Mages and scripted spells

[Yrkoon]

Now I'm all confused again

[llamabeast]

thejeff has it right.

Gem usage:
- Minimum: Gem cost of spell
- Maximum: Gem cost of spell + 1
- Another maximum: Mage's level

Fatigue cannot rise above 200 from spellcasting. A mage cannot damage himself from excess fatigue. Hence very high fatigue costs only really reflect the number of gems required for casting.

Some consequences:
(Required facts:
Imaginary Spell A is A5 and needs 1 A gem
Fog Warriors is A5 and needs 3 A gems
Shimmering Fields is A6 and needs 2 A gems
Imaginary Spell B is A9 and needs 9 A gems)

An A3 mage cannot cast Fog Warriors, as his level cannot be boosted enough. He cannot even cast Imaginary Spell A - there is no way an A3 mage can cast an A5 spell.

An A4 mage can cast Fog Warriors and will need 4 gems (3 for spell + 1 to boost level)

An A4 mage cannot cast Shimmering Fields.

An A5 mage can cast Shimmering Fields with 3 air gems.

An A6 mage can cast Shimmering Fields using either 2 or 3 gems. Using 2 he will get 200 fatigue. Using 3 he will count as a level 7 and will only get 100 fatigue.

An A9 mage can cast Imaginary Spell B. Although the fatigue is listed as 900, he will only take 200 fatigue.

I am reasonably sure of all this. Hope that is helpful.

[thejeff]

Very high fatigue cost also affects how high you need to boost your level to drop the resulting fatigue down below 200.
Imaginary Spell B is probably too extreme, but an A7, 7 gem spell cast by an A10 pretender with 3 boosters= A13 and an extra gem for A14 would be 87 fatigue, so it is possible even for very high gem cost spells.

More commonly it also affects how quickly communion slaves used to cast the big spells die. They are not limited to 200 fatigue.

Also, I'm not sure, but I believe the AI will use an extra gem to reduce fatigue, even if it doesn't get reduced below 200. An A10 mage casting Imaginary spell B would use 10 gems and take 300 fatigue capped to 200.

[sum1lost]

A mage will use more than 1 more than the gem cost to cast a spell, but not to increase caster level.

[thejeff]

No. A mage can only use one gem more than the gem cost. This increases his level by one for either fatigue reduction or to be able to cast the spell.

He can only do this if his level in the path is at least the total number of gems he wants to use.

Your version was prevailing opinion for quite awhile. I certainly thought so, but it was dis-proven in a long thread a few months ago.
If you can produce a counter-example, I'd love to see it.

[Kristoffer O]

> A mage can only use one gem more than the gem cost. This increases his level by one for either fatigue reduction or to be able to cast the spell.

He will use this one gem to increase his lvl. Incresed lvl increases the power of the spell and reduces fatigue as if the mage was one lvl higher.