changing the description for the cloak magic effect to reflect both the cloak and the resist, delete the description on the resist effect and just let the cloak provide the entire description. But then I'd have to set a static percent instead of letting the description reflect that the resist effect is actually boosted by Augmented perks, since the magnitude of the cloak and the damage resist are different values so one would have to be set as a number and not . And its just not a very tidy solution.

Ugh. I'm sure I've seen enchanted gear and such that added 2 seperate entries and yet had 2 different descriptions in Active Effects. Or am I just imagining that?

Yerg. Why does the CK even allow for "combined" descriptions for spells based on all spell effects if things like this are going to happen and ruin the point anyway.

There is a description box for each magic effect as well as a description box for the spell. In my experience the spell description box overrides the magic effect box so you might try messing around with where your descriptions are.

Could be just another one of the many bugs, though it's hard to say whether it lies within the CK, Skyrim, or both. I think there is a general issue of multiple effects not quite behaving on spells. Consider things like how all effects of a spell or enchantment are enhanced if one of them is enhanced by a perk, such as "Aspect of Terror" affecting fire damage on fire spells, or Augmented Flames/Frost/Shock affects all spell effects on a spell, not just the relevant ones. It seems like the game may not really have methods for properly examining individual effects, and their descriptions, so the later description displays both of them.

Poking around in the CK, I vaguely remember seeing some goofy workarounds, creating redundant "Abilities" that don't actually do anything, but are there just to display descriptions. But I can't remember any specific examples off-hand... Do you remember anything specific spells or enchantments that you remember working properly?

Yah, I know about the different boxes. I'm using the description boxes for the individual magic effects with a blank description for the spell. That yields the correct combined description for the spell itself as displayed in the spell list, the only problem is the active effects getting messed up.

I could give a description for the spell as a whole instead of individual effects, but that would require using static numbers instead of the tag, which means the description wouldn't actually display changes from Augmented element perks. Which is one of the things I'm specifically trying to fix, since in the vanilla game the Cloak spell descriptions do not reflect those perks even though they are boosted by them. So that'd be a bummer if I was unable to fix one of the things I specifically set out to.

Could be just another one of the many bugs, though it's hard to say whether it lies within the CK, Skyrim, or both. I think there is a general issue of multiple effects not quite behaving on spells. Consider things like how all effects of a spell or enchantment are enhanced if one of them is enhanced by a perk, such as "Aspect of Terror" affecting fire damage on fire spells, or Augmented Flames/Frost/Shock affects all spell effects on a spell, not just the relevant ones. It seems like the game may not really have methods for properly examining individual effects, and their descriptions, so the later description displays both of them.

Poking around in the CK, I vaguely remember seeing some goofy workarounds, creating redundant "Abilities" that don't actually do anything, but are there just to display descriptions. But I can't remember any specific examples off-hand... Do you remember anything specific spells or enchantments that you remember working properly?

It could very well be a bug with the game and the way it handles multiple effects, yah. That's what I'm thinking more and more, because there's really no reason for whats happening that I can see.

Honestly, I swear I've seen working cases of a single enchantment for instance with different descriptions, yet any evidence I find keeps contradicting that completely. I just checked out some items using my thief character who carries around a few potions and items with dual effects. Stuff like the Nightengale Armor has 2 active effects, and each active effect shows the full description of both enchantments. It'll show a Fortify Stamina effect in the list, and highlightning it gives the description "Forifies Stamina by 40 points. Increases Frost Resist by 50%." Ditto with the Frost Resist effect. A dual-effect potion, same thing. 2 active effects, both list the full description.

So maybe I'm wrong about ever seeing seperate descriptions per active effect. Maybe each effect just lists the full description of the combined effects, and thats just the way it is. But that still leaves me with the problem that my effects are not doing that in this case. They display only the description for the second effect (the resist), not the combined description. Which makes even less sense considering the spell description works correctly. The effect and the spell should be using the same descriptions, so either they should both work or neither should.

Wow. The wierdness with this issue continues.

I was just idly looking at my descriptions and noticed that Health and Magicka are supposed to be capitalized in descriptions, so I went back to Lightning Cloak's decription box and edited the description (which I had previously edited and left lower-case).

Now I save the plugin, go back into the game, and... now both effects are using the Cloak description in the Active Effects window instead of the Resist description. Same issue, still can't get both to stick like they're supposed to, but which one was displaying switched.

What? It looks at the most recently changed description or something? The heck?! So I guess the solution must be to edit both at the exact same time... yah right. >.>

Well, no. I figured out what actually made that change. It was actually the fact that I decided to remove the MagicDamage keyword from the resist effects since they weren't needed to cause magnitude increases due to what was mentioned above about even one facet of the spell leading to every effect being boosted.

Not that its any less wierd. Why that keyword would somehow change which description was used is beyond me.

Also, another discovery. I placed a MagicCloak keyword on each of the resist effects so that the resist effect would dispel along with the cloak effect if another cloak was cast (if the cloak isn't active, no reason for the resist to remain). Well, upon removing that MagicCloak keyword just for fun and to see if removing another tag would somehow fix the error altogether, the effect does indeed stick after casting another cloak, since its no longer dispelled with a new cast. That makes sense. But... it then regains its correct description.

So if I have Lightning Cloak active, there will be a "Resist Shock" effect on my ActiveEffects list, and it will have the description "Enemies in melee range take 8 shock damage per second" ect. Now, if I cast Flame Cloak, thereby removing the Lightning Cloak effect (but not the resist since its no longer marked with a MagicCloak keyword) the "Resist Shock" effect will change description entirely, and it will now use the "Lightning Cloak's static field blocks 10% of shock damage" description.

So its not even like the description isn't loading into the game. Its there, but for some reason is being overridden by the Cloak description. Once the cloak is gone from the active effects list, the Resist description gets turned into the right description suddenly.

Seriously... I don't understand. The words "what is this I don't even..." come to mind. Why don't the descriptions just combine like they should and do for the spell itself, why does a keyword determine which effect takes "precedence", why does one effect getting removed let the other effect's description correct itself...

Well, I think I'm going to have to concede that I'm not going to get around this issue and just give the Flame Cloak effect a description that represents both effects. I'll have to drop the resist I'm adding to 8% instead of 10% so that it matches the damage dealt by the cloak and displays accurately in the description though. Meh, I guess 2-3% won't make much difference.