More Awesome Than You!

Given that I prefer to lag at least a couple of months behind when it comes to acquiring/installing the last few EPs, I'm now starting to ponder whether to bother with AL and would appreciate opinions and input. Right off the top I'll say that I have zero interests in playing apartments. I fail to see the point. The social groups stuff also sounds pretty pointless to me. I am quite interested, however, in the witch-y aspect of this EP. So with all the things about this EP that really fail to interest me in any way, how likely do you guys think am I to find the addition of witches to be worth slogging through all the other "features" of AL?

Speaking as one who has also not played apartments in my "real" hoods (tried it in a test hood), and has only seen the witches once, I like many of the little features and tweaks (new skillinating possibilities, playgrounds and other "stuff", etc.).  I always say I don't care about certain features, but ultimately find that I start using and liking the increased options that a new EP brings along, as I get tired of my old style of gameplay.  I think it's worth having for this reason (although admittedly I arrrquired my copy to avoid paying for securom).

Theres always the ceilings, spiral stircases, new interactions, hood deco, new items, animations and of course witchkraft.
The apartments are always an option you don't have to include in your game, just like eveything else.

So it would be a neat little EP without apartments anyhow.
No, on second thoughts it would be a crap EP, but the additions to the game are there nonetheless.

Short list of non-apartment likes (since I only have one apartment in play anyway):

• Ceilings without having to place tiles manually - Yay!
• Spiral staircases ...better traffic control than Marvine's
• Some of the interactions are cute. My sim kids love jumping rope as part of their fitness learning times. Peek-a-boo is win.
• So many new floors, walls, and fences. I like almost all of them, and I'm pretty anti-EAxis.

Boo:

• Ceilings don't work well with lots you've done some level-lowering with using the constrainfloorelevationcheat. It's pretty bad. Not only does it screw the ceilings on the lower area, but it screws what you see of the roof from the inside.
• Hood deco screw-ups (pond miscategorized, alleys not layerable over lots, building replacement total fail)
• The normal list of bugs. See the borkination thread in Oops.
• Some stupid perk (either reputation or benefit of a great review) giving my sims unavoidable money. It needs to die.

Social groups are pointless. I haven't done the witch stuff much. My only witch is Princess Plum the Infallibly Good Witch. She's more eye-candy right now as her time hasn't come yet.

In my oppinion, the witchyness is pretty cool.

The clothes they get are a beautiful mesh; I love them in both "good" and "evil" colours (havan't actually seen nutral colours yet!).  Someone at MTS2 extracted the female witch clothes and did a pink recolour which I downloaded and have made a couple of my own recolours to.  Witches can learn lots of useful spells, but by far the best one is the teleportation spell wich is free to cast and I think is actually faster than ninja teleport.

Witches can also craft a bunch of stuff.  Probably the most useful to my play style is the ReNuU potion wich wasn't buyable or craftable before AL.  They can also craft all the curing potions as well as the love potion from Nightlife (you have to have the EP each potion came with, though).  They also can craft decorative objects and a set of lamps (well, two sets, one evil and one good; the evil one looks awesome).  Probably the most useful is the chair they can craft wich maxes out all thier motives when they sit in it.  They need to have a huge magic skill to craft it and it takes forever to craft, but once they have one, stick by bookcase or whatever, and they can study while their meters fill up.  Never need to eat, pee, bathe, sleep, or socailze again!  lol

If you have pets they get spectral cats wich are pretty cute.  The cats can't have jobs and can't breed, but they also never need to pee, wich is a cool bonus.  In fact, you never need to feed the specrtal cat either, since it will just unsummon itslef if any of its meters get too low.

Overall, I have enjoyed playing around with the witches.  I eventuall would like to have a "house of freaks" or something with some combination of Witch, Plantsim, Vampire, Zombie, Werewolf, Bigfoot, Servo, and Alien, but I don't like playing more than 5-6 sims in one house, so I think I'd make some of them combinations.  lol  I'm not even sure if Bigfoot can become a witch; can he be a vampire?

