Chain lightning without the lightning... how can I do that

First, searching for "chain lightning" brought up like 200 topics, and the first few pages didn't have what I was looking for.

I tried to alter chain lightning to make it a missile attack instead of a "chain".. What I mean is, a missile comes from the caster, hits first target, then same missile comes from 1st target and bounces to second, and so on.

But it still looks like chain lightning and the missile model I specified did not appear (however, target art would appear - so I could make a "holy light" appear on each target when they are hit, or any other effect).

Is it possible to eliminate the chain lightning model but still make a missile bounce between the targets? Or make a trigger based spell that does similar?

Another question.. What's a good direct damage spell that can be used as a dummy, that just has damage and nothing else?? I want a spell that -only- damages the target, no healing (this has limitations, even when set to negatives) no undead/living differences like death coil (never works right), and no stun (like firebolt). I tried forked lightning with only 1 target allowed and my game crashed.. no clue.

You can eliminate the model - just import a blank .mdx file and set its custom path to the same one Chain Lightning uses for its artwork. I don't think, however, that would make missiles bounce between targets, sadly - you'd need to actually edit the Chain lightning model art for that to work.

I think that you can't really remove the lightning model without editing stuff outside of the WE. You could summon an invisible dummy unit and then order it with triggers to attack the unit targeted by the spell. Give the summoned unit a missile type of bounce and then change the missile art. I guess it's kind of a clumsy workaround though.

I had a feeling I was getting myself into trouble :D

I wouldn't know how to make a trigger spell that acts like chain lightning but watch me try lol

Yeah, actually as an item ability Wand of Neutralization can only be cast on enemy units with positive buffs. Pretty restrictive. Setting the damage to summons to anything except 0 (default) allows summons to be targeted, though. Like you said. But that's not good enough, as there's no setting for damage reduction per target, so that's a set amount on EVERY target that is struck...

I found somewhat of a solution though, I haven't tried it yet. I am going to try to make a trigger that creates an invisible huntress with chaos damage at the point of the caster that targets and attacks the enemy once. This has some drawbacks though, like the "chain" will be able to hit the same target more than once in a single "cast" which I don't think there is a way around. :(

Never mind them. Extract Units\SplatData.slk from your mpq, edit the alpha in both the primary and secondary bolt for chainlightning, and set the alpha to 0. Import this into your map, and chainlightning cant be seen. (You can also change colors with this method)

^ That's right, it works wonderfully for getting rid of the bolts, but I can only figure out how to attach target art to the spell afterwards... Putting anything in Missile Art has no effect =\