Spells coming out from the ground

Neverwinter Nights 1
1

I have a placeable (a Balista-trap) which should cast spells on the PC, which is triggered by the following line in a script:

ActionCastSpellAtObject(SPELL_FLAME_ARROW, oSPI, METAMAGIC_ANY, TRUE, 20, PROJECTILE_PATH_TYPE_DEFAULT, TRUE)

The bolts seem to emerge from the ground under the placeable, not from any node in the model (like the hand node). The same thing happens with Isaacs missile storms or magic missile, so it seemingly doesn’t matter which spell is used. Moving the ground node to the hand position doesn’t help.

Is there anything which can be done to cast the spell from a specific point of the model?

2

use invisible placeable

the ballista is very likely missing key nodes, I had same issue with one of the vanilla creature model

I am pretty sure it normally works, that vanilla low poly ballista is firing fireball from correct position so it must be that

3

The invisible placeable works well, but since I’m planning to rotate the “ballista” into the player direction, it’s not my first choice, since I have to “rotate” the fire spot (the invisible placeable) as well in this case.

All the key nodes (ground, hand head, head_hit and impact) are there and at least the hand and impact node are working well. As mentioned above, moving the nodes (including the ground node) up, has no influence.

I tried the bio ballista (Line 799) and my own model, messed around with the spells 2da, no positive result.

Any other idea, anyone?

4

Harvest of souls module has a dwarf engineer who handles the ballista, I think Deva used a chain placeable to appear to be a blur of the bolt firing to the target. It’s not ideal but it doesn’t show for long.

Otherwise Good vs Evil 3 had a ballista creature appearance. I wish ballista and others were a built in creature appearance, frankly.