As far as the rest of the game goes, I do like a bunch of the other stuff as well.  Social groups are silly, but they do add "tell a story" and 5 new gestures that are useful in building relationshis btwn sims who have little in common because the gestures and "stories" are nearly always accepted.  Peek-a-boo is also very cute.   :D  And jumping rope is quite useful since no skill or object is reqired and it is also fun!  (the irritating thing is they tend to cancel the action as soon as thier fun meter is full.)

I personally really like the new study options.  Anger Management can be very nice for a sim that you want to be nice and lvl headed for instance.  And I havn't seen the usefullness of Fire Safety yet, but it sounds like a good idea in theory...

Overall, I'd say it is worth your time (if not your money).  The unoffical patch available at this site actually makes it playable (I would NOT recomend playing AL without the "patch").

Anger management is useless because it does not allow a sim to more effectively manage being angry. Better management should allow them to make more use of their rage, not make it go faster! In what school of management does squandering a resource constitute GOOD management?!? Was this idea from the treasury department?

Fire safety is similarly useless, as it does not really improve a sim's reaction to fires. They still scream at it, albeit of slightly reduced duration, and then do nothing useful about it and are quickly back to screaming at it. Firemod makes it more useful, but out of the box, it is as utterly worthless as the the others. There is ONE skill that shines above all others, even with the broken exploit patched, though: Physiology. -20% energy decay!

:o Is that what it does?!  I had one sim learn it a while back and then stopped playing her because she was maxing all skills in a matter of hours; just seemd too easy.  I think I have your fix for that broken exploit now though, so I think I'm gonna teach all my sims Physiology!   8)

I like how you can move things up and down the wall. 

I don't bother with witches, just as vampires or werewolves never appealed to me. The apartment aspect I do find worthwhile, and I've quite a few sims living in apartments now. I like that sims just starting out can afford to live somewhere with decent facilities by just renting.  I also get sims who were friends as kids, went off to uni together etc. to move into the same block when they're adults, so they get to socialize haphazardly in common areas without my needing to manage them.

The witches are fun, but seem to take a bit too much devotion for casual use. There is a hack to cast without reagents, though. Making the reagents is a bit tedious after a while, but you can also just buy them if you have the simoleons.
Even if there weren't witches, I would definitely still get the EP. No question. There are a ton of small features that add up to a really great expansion. Moving pictures up and down, potrait automatically changing when you change outfit, the new skills to research, playground equipment, etc. And remember, apartments come in REAL handy when you move a sim out into the family bin and he doesn't have enough simoleons to buy a house.
Despite a few complaints (*cough* no beach apartments*cough*), I am definitely satisfied with this EP...and I've barely fooled around with witches yet.

That's not a good thing! That's a BAD thing, a really goddamn ANNOYING and LAGGY thing. EAxis could have trivially implemented this in a non-horrifically-laggy way with a simple BHAV line, but NOOOO, they had to COMPLETELY BUGGER IT UP.

I also waited a while to get AL.  So far I do like the witches, I am not ususally into the other "species" of the game.  I got some hacks/mods to take away the skin change and sparkles.  I have always made duplexes and apartments using Inge's lockable doors so I am enjoying apartments.  I like the new interactions and even the statue man and the breakdancer.

I hate the changing of the portrait...to see its total fail, watch someone get electrocuted!  As always they tend to get obsessed over the new items and jumping rope.

So my hack folder is even bigger but I love a lot of the items added and I am really liking the game right now.

Here's a fix for beach apartments:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=302405

If it were just Witches, then no it wouldn't be enough.  But Witches + Reputation + new objects and socials make it worth the effort.  I'm not a huge Apartment fan, I think they could be much better implemented, but that's not a big loss.

I haven't really seen this reputation thing much at work, other than that random sims decide to give you things for no reason while your reputation is still 0.

