woohoo thanks Anarch (and nice to hear from u man!)
Hey man, I read this I have come to give you guys an easier solution...
Use the TextureSheeter.exe in guts, with this you can take a folder full of individual icon files, or UI files or whatever, and I'll make the sheet and create the apropiate imageset file (using the file names and dimensions). If I recall correctly is under the "View" menu button on the toolbar.
The only issue is that you have to export the image as PNG since the DDS converter won't work for some reason.
@Aherin It cannot be truer than this. Reason why I have given you blank scroll templates in 66x66 pixel format. Use the TextureSheeter in GUTS, even naming each icon would be easy in there. Although I always use Phanjam's method because I can't make direct3d and GUTS work with the low-end laptop I have right now.
Yup I would say @doudley is a wizard with crafting skills. I don't really know how he will make it work, but I'm sure he knows what he's doing 
I'd love to learn about it too
@Phanjam I'm no wizard
...but to make any layout to be class aware before it execute, is simply by letting a UI send a stat to the playable character. To do this, you will need an invisible UI, 4 stats for each vanilla class, and a layout with Logic Group instead of Timeline.
Wow thanks for much for all the tips guys, I really appreciate it.
A more pressing issue that I have is how to actually make the icons themselves. I was thinking of using some closeup screen shots of the monsters and isolating/maybe filtering them somehow before copying them onto the spell template file. Is that the best approach?
I'm very worried about making them look crappy quite frankly
Ok ok, i had a go anyway
Is this on the right track?
Looks good to me
Also, there's a tool that you can open mesh files with. Its TL2MeshViewer. More tools can be found on this site too, this one included. It will render the model nicely but of course without the envi lighting and such.
Ok ok, i had a go anyway Is this on the right track?
That's absolutely on the right track! maybe sharpen it up some more, but that's it right there
what image editing software are you using?
Also, there's a tool that you can open mesh files with. Its TL2MeshViewer... It will render the model nicely but of course without the envi lighting and such.
doudley's right. you can use the mesh viewer to kinda pose the model then take a screen-capture of it and use it as your icon
Cheers guys, I've never really made an icon before so was just going on what I thought looked ok. My original wolf pic was a bit blurry, so I'll try using that mesh viewer tool and see if I can make it sharper.
Phanjam, i'm using paint.net cause it seems to convert to .dds without too much trouble.
Paint.net's a good choice and yes it'll work with .DDS out of the box. I use GIMP and i had to dl a plug-in for dds