Magic NPCs

[0.6.1] - August 25th, 2026

A major bug-fixing update focused on making School Tomes, villager spellcasting, Recruits integration, and NPC spell behavior actually work as intended.

School Tome Fixes

• The School Tome now works on villagers and Recruits instead of opening their normal interaction screens.

• Added proper right-click behavior:

  • Right-click an NPC to see its current spell school.
  • Sneak-right-click to cycle through available schools.
  • Cycling past the last school clears it and stops that NPC from casting.

• Manually assigned schools now survive chunk reloads instead of reverting.

• Fixed the Tome getting stuck when cycling past an unusable school.

School Tome Is Now Craftable

The School Tome finally has crafting recipes.

• With Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks installed, it uses Arcane Essence and Blank Runes.
• Without Iron's installed, it uses Amethyst and Lapis.

Exactly one appropriate recipe will load depending on your mod setup.

NPC Spellcasting Fixes

• Fixed many Iron's spells doing nothing when cast by NPCs while still consuming mana and triggering cooldowns.
• Spells now properly prepare their effects before casting.
• Failed spell preparations no longer consume mana.
• Fixed several healing, support, area, and offensive spells that were affected.
• NPCs are no longer assigned schools that give them no usable support spells.
• Added more defensive and healing spells to the default support-spell list.

Villager Self-Defense

Added:

schools.villagers.selfDefense = false

When enabled, spellcasting villagers can fight back when attacked.

This gives normal villagers a way to use offensive spells without requiring another NPC or guard mod to give them combat targets.

Friendly-Fire Protection

Fixed friendly-fire checks not working reliably.

NPC casters now properly avoid hitting:

• Owners.
• Allied Recruits.
• Friendly mobs.
• Protected bystanders.

Creative and spectator players no longer unnecessarily block casts.

Recruits Improvements

• recruits.enabled = false now properly disables Recruit spellcasting and rank scaling.
• Recruit ally protection remains active even when spellcasting integration is disabled.
• Passive Recruits can now still cast self-healing and support spells.
• Player-owned Recruit casting sounds now use a more appropriate sound category instead of "Hostile Creatures."

Better School Assignment

• Villagers with professions that currently have no mapped school are no longer permanently marked as non-casters.
• Adding new profession mappings or changing spell restrictions can now affect existing villagers.
• Failed school assignments caused by temporary config restrictions no longer permanently lock an NPC out of casting.
• /reload now refreshes spellcasters already in the world.

AI & Casting Fixes

• Fixed spellcasters taking several seconds to react after entering combat.
• Fixed removing a spellcasting goal potentially leaving an NPC's movement or targeting AI stuck.
• Fixed casting glow effects sometimes remaining permanently after unloading, death, or server shutdown.
• Fixed configured spell wind-up times being one tick shorter than intended.
• Fixed long-channel spells also ending one tick early.
• Fixed blacklisted spells sometimes causing NPCs to repeatedly start the same failed cast.
• Fixed Evoker spellcasting not being correctly suppressed when configured.
• Fixed NPC mana remaining above its new maximum after mana limits were lowered.
• Reduced unnecessary spell-selection checks when no usable spells are available.

Command Improvements

• /magicnpcs school info now reports the actual source controlling the NPC's school.
• It now gives proper feedback when no NPC is selected.
• /magicnpcs spells is now correctly restricted to operators.
• Fixed /magicnpcs spells crashing on certain addon spells.
• Improved School Tome and school-reroll feedback.

Stability Improvements

• Fixed extremely large datapack weights potentially crashing the server.
• Improved weighted spell, loadout, and equipment selection safety.
• Reading NPC school information no longer creates unnecessary saved data on every mob.

Default Spell Changes

Added several defensive and healing spells to the default support list, including:

• Oakskin
• Evasion
• Invisibility
• Spider Aspect
• Ice Block
• Frost Step
• Shield
• Fang Ward
• Additional healing spells

Removed the nonexistent irons_spellbooks:cure_wounds entry.

Documentation Corrections

• Corrected documentation claiming villagers naturally attack during raids.

  • Vanilla villagers do not gain combat targets during raids.
  • Offensive casting requires another NPC/guard system or the new selfDefense option.

• Corrected several incorrectly documented config paths.

• Updated the mod description to correctly describe the system as datapack-driven.

Migration Notes

• Existing windup values now last exactly as many ticks as configured.

  • Existing packs will effectively gain one extra tick compared with the previous broken behavior.

• Disabling recruits.enabled now disables Recruit spellcasting entirely.

• Spells that previously consumed mana while doing nothing will now either work correctly or safely refuse to cast.