At certain rep levels, you can get discounts on buy mode objects, random blind dates if not married, or a "prototype" to test...always a tv for me. You also can be offered a job at a higher level than the newspaper gives. The only bad rep result I've seen caused higher prices on buy mode objects. Most of my sims are nice. According to IGN, it says that the rep bar level affects your starting relationships with people. However, it says that's the only affect, which is patently false. They say that the benefits are a result of befriending sims in social groups. My one 'hood has no social group sims and I've gotten the benefits. Lies.

And there's that dumb salary thing I need to catch a screen shot of. I want it dead. I had thought it was purely a rep thing, but now I think it has to do with owning a business, since both times I've gotten it it was while I was running a business and the receiver was the owner. You can't zero it out or cancel it out, and the lowest amount is $5/hour.

Someone (TripleM) already has made that. Check the Peasantry.

ETA: Gah, I'm feeling extra helpful today: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,12918.0.html

Salary thing?  I've had a few Sims get the "Wow, I'm in the same career as you, I think you should get better wages!" benefit.  I agree that it doesn't seem to actually require social group townies at all - a couple of the benefits have come from standard townies IIRC, and the reputation increase is with anyone on a community lot.. so my business owner had max reputation incredibly quickly, as does anyone who goes out on a date or two to a comm lot. 

Apparently the prototype can be a TV or a computer - I seem to mostly get the computer, but I've had one or two TV's as well. Another benefit/penalty is lower/higher rent if your Sim lives in an apartment.. apparently promotions/demotions as well, but I've not seen this yet. 

Edited to Add:

..on the original topic - I'm not really using apartments much, and I only have one witch, and I still rather like the expansion pack overall.  The little things that have been mentioned above, such as the ability to move items up/down walls, spiral staircases, ceilings (I use a minimum of CC so never bothered with custom versions of ceilings/stairs), skipping, the new playground stuff (some of which builds body skill - always useful!) and so on are things that can make the pack worthwhile even without the main draws. 

Can't say much about a good reputation yet, but I have one Sim who has a bad rep.  When she meets a Sim, her relationship both lifetime and daily are immediately negative.  Also, while not directly interacting, other Sims make a goofy noise and walk away from her like they are scared of her.

I'm sure I had a married sim get an offer of a blind date.  It rather surprised me.

Blind date offers are not coded to only happen to unmarried sims. I read about this before, so wasn't surprised when it happened to a married, elder sim. 

Yea, I've had married sims get offered blind dates, too.  Guess it includes initiation into the Sim Cheaters Club. :)

I've seen the results of a bad reputation -- everyone the sim encounters picks on them.  The townies either want to poke or yell at the sim with the bad rep.  And it really spirals out of control on its own.  One sim (Jess Peterson in Desiderata) started getting a bad rep because one of the other trailer park residents took an instant dislike to her and started picking on her, so they got into a fight. Her rep was down to maybe the first tick in the red.  I then sent her to one of the community parks to earn some money and creativity skill, and while she was playing, sims would tip her, then wait to greet her - at one point she had 3 or 4 'greet' icons stacked up in her queue.  Because she didn't stop playing to greet them, their queues turned to stuff like 'yell at', and when she finally stopped playing, she got yelled at or poked by every townie in the park.

By the time she got home, her rep was pure red, and now every sim she meets wants to annoy/yell at/poke/slap her.  :P

I'm a big meanypants for being thrilled about that. My sims always tend to be nice, even the ones who hate each other in my games rarely get into fights. (Just poke-weep-poke-weep loops.) So I'm gonna love seeing a bit more antagonism going around on comm lots, and sims reacting to that one guy who loves poking people and ventrilofarting.

I know what you are talking about, but this isn't the same thing. None of my sims in Onoway have regular careers...they are all currently OFB business owners. No employees. The business owners are the ones who are getting the dialog. It looks like the one you get to set prices on items, but the lowest you can go is $5. Then, your sim receives $5/hour (or whatever you've chosen). You cannot cancel out of it. There isn't any additional dialog, so I can't tell who is giving the "benefit".

