Spells

spells.toml lists the 64 spells of Magery and, since the necromancer’s school came, its spells too: what each is called, its circle, the words of power, the reagents, what the target cursor asks for, its flags, its sound and graphics, and the scroll that holds it. What a spell does is its script, scripts/spells/<key>.lua; the mana, the delay and the skill window come from the circle, in the server — or from the spell’s own fields, for the school without circles. Without the file no spell can be cast.

[[spell]]
id = 5
key = "magic_arrow"
name = "Magic Arrow"
circle = 1
mantra = "In Por Ylem"
action = 17
reagents = [{ template = "sulfurous_ash", amount = 1 }]
target = "mobile"
harmful = true
resistable = true
reflectable = true
sound = 0x01E5
effect = 0
effect_duration = 0
projectile = 0x36E4
projectile_speed = 5
prompt = "Select target for magic arrow."
scroll = "magic_arrow_scroll"
enabled = true

Field	Meaning
[[spell]]	One per spell, in the order of the client’s spellbook.
id	The client’s number, 1 to 64: the bit of the spellbook and what a cast request names. Once only.
key	The name of its script and of the spell in scripts: lower-case letters, digits and underscores. Once only.
name	The name players read.
circle	1 to 8, or 0 for a school spell that carries its own numbers.
mana	The spell’s own mana cost, in place of the circle’s. Necromancy carries it.
required_skill	The least points of cast_skill a try asks; without a circle the window runs from here to here plus 40 from a book, and from a scroll only to here.
cast_skill	The skill the cast is checked with and trains, named as the skills are; Magery when left out.
scale_skill	The skill that gains a tenth on every cast, named as the skills are; Evaluating Intelligence when left out.
cast_delay	The spell’s own cast delay in seconds, in place of the circle’s.
mantra	The words of power said over the caster’s head.
action	The animation of a human caster: 16 or 17.
reagents	The item templates and how many of each a cast takes from the backpack (a scroll holds its own). Each must be an item template.
target	What the cursor asks for: none, mobile, item or location.
harmful	The spell hurts or curses: its cursor is the harmful one.
resistable	Resisting Spells may weaken it.
reflectable	Magic Reflection may turn it back.
cast_delay_scale	How many times the cast delay of its circle the spell takes, above 0 and at most 10; 1 when left out. Blade Spirits and Summon Creature carry 4, as the classic game slowed them.
sound	The sound of the spell, 0 for none.
effect, effect_duration	The graphic played on the target and for how long, 0 for none.
projectile, projectile_speed	The graphic that flies from the caster to the target and how fast, 0 for none.
prompt	The text of the target cursor, empty for a spell with no target.
scroll	The item template of the scroll that holds the spell; its graphic is what tells a scroll from another.
enabled	false takes the spell out of the game.

A bad value stops the server at startup, naming the spell. A spell with no scripts/spells/<key>.lua loads and says it is disabled when cast.

The file is generated from UOX3’s spells.dfn:

cd tools/convert
uv run moongate-convert uox-spells --source <UOX3>/data/dfndata/spells \
  --items ../../moongate_root/templates/items --destination ../../moongate_root/data

The scroll of each spell is the canonical scroll template of its graphic and each reagent is a canonical reagent template, so the conversion fails when one is gone. The target of the area spells and of the ones that take a rune is set by the converter, not by UOX3’s flags, which flag them as a character.