I haven't had a married sim offered, so I assumed. I had a sim offered a blind date by his fiance, though. That was nasty.Gah, I'd love that. All my current sims are nice.

w00t. MOAR FIGHT!

I agree, there needs to be less Pleasantville in my Pleasantview.

Apart from the ability to tweak picture placement (whoot on that one!), I think I might be most intrigued by the possibilities for random enmity. Shame that the second one seems to be all or nothing, though. Like, either you get higher pay just 'cause you're popular, or the whole town wants to poke you (and not in a good way). Am I reading that right, or is there more to it than this?

Having witches is clearly more involved than it was in Makin' Magic. Sounds like it's difficult to have 'casual' witches, though I suppose that's a good thing if you don't want the whole neighbourhood coming over all sparkly. A bit disappointing, though, that you have to put in so much more effort to get spells that may or may not really add much to gameplay. Still, being able to summon fireflies might come in handy for my nature sims who can't stop Wanting to catch those buggers when there aren't any.

As to the inevitable new EP want-clog, what sorts of silliness does it inflict upon us this time? I'd welcome a little less hobby obsession, but I'm not really in a hurry to trade in for a fancy new obsession with breakdancing. ;)

I've never actually had a sim learn breakdancing yet.  I assume sims that are already into music and dance will be egar to jump on that bandwaggon, though.  EP specific wants I've noticed: Become a Witch, Cast a Spell (only for witches), Sim I know becomes a Witch, Sim I know is Cured of Witchyness, Have a Good Reputation, Be Swung Around (kids get this want), Play Peek-A-Boo with Toddler, Jump Rope, Visit Neighbour (for sims living in Apts).  Apparently parents can get a want to read the Bedtime Story to thier kids, but I've never seen the want (good thing to, sicne I can't get parents to do it anyway; I think it's very specific to time of day).

Other than that, I guess I need to play more, since I havn't actaully noticed any ohters, though I think kids can get one to do with the playgrond equipment.

Of course, they also get fears to go along with the wants.  Like fear of becoming a Witch, fear of their friends being cured of being Witchy.  Probably fear of a bad rep but I havn't seen it.

I know the one sister from Belladonna Cove often rolls on a want to be cured of being a Witch (even though she is a Knowledge sim), as well as a fear of being cured, and a fear that her freinds being cured, and wants for them to be cured, and wants that the ones who aren't Witches yet to become Witches.  Since she only has 4 want slots, it can get annoying because she has little room for any other wants.

My witch sims pretty much summon magical servants to clean house, get rid of puddles and leaves, and, when children age up into teenagers, the resident witches give them a birthday present of a buff physique.  I made the teenage member of the Newson family (the all-underage bin family) a witch and she would produce food magically for free.  Then I got bored with having witches since the throne means witches don't have to do anything once they have one.

Casual witching isn't that hard.  After I got my first witch made (which is kind of an ordeal, though not as hard as getting a werewolf), then you just send them to the magic lot of whichever choice, buy up a ton of reagents, study magic, and use the available throne to recharge all motives when necessary until you've maxed out magic skill.  It takes a while where you're not doing anything but monitoring needs, but you can mostly do it on fast-forward and watch TV or read a book, just looking up every once in a while to check those motives.

I found making a witch quite simple.

Go to community lot.
Wait for NPC witch to show - shouldn't take long.
Macro > Socialise (or otherwise befriend) NPC witch.
Ask to be taught the ways of darkness/path of light.

If you don't want to wait for the 'right' alignment witch, you don't have to, you can study to your preferred alignment, be it good, evil, or neutral. You can even change your mind and study from maxed evil to maxed good or vice versa, if you feel like it.

You don't have to issue them a throne. In fact, you normally can't even get one unless you have over 900 alignment, which is not easy because all the best spells are the neutral ones, and if you cast them, your alignment moves back towards the center.

Actually, you're not even really monitoring needs, as Macrotastics can do this for you. :P

Alright, I'm *almost* with you now - the only times I've ever had what I think you're talking about pop up is immediately before (or after, maybe?) my Sim was notified he'd received a Good Review/Best of the Best.  I haven't really played businesses much in the past and, now this Sim has acheived his LTW to get 5 top levels, I probably shan't again in the future, so I just assumed it was some weird coding bug I'd not noticed in the past and just clicked to get rid of it.  I didn't *notice* him receiving additional money but I wasn't keeping a particularly tight eye on it anyway - with the sales, restocking and item creation going on almost constantly it was fluctuating widely and I doubt I'd have really realised since I wasn't expecting it.

True.  However, the first thing I did with my witches was max them out and make everything they could possibly make.  The thrones seemed like a good idea . . . at first.  Then they made things really boring.  However, they're a good source of revenue for the stay-at-home witch.  When I finally use AL for apartments (by making a retirement home), I'll have the witches make thrones and then sell them to pay the rent.

Or I'll just keep moving more and more old sims in and just forgetting about them, like a real retirement home.

I haven't ever seen so much fighting in my game :D I love it! I have one sim, Nick Calme, who got a bad rep for cheating on the diva and now everyone hates him. He lives in the trailer park where I have 3 other families living and when I am playing with one of the other families all you can see is a cloud of dust where he is attacking/being attacked by passers-by. It is so much fun!

I still haven't had a witch, but my Infallibly Good witch NPC is an elder! That surprised me. Here she is flying off on her broom:

(http://i35.tinypic.com/2mrgz79.jpg)

One thing I have noticed though is, community weddings make the bride change into an actual wedding dress, rather than just using the formal wear. I'm not sure if it is to do with the Celebrations SP though as all I use is the celebrations wedding arch and they change into a celebrations wedding dress.

(http://i35.tinypic.com/j0hbf9.jpg)

This sim's normal formal is the orangey maxi dress from the H&M pack but she wore this dress to get married. Can anyone confirm this? Has anyone used the normal BG wedding arch? What about home weddings? I might test it out, but if anyone else has noticed it it will save me a lot of testing :D

I really do like the ceilings and have been a inveterate ceiling inserter up until now (I am currently going round removing all the ceiling plants).  I had not noticed that issue about the level-lowering and will have to check that out.  I'm also a bit of a ceiling bender when I build.  One (slightly) annoying thing about the ceilings - and it's not that big a deal - is that you need a floor in on the level above for the ceiling to show.  As well as removing ceiling plants, I have also been putting in attics all over the place and there are times, of course, when a floor on the level above is not possible.

Social groups I have not had a problem with as I used the empty templates and the no spawn mods before I went back to Little Carping.  As a consequence, there are no social groups in LC and it's going to stay that way.

I've not really tried the witches.  I would have liked to see some more ... direct and powerful spells.  Curse would be good for the evil witch for instance.


I can tell you with that for me with both arches (original and Celebrations) that they use their formal wear - which is a relief to me because with FT they were changing into the Maxis outfits.  I was sure it wasn't supposed to be like that but that's what they did and it was annoying when I'd been out to buy them a nice wedding dress. 

How is that different from real life?

@ Maxon; Was that happening with the dresses on a community or residential lot?

That was my suspicion, that it has to do with getting Best of the Best. Kristy Pittman got it twice and she had two Best of the Bests. Beth Pittman got it once and has one Best of the Best. So that's where I need to look in the code, apparently. Unless Pescado wants to stomp it (please) because I suck.

The first time, I kind of glazed over the dialog. I remembered something about $35, but I thought perhaps I'd misclicked something and was accidentally setting a price...I'm not sure. It was awhile ago. But then I noticed funds going up on non-business days. Kristy's biz only ran on harvest days, and no other jobs were had, so how was I making $300 or so simoleans that day? Then I saw the dialog again two harvest days afterward.

I'm fairly positive I haven't seen it separate from the reviewer.  Unfortunately I have no idea if it was making a difference or not - the Sim ended up with an army of six robots working round the clock at crafting stations so I never paid much attention to the amount of money going in or out with that lot constantly paying for materials..!  Is there a way to force a visit from the reviewer? 

With testingcheats enabled, shift-click on the sim and Spawn...badge juicer. It's one of the options there.

Just an annoyance on the pre-AL homes, especially the single story ones, they didn't have floors inserted on the level above because, well, there WAS no level above to concern yourself with!

As I go through the houses with this issue I just insert a ceiling/floor above, even if I have to cheat a little to afford it on the houses that are dirt poor.

I have the $0 "crapboard" floor that happens when you drag doors over the area enabled as buyable. The environment value sucks, but it's perfect for frame-rate covers and ceilinging like you mentioned. I try to always cover the lower floors to preserve frame rate.

I had no problems with AL up now, taking into consideration that the first thing I did was to download a mod "NoWitches".
My first difficulty was to build normal lots. I started to build a very common big lot and suddenly I found out that I could not place stairs on a balcony behind the house. The stairs tool simply denied to place the thing. I had to fullfill the whole extension of the terrain left behind the house with a basement (the house was on a basement), then I could place an access door. Very annoying once it is not possible to place basement in the last two rows of the lot. I read that you cannot make a second entrance to an appartment - but it was NOT an appartment!
There are many things that disturb me and in AL it disturbs that only appartment resident can place an add for a roommate. But the extrem dumbness is that the landlord HAS to be an NPC. I really didn't need that one! All I wished was the possibility that MY Sims could buy many houses and rent them out. AL in this point is a trash. To create NPCs is foolish.
You cannot control other appartment residents. In fact they are just visitors confined to full furnished flat. I think that I can build an appartment system self that I can control all the residents. My computer allows me to have as many Sims I wish. I hope Inge Jones comes with an alternative for the dull apartment door.
Other dumbness is that the game creates 80% of elders for the new residents. The game always chose the CASface that is used by Mary-Sue Pleasant (an asian type) so I get a lot of asian look Sims with names like Centowski or alike.
BellaDona Cove has a lot of appartments and all of them belongs to two landlords. So rich and are dressed as low class accountants!
All the original characters supplied are still kids work. They are thinned in the face like bullemists and the facial is uppered or lowered, what causes incompatibility by face blanding. One inhabitant couple at FT have ridiculous faces and caused a son that has the mouth close to the edge of the cheek and the nose hang just under the eyes (Contrary or whatever)
I'm happy that I got rid of all the NPCs and Townies (thanks Pescado), otherwise I would vomit before starting face lifts.
I made a slight modification in one of the appartments that I liked (mobile homes or something alike) and the modification was accepted when saving.
When I moved in my first Sim, all the furniture disappeared, except for the kitchen essential. Got upset but it was good. I could place my own furniture instead. The original furniture is a bore. They filled up the flats with objects that are extremely addictive (training equipments, etc). Have you ever heard of a super poor flat that is already rented out with fitness equipment that cost a lot? What about a piano??? (Which land is this? - ah yah, EAxisland!)
Animations are good.
The new objects as always are super adictive once Sims do not experiment discomfort. Oh yeah, it is very normal that you spin in a carroussel forever - the teen girl that live in a very rich appartment used it up to death (another female that was helping her to spin around, fell asleep in front of the carroussel and she was imprisoned). Exit without saving - aaargh!
The very rich appartment is as always a mix of everything that is very expensive in build and buy. Lots of peacocks in rooms without access, tons of pictures on the wall and the very expensive beds. Deleted all the appartments and the only one I'm probably going to use is the Mobile Homes - Good for a One Sims start.
Will I ever build my own AL appartments? - Doubt so!

There's a no witches mod? Where?! Where?!

I too would like to hear more about this "No Witches" hack.

@edalbformat: The "rooms with out access" in the expensive apartments in Belladonna Cove have sekkrit doors. Not too hard to find if you actually try.

Inge's working on a landlord mod... you should check it out.

The no more witch hack is by squinge.
http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=94504

I've long used this plain gray tile I created at a $0 cost to cap off all tops of rooms just because certain roofs have never properly set the room below as sealed. Just a good habit to get into.

I makeover my landlords depending on what lot classification I give the apartment complex.  I don't necessarily hate the outfits they come in (who wants to clean an apt complex in a suit?) but the hair... the HAIR!  I can't stand the bald landlord.  He gets a new set of hair plugs in every apt, regardless of the classification.

The appearance of the landlord is not fixed: Hairstyle is random, only the uniform is fixed. Awesomeland has the Gray Fatness as the landlord.

While my game will likely explode shortly, I've been adding second doors by giving them a "patio" using the dividers from Pets and locking the door to household only.

Adding this setup to multiple apartments causes indoor community areas to be darkened like unplayable apartments, but using them for the one playable apartment seems to work.  I might try exploiting the lot "clones" to add the second door only when playing each apartment, but have not as yet.  One temptation of borkination at a time.

I can't say what is AL specific or not past the witches (i installed like 3 expansions all at once so im not sure what features are new from which pack) but the 2 things which have bothered me with witches are alignment and reagent. I wouldn't mind the reagent costs on creating objects since objects = physical thus need physical components of some sort.... but magic is magic no bloody alchemy thus it should at most have a motive drain. I already have hacks for no reagents and no alignment changes and no alignment requirements... The biggest trick is to avoid the temptation of having your infallibly good witch cast the population mood booster spell all the time to keep every one's motives up (kind of kills the challenge.... i personally only use it once per day usually in the morning or early afternoon depending on work schedules and such)

One big annoyance i have with it, and im not sure if this is a bug or intended, but I can't cast the chicken spirit spell on the evil mascot....keeps saying they are busy and should try again later even when i make the bugger selectable and have him walk from point A to B.... =/ Not sure about other harmful spells since my witch is max good (and havnt gotten a chance to play with no-alignment requirements yet, just got'em from a link earlier in this thread re-posted here for your convenience: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,12918.0.html )


And since it was mentioned elsewhere in the thread about custom spells that would be pretty cool if any one was working on some and looking for ideas:

Curse with... (special status such as werewolf, vampire, or plantism)
Cure of... (same as above but remove status)
Water Plants (pretty obvious, all plants on the lot which NEED watering get watered)
Aspiration Boost (boosts sim's aspiration bar to max gold...max platinum seems a little too powerful)
Compel to... (exact same as influence to... but magical and thus no influence points needed, not to be confused with 'forced acceptance' spell which is already there)
Slay by... (kill them using any method you want with some sanity checks in play....no death by satellite if they are inside for example)
Alien Abduction (again obvious, why just banish the sim when you can get them a free anal probe while you're at it? >=D )
Spirit Dog (because some prefer dogs over cats)
Love Sick for... (target instantly develops crush+love for selected sim on lot)
EM Storm (breaks all electronics on lot and causes all servos to freak out then break. If caster is a servo its immune.)
Summon Light (makes it daytime for the next 6 hours)
Summon Darkness (makes it night for the next 6 hours)
Summon Day Moon (Werewolves on lot transform even if daytime)

Spirit Transfer (kills caster via old age, target's memories, relations, gender bias, personality, and status as a playable sim (if cast on NPCs) become the same as the casters. Skills and Talent badges become whichever of the two is higher. Fitness, Job related items are left alone. Also because of the drain it would cause on the body and mind, all motives are nuked (similar to a failed usage of the motive booster aspiration item). I know i missed a few things of how they would swap but it should give a good idea of what i'm talking about) And yes, i realize this one would probably be ridiculously hard to do, just figured I'd toss it out there any way.

Philosopher's Stone - Aspiration Reward - 50k? (Lets you cast any spell from any alignment with 100% success regardless of you magic level or alignment. Non-witch sims may use it to become a witch. 5 charges. Backfire is it auto-fails the spell you tried as well as causing you to lose 2 magic skill, if you have 1 or less magic skill you also lose your witch/warlock status because you should not do magic that you do not understand)

Cool idea.

It can't be more than 32767 aspiration points, though - signed integer